MECH.

There hangs the Viceroy!  Your obeisance, children!

ELSBETH.

I would to God he’d go, and leave his cap! 
The country would be none the worse for it.

FRIESSHARDT (driving them away).

Out of the way!  Confounded pack of gossips! 
Who sent for you?  Go, send your husbands here,
If they have courage to defy the order.

[TELL enters with his cross-bow, leading his son WALTER by the hand.  They pass the hat without noticing it, and advance to the front of the stage.]

WALTER (pointing to the Bannberg).

Father, is’t true, that on the mountain there
The trees, if wounded with a hatchet, bleed?

TELL.

Who says so, boy?

WALTER.

The master herdsman, father! 
He tells us there’s a charm upon the trees,
And if a man shall injure them, the hand
That struck the blow will grow from out the grave.

TELL.

There is a charm about them—­that’s the truth. 
Dost see those glaciers yonder—­those white horns—­
That seem to melt away into the sky?

WALTER.

They are the peaks that thunder so at night,
And send the avalanches down upon us.

TELL.

They are; and Altdorf long ago had been
Submerged beneath these avalanches’ weight,
Did not the forest there above the town
Stand like a bulwark to arrest their fall.

WALTER (after musing a little).

And are there countries with no mountains, father?

TELL.

Yes, if we travel downward from our heights,
And keep descending where the rivers go,
We reach, a wide and level country, where
Our mountain torrents brawl and foam no more,
And fair large rivers glide serenely on. 
All quarters of the heaven may there be scann’d
Without impediment.  The corn grows there
In broad and lovely fields, and all the land
Is like a garden fair to look upon.

WALTER.

But, father, tell me, wherefore haste we not
Away to this delightful land, instead
Of toiling here and struggling as we do?

TELL.

The land is fair and bountiful as Heaven;
But they who till it never may enjoy
The fruits of what they sow.

WALTER.

Live they not free,
As you do, on the land their fathers left them?

TELL.

The fields are all the bishop’s or the king’s.

WALTER.

But they may freely hunt among the woods?

TELL.

The game is all the monarch’s—­bird and beast.

WALTER.

But they, at least, may surely fish the streams?

TELL.

Stream, lake, and sea, all to the king belong.

WALTER.

Who is this king, of whom they’re so afraid?

TELL.

He is the man who fosters and protects them.