Friedrich Schiller - The Robbers

AMELIA (with emotion). Yes, verily, I own it. Despite of you all, barbarians as you are, I will own it before all the world. I love him!

FRANCIS. Inhuman, cruel! So to requite a love like this! To forget her —

AMELIA (starting). What! forget me?

FRANCIS. Did you not place a ring on his finger? – a diamond ring, the pledge of your love? To be sure how is it possible for youth to resist the fascinations of a wanton? Who can blame him for it, since he had nothing else left to give away? and of course she repaid him with interest by her caresses and embraces.

AMELIA (with indignation). My ring to a wanton?

FRANCIS. Fie, fie! it is disgraceful. 'Twould not be much, however, if that were all. A ring, be it ever so costly, is, after all, a thing which one may always buy of a Jew. Perhaps the fashion of it did not please him, perhaps he exchanged it for one more beautiful.

AMELIA (with violence). But my ring, I say, my ring?

FRANCIS. Even yours, Amelia. Ha! such a brilliant, and on my finger; and from Amelia! Death itself should not have plucked it hence. It is not the costliness of the diamond, not the cunning of the pattern – it is love which constitutes its value. Is it not so, Amelia? Dearest child, you are weeping. Woe be to him who causes such precious drops to flow from those heavenly eyes; ah, and if you knew all, if you could but see him yourself, see him under that form?

AMELIA. Monster! what do you mean? What form do you speak of?

FRANCIS. Hush, hush, gentle soul, press me no further (as if soliloquizing, yet aloud). If it had only some veil, that horrid vice, under which it might shroud itself from the eye of the world! But there it is, glaring horribly through the sallow, leaden eye; proclaiming itself in the sunken, deathlike look; ghastly protruding bones; the faltering, hollow voice; preaching audibly from the shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth – faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your mind, and your Charles stands before you. His kisses are pestilence, his lips poison.

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