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What they wanted, as Arnold of Sewa might have said if he had been there, was a few moments' complete rest. Leuthold's helmet had been hammered with sticks until it was over his eyes and all out of shape, and Friesshardt's was very little better. And they both felt just as if they had been run over in the street by a horse and cart. "Tell!" shouted the crowd. "Hurrah for Tell! Good old Tell!"
"In short," continued Walter, "after a few minutes' very interesting conversation he made us see that it really wouldn't do, and that we must go on paying the taxes as before." There was a dead silence for several minutes, while everybody looked at everybody else in dismay. The silence was broken by Arnold of Sewa.
"That," said Arnold of Sewa, "I put down entirely to the fact that you and your friends, by not exercising tact, irritated the Governor, and made him unwilling to listen to anybody else. Nothing is more important in these affairs than tact. That's what you want tact. But have it your own way. Don't mind me!" And the citizens did not.
BUHEL. The forest chapel's matin bell Chimes clearly o'er the lake from Switzerland. FLUE. The air is clear, and bears the sound so far. MELCHTHAL. Go, you and you, and light some broken boughs, Let's bid them welcome with a cheerful blaze. SEWA. The moon shines fair to-night. Beneath its beams The lake reposes, bright as burnished steel. BUHEL. They'll have an easy passage. Ha! look there!
WINKELRLED. 'Tis a traitor's counsel, His country's foe! REDING. Peace, peace, confederates! SEWA. Homage to Austria, after wrongs like these! FLUE. Shall Austria exert from us by force What we denied to kindness and entreaty? MEYER. Then should we all be slaves, deservedly. MAUER. Yes! Let him forfeit all a Switzer's rights Who talks of yielding to the yoke of Austria! I stand on this, Landamman.
Arnold of Sewa had been disappointed at not being chosen as one of the three spokesmen, and he thought that if he had been so chosen all this trouble would not have occurred. "The fact is," he said bitterly, "that you three have failed to do what you were sent to do.
" Shouting out that you want the taxes abolished " "But we didn't shout," said Walter Furst. "I really cannot speak if I am to be constantly interrupted," said Arnold of Sewa severely. "What I say is, that you ought to employ tact. Tact; that's what you want.
"I don't desire to be unpleasant at all," replied Arnold of Sewa, "but I must be forgiven for reminding the honourable gentleman who has just spoken that he and his equally honourable friends did not meet with the best of success when they called upon the Governor." "Well, and you didn't either!" snapped Arnold of Melchthal, whose finger still hurt him, and made him a little bad-tempered.
"I don't wish to seem to boast at all," said Arnold of Sewa, "but I think I had better be one of the three." "I was thinking," said Werner Stauffacher, "that it would be a pity always to be chopping and changing. Why not choose the same three as were sent to Gessler?"
In the background the lake is observed, and over it a moon rainbow in the early part of the scene. The prospect is closed by lofty mountains, with glaciers rising behind them. The stage is dark, but the lake and glaciers glisten in the moonlight. MELCHTHAL, BAUMGARTEN, WINKELRIED, MEYER VON SARNEN, BURKHART AM BUHEL, ARNOLD VON SEWA, KLAUS VON DER FLUE, and four other peasants, all armed.
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