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\title{The Cenci}
\date{1819}
\author{Percy Bysshe Shelley}
\subtitle{}
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\begin{document}
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{\usekomafont{title}{\huge The Cenci\par}}%
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{\usekomafont{author}{Percy Bysshe Shelley\par}}%
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{\usekomafont{date}{1819\par}}%
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\chapter{\textbf{Dramatis Personæ}
\forcelinebreak}
COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI.
GIACOMO \& BERNARDO, \emph{his Sons.}
CARDINAL CAMILLO.
ORSINO, \emph{a Prelate.}
SAVELLA, \emph{the Pope’s Legate.}
OLIMPIO \& MARZIO, \emph{Assassins.}
ANDREA, \emph{Servant to Cenci.}
Nobles—Judges—Guards—Servants.
LUCRETIA, \emph{Wife of Cenci, and Step-mother of his children;} BEATRICE, \emph{his Daughter.}
\bigskip
The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.
\bigskip
\emph{Time.} During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.
\bigskip
\bigskip
\part{\textbf{Act I}
\forcelinebreak}
\chapter{\textbf{Scene I}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment In The Cenci Palace.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} COUNT CENCI, \emph{and} CARDINAL CAMILLO
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo}
\forcelinebreak
THAT matter of the murder is hushed up
\forcelinebreak
If you consent to yield his Holiness
\forcelinebreak
Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—\forcelinebreak It needed all my interest in the conclave
\forcelinebreak
To bend him to this point: he said that you
\forcelinebreak
Bought perilous impunity with your gold;
\forcelinebreak
That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded
\forcelinebreak
Enriched the Church, and respited from hell\forcelinebreak An erring soul which might repent and live:—
\forcelinebreak
But that the glory and the interest
\forcelinebreak
Of the high throne he fills, little consist
\forcelinebreak
With making it a daily mart of guilt
\forcelinebreak
As manifold and hideous as the deeds\forcelinebreak Which you scarce hide from men’s revolted eyes.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} The third of my possessions—let it go!
\forcelinebreak
Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
\forcelinebreak
Had sent his architect to view the ground,
\forcelinebreak
Meaning to build a villa on my vines\forcelinebreak The next time I compounded with his uncle:
\forcelinebreak
I little thought he should outwit me so!
\forcelinebreak
Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see
\forcelinebreak
That which the vassal threatened to divulge
\forcelinebreak
Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.\forcelinebreak The deed he saw could not have rated higher
\forcelinebreak
Than his most worthless life:—it angers me!
\forcelinebreak
Respited me from Hell!—So may the Devil
\forcelinebreak
Respite their souls from Heaven. No doubt Pope Clement,
\forcelinebreak
And his most charitable nephews, pray\forcelinebreak That the Apostle Peter and the saints
\forcelinebreak
Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy
\forcelinebreak
Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days
\forcelinebreak
Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards
\forcelinebreak
Of their revenue.—But much yet remains\forcelinebreak To which they show no title.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Oh, Count Cenci!
\forcelinebreak
So much that thou mightst honourably live
\forcelinebreak
And reconcile thyself with thine own heart
\forcelinebreak
And with thy God, and with the offended world.\forcelinebreak How hideously look deeds of lust and blood
\forcelinebreak
Thro’ those snow white and venerable hairs!—
\forcelinebreak
Your children should be sitting round you now,
\forcelinebreak
But that you fear to read upon their looks
\forcelinebreak
The shame and misery you have written there.\forcelinebreak Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?
\forcelinebreak
Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else
\forcelinebreak
Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.
\forcelinebreak
Why is she barred from all society
\forcelinebreak
But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?\forcelinebreak Talk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well.
\forcelinebreak
I stood beside your dark and fiery youth
\forcelinebreak
Watching its bold and bad career, as men
\forcelinebreak
Watch meteors, but it vanished not—I marked
\forcelinebreak
Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now\forcelinebreak Do I behold you in dishonoured age
\forcelinebreak
Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.
\forcelinebreak
Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,
\forcelinebreak
And in that hope have saved your life three times.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} For which Aldobrandino owes you now\forcelinebreak My fief beyond the Pincian-Cardinal,
\forcelinebreak
One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,
\forcelinebreak
And so we shall converse with less restraint.
\forcelinebreak
A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter—
\forcelinebreak
He was accustomed to frequent my house;\forcelinebreak So the next day \emph{his} wife and daughter came
\forcelinebreak
And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:
\forcelinebreak
I think they never saw him any more.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Thou execrable man, beware!—
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Of thee?\forcelinebreak Nay this is idle:—We should know each other.
\forcelinebreak
As to my character for what men call crime
\forcelinebreak
Seeing I please my senses as I list,
\forcelinebreak
And vindicate that right with force or guile
\forcelinebreak
It is a public matter, and I care not\forcelinebreak If I discuss it with you. I may speak
\forcelinebreak
Alike to you and my own conscious heart—
\forcelinebreak
For you give out that you have half reformed me,
\forcelinebreak
Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent
\forcelinebreak
If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.\forcelinebreak All men delight in sensual luxury,
\forcelinebreak
All men enjoy revenge; and most exult
\forcelinebreak
Over the tortures they can never feel—
\forcelinebreak
Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain.
\forcelinebreak
But I delight in nothing else. I love\forcelinebreak The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,
\forcelinebreak
When this shall be another’s, and that mine.
\forcelinebreak
And I have no remorse and little fear,
\forcelinebreak
Which are, I think, the checks of other men.
\forcelinebreak
This mood has grown upon me, until now\forcelinebreak Any design my captious fancy makes
\forcelinebreak
The picture of its wish, and it forms none
\forcelinebreak
But such as men like you would start to know,
\forcelinebreak
Is as my natural food and rest debarred
\forcelinebreak
Until it be accomplished.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Art thou not
\forcelinebreak
Most miserable?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Why, miserable?—
\forcelinebreak
No.—I am what your theologians call
\forcelinebreak
Hardened;—which they must be in impudence,\forcelinebreak So to revile a man’s peculiar taste.
\forcelinebreak
True, I was happier than I am, while yet
\forcelinebreak
Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;
\forcelinebreak
While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now
\forcelinebreak
Invention palls:—Ay, we must all grow old—\forcelinebreak And but that there yet remains a deed to act
\forcelinebreak
Whose horror might make sharp an appetite
\forcelinebreak
Duller than mine—I’d do—I know not what.
\forcelinebreak
When I was young I thought of nothing else
\forcelinebreak
But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:\forcelinebreak Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,
\forcelinebreak
And I grew tired:—yet, till I killed a foe,
\forcelinebreak
And heard his groans, and heard his children’s groans,
\forcelinebreak
Knew I not what delight was else on earth,
\forcelinebreak
Which now delights me little. I the rather\forcelinebreak Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals,
\forcelinebreak
The dry fixed eyeball; the pale quivering lip,
\forcelinebreak
Which tell me that the spirit weeps within
\forcelinebreak
Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.
\forcelinebreak
I rarely kill the body, which preserves,\forcelinebreak Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,
\forcelinebreak
Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear
\forcelinebreak
For hourly pain.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Hell’s most abandoned fiend
\forcelinebreak
Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,\forcelinebreak Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;
\forcelinebreak
I thank my God that I believe you not.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ANDREA
\noindent
\emph{Andrea.} My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca
\forcelinebreak
Would speak with you.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Bid him attend me in the grand saloon. [\emph{Exit} ANDREA.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Farewell; and I will pray
\forcelinebreak
Almighty God that thy false, impious words
\forcelinebreak
Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. [\emph{Exit} CAMILLO.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} The third of my possessions! I must use\forcelinebreak Close husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword,
\forcelinebreak
Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday
\forcelinebreak
There came an order from the Pope to make
\forcelinebreak
Fourfold provision for my cursed sons;
\forcelinebreak
Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,\forcelinebreak Hoping some accident might cut them off;
\forcelinebreak
And meaning if I could to starve them there.
\forcelinebreak
I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!
\forcelinebreak
Bernardo and my wife could not be worse
\forcelinebreak
If dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice—\forcelinebreak (\emph{Looking around him suspiciously.})
\forcelinebreak
I think they cannot hear me at the door;
\forcelinebreak
What if they should? And yet I need not speak
\forcelinebreak
Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.
\forcelinebreak
O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear\forcelinebreak What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread
\forcelinebreak
Towards her chamber,—let your echoes talk
\forcelinebreak
Of my imperious step scorning surprise,
\forcelinebreak
But not of my intent!—Andrea!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ANDREA
\noindent \emph{Andrea.} My lord?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber
\forcelinebreak
This evening:—no, at midnight and alone. [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene II}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A Garden in the Cenci Palace.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE \emph{and} ORSINO, \emph{as in conversation}
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Pervert not truth,
\forcelinebreak
Orsino. You remember where we held
\forcelinebreak
That conversation;—nay, we see the spot\forcelinebreak Even from this cypress;—two long years are past
\forcelinebreak
Since, on an April midnight, underneath
\forcelinebreak
The moonlight ruins of mount Palatine,
\forcelinebreak
I did confess to you my secret mind.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} You said you loved me then.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} You are a Priest,
\forcelinebreak
Speak to me not of love.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I may obtain
\forcelinebreak
The dispensation of the Pope to marry.
\forcelinebreak
Because I am a Priest do you believe\forcelinebreak Your image, as the hunter some struck deer,
\forcelinebreak
Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} As I have said, speak to me not of love:
\forcelinebreak
Had you a dispensation I have not;
\forcelinebreak
Nor will I leave this home of misery\forcelinebreak Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady
\forcelinebreak
To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,
\forcelinebreak
Must suffer what I still have strength to share.
\forcelinebreak
Alas, Orsino! All the love that once
\forcelinebreak
I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.\forcelinebreak Ours was a youthful contract, which you first
\forcelinebreak
Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.
\forcelinebreak
And thus I love you still, but holily,
\forcelinebreak
Even as a sister or a spirit might;
\forcelinebreak
And so I swear a cold fidelity.\forcelinebreak And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.
\forcelinebreak
You have a sly, equivocating vein
\forcelinebreak
That suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am!
\forcelinebreak
Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me
\forcelinebreak
As you were not my friend, and as if you\forcelinebreak Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles
\forcelinebreak
Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.
\forcelinebreak
Ah no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seem
\forcelinebreak
Sterner than else my nature might have been;
\forcelinebreak
I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,\forcelinebreak And they forbode,—but what can they forbode
\forcelinebreak
Worse than I now endure?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} All will be well.
\forcelinebreak
Is the petition yet prepared? You know
\forcelinebreak
My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;\forcelinebreak Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill
\forcelinebreak
So that the Pope attend to your complaint.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Your zeal for all I wish;—Ah me, you are cold!
\forcelinebreak
Your utmost skill \dots{} speak but one word \dots{} (\emph{aside}) Alas!
\forcelinebreak
Weak and deserted creature that I am,\forcelinebreak Here I stand bickering with my only friend! [\emph{To} ORSINO.
\forcelinebreak
This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,
\forcelinebreak
Orsino; he has heard some happy news
\forcelinebreak
From Salamanca, from my brothers there,
\forcelinebreak
And with this outward show of love he mocks\forcelinebreak His inward hate. ’Tis bold hypocrisy,
\forcelinebreak
For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,
\forcelinebreak
Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:
\forcelinebreak
Great God! that such a father should be mine!
\forcelinebreak
But there is mighty preparation made,\forcelinebreak And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,
\forcelinebreak
And all the chief nobility of Rome.
\forcelinebreak
And he has bidden me and my pale Mother
\forcelinebreak
Attire ourselves in festival array.
\forcelinebreak
Poor lady! She expects some happy change\forcelinebreak In his dark spirit from this act; I none.
\forcelinebreak
At supper I will give you the petition:
\forcelinebreak
Till when—farewell.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Farewell. (\emph{Exit} BEATRICE.) I know the Pope
\forcelinebreak
Will ne’er absolve me from my priestly vow\forcelinebreak But by absolving me from the revenue
\forcelinebreak
Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,
\forcelinebreak
I think to win thee at an easier rate.
\forcelinebreak
Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:
\forcelinebreak
He might bestow her on some poor relation\forcelinebreak Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,
\forcelinebreak
And I should be debarred from all access.
\forcelinebreak
Then as to what she suffers from her father,
\forcelinebreak
In all this there is much exaggeration:—
\forcelinebreak
Old men are testy and will have their way;\forcelinebreak A man my stab his enemy, or his vassal,
\forcelinebreak
And live a free life as to wine and women,
\forcelinebreak
And with a peevish temper may return
\forcelinebreak
To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;
\forcelinebreak
Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.\forcelinebreak I shall be well content if on my conscience
\forcelinebreak
There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer
\forcelinebreak
From the devices of my love—A net
\forcelinebreak
From which she shall escape not. Yet I fear
\forcelinebreak
Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,\forcelinebreak Whose beams anatomise me nerve by nerve
\forcelinebreak
And lay me bare, and make me blush to see
\forcelinebreak
My hidden thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girl
\forcelinebreak
Who clings to me, as to her only hope:—
\forcelinebreak
I were a fool, not less than if a panther\forcelinebreak Were panic-stricken by the antelope’s eye,
\forcelinebreak
If she escape me. [\emph{Exit.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene III}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A Magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, NOBLES
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,
\forcelinebreak
Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,
\forcelinebreak
Whose presence honours our festivity.\forcelinebreak I have too long lived like an anchorite,
\forcelinebreak
And in my absence from your merry meetings
\forcelinebreak
An evil word is gone abroad of me;
\forcelinebreak
But I do hope that you, my noble friends,
\forcelinebreak
When you have shared the entertainment here,\forcelinebreak And heard the pious cause for which ’tis given,
\forcelinebreak
And we have pledged a health or two together,
\forcelinebreak
Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;
\forcelinebreak
Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,
\forcelinebreak
But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{First Guest.} In truth, My Lord, you seem too light of heart,
\forcelinebreak
Too sprightly and companionable a man,
\forcelinebreak
To act the deeds that rumour pins on you.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{To his companion.}) I never saw such blithe and open cheer
\forcelinebreak
In any eye!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Second Guest.} Some most desired event,
\forcelinebreak
In which we all demand a common joy,
\forcelinebreak
Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} It is indeed a most desired event.
\forcelinebreak
If, when a parent from a parent’s heart\forcelinebreak Lifts from this earth to the great father of all
\forcelinebreak
A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,
\forcelinebreak
And when he rises up from dreaming it;
\forcelinebreak
One supplication, one desire, one hope,
\forcelinebreak
That he would grant a wish for his two sons,\forcelinebreak Even all that he demands in their regard—
\forcelinebreak
And suddenly beyond his dearest hope,
\forcelinebreak
It is accomplished, he should then rejoice,
\forcelinebreak
And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,
\forcelinebreak
And task their love to grace his merriment,\forcelinebreak Then honour me thus far—for I am he.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{to Lucretia}). Great God! How horrible! Some dreadful ill
\forcelinebreak
Must have befallen my brothers.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Fear not, Child,
\forcelinebreak
He speaks too frankly.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Ah! My blood runs cold.
\forcelinebreak
I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,
\forcelinebreak
Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;
\forcelinebreak
Beatrice, read them to your mother. God!\forcelinebreak I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,
\forcelinebreak
By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.
\forcelinebreak
My disobedient and rebellious sons
\forcelinebreak
Are dead!—Why, dead!—What means this change of cheer?
\forcelinebreak
You hear me not, I tell you they are dead;\forcelinebreak And they will need no food or raiment more:
\forcelinebreak
The tapers that did light them the dark way
\forcelinebreak
Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not
\forcelinebreak
Expect I should maintain them in their coffins.
\forcelinebreak
Rejoice with me—my heart is wondrous glad. [LUCRETIA \emph{sinks, half-fainting;} BEATRICE \emph{supports her.}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} It is not true!—Dear lady, pray look up.
\forcelinebreak
Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven,
\forcelinebreak
He would not live to boast of such a boon.
\forcelinebreak
Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call\forcelinebreak To witness that I speak the sober truth;—
\forcelinebreak
And whose most favouring Providence was shown
\forcelinebreak
Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco
\forcelinebreak
Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,
\forcelinebreak
When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy,\forcelinebreak The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano
\forcelinebreak
Was stabbed in error by a jealous man,
\forcelinebreak
Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;
\forcelinebreak
All in the self-same hour of the same night;
\forcelinebreak
Which shows that Heaven has special care of me.\forcelinebreak I beg those friends who love me, that they mark
\forcelinebreak
The day a feast upon their calendars.
\forcelinebreak
It was the twenty-seventh of December:
\forcelinebreak
Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath. [\emph{The Assembly appears confused; several of the guests rise.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{First Guest.} Oh, horrible! I will depart—\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Second Guest.} And I.—
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Third Guest.} No, stay!
\forcelinebreak
I do believe it is some jest; tho’ faith!
\forcelinebreak
’Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly.
\forcelinebreak
I think his son has married the Infanta,\forcelinebreak Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado;
\forcelinebreak
’Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay!
\forcelinebreak
I see ’tis only raillery by his smile.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci} (\emph{filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up}). Oh, thou
\forcelinebreak
bright wine whose purple splendour leaps\forcelinebreak And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
\forcelinebreak
Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do,
\forcelinebreak
To hear the death of my accursèd sons!
\forcelinebreak
Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
\forcelinebreak
Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,\forcelinebreak And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
\forcelinebreak
Who, if a father’s curses, as men say,
\forcelinebreak
Climb with swift wings after their children’s souls,
\forcelinebreak
And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
\forcelinebreak
Now triumphs in my triumph!—But thou art\forcelinebreak Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,
\forcelinebreak
And I will taste no other wine to-night.
\forcelinebreak
Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak
\emph{A Guest} (\emph{rising}). Thou wretch!
\forcelinebreak
Will none among this noble company\forcelinebreak Check the abandoned villain?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} For God’s sake
\forcelinebreak
Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane,
\forcelinebreak
Some ill will come of this.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Second Guest.} Seize, silence him!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{First Guest.} I will!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Third Guest.} And I!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci} (\emph{addressing those who rise with a threatening gesture}). Who moves? Who speaks? (\emph{turning to the Company})
\forcelinebreak
’tis nothing,
\forcelinebreak
Enjoy yourselves.—Beware! For my revenge\forcelinebreak Is as the sealed commission of a king
\forcelinebreak
That kills, and none dare name the murderer. [\emph{The Banquet is broken up; several of the Guests are departing.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;
\forcelinebreak
What, although tyranny and impious hate
\forcelinebreak
Stand sheltered by a father’s hoary hair,\forcelinebreak What, if ’tis he who clothed us in these limbs
\forcelinebreak
Who tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we,
\forcelinebreak
The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,
\forcelinebreak
His children and his wife, whom he is bound
\forcelinebreak
To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find\forcelinebreak No refuge in this merciless wide world?
\forcelinebreak
O think what deep wrongs must have blotted out
\forcelinebreak
First love, then reverence in a child’s prone mind,
\forcelinebreak
Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think!
\forcelinebreak
I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand\forcelinebreak Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke
\forcelinebreak
Was perhaps some paternal chastisement!
\forcelinebreak
Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt
\forcelinebreak
Remained, have sought by patience, love, and tears
\forcelinebreak
To soften him, and when this could not be\forcelinebreak I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights
\forcelinebreak
And lifted up to God, the father of all,
\forcelinebreak
Passionate prayers: and when these were not heard
\forcelinebreak
I have still borne,—until I meet you here,
\forcelinebreak
Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast\forcelinebreak Given at my brothers’ deaths. Two yet remain,
\forcelinebreak
His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,
\forcelinebreak
Ye may soon share such merriment again
\forcelinebreak
As fathers make over their children’s graves.
\forcelinebreak
O Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman,\forcelinebreak Cardinal, thou art the Pope’s chamberlain,
\forcelinebreak
Camillo, thou art chief justiciary,
\forcelinebreak
Take us away!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} (\emph{He has been conversing with} CAMILLO \emph{during the first part of} BEATRICE’S speech; \emph{he hears the conclusion, and now advances.}) I hope my good friends here
\forcelinebreak
Will think of their own daughters—or perhaps\forcelinebreak Of their own throats—before they lend an ear
\forcelinebreak
To this wild girl.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{not noticing the words of Cenci}). Dare no one look on me?
\forcelinebreak
None answer? Can one tyrant overbear
\forcelinebreak
The sense of many best and wisest men?\forcelinebreak Or is it that I sue not in some form
\forcelinebreak
Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit?
\forcelinebreak
O God! That I were buried with my brothers!
\forcelinebreak
And that the flowers of this departed spring
\forcelinebreak
Were fading on my grave! And that my father\forcelinebreak Were celebrating now one feast for all!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} A bitter wish for one so young and gentle;
\forcelinebreak
Can we do nothing?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Colonna.} Nothing that I see.
\forcelinebreak
Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy:\forcelinebreak Yet I would second any one.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{A Cardinal.} And I.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Retire to your chamber, insolent girl!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Retire thou impious man! Ay, hide thyself
\forcelinebreak
Where never eye can look upon thee more!\forcelinebreak Wouldst thou have honour and obedience
\forcelinebreak
Who art a torturer? Father, never dream
\forcelinebreak
Though thou must overbear this company,
\forcelinebreak
But ill must come of ill.—Frown not on me!
\forcelinebreak
Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks\forcelinebreak My brothers’ ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!
\forcelinebreak
Cover thy face from every living eye,
\forcelinebreak
And start if thou but hear a human step.
\forcelinebreak
Seek out some dark and silent corner, there
\forcelinebreak
Bow thy white head before offended God,\forcelinebreak And we will kneel around, and fervently
\forcelinebreak
Pray that he pity both ourselves, and thee.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} My friends, I do lament this insane girl
\forcelinebreak
Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity.
\forcelinebreak
Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer\forcelinebreak Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels.
\forcelinebreak
Another time.— [\emph{Exeunt all but} CENCI \emph{and} BEATRICE.
\forcelinebreak
My brain is swimming round;
\forcelinebreak
Give me a bowl of wine! [\emph{To} BEATRICE.
\forcelinebreak
Thou painted viper!\forcelinebreak Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!
\forcelinebreak
I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,
\forcelinebreak
Now get thee from my sight! [\emph{Exit} BEATRICE.
\forcelinebreak
Here, Andrea,
\forcelinebreak
Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said\forcelinebreak I would not drink this evening; but I must;
\forcelinebreak
For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail
\forcelinebreak
With thinking what I have decreed to do.— [\emph{Drinking the wine.}
\forcelinebreak
Be thou the resolution of quick youth
\forcelinebreak
Within my veins, and manhood’s purpose stern,\forcelinebreak And age’s firm, cold, subtle villainy;
\forcelinebreak
As if thou wert indeed my children’s blood
\forcelinebreak
Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;
\forcelinebreak
It must be done; it shall be done, I swear! [\emph{Exit.}
\bigskip
\bigskip
\part{\textbf{Act II}
\forcelinebreak}
\chapter{\textbf{Scene I}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA \emph{and} BERNARDO
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me
\forcelinebreak
Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he
\forcelinebreak
Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed.\forcelinebreak O, God Almighty, do thou look upon us,
\forcelinebreak
We have no other friend but only thee!
\forcelinebreak
Yet weep not; though I love you as my own,
\forcelinebreak
I am not your true mother.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} O more, more,\forcelinebreak Than ever mother was to any child,
\forcelinebreak
That have you been to me! Had he not been
\forcelinebreak
My father, do you think that I should weep!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Alas! Poor boy, what else couldst thou have done?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice} (\emph{in a hurried voice}). Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?
\forcelinebreak
Ah! No, that is his step upon the stairs;
\forcelinebreak
’Tis nearer now; his hand in on the door;
\forcelinebreak
Mother, if I to thee have ever been
\forcelinebreak
A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,\forcelinebreak Whose image upon earth a father is,
\forcelinebreak
Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes:
\forcelinebreak
The door is opening now; I see his face;
\forcelinebreak
He frowns on others, but he smiles on me,
\forcelinebreak
Even as he did after the feast last night.\forcelinebreak \emph{Enter a Servant}
\forcelinebreak
Almighty God, how merciful thou art!
\forcelinebreak
’Tis but Orsino’s servant.—Well, what news?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Servant.} My master bids me say, the Holy Father
\forcelinebreak
Has sent back your petition thus unopened. [\emph{Giving a paper.}\forcelinebreak And he demands at what hour ’twere secure
\forcelinebreak
To visit you again?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} At the Ave Mary. [\emph{Exit Servant.}
\forcelinebreak
So daughter, our last hope has failed; Ah me!
\forcelinebreak
How pale you look; you tremble, and you stand\forcelinebreak Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,
\forcelinebreak
As if one thought were over strong for you:
\forcelinebreak
Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!
\forcelinebreak
Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} You see I am not mad: I speak to you.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} You talked of something that your father did
\forcelinebreak
After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse
\forcelinebreak
Than when he smiled, and cried, My sons are dead!
\forcelinebreak
And every one looked in his neighbour’s face
\forcelinebreak
To see if others were as white as he?\forcelinebreak At the first word he spoke I felt the blood
\forcelinebreak
Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;
\forcelinebreak
And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;
\forcelinebreak
Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words
\forcelinebreak
Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see\forcelinebreak The devil was rebuked that lives in him.
\forcelinebreak
Until this hour thus have you ever stood
\forcelinebreak
Between us and your father’s moody wrath
\forcelinebreak
Like a protecting presence: your firm mind
\forcelinebreak
Has been our only refuge and defence.\forcelinebreak What can have thus subdued it? What can now
\forcelinebreak
Have given you that cold melancholy look,
\forcelinebreak
Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What is it that you say? I was just thinking
\forcelinebreak
’Twere better not to struggle any more.\forcelinebreak Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody,
\forcelinebreak
Yet never—Oh! Before worse comes of it
\forcelinebreak
’Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} O talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once
\forcelinebreak
What did your father do or say to you?\forcelinebreak He stayed not after that accursèd feast
\forcelinebreak
One moment in your chamber.—Speak to me.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} O sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{speaking very slowly with a forced calmness}). It was one word, Mother, one little word;
\forcelinebreak
One look, one smile. (\emph{Wildly.}) Oh! He has trampled me\forcelinebreak Under his feet, and made the blood stream down
\forcelinebreak
My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all
\forcelinebreak
Ditch water, and the fever-stricken flesh
\forcelinebreak
Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,
\forcelinebreak
And we have eaten.—He has made me look\forcelinebreak On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust
\forcelinebreak
Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,
\forcelinebreak
And I have never yet despaired—but now!
\forcelinebreak
What could I say? [\emph{Recovering herself.}
\forcelinebreak
Ah! No, ’tis nothing new.\forcelinebreak The sufferings we all share have made me wild:
\forcelinebreak
He only struck and cursed me as he passed;
\forcelinebreak
He said, he looked, he did;—nothing at all
\forcelinebreak
Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me.
\forcelinebreak
Alas! I am forgetful of my duty,\forcelinebreak I should preserve my senses for your sake.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Nay, Beatrice! have courage, my sweet girl,
\forcelinebreak
If any one despairs it should be I
\forcelinebreak
Who loved him once, and now must live with him
\forcelinebreak
Till God in pity call for him or me.\forcelinebreak For you may, like your sister, find some husband,
\forcelinebreak
And smile, years hence, with children round your knees;
\forcelinebreak
Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil
\forcelinebreak
Shall be remembered only as a dream.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.\forcelinebreak Did you not nurse me when my mother died?
\forcelinebreak
Did you not shield me and that dearest boy?
\forcelinebreak
And had we any other friend but you
\forcelinebreak
In infancy, with gentle words and looks,
\forcelinebreak
To win our father not to murder us?\forcelinebreak And shall I now desert you? May the ghost
\forcelinebreak
Of my dead Mother plead against my soul
\forcelinebreak
If I abandon her who filled the place
\forcelinebreak
She left, with more, even, than a mother’s love!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} And I am of my sister’s mind. Indeed\forcelinebreak I would not leave you in this wretchedness,
\forcelinebreak
Even though the Pope should make me free to live
\forcelinebreak
In some blithe place, like others of my age,
\forcelinebreak
With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.
\forcelinebreak
O never think that I will leave you, Mother!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} My dear, dear children!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} CENCI \emph{suddenly}
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} What, Beatrice here!
\forcelinebreak
Come hither! [\emph{She shrinks back, and covers her face.}
\forcelinebreak
Nay, hide not your face, ’tis fair;\forcelinebreak Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look
\forcelinebreak
With disobedient insolence upon me,
\forcelinebreak
Bending a stern and an inquiring brow
\forcelinebreak
On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide
\forcelinebreak
That which I came to tell you—but in vain.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice} (\emph{wildly, staggering towards the door}). O that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Then it was I whose inarticulate words
\forcelinebreak
Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps
\forcelinebreak
Fled from your presence, as you now from mine.
\forcelinebreak
Stay, I command you—from this day and hour\forcelinebreak Never again, I think, with fearless eye,
\forcelinebreak
And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,
\forcelinebreak
And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,
\forcelinebreak
Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;
\forcelinebreak
Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber!\forcelinebreak Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother, [\emph{To} BERNARDO.
\forcelinebreak
Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate! [\emph{Exeunt} BEATRICE \emph{and} BERNARDO.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{Aside.}) So much has past between us as must make
\forcelinebreak
Me bold, her fearful.—’Tis an awful thing
\forcelinebreak
To touch such mischief as I now conceive:\forcelinebreak So men sit shivering on the dewy bank,
\forcelinebreak
And try the chill stream with their feet; once in\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
How the delighted spirit pants for joy!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia} (\emph{advancing timidly towards him}). O husband! Pray forgive poor Beatrice.
\forcelinebreak
She meant not any ill.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Nor you perhaps?
\forcelinebreak
Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote
\forcelinebreak
Parricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo?
\forcelinebreak
Nor those two must unnatural sons, who stirred
\forcelinebreak
Enmity up against me with the Pope?\forcelinebreak Whom in one night merciful God cut off:
\forcelinebreak
Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.
\forcelinebreak
You were not here conspiring? You said nothing
\forcelinebreak
Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman;
\forcelinebreak
Or be condemned to death for some offence,\forcelinebreak And you would be the witness?—This failing,
\forcelinebreak
How just it were to hire assassins, or
\forcelinebreak
Put sudden poison in my evening drink?
\forcelinebreak
Or smother me when overcome by wine?
\forcelinebreak
Seeing we had no other judge but God,\forcelinebreak And he had sentenced me, and there were none
\forcelinebreak
But you to be the executioners
\forcelinebreak
Of this decree enregistered in heaven?
\forcelinebreak
Oh, no! You said not this?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} So help me God,\forcelinebreak I never thought the things you charge me with!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} If you dare speak that wicked lie again
\forcelinebreak
I’ll kill you. What! It was not by your counsel
\forcelinebreak
That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?
\forcelinebreak
You did not hope to stir some enemies\forcelinebreak Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn
\forcelinebreak
What every nerve of you now trembles at?
\forcelinebreak
You judged that men were bolder than they are;
\forcelinebreak
Few dare to stand between their grave and me.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation\forcelinebreak I knew not aught that Beatrice designed;
\forcelinebreak
Nor do I think she designed any thing
\forcelinebreak
Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Blaspheming liar! You are damned for his!
\forcelinebreak
But I will take you where you may persuade\forcelinebreak The stones you tread on to deliver you:
\forcelinebreak
For men shall there be none but those who dare
\forcelinebreak
All things—not question that which I command.
\forcelinebreak
On Wednesday next I shall set out: you know
\forcelinebreak
That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:\forcelinebreak ’Tis safely walled, and moated round about:
\forcelinebreak
Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers
\forcelinebreak
Never told tales; though they have heard and seen
\forcelinebreak
What might make dumb things speak.—Why do you linger?
\forcelinebreak
Make speediest preparation for the journey! [\emph{Exit} LUCRETIA.\forcelinebreak The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear
\forcelinebreak
A busy stir of men about the streets;
\forcelinebreak
I see the bright sky through the window panes:
\forcelinebreak
It is a garish, broad, and peering day;
\forcelinebreak
Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,\forcelinebreak And every little corner, nook, and hole
\forcelinebreak
Is penetrated with the insolent light.
\forcelinebreak
Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?
\forcelinebreak
And wherefore should I wish for night, who do
\forcelinebreak
A deed which shall confound both night and day?\forcelinebreak ’Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist
\forcelinebreak
Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven
\forcelinebreak
She shall not dare to look upon its beams;
\forcelinebreak
Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night;
\forcelinebreak
The act I think shall soon extinguish all\forcelinebreak For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom
\forcelinebreak
Than the earth’s shade, or interlunar air,
\forcelinebreak
Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,
\forcelinebreak
In which I walk secure and unbeheld
\forcelinebreak
Towards my purpose.—Would that it were done! [\emph{Exit.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene II}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A Chamber in the Vatican.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} CAMILLO \emph{and} GIACOMO, \emph{in conversation}
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} There is an obsolete and doubtful law
\forcelinebreak
By which you might obtain a bare provision
\forcelinebreak
Of food and clothing—\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Nothing more? Alas!
\forcelinebreak
Bare must be the provision which strict law
\forcelinebreak
Awards, and aged, sullen avarice pays.
\forcelinebreak
Why did my father not apprentice me
\forcelinebreak
To some mechanic trade? I should have then\forcelinebreak Been trained in no highborn necessities
\forcelinebreak
Which I could meet not by my daily toil.
\forcelinebreak
The eldest son of a rich nobleman
\forcelinebreak
Is heir to all his incapacities;
\forcelinebreak
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,\forcelinebreak Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once
\forcelinebreak
From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,
\forcelinebreak
An hundred servants, and six palaces,
\forcelinebreak
To that which nature doth indeed require?—
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Nay, there is reason in your plea; ’twere hard.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} ’Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I
\forcelinebreak
Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,
\forcelinebreak
Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father
\forcelinebreak
Without a bond or witness to the deed:
\forcelinebreak
And children, who inherit her fine senses,\forcelinebreak The fairest creatures in this breathing world;
\forcelinebreak
And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,
\forcelinebreak
Do you not think the Pope would interpose
\forcelinebreak
And stretch authority beyond the law?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Though your peculiar case is hard, I know\forcelinebreak The Pope will not divert the course of law.
\forcelinebreak
After that impious feast the other night
\forcelinebreak
I spoke with him, and urged him then to check
\forcelinebreak
Your father’s cruel hand; he frowned and said,
\forcelinebreak
“Children are disobedient, and they sting\forcelinebreak Their father’s hearts to madness and despair,
\forcelinebreak
Requiting years of care with contumely.
\forcelinebreak
I pity the Count Cenci from my heart;
\forcelinebreak
His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,
\forcelinebreak
And thus he is exasperated to ill.\forcelinebreak In the great war between the old and young
\forcelinebreak
I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,
\forcelinebreak
Will keep at least blameless neutrality.”
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ORSINO
\noindent
You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} What words?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Alas, repeat them not again!
\forcelinebreak
There then is no redress for me, at least
\forcelinebreak
None but that which I may achieve myself,
\forcelinebreak
Since I am driven to the brink.—But, say,\forcelinebreak My innocent sister and my only brother
\forcelinebreak
Are dying underneath my father’s eye.
\forcelinebreak
The memorable torturers of this land,
\forcelinebreak
Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
\forcelinebreak
Never inflicted on the meanest slave\forcelinebreak What these endure; shall they have no protection?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Why, if they would petition to the Pope
\forcelinebreak
I see not how he could refuse it—yet
\forcelinebreak
He holds it of most dangerous example
\forcelinebreak
In aught to weaken the paternal power,\forcelinebreak Being, as ’twere, the shadow of his own.
\forcelinebreak
I pray you now excuse me. I have business
\forcelinebreak
That will not bear delay. [\emph{Exit} CAMILLO.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} But you, Orsino,
\forcelinebreak
Have the petition: wherefore not present it?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I have presented it, and backed it with
\forcelinebreak
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;
\forcelinebreak
It was returned unanswered. I doubt not
\forcelinebreak
But that the strange and execrable deeds
\forcelinebreak
Alleged in it—in truth they might well baffle\forcelinebreak Any belief—have turned the Pope’s displeasure
\forcelinebreak
Upon the accusers from the criminal:
\forcelinebreak
So I should guess from what Camillo said.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
\forcelinebreak
Has whispered silence to his Holiness:\forcelinebreak And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.
\forcelinebreak
What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
\forcelinebreak
For he who is our murderous persecutor
\forcelinebreak
Is shielded by a father’s holy name,
\forcelinebreak
Or I would— (\emph{Stops abruptly.})\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} What? Fear not to speak your thought.
\forcelinebreak
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover:
\forcelinebreak
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
\forcelinebreak
A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
\forcelinebreak
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,\forcelinebreak But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
\forcelinebreak
A father who is all a tyrant seems,
\forcelinebreak
Were the profaner for his sacred name.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
\forcelinebreak
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust\forcelinebreak Imagination with such phantasies
\forcelinebreak
As the tongue dares not fashion into words,
\forcelinebreak
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
\forcelinebreak
To the mind’s eye.—My heart denies itself
\forcelinebreak
To think what you demand.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} But a friend’s bosom
\forcelinebreak
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
\forcelinebreak
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day,
\forcelinebreak
And from the all-communicating air.
\forcelinebreak
You look what I suspected—\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Spare me now!
\forcelinebreak
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
\forcelinebreak
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
\forcelinebreak
The path across the wilderness, lest he,
\forcelinebreak
As my thoughts are, should be—a murderer.\forcelinebreak I know you are my friend, and all I dare
\forcelinebreak
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
\forcelinebreak
But now my heart is heavy, and would take
\forcelinebreak
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care.
\forcelinebreak
Pardon me, that I say farewell—farewell!\forcelinebreak I would that to my own suspected self
\forcelinebreak
I could address a word so full of peace.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Farewell!—Be your thoughts better or more bold. [\emph{Exit} GIACOMO.
\forcelinebreak
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
\forcelinebreak
To feed his hope with cold encouragement:\forcelinebreak It fortunately serves my close designs
\forcelinebreak
That ’tis a trick of this same family
\forcelinebreak
To analyse their own and other minds.
\forcelinebreak
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will
\forcelinebreak
Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,\forcelinebreak Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,
\forcelinebreak
Into the depth of darkest purposes:
\forcelinebreak
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
\forcelinebreak
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,
\forcelinebreak
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,\forcelinebreak Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
\forcelinebreak
To which I grow half reconciled. I’ll do
\forcelinebreak
As little mischief as I can; that thought
\forcelinebreak
Shall fee the accuser conscience.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{After a pause.}) Now what harm\forcelinebreak If Cenci should be murdered?—Yet, if murdered,
\forcelinebreak
Wherefore by me? And what if I could take
\forcelinebreak
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
\forcelinebreak
In such an action? Of all earthly things
\forcelinebreak
I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words;\forcelinebreak And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives
\forcelinebreak
His daughter’s dowry were a secret grave
\forcelinebreak
If a priest wins her.—Oh, fair Beatrice!
\forcelinebreak
Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee
\forcelinebreak
Could but despise danger and gold and all\forcelinebreak That frowns between my wish and its effect,
\forcelinebreak
Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
\forcelinebreak
And follows me to the resort of men,
\forcelinebreak
And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams.\forcelinebreak So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;
\forcelinebreak
And if I strike my damp and dizzy head
\forcelinebreak
My hot palm scorches it: her very name,
\forcelinebreak
But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart
\forcelinebreak
Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably\forcelinebreak I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights
\forcelinebreak
Till weak imagination half possesses
\forcelinebreak
The self-created shadow. Yet much longer
\forcelinebreak
Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours:
\forcelinebreak
From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo\forcelinebreak I must work out my own dear purposes.
\forcelinebreak
I see, as from a tower, the end of all:
\forcelinebreak
Her father dead; her brother bound to me
\forcelinebreak
By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
\forcelinebreak
Her mother scared and unexpostulating\forcelinebreak From the dread manner of her wish achieved:
\forcelinebreak
And she!—Once more take courage my faint heart;
\forcelinebreak
What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
\forcelinebreak
I have such foresight as assures success:
\forcelinebreak
Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,\forcelinebreak When dread events are near, stir up men’s minds
\forcelinebreak
To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
\forcelinebreak
Not who becomes the instrument of ill,
\forcelinebreak
But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes
\forcelinebreak
Its empire and its prey of other hearts\forcelinebreak Till it become his slave \dots{} as I will do. [\emph{Exit.}
\bigskip
\part{\textbf{Act III}
\forcelinebreak}
\chapter{\textbf{Scene I}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.}
\bigskip
LUCRETIA, \emph{to her enter} BEATRICE
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} (\emph{She enters staggering, and speaks wildly.}) Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt;
\forcelinebreak
My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
I see but indistinctly\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} My sweet child,
\forcelinebreak
You have no wound; ’tis only a cold dew
\forcelinebreak
That starts from your dear brow \dots{} Alas! Alas!
\forcelinebreak
What has befallen?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} How comes this hair undone?\forcelinebreak Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
\forcelinebreak
And yet I tied it fast.—O, horrible!
\forcelinebreak
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
\forcelinebreak
Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
\forcelinebreak
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I\forcelinebreak Slide giddily as the world reels\dots{}. My God!
\forcelinebreak
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
\forcelinebreak
The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
\forcelinebreak
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
\forcelinebreak
In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps\forcelinebreak A clinging, black contaminating mist
\forcelinebreak
About me \dots{} ’tis substantial, heavy, thick,
\forcelinebreak
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
\forcelinebreak
My fingers and my limbs to one another,
\forcelinebreak
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves\forcelinebreak My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
\forcelinebreak
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
\forcelinebreak
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
\forcelinebreak
Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{More wildly.}) No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs\forcelinebreak Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
\forcelinebreak
Which would burst forth into the wandering air! (\emph{A pause.})
\forcelinebreak
What hideous thought was that I had even now?
\forcelinebreak
’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here
\forcelinebreak
O’er these dull eyes \dots{} upon this weary heart!\forcelinebreak O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not:
\forcelinebreak
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
\forcelinebreak
But not its cause; suffering has dried away
\forcelinebreak
The source from which it sprung\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice} (\emph{frantically}). Like Parricide\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Misery has killed its father: yet its father
\forcelinebreak
Never like mine \dots{} O, God! What thing am I?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} My dearest child, what has your father done?
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{doubtfully}). Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.\forcelinebreak (\emph{Aside.}) She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
\forcelinebreak
It is a piteous office.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{To Lucretia, in a slow, subdued voice.}) Do you know
\forcelinebreak
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
\forcelinebreak
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales\forcelinebreak From hall to hall by the entangled hair;
\forcelinebreak
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
\forcelinebreak
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
\forcelinebreak
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
\forcelinebreak
So did I overact in my sick dreams,\forcelinebreak That I imagined \dots{} no, it cannot be!
\forcelinebreak
Horrible things have been in this wild world,
\forcelinebreak
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
\forcelinebreak
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
\forcelinebreak
Than ever there was found a heart to do.\forcelinebreak But never fancy imaged such a deed
\forcelinebreak
As\dots{} (\emph{Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself.})
\forcelinebreak
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
\forcelinebreak
With fearful expectation, that indeed
\forcelinebreak
Thou art not what thou seemest \dots{} Mother!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Oh!
\forcelinebreak
My sweet child, know you\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Yet speak it not:
\forcelinebreak
For then if this be truth, that other too
\forcelinebreak
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,\forcelinebreak Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
\forcelinebreak
Never to change, never to pass away.
\forcelinebreak
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
\forcelinebreak
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.
\forcelinebreak
I have talked some wild words, but will no more.\forcelinebreak Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
\forcelinebreak
I am\dots{} (\emph{Her voice dies away faintly.})
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Alas! What has befallen thee, child?
\forcelinebreak
What has thy father done?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What have I done?\forcelinebreak Am I not innocent? Is it my crime
\forcelinebreak
That one with white hair and imperious brow,
\forcelinebreak
Who tortured me from my forgotten years
\forcelinebreak
As parents only dare, should call himself
\forcelinebreak
My father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I?\forcelinebreak What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?
\forcelinebreak
What retrospects, outliving even despair?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:
\forcelinebreak
We know that death alone can make us free;
\forcelinebreak
His death or ours. But what can he have done\forcelinebreak Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?
\forcelinebreak
Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
\forcelinebreak
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,
\forcelinebreak
Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine
\forcelinebreak
With one another.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} ’Tis the restless life
\forcelinebreak
Tortured within them. If I try to speak
\forcelinebreak
I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done:
\forcelinebreak
What, yet I know not \dots{} something which shall make
\forcelinebreak
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow\forcelinebreak In the dread lightning which avenges it;
\forcelinebreak
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying
\forcelinebreak
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
\forcelinebreak
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
\forcelinebreak
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,\forcelinebreak And never any thing will move me more.
\forcelinebreak
But now!—Oh blood, which art my father’s blood,
\forcelinebreak
Circling thro’ these contaminated veins,
\forcelinebreak
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
\forcelinebreak
Could wash away the crime, and punishment\forcelinebreak By which I suffer \dots{} no, that cannot be!
\forcelinebreak
Many might doubt there were a God above
\forcelinebreak
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
\forcelinebreak
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;\forcelinebreak Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
\forcelinebreak
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief
\forcelinebreak
Thy sufferings from my fear.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} I hide them not.
\forcelinebreak
What are the words which you would have me speak?\forcelinebreak I, who can feign no image in my mind
\forcelinebreak
Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
\forcelinebreak
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up
\forcelinebreak
In its own formless horror: of all words,
\forcelinebreak
That minister to mortal intercourse,\forcelinebreak Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
\forcelinebreak
My misery: if another ever knew
\forcelinebreak
Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
\forcelinebreak
And left it, as I must, without a name.
\forcelinebreak
Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee\forcelinebreak A punishment and a reward \dots{} Oh, which
\forcelinebreak
Have I deserved?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} The peace of innocence;
\forcelinebreak
Till in your season you be called to heaven.
\forcelinebreak
Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done\forcelinebreak No evil. Death must be the punishment
\forcelinebreak
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
\forcelinebreak
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
\forcelinebreak
Which leads to immortality.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Ay, death\dots{}\forcelinebreak The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
\forcelinebreak
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
\forcelinebreak
If I must live day after day, and keep
\forcelinebreak
These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit,
\forcelinebreak
As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest\forcelinebreak May mock thee, unavenged \dots{} it shall not be!
\forcelinebreak
Self-murder \dots{} no, that might be no escape,
\forcelinebreak
For thy decree yawns like a Hell between
\forcelinebreak
Our will and it:—O! In this mortal world
\forcelinebreak
There is no vindication and no law\forcelinebreak Which can adjudge and execute the doom
\forcelinebreak
Of that through which I suffer.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ORSINO
\noindent
(\emph{She approaches him solemnly.}) Welcome, Friend!
\forcelinebreak
I have to tell you that, since last we met,\forcelinebreak I have endured a wrong so great and strange,
\forcelinebreak
That neither life nor death can give me rest.
\forcelinebreak
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
\forcelinebreak
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} And what is he who has thus injured you?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} The man they call my father: a dread name.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} It cannot be\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What it can be, or not,
\forcelinebreak
Forbear to think. It is, and it has been;
\forcelinebreak
Advise me how it shall not be again.\forcelinebreak I thought to die; but a religious awe
\forcelinebreak
Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself
\forcelinebreak
Might be no refuge from the consciousness
\forcelinebreak
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Accuse him of the deed, and let the law avenge thee.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!
\forcelinebreak
If I could find a word that might make known
\forcelinebreak
The crime of my destroyer; and that done,
\forcelinebreak
My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret
\forcelinebreak
Which cankers my heart’s core; ay, lay all bare\forcelinebreak So that my unpolluted fame should be
\forcelinebreak
With vilest gossips a stale mouthèd story;
\forcelinebreak
A mock, a bye-word, an astonishment:—
\forcelinebreak
If this were done, which never shall be done,
\forcelinebreak
Think of the offender’s gold, his dreaded hate\forcelinebreak And the strange horror of the accuser’s tale,
\forcelinebreak
Baffling belief, and overpowering speech;
\forcelinebreak
Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt
\forcelinebreak
In hideous hints \dots{} Oh, most assured redress!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} You will endure it then?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Endure?—Orsino,
\forcelinebreak
It seems your counsel is small profit. (\emph{Turns from him, and speaks half to herself.})
\forcelinebreak
Ay,
\forcelinebreak
All must be suddenly resolved and done.
\forcelinebreak
What is this undistinguishable mist\forcelinebreak Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,
\forcelinebreak
Darkening each other?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Should the offender live?
\forcelinebreak
Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,
\forcelinebreak
His crime, whate’er it is, dreadful no doubt,\forcelinebreak Thine element; until thou mayest become
\forcelinebreak
Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue
\forcelinebreak
Of that which thou permittest?
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{to herself}). Mighty death!
\forcelinebreak
Thou double-visaged shadow? Only judge!\forcelinebreak Rightfullest arbiter! (\emph{She retires absorbed in thought.})
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} If the lightning
\forcelinebreak
Of God has e’er descended to avenge\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits
\forcelinebreak
Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs\forcelinebreak Into the hands of men; if they neglect
\forcelinebreak
To punish crime\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} But if one, like this wretch,
\forcelinebreak
Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power?
\forcelinebreak
If there be no appeal to that which makes\forcelinebreak The guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs,
\forcelinebreak
For that they are unnatural, strange, and monstrous,
\forcelinebreak
Exceed all measure of belief? O God!
\forcelinebreak
If, for the very reasons which should make
\forcelinebreak
Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?\forcelinebreak And we, the victims, bear worse punishment
\forcelinebreak
Than that appointed for their torturer?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Think not
\forcelinebreak
But that there is redress where there is wrong,
\forcelinebreak
So we be bold enough to seize it.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} How?
\forcelinebreak
If there were any way to make all sure,
\forcelinebreak
I know not \dots{} but I think it might be good
\forcelinebreak
To\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;\forcelinebreak For it is such, as I but faintly guess,
\forcelinebreak
As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her
\forcelinebreak
Only one duty, how she may avenge:
\forcelinebreak
You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;
\forcelinebreak
Me, but one counsel\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} For we cannot hope
\forcelinebreak
That aid, or retribution, or resource
\forcelinebreak
Will arise thence, where every other one
\forcelinebreak
Might find them with less need. (BEATRICE \emph{advances.})
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Then\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Peace, Orsino!
\forcelinebreak
And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray
\forcelinebreak
That you put off, as garments overworn,
\forcelinebreak
Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,
\forcelinebreak
And all the fit restraints of daily life,\forcelinebreak Which have been borne from childhood, but which now
\forcelinebreak
Would be a mockery to my holier plea.
\forcelinebreak
As I have said, I have endured a wrong,
\forcelinebreak
Which, though it be expressionless, is such
\forcelinebreak
As asks atonement; both for what is past,\forcelinebreak And lest I be reserved, day after day,
\forcelinebreak
To load with crimes an overburthened soul,
\forcelinebreak
And be \dots{} what ye can dream not. I have prayed
\forcelinebreak
To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
\forcelinebreak
And have unravelled my entangled will,\forcelinebreak And have at length determined what is right.
\forcelinebreak
Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true?
\forcelinebreak
Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I swear
\forcelinebreak
To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,\forcelinebreak My silence, and whatever else is mine,
\forcelinebreak
To thy commands.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} You think we should devise
\forcelinebreak
His death?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} And execute what is devised,\forcelinebreak And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} And yet most cautious.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} For the jealous laws
\forcelinebreak
Would punish us with death and infamy
\forcelinebreak
For that which it became themselves to do.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino.
\forcelinebreak
What are the means?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I know two dull, fierce outlaws,
\forcelinebreak
Who think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they
\forcelinebreak
Would trample out, for any slight caprice,\forcelinebreak The meanest or the noblest life. This mood
\forcelinebreak
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell
\forcelinebreak
What we now want.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} To-morrow before dawn,
\forcelinebreak
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,\forcelinebreak Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.
\forcelinebreak
If he arrive there\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} He must not arrive.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} The sun will scarce be set.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} But I remember
\forcelinebreak
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
\forcelinebreak
Crosses a deep ravine; ’tis rough and narrow,
\forcelinebreak
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
\forcelinebreak
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,\forcelinebreak Which has, from unimaginable years,
\forcelinebreak
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
\forcelinebreak
Over a gulph, and with the agony
\forcelinebreak
With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
\forcelinebreak
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,\forcelinebreak Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
\forcelinebreak
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
\forcelinebreak
In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
\forcelinebreak
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
\forcelinebreak
The melancholy mountain yawns \dots{} below,\forcelinebreak You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
\forcelinebreak
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
\forcelinebreak
Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
\forcelinebreak
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
\forcelinebreak
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair\forcelinebreak Is matted in one solid roof of shade
\forcelinebreak
By the dark ivy’s twine. At noonday here
\forcelinebreak
’Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Before you reach that bridge make some excuse
\forcelinebreak
For spurring on your mules, or loitering\forcelinebreak Until\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What sound is that?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Hark! No, it cannot be a servant’s step;
\forcelinebreak
It must be Cenci, unexpectedly
\forcelinebreak
Returned \dots{} Make some excuse for being here.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} (\emph{To} ORSINO, \emph{as she goes out.}) That step we hear approach must never pass
\forcelinebreak
The bridge of which we spoke. [\emph{Exeunt} LUCRETIA \emph{and} BEATRICE.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} What shall I do?
\forcelinebreak
Cenci must find me here, and I must bear
\forcelinebreak
The imperious inquisition of his looks\forcelinebreak As to what brought me hither: let me mask
\forcelinebreak
Mine own in some inane and vacant smile.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} GIACOMO, \emph{in a hurried manner}
\noindent
How! Have you ventured hither? Know you then
\forcelinebreak
That Cenci is from home?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} I sought him here;
\forcelinebreak
And now must wait till he returns.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Great God!
\forcelinebreak
Weigh you the danger of this rashness?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Ay!\forcelinebreak Does my destroyer know his danger? We
\forcelinebreak
Are now no more, as once, parent and child,
\forcelinebreak
But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;
\forcelinebreak
The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe:
\forcelinebreak
He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,\forcelinebreak And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;
\forcelinebreak
And I spurn both. Is it a father’s throat
\forcelinebreak
Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;
\forcelinebreak
I ask not happy years; nor memories
\forcelinebreak
Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;\forcelinebreak Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more;
\forcelinebreak
But only my fair fame; only one hoard
\forcelinebreak
Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,
\forcelinebreak
Under the penury heaped on me by thee,
\forcelinebreak
Or I will \dots{} God can understand and pardon,\forcelinebreak Why should I speak with man?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Be calm, dear friend.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Well, I will calmly tell you what he did.
\forcelinebreak
This old Francesco Cenci, as you know,
\forcelinebreak
Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me,\forcelinebreak And then denied the loan; and left me so
\forcelinebreak
In poverty, the which I sought to mend
\forcelinebreak
By holding a poor office in the state.
\forcelinebreak
It had been promised to me, and already
\forcelinebreak
I bought new clothing for my ragged babes,\forcelinebreak And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose.
\forcelinebreak
When Cenci’s intercession, as I found,
\forcelinebreak
Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus
\forcelinebreak
He paid for vilest service. I returned
\forcelinebreak
With this ill news, and we sate sad together\forcelinebreak Solacing our despondency with tears
\forcelinebreak
Of such affection and unbroken faith
\forcelinebreak
As temper life’s worst bitterness; when he,
\forcelinebreak
As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,
\forcelinebreak
Mocking our poverty, and telling us\forcelinebreak Such was God’s scourge for disobedient sons.
\forcelinebreak
And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame
\forcelinebreak
I spoke of my wife’s dowry; but he coined
\forcelinebreak
A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted
\forcelinebreak
The sum in secret riot and he saw\forcelinebreak My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.
\forcelinebreak
And when I knew the impression he had made,
\forcelinebreak
And felt my wife insult with silent scorn
\forcelinebreak
My ardent truth, and look averse and cold,
\forcelinebreak
I went forth too: but soon returned again;\forcelinebreak Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught
\forcelinebreak
My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried,
\forcelinebreak
“Give us clothes, father” Give us better food!
\forcelinebreak
What you in one night squander were enough
\forcelinebreak
For months!” I looked, and saw that home was hell.\forcelinebreak And to that hell will I return no more
\forcelinebreak
Until mine enemy has rendered up
\forcelinebreak
Atonement, or, as he gave life to me
\forcelinebreak
I will, reversing nature’s law\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Trust me,\forcelinebreak The compensation which thou seekest here
\forcelinebreak
Will be denied.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Then \dots{} Are you not my friend?
\forcelinebreak
Did you not hint at the alternative,
\forcelinebreak
Upon the brink of which you see I stand,\forcelinebreak The other day when we conversed together?
\forcelinebreak
My wrongs were then less. That word parricide,
\forcelinebreak
Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} It must be fear itself, for the bare word
\forcelinebreak
Is hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest God\forcelinebreak Draws to one point the threads of a just doom,
\forcelinebreak
So sanctifying it: what you devise
\forcelinebreak
Is, as it were, accomplished.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Is he dead?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} His grave is ready. Know that since we met.\forcelinebreak Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} What outrage?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} That she speaks not, but you may
\forcelinebreak
Conceive such half conjectures as I do,
\forcelinebreak
From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief\forcelinebreak Of her stern brow bent on the idle air,
\forcelinebreak
And her severe unmodulated voice,
\forcelinebreak
Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last
\forcelinebreak
From this; that whilst her step-mother and I,
\forcelinebreak
Bewildered in our horror, talked together\forcelinebreak With obscure hints; both self-misunderstood
\forcelinebreak
And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk,
\forcelinebreak
Over the truth, and yet to its revenge,
\forcelinebreak
She interrupted us, and with a look
\forcelinebreak
Which told before she spoke it, he must die:\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} It is enough. My doubts are well appeased;
\forcelinebreak
There is a higher reason for the act
\forcelinebreak
Than mine; there is a holier judge than me,
\forcelinebreak
A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice,
\forcelinebreak
Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth\forcelinebreak Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
\forcelinebreak
A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
\forcelinebreak
With needless tears! Fair sister, thou in whom
\forcelinebreak
Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom
\forcelinebreak
Did not destroy each other! Is there made\forcelinebreak Ravage of thee? O, heart, I ask no more
\forcelinebreak
Justification! Shall I wait, Orsino,
\forcelinebreak
Till he return, and stab him at the door?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Not so; some accident might interpose
\forcelinebreak
To rescue him from what is now most sure;\forcelinebreak And you are unprovided where to fly,
\forcelinebreak
How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen:
\forcelinebreak
All is contrived; success is so assured
\forcelinebreak
That\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE
\noindent \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} ’Tis my brother’s voice! You know me not?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} My sister, my lost sister!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Lost indeed!
\forcelinebreak
I see Orsino has talked with you, and
\forcelinebreak
That you conjecture things too horrible\forcelinebreak To speak, yet far less than the truth.
\forcelinebreak
Now, stay not,
\forcelinebreak
He might return: yet kiss me; I shall know
\forcelinebreak
That then thou hast consented to his death.
\forcelinebreak
Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God,\forcelinebreak Brotherly love, justice and clemency,
\forcelinebreak
And all things that make tender hardest hearts
\forcelinebreak
Make thine hard, brother. Answer not \dots{} farewell. [\emph{Exeunt severally.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene II}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A mean Apartment in} GIACOMO’S \emph{House.}
\bigskip
GIACOMO \emph{alone}
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} ’Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. [\emph{Thunder, and the sound of a storm.}
\forcelinebreak
What! can the everlasting elements
\forcelinebreak
Fell with a worm like man? If so the shaft\forcelinebreak Of mercy-wingèd lightning would not fall
\forcelinebreak
On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:
\forcelinebreak
They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
\forcelinebreak
But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
\forcelinebreak
Be just which was most necessary. O,\forcelinebreak Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
\forcelinebreak
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
\forcelinebreak
Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
\forcelinebreak
Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
\forcelinebreak
Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,\forcelinebreak Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be
\forcelinebreak
As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
\forcelinebreak
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
\forcelinebreak
But that no power can fill with vital oil
\forcelinebreak
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! ’tis the blood\forcelinebreak Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
\forcelinebreak
It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
\forcelinebreak
Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
\forcelinebreak
It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
\forcelinebreak
In God’s immortal likeness which now stands\forcelinebreak Naked before Heaven’s judgment seat! (\emph{A bell strikes.})
\forcelinebreak
One! Two!
\forcelinebreak
The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white,
\forcelinebreak
My son will then perhaps be waiting thus,
\forcelinebreak
Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;\forcelinebreak Chiding the tardy messenger of news
\forcelinebreak
Like those which I expect; I almost wish
\forcelinebreak
He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
\forcelinebreak
Yet \dots{} ’tis Orsino’s step\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ORSINO
\noindent Speak!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I am come
\forcelinebreak
To say he has escaped.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Escaped!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} And safe\forcelinebreak Within Petrella. He past by the spot
\forcelinebreak
Appointed for the deed an hour too soon.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Are we the fools of such contingencies?
\forcelinebreak
And do we waste in blind misgivings thus
\forcelinebreak
The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder,\forcelinebreak Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter
\forcelinebreak
With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth
\forcelinebreak
Will ne’er repent of aught designed or done
\forcelinebreak
But my repentance.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} See, the lamp is out.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} If no remorse is ours when the dim air
\forcelinebreak
Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail
\forcelinebreak
When Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits
\forcelinebreak
See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever?
\forcelinebreak
No, I am hardened.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Why, what need of this?
\forcelinebreak
Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse
\forcelinebreak
In a just deed? Altho’ our first plan failed,
\forcelinebreak
Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest.
\forcelinebreak
But light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark.\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo} (\emph{lighting the lamp}). And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume
\forcelinebreak
My father’s life: do you not think his ghost
\forcelinebreak
Might plead that argument with God?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Once gone
\forcelinebreak
You cannot now recall your sister’s peace;\forcelinebreak Your own extinguished years of youth and hope;
\forcelinebreak
Nor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts
\forcelinebreak
Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;
\forcelinebreak
Nor your dead mother; nor\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} O, speak no more!\forcelinebreak I am resolved, although this very hand
\forcelinebreak
Must quench the life that animated it.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} There is no need of that. Listen: you know
\forcelinebreak
Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella
\forcelinebreak
In old Colonna’s time; him whom your father\forcelinebreak Degraded from his post? And Marzio,
\forcelinebreak
That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year
\forcelinebreak
Of a reward of blood, well earned and due?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated
\forcelinebreak
Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage\forcelinebreak His lips grew white only to see him pass.
\forcelinebreak
Of Marzio I know nothing.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Marzio’s hate
\forcelinebreak
Matches Olimpio’s. I have sent these men,
\forcelinebreak
But in your name and as at your request,\forcelinebreak To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Only to talk?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} The moments which even now
\forcelinebreak
Pass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour
\forcelinebreak
May memorise their flight with death: ere then\forcelinebreak They must have talked, and may perhaps have done
\forcelinebreak
And made an end\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Listen! What sound is that?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} The house-dog moans, and the beams crack nought else.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} It is my wife complaining in her sleep:\forcelinebreak I doubt not she is saying bitter things
\forcelinebreak
Of me; and all my children round her dreaming
\forcelinebreak
That I deny them sustenance.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Whilst he
\forcelinebreak
Who truly took it from them, and who fills\forcelinebreak Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps
\forcelinebreak
Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly
\forcelinebreak
Mocks thee in visions of successful hate
\forcelinebreak
Too like the truth of day.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} If e’er he wakes\forcelinebreak Again, I will not trust to hireling hands\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Why, that were well. I must be gone; good-night:
\forcelinebreak
When next we meet—may all be done!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} And all
\forcelinebreak
Forgotten: Oh, that I had never been! [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\part{\textbf{Act IV}
\forcelinebreak}
\chapter{\textbf{Scene I}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment in the Castle of Petrella}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} CENCI
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} She comes not; yet I left her even now
\forcelinebreak
Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty
\forcelinebreak
Of her delay: yet what if threats are vain?\forcelinebreak Am I not now within Petrella’s moat?
\forcelinebreak
Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome?
\forcelinebreak
Might I not drag her by the golden hair?
\forcelinebreak
Stamp on her? Keep her sleepless till her brain
\forcelinebreak
Be overworn? Tame her with chains and famine?\forcelinebreak Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone
\forcelinebreak
What I most seek! No, ’tis her stubborn will
\forcelinebreak
Which by its own consent shall stoop as low
\forcelinebreak
As that which drags it down.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA
\noindent Thou loathèd wretch!
\forcelinebreak
Hide thee from my abhorrence; fly, begone!
\forcelinebreak
Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Oh,
\forcelinebreak
Husband! I pray for thine own wretched sake\forcelinebreak Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee
\forcelinebreak
Thro’ crimes, and thro’ the danger of his crimes,
\forcelinebreak
Each hour may stumble o’er a sudden grave.
\forcelinebreak
And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray;
\forcelinebreak
As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell,\forcelinebreak Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend
\forcelinebreak
In marriage: so that she may tempt thee not
\forcelinebreak
To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} What! like her sister who has found a home
\forcelinebreak
To mock my hate from with prosperity?\forcelinebreak Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee
\forcelinebreak
And all that yet remain. My death may be
\forcelinebreak
Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go,
\forcelinebreak
Bid her come hither, and before my mood
\forcelinebreak
Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence
\forcelinebreak
She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance;
\forcelinebreak
And in that trance she heard a voice which said,
\forcelinebreak
“Cenci must die! Let him confess himself!
\forcelinebreak
Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear\forcelinebreak If God, to punish his enormous crimes,
\forcelinebreak
Harden his dying heart!”
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Why—such thing are\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
No doubt divine revealings may be made.
\forcelinebreak
’Tis plain I have been favoured from above,\forcelinebreak For when I cursed my sons they died.—Ay \dots{} so\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
As to the right of wrong that’s talk \dots{} repentance\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Repentance is an easy moment’s work
\forcelinebreak
And more depends on God than me. Well \dots{} well\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
I must give up the greater point, which was\forcelinebreak To poison and corrupt her soul. [\emph{A pause;} LUCRETIA \emph{approaches anxiously, and then shrinks bask as he speaks.} One, two;
\forcelinebreak
Ay \dots{} Rocco and Cristofano my curse
\forcelinebreak
Strangled: and Giacomo, I think, will find
\forcelinebreak
Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave:
\forcelinebreak
Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate,\forcelinebreak Die in despair, blaspheming: to Bernardo,
\forcelinebreak
He is so innocent, I will bequeath
\forcelinebreak
The memory of these deeds, and make his youth
\forcelinebreak
The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts
\forcelinebreak
Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.\forcelinebreak When all is done, out in the wide Campagna,
\forcelinebreak
I will pile up my silver and my gold;
\forcelinebreak
My costly robes, paintings and tapestries;
\forcelinebreak
My parchments and all records of my wealth,
\forcelinebreak
And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave\forcelinebreak Of my possessions nothing but my name;
\forcelinebreak
Which shall be an inheritance to strip
\forcelinebreak
Its wearer bare as infamy. That done,
\forcelinebreak
My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign
\forcelinebreak
Into the hands of him who wielded it;\forcelinebreak Be it for its own punishment or theirs,
\forcelinebreak
He will not ask it of me till the lash
\forcelinebreak
Be broken in its last and deepest wound;
\forcelinebreak
Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet,
\forcelinebreak
Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make\forcelinebreak Short work and sure \dots{} [\emph{Going.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} (\emph{Stops him.}) Oh, stay! It was a feint:
\forcelinebreak
She had no vision, and she heard no voice.
\forcelinebreak
I said it but to awe thee.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} That is well.\forcelinebreak Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God,
\forcelinebreak
Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie!
\forcelinebreak
For Beatrice worse terrors are in store
\forcelinebreak
To bend her to my will.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Oh! to what will?\forcelinebreak What cruel sufferings more than she has known
\forcelinebreak
Canst thou inflict?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Andrea! Go call my daughter,
\forcelinebreak
And if she comes not tell her that I come.
\forcelinebreak
What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,\forcelinebreak Thro’ infamies unheard of among men:
\forcelinebreak
She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon
\forcelinebreak
Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad,
\forcelinebreak
One among which shall be \dots{} What? Canst thou guess?
\forcelinebreak
She shall become (for what she most abhors\forcelinebreak Shall have a fascination to entrap
\forcelinebreak
Her loathing will) to her own conscious self
\forcelinebreak
All she appears to others; and when dead,
\forcelinebreak
As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven,
\forcelinebreak
A rebel to her father and her God,\forcelinebreak Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds;
\forcelinebreak
Her name shall be the terror of the earth;
\forcelinebreak
Her spirit shall approach the throne of God
\forcelinebreak
Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make
\forcelinebreak
Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} ANDREA
\noindent
\emph{Andrea.} The Lady Beatrice\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Speak, pale slave! What
\forcelinebreak
Said she?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Andrea.} My lord, ’twas what she looked; she said:\forcelinebreak “Go tell my father that I see the gulf
\forcelinebreak
Of Hell between us two, which he may pass,
\forcelinebreak
I will not.” [\emph{Exit} ANDREA.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} Go thou quick, Lucretia,
\forcelinebreak
Tell her to come; yet let her understand\forcelinebreak Her coming is consent: and say, moreover
\forcelinebreak
That if she come not I will curse her. [Exit LUCRETIA.
\forcelinebreak
Ha!
\forcelinebreak
With what but with a father’s curse doth God
\forcelinebreak
Panic-strike armèd victory, and make pale\forcelinebreak Cities in their prosperity? The world’s Father
\forcelinebreak
Must grant a parent’s prayer against his child,
\forcelinebreak
Be he who asks even what men call me.
\forcelinebreak
Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers
\forcelinebreak
Awe her before I speak? For I on them\forcelinebreak Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA
\noindent
Well; what? Speak, wretch!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} She said, “I cannot come;
\forcelinebreak
Go tell my father that I see a torrent\forcelinebreak Of his own blood raging between us.”
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci} (\emph{kneeling}). God!
\forcelinebreak
Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
\forcelinebreak
Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
\forcelinebreak
This particle of my divided being;\forcelinebreak Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
\forcelinebreak
Whose sight infects and poisons, me; this devil
\forcelinebreak
Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
\forcelinebreak
To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
\forcelinebreak
Was kindled to illumine this dark world;\forcelinebreak If nursed by thy selectest dew of love
\forcelinebreak
Such virtues blossom in her as should make
\forcelinebreak
The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake,
\forcelinebreak
As thou the common God and Father art
\forcelinebreak
Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!\forcelinebreak Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
\forcelinebreak
Poison, until she be encrusted round
\forcelinebreak
With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
\forcelinebreak
The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew,
\forcelinebreak
Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up\forcelinebreak Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
\forcelinebreak
To loathed lameness! All-beholding sun,
\forcelinebreak
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
\forcelinebreak
With thine own blinding beams!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Peace! Peace!\forcelinebreak For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
\forcelinebreak
When high God grants he punishes such prayers.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci} (\emph{leaping up, and throwing his right hand towards Heaven}). He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
\forcelinebreak
That if she have a child\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Horrible thought!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} That if she ever have a child; and thou,
\forcelinebreak
Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
\forcelinebreak
That thou be fruitful in her, and increase
\forcelinebreak
And multiply, fulfilling his command,
\forcelinebreak
And my deep imprecation! May it be\forcelinebreak A hideous likeness of herself, that as
\forcelinebreak
From a distorting mirror, she may see
\forcelinebreak
Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
\forcelinebreak
Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.
\forcelinebreak
And that the child may from its infancy\forcelinebreak Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
\forcelinebreak
Turning her mother’s love to misery:
\forcelinebreak
And that both she and it may live until
\forcelinebreak
It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
\forcelinebreak
Or what may else be more unnatural.\forcelinebreak So he may hunt her through he clamorous scoffs
\forcelinebreak
Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.
\forcelinebreak
Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
\forcelinebreak
Before my words are chronicled in Heaven. [\emph{Exit} LUCRETIA.
\forcelinebreak
I do not feel as if I were a man,\forcelinebreak But like a fiend appointed to chastise
\forcelinebreak
The offences of some unremembered world.
\forcelinebreak
My blood is running up and down my veins;
\forcelinebreak
A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
\forcelinebreak
I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;\forcelinebreak My heart is beating with an expectation
\forcelinebreak
Of horrid joy.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA
\noindent
What? Speak!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} She bids thee curse;\forcelinebreak And if thy curses, as they cannot do,
\forcelinebreak
Could kill her soul\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Cenci.} She would not come. ’Tis well,
\forcelinebreak
I can do both: first take what I demand,
\forcelinebreak
And then extort concession. To thy chamber!\forcelinebreak Fly ere I spurn thee: and beware this night
\forcelinebreak
That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer
\forcelinebreak
To come between the tiger and his prey. [\emph{Exit} LUCRETIA.
\forcelinebreak
It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim
\forcelinebreak
With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.\forcelinebreak Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!
\forcelinebreak
They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,
\forcelinebreak
Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain
\forcelinebreak
Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go
\forcelinebreak
First belie thee with an hour of rest,\forcelinebreak Which will be deep and calm, I feel: and then\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake
\forcelinebreak
Thine arches with the laughter of their joy!
\forcelinebreak
There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven
\forcelinebreak
As o’er an angel fallen and upon Earth\forcelinebreak All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things
\forcelinebreak
Shall with a spirit of unnatural life
\forcelinebreak
Stir and be quickened \dots{} even as I am now. [\emph{Exit.}
\forcelinebreak
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene II}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{Before the Castle of Petrella.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE \emph{and} LUCRETIA \emph{above on the Ramparts}
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} They come not yet.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} ’Tis scarce midnight.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} How slow\forcelinebreak Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed,
\forcelinebreak
Lags leaden footed time!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} The minutes pass\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
If he should wake before the deed is done?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} O, mother! He must never wake again.\forcelinebreak What thou hast said persuades me that our act
\forcelinebreak
Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell
\forcelinebreak
Out of a human form.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} ’Tis true he spoke
\forcelinebreak
Of death and judgment with strange confidence\forcelinebreak For one so wicked; as a man believing
\forcelinebreak
In God, yet recking not of good or ill.
\forcelinebreak
And yet to die without confession!\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Oh!
\forcelinebreak
Believe that Heaven is merciful and just,\forcelinebreak And will not add our dread necessity
\forcelinebreak
To the amount of his offences.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} OLIMPIO \emph{and} MARZIO, \emph{below}
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} See,
\forcelinebreak
They come.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} All mortal things must hasten thus
\forcelinebreak
To their dark end. Let us go down. [\emph{Exeunt} LUCRETIA \emph{and} BEATRICE \emph{from above.}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} How feel you to this work?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} As one who thinks
\forcelinebreak
A thousand crowns excellent market price\forcelinebreak For an old murderer’s life. Your cheeks are pale.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} It is the white reflection of your own,
\forcelinebreak
Which you call pale.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Is that their natural hue?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Or ’tis my hate and the deferred desire\forcelinebreak To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} You are inclined then to this business?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Ay.
\forcelinebreak
If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns
\forcelinebreak
To kill a serpent which had stung my child,\forcelinebreak I could not be more willing.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE \emph{and} LUCRETIA, \emph{below}
\noindent
Noble ladies!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Are ye resolved?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Is he asleep?\forcelinebreak \emph{Marzio.} Is all
\forcelinebreak
Quiet?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} I mixed an opiate with his drink:
\forcelinebreak
He sleeps so soundly\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} That his death will be\forcelinebreak But as a change of sin-chastising dreams,
\forcelinebreak
A dark continuance of the Hell within him,
\forcelinebreak
Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved?
\forcelinebreak
Ye know it is a high and holy deed?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} We are resolved.\forcelinebreak \emph{Marzio.} As to the how this act
\forcelinebreak
Be warranted, it rests with you.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Well, follow!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Hush! Hark! What noise is that?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Ha! some one comes!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest
\forcelinebreak
Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate,
\forcelinebreak
Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,
\forcelinebreak
That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow!
\forcelinebreak
And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold. [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene III}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment in the Castle.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE \emph{and} LUCRETIA
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} They are about it now.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Nay, it is done.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} I have not heard him groan.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} He will not groan.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} What sound is that?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} List ’tis the tread of feet
\forcelinebreak
About his bed.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} My God!\forcelinebreak If he be now a cold stiff corpse\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} O, fear not
\forcelinebreak
What may be done, but what is left undone:
\forcelinebreak
The act seals all.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} OLIMPIO \emph{and} MARZIO
\noindent Is it accomplished?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} What?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Did you not call?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} When?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Now.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} I ask if all is over?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
\forcelinebreak
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent brow,
\forcelinebreak
His veined hands crossed on his heaving breast,
\forcelinebreak
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,\forcelinebreak Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
\forcelinebreak
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave
\forcelinebreak
And leave me the reward. And now my knife
\forcelinebreak
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man\forcelinebreak Stirred in his sleep, and said, “God! hear, O, hear,
\forcelinebreak
A father’s curse! What, art though not our father?”
\forcelinebreak
And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost
\forcelinebreak
Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
\forcelinebreak
And could not kill him.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Miserable slaves!
\forcelinebreak
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
\forcelinebreak
Found ye the boldness to return to me
\forcelinebreak
With such a deed undone? Base palterers!
\forcelinebreak
Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience\forcelinebreak Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
\forcelinebreak
Is an equivocation: it sleeps over
\forcelinebreak
A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
\forcelinebreak
And when a deed where mercy insults Heaven\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Why do I talk? [\emph{Snatching a dagger from one of them and raising it.}\forcelinebreak Hadst thou a tongue to say,
\forcelinebreak
She murdered her own father, I must do it!
\forcelinebreak
But never dream ye shall outlive him long!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Olimpio.} Stop, for God’s sake!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} I will go back and kill him.\forcelinebreak \emph{Olimpio.} Give me the weapon, we must do thy will.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Take it. Depart! Return! [\emph{Exeunt} OLIMPIO \emph{and} MARZIO.
\forcelinebreak
How pale thou art!
\forcelinebreak
We do but that which ’twere a deadly crime
\forcelinebreak
To leave undone.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Would it were done!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Even whilst
\forcelinebreak
That doubt is passing through your mind, the world
\forcelinebreak
Is conscious of a change. Darkness and Hell
\forcelinebreak
Have swallowed up the vapour they sent forth\forcelinebreak To blacken the sweet light of life, My breath
\forcelinebreak
Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood
\forcelinebreak
Runs freely thro’ my veins. Hark!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} OLIMPIO \emph{and} MARZIO.
\noindent
He is\dots{}\forcelinebreak \emph{Olimpio.} Dead!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} We strangled him that there might be no blood;
\forcelinebreak
And then we threw his heavy corpse i’ the garden
\forcelinebreak
Under the balcony; ’twill seem it fell.
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{giving them a bag of coin}). Here, take this gold and hasten to your homes.\forcelinebreak And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed
\forcelinebreak
By that which made me tremble, wear thou this! [\emph{Clothes him in a rich mantle.}
\forcelinebreak
It was the mantle which my grandfather
\forcelinebreak
Wore in his high prosperity, and men
\forcelinebreak
Envied his state: so may they envy thine.\forcelinebreak Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God
\forcelinebreak
To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark,
\forcelinebreak
If thou hast crimes, repent: this deed is none. [\emph{A horn is sounded.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Hark, ’tis the castle horn; my God! it sounds
\forcelinebreak
Like the last trump.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Some tedious guest is coming.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp
\forcelinebreak
Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves! [\emph{Exeunt} OLIMPIO \emph{and} MARZIO.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;
\forcelinebreak
I scarcely need to counterfeit it now:\forcelinebreak The spirit which doth reign within these limbs
\forcelinebreak
Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep
\forcelinebreak
Fearless and calm: all ill is surely past. [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene IV}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{Another Apartment in the Castle.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter on one side the Legate} SAVELLA, \emph{introduced by a Servant, and on the other} LUCRETIA \emph{and} BERNARDO
\bigskip
\noindent
\emph{Savella.} Lady, my duty to his Holiness
\forcelinebreak
Be my excuse that thus unseasonably
\forcelinebreak
I break upon your rest. I must speak with\forcelinebreak Count Cenci; doth he sleep?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia} (\emph{in a hurried and confused manner}). I think he sleeps;
\forcelinebreak
Yet wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile,
\forcelinebreak
He is a wicked and a wrathful man;
\forcelinebreak
Should he be roused out of his sleep to-night,\forcelinebreak Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,
\forcelinebreak
It were not well; indeed it were not well.
\forcelinebreak
Wait till day break \dots{} (\emph{aside}) O, I am deadly sick!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count
\forcelinebreak
Must answer charges of the gravest import,\forcelinebreak And suddenly; such my commission is.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia} (\emph{with increased agitation}). I dare not rouse him:
\forcelinebreak
I know none who dare\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
’Twere perilous;\dots{} you might as safely waken
\forcelinebreak
A serpent; or a corpse in which some fiend\forcelinebreak Were laid to sleep.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} Lady, moments here
\forcelinebreak
Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep,
\forcelinebreak
Since none else dare.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia} (\emph{aside}). O, terror! O, despair!\forcelinebreak (\emph{To} BERNARDO.) Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to
\forcelinebreak
Your father’s chamber. [\emph{Exeunt} SAVELLA \emph{and} BERNARDO.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} BEATRICE
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} ’Tis a messenger
\forcelinebreak
Come to arrest the culprit who now stands\forcelinebreak Before the throne of unappealable God.
\forcelinebreak
Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters,
\forcelinebreak
Acquit our deed.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Oh, agony of fear!
\forcelinebreak
Would that he yet might live! Even now I heard\forcelinebreak The Legate’s followers whisper as they passed
\forcelinebreak
They had a warrant for his instant death.
\forcelinebreak
All was prepared by unforbidden means
\forcelinebreak
Which we must pay so dearly, having done.
\forcelinebreak
Even now they search the tower, and find the body;\forcelinebreak Now they suspect the truth; now they consult
\forcelinebreak
Before they come to tax us with the fact;
\forcelinebreak
O, horrible, ’tis all discovered!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Mother,
\forcelinebreak
What is done wisely, is done well. Be bold\forcelinebreak As thou art just. ’Tis like a truant child
\forcelinebreak
To fear that others know what thou hast done,
\forcelinebreak
Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus
\forcelinebreak
Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks
\forcelinebreak
All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself,\forcelinebreak And fear no other witness but thy fear.
\forcelinebreak
For if, as cannot be, some circumstance
\forcelinebreak
Should rise in accusation, we can blind
\forcelinebreak
Suspicion with such cheap astonishment,
\forcelinebreak
Or overbear it with such guiltless pride,\forcelinebreak As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done,
\forcelinebreak
And what may follow now regards not me.
\forcelinebreak
I am as universal as the light;
\forcelinebreak
Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm
\forcelinebreak
As the world’s centre. Consequence, to me,\forcelinebreak Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock
\forcelinebreak
But shakes it not. [\emph{A cry within and tumult.}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Voices.} Murder! Murder! Murder!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} BERNARDO \emph{and} SAVELLA
\noindent
\emph{Savella} (\emph{to his followers}). Go search the castle round; sound the alarm;\forcelinebreak Look to the gates that none escape!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What now?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} I know not what to say \dots{} my father’s dead.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} How; dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, brother.
\forcelinebreak
His sleep is very calm, very like death;\forcelinebreak ’Tis wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps.
\forcelinebreak
He is not dead?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} Dead; murdered.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia} (\emph{with extreme agitation}). Oh no, no,
\forcelinebreak
He is not murdered though he may be dead;\forcelinebreak I have alone the keys of those apartments.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} Ha! Is it so?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} My Lord, I pray excuse us;
\forcelinebreak
We will retire; my mother is not well:
\forcelinebreak
She seems quite overcome with this strange horror. [\emph{Exeunt} LUCRETIA \emph{and} BEATRICE.\forcelinebreak \emph{Savella.} Can you suspect who may have murdered him?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} I know not what to think.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} Can you name any
\forcelinebreak
Who had an interest in his death?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} Alas!\forcelinebreak I can name none who had not, and those most
\forcelinebreak
Who most lament that such a deed is done;
\forcelinebreak
My mother, and my sister, and myself.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} ’Tis strange! There were clear marks of violence.
\forcelinebreak
I found the old man’s body in the moonlight\forcelinebreak Hanging beneath the window of his chamber,
\forcelinebreak
Among the branches of a pine; he could not
\forcelinebreak
Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped
\forcelinebreak
And effortless; ’tis true there was no blood\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Favour me, Sir; it much imports your house\forcelinebreak That all should be made clear; to tell the ladies
\forcelinebreak
That I request their presence. [\emph{Exit} BERNARDO.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} GUARDS \emph{bringing in} MARZIO
\noindent
\emph{Guard.} We have one.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Officer.} My Lord, we found this ruffian and another\forcelinebreak Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt
\forcelinebreak
But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci;
\forcelinebreak
Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore
\forcelinebreak
A gold-inwoven robe, which shining bright
\forcelinebreak
Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon\forcelinebreak Betrayed them to our notice: the other fell
\forcelinebreak
Desperately fighting.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} What does he confess?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Officer.} He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him
\forcelinebreak
May speak.\forcelinebreak \emph{Savella.} Their language is at least sincere. [\emph{Reads.}
\forcelinebreak
“TO THE LADY BEATRICE.—That the atonement of what my nature sickens to conjecture may soon arrive, I send thee, at thy brother’s desire, those who will speak and do more than I dare write\dots{}. Thy devoted servant,
ORSINO.”
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, \emph{and} BERNARDO
\noindent
Knowest thou this writing, Lady?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} No.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} Nor thou?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} (\emph{Her conduct throughout the scene is marked by extreme agitation}). Where was it found? What is it?
\forcelinebreak
It should be
\forcelinebreak
Orsino’s hand! It speaks of that strange horror\forcelinebreak Which never yet found utterance, but which made
\forcelinebreak
Between that hapless child and her dead father
\forcelinebreak
A gulf of obscure hatred.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} Is it so?
\forcelinebreak
Is it true, Lady, that thy father did\forcelinebreak Such outrages as to awaken in thee
\forcelinebreak
Unfilial hate?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Not hate, ’twas more than hate:
\forcelinebreak
This is most true, yet wherefore question me?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} There is a deed demanding question done;\forcelinebreak Thou hast a secret which will answer not.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What sayest? My Lord, your words are bold and rash.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} I do arrest all present in the name
\forcelinebreak
Of the Pope’s Holiness. You must to Rome.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} O, not to Rome, Indeed we are not guilty.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My Lord,
\forcelinebreak
I am more innocent of parricide
\forcelinebreak
Than is a child born fatherless. \dots{} Dear mother,
\forcelinebreak
Your gentleness and patience are no shield
\forcelinebreak
For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,\forcelinebreak Which seems, but is not. What! will human laws,
\forcelinebreak
Rather will ye who are their ministers,
\forcelinebreak
Bar all access to retribution first,
\forcelinebreak
And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do
\forcelinebreak
What ye neglect, arming familiar things\forcelinebreak To the redress of an unwonted crime,
\forcelinebreak
Make ye the victims who demanded it
\forcelinebreak
Culprits? ’Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch
\forcelinebreak
Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed,
\forcelinebreak
If it be true he murdered Cenci, was\forcelinebreak A sword in the right hand of justest God.
\forcelinebreak
Wherefore should I have wielded it? Unless
\forcelinebreak
The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name
\forcelinebreak
God therefore scruples to avenge.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} You own\forcelinebreak That you desired his death?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} It would have been
\forcelinebreak
A crime no less than his, if for one moment
\forcelinebreak
That fierce desire had faded in my heart.
\forcelinebreak
’Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray,\forcelinebreak Ay, I even knew \dots{} for God is wise and just,
\forcelinebreak
That some strange sudden death hung over him.
\forcelinebreak
’Tis true that this did happen, and most true
\forcelinebreak
There was no other rest for me on earth,
\forcelinebreak
No other hope in Heaven \dots{} now what of this?\forcelinebreak \emph{Savella.} Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both:
\forcelinebreak
I judge thee not.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} And yet, if you arrest me,
\forcelinebreak
You are the judge and executioner
\forcelinebreak
Of that which is the life of life: the breath\forcelinebreak Of accusation kills an innocent name,
\forcelinebreak
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life
\forcelinebreak
Which is a mask without it. ’Tis most false
\forcelinebreak
That I am guilty of foul parricide;
\forcelinebreak
Although I must rejoice, for justest cause,\forcelinebreak That other hands have sent my father’s soul
\forcelinebreak
To ask the mercy he denied to me.
\forcelinebreak
Now leave us free; stain not a noble house
\forcelinebreak
With vague surmises of rejected crime;
\forcelinebreak
Add to our sufferings and your own neglect\forcelinebreak No heavier sum: let them have been enough:
\forcelinebreak
Leave us the wreck we have.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} I dare not, Lady.
\forcelinebreak
I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome:
\forcelinebreak
There the Pope’s further pleasure will be known.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} O, not to Rome! O, take us not to Rome!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here
\forcelinebreak
Our innocence is as an armed heel
\forcelinebreak
To trample accusation. God is there
\forcelinebreak
As here, and with his shadow ever clothes\forcelinebreak The innocent, the injured and the weak;
\forcelinebreak
And such are we. Cheer up, dear Lady, lean
\forcelinebreak
On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord,
\forcelinebreak
As soon as you have taken some refreshment,
\forcelinebreak
And had all such examinations made\forcelinebreak Upon the spot, as may be necessary
\forcelinebreak
To the full understanding of this matter,
\forcelinebreak
We shall be ready. Mother; will you come?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest
\forcelinebreak
Self-accusation from our agony!\forcelinebreak Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio?
\forcelinebreak
All present; all confronted; all demanding
\forcelinebreak
Each from the other’s countenance the thing
\forcelinebreak
Which is in every heart! O, misery! [\emph{She faints, and is borne out.}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Savella.} She faints: an ill appearance, this.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} My Lord,
\forcelinebreak
She knows not yet the uses of the world.
\forcelinebreak
She fears that power is as a beast which grasps
\forcelinebreak
And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes
\forcelinebreak
All things to guilt which is its nutriment.\forcelinebreak She cannot know how well the supine slaves
\forcelinebreak
Of blind authority read the truth of things
\forcelinebreak
When written on a brow of guilelessness:
\forcelinebreak
She sees not yet triumphant Innocence
\forcelinebreak
Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal man,\forcelinebreak A judge and an accuser of the wrong
\forcelinebreak
Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord;
\forcelinebreak
Our suite will join yours in the court below. [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\part{\textbf{Act V}
\forcelinebreak}
\chapter{\textbf{Scene I}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{An Apartment in} ORSINO’S \emph{Palace.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} ORSINO \emph{and} GIACOMO
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
\forcelinebreak
O, that the vain remorse which must chastise
\forcelinebreak
Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn\forcelinebreak As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!
\forcelinebreak
O, that the hour when present had cast off
\forcelinebreak
The mantle of its mystery, and shown
\forcelinebreak
The ghastly form with which it now returns
\forcelinebreak
When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds\forcelinebreak Of conscience to their prey! Alas! Alas!
\forcelinebreak
It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,
\forcelinebreak
To kill an old and hoary-headed father.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} It has turned out unluckily, in truth.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} To violate the sacred doors of sleep;\forcelinebreak To cheat kind nature of the placid death
\forcelinebreak
Which she prepares for overwearied age;
\forcelinebreak
To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul
\forcelinebreak
Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers
\forcelinebreak
A life of burning crimes\dots{}\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} You cannot say
\forcelinebreak
I urged you to the deed.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} O, had I never
\forcelinebreak
Found in thy smooth and ready countenance
\forcelinebreak
The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou\forcelinebreak Never with hints and questions made me look
\forcelinebreak
Upon the monster of my thought, until
\forcelinebreak
It grew familiar to desire\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} ’Tis thus
\forcelinebreak
Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts\forcelinebreak Upon the abettors of their own resolve;
\forcelinebreak
Or anything but their weak, guilty selves.
\forcelinebreak
And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril
\forcelinebreak
In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness
\forcelinebreak
Of penitence; confess ’tis fear disguised\forcelinebreak From its own shame that takes the mantle now
\forcelinebreak
Of thin remorse. What if we yet were safe?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} How can that be? Already Beatrice,
\forcelinebreak
Lucretia and the murderer are in prison.
\forcelinebreak
I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak,\forcelinebreak Sent to arrest us.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} I have all prepared.
\forcelinebreak
For instant flight. We can escape even now,
\forcelinebreak
So we take fleet occasion by the hair.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Rather expire in tortures, as I may.\forcelinebreak What! will you cast by self-accusing flight
\forcelinebreak
Assured conviction upon Beatrice?
\forcelinebreak
She, who alone in this unnatural work,
\forcelinebreak
Stands like God’s angel ministered upon
\forcelinebreak
By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong\forcelinebreak As turns black parricide to piety;
\forcelinebreak
Whilst we for basest ends \dots{} I fear, Orsino,
\forcelinebreak
While I consider all your words and looks,
\forcelinebreak
Comparing them with your proposal now,
\forcelinebreak
That you must be a villain. For what end\forcelinebreak Could you engage in such a perilous crime,
\forcelinebreak
Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,
\forcelinebreak
Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No,
\forcelinebreak
Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!
\forcelinebreak
Coward and slave! But, no, defend thyself; [\emph{Drawing.}\forcelinebreak Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue
\forcelinebreak
Disdains to brand thee with.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} Put up your weapon.
\forcelinebreak
Is it the desperation of your fear
\forcelinebreak
Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend,\forcelinebreak Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger
\forcelinebreak
Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed
\forcelinebreak
Was but to try you. As for me, I think,
\forcelinebreak
Thankless affection led me to this point,
\forcelinebreak
From which, if my firm temper could repent,\forcelinebreak I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak
\forcelinebreak
The ministers of justice wait below:
\forcelinebreak
They grant me these brief moments. Now if you
\forcelinebreak
Have any word of melancholy comfort
\forcelinebreak
To speak to your pale wife, ’twere best to pass\forcelinebreak Out at the postern, and avoid them so.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} O, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me?
\forcelinebreak
Would that my life could purchase thine!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Orsino.} That wish
\forcelinebreak
Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well!\forcelinebreak Hear’st thou not steps along the corridor? [\emph{Exit} GIACOMO.
\forcelinebreak
I’m sorry for it; but the guards are waiting
\forcelinebreak
At his own gate, and such was my contrivance
\forcelinebreak
That I might rid me both of him and them.
\forcelinebreak
I thought to act a solemn comedy\forcelinebreak Upon the painted scene of this new world,
\forcelinebreak
And to attain my own peculiar ends
\forcelinebreak
By some such plot of mingled good and ill
\forcelinebreak
As other weave; but there arose a Power
\forcelinebreak
Which graspt and snapped the threads of my device\forcelinebreak And turned it to a net of ruin \dots{} Ha! [\emph{A shout is heard.}
\forcelinebreak
Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?
\forcelinebreak
But I will pass, wrapt in a vile disguise;
\forcelinebreak
Rags on my back, and a false innocence
\forcelinebreak
Upon my face, thro’ the misdeeming crowd\forcelinebreak Which judges by what seems. ’Tis easy then
\forcelinebreak
For a new name and for a country new,
\forcelinebreak
And a new life, fashioned on old desires,
\forcelinebreak
To change the honours of abandoned Rome.
\forcelinebreak
And these must be the masks of that within,\forcelinebreak Which must remain unaltered \dots{} Oh, I fear
\forcelinebreak
That what is past will never let me rest!
\forcelinebreak
Why, when none else is conscious, but myself,
\forcelinebreak
Of my misdeeds, should my own heart’s contempt
\forcelinebreak
Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly\forcelinebreak My own reproaches? Shall I be the slave
\forcelinebreak
Of \dots{} what? A word? which those of this false world
\forcelinebreak
Employ against each other, not themselves;
\forcelinebreak
As men wear daggers not for self-offence.
\forcelinebreak
But if I am mistaken, where shall I\forcelinebreak Find the disguise to hide me from myself,
\forcelinebreak
As now I skulk from every other eye? [\emph{Exit.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene II}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A Hall of Justice.}
\bigskip
CAMILLO, JUDGES, etc., \emph{are discovered seated;} MARZIO \emph{is led in}
\bigskip
\noindent
\emph{First Judge.} Accused, do you persist in your denial?
\forcelinebreak
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?
\forcelinebreak
I demand who were the participators\forcelinebreak In your offence? Speak truth and the whole truth.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;
\forcelinebreak
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which
\forcelinebreak
You would infer my guilt.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Second Judge.} Away with him!\forcelinebreak \emph{First Judge.} Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss
\forcelinebreak
Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner,
\forcelinebreak
That you would bandy lover’s talk with it
\forcelinebreak
Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.\forcelinebreak \emph{First Judge.} Then speak.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} I strangled him in his sleep.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{First Judge.} Who urged you to it?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate
\forcelinebreak
Orsino sent me to Petrella; there\forcelinebreak The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia
\forcelinebreak
Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I
\forcelinebreak
And my companion forthwith murdered him.
\forcelinebreak
Now let me die.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{First Judge.} This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there,\forcelinebreak Lead forth the prisoner!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, \emph{and} GIACOMO, \emph{guarded}
\noindent
Look upon this man;
\forcelinebreak
When did you see him last?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} We never saw him.\forcelinebreak \emph{Marzio.} You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} I know thee! How? where? when?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} You know ’twas I
\forcelinebreak
Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes
\forcelinebreak
To kill your father. When the thing was done\forcelinebreak You clothed me in a robe of woven gold
\forcelinebreak
And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see.
\forcelinebreak
You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,
\forcelinebreak
You know that what I speak is true. [BEATRICE \emph{advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back.} O, dart
\forcelinebreak
The terrible resentment of those eyes\forcelinebreak On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!
\forcelinebreak
They wound: ’twas torture forced the truth. My Lords,
\forcelinebreak
Having said this let me be led to death.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Guards, lead him not away.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Cardinal Camillo,
\forcelinebreak
You have a good repute for gentleness
\forcelinebreak
And wisdom: can it be that you sit here
\forcelinebreak
To countenance a wicked farce like this?
\forcelinebreak
When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged\forcelinebreak From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
\forcelinebreak
And bade to answer, not as he believes,
\forcelinebreak
But as those may suspect or do desire
\forcelinebreak
Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:
\forcelinebreak
And that in peril of such hideous torments\forcelinebreak As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now
\forcelinebreak
The thing you surely know, which is that you,
\forcelinebreak
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
\forcelinebreak
And you were told: “Confess that you did poison
\forcelinebreak
Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child\forcelinebreak Who was the loadstar of your life:”—and though
\forcelinebreak
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
\forcelinebreak
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
\forcelinebreak
And all the things hoped for or done therein
\forcelinebreak
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,\forcelinebreak Yet you would say, “I confess anything:”
\forcelinebreak
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
\forcelinebreak
The refuge of dishonourable death.
\forcelinebreak
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
\forcelinebreak
My innocence.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo} (\emph{much moved}). What shall we think, my Lords?
\forcelinebreak
Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen
\forcelinebreak
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul
\forcelinebreak
That she is guiltless.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Yet she must be tortured.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
\forcelinebreak
(If he now live he would be just her age;
\forcelinebreak
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes
\forcelinebreak
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
\forcelinebreak
As that most perfect image of God’s love\forcelinebreak That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
\forcelinebreak
She is as pure as speechless infancy!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.}Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,
\forcelinebreak
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness
\forcelinebreak
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime\forcelinebreak By the severest forms of law; nay even
\forcelinebreak
To stretch a point against the criminals.
\forcelinebreak
The prisoners stand accused of parricide
\forcelinebreak
Upon such evidence as justifies
\forcelinebreak
Torture.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What evidence? This man’s?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Even so.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} (\emph{To} MARZIO.) Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth
\forcelinebreak
Out of the multitude of living men
\forcelinebreak
To kill the innocent?\forcelinebreak \emph{Marzio.} I am Marzio,
\forcelinebreak
Thy father’s vassal.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Fix thine eyes on mine;
\forcelinebreak
Answer to what I ask.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{Turning to the Judges.}) I prithee mark\forcelinebreak His countenance: unlike bold calumny
\forcelinebreak
Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,
\forcelinebreak
He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends
\forcelinebreak
His gaze on the blind earth.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{To} MARZIO.) What! wilt thou say\forcelinebreak That I did murder my own father?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Oh!
\forcelinebreak
Spare me! My brain swims round \dots{} I cannot speak\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
It was that horrid torture forced the truth.
\forcelinebreak
Take me away! Let her not look on me!\forcelinebreak I am a guilty miserable wretch,
\forcelinebreak
I have said all I know; now, let me die!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} My Lords, if by my nature I had been
\forcelinebreak
So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged,
\forcelinebreak
Which your suspicions dictate to this slave,\forcelinebreak And the rack makes him utter, do you think
\forcelinebreak
I should have left this two-edged instrument
\forcelinebreak
Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife
\forcelinebreak
With my own name engraven on the heft,
\forcelinebreak
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,\forcelinebreak For my own death? That with such horrible need
\forcelinebreak
For deepest silence, I should have neglected
\forcelinebreak
So trivial a precaution, as the making
\forcelinebreak
His tomb the keeper of a secret written
\forcelinebreak
On a thief’s memory? What is his poor life?\forcelinebreak What are a thousand lives? A parricide
\forcelinebreak
Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives!
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{Turning to} MARZIO.) And thou\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Oh, spare me!
\forcelinebreak
Speak to me no more!\forcelinebreak That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,
\forcelinebreak
Wound worse than torture.
\forcelinebreak
(\emph{To the Judges.}) I have told it all;
\forcelinebreak
For pity’s sake lead me away to death.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice,\forcelinebreak He shrinks from her regard like autumn’s leaf
\forcelinebreak
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
\forcelinebreak
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
\forcelinebreak
So mayst thou answer God with less dismay:\forcelinebreak What evil have we done thee? I, alas!
\forcelinebreak
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years
\forcelinebreak
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
\forcelinebreak
First turned the moments of awakening life
\forcelinebreak
To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope; and then\forcelinebreak Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;
\forcelinebreak
And my untainted fame; and even that peace
\forcelinebreak
Which sleeps within the core of the heart’s heart;
\forcelinebreak
But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
\forcelinebreak
Became the only worship I could lift\forcelinebreak To our great father, who in pity and love,
\forcelinebreak
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
\forcelinebreak
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation;
\forcelinebreak
And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest
\forcelinebreak
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:\forcelinebreak Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
\forcelinebreak
If thou hast done murders, made thy life’s path
\forcelinebreak
Over the trampled laws of God and man,
\forcelinebreak
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: “My maker,
\forcelinebreak
I have done this and more; for there was one\forcelinebreak Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
\forcelinebreak
And because she endured what never any
\forcelinebreak
Guilty or innocent endured before:
\forcelinebreak
Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought;
\forcelinebreak
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;\forcelinebreak I with my words killed her and all her kin.”
\forcelinebreak
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
\forcelinebreak
The reverence living in the minds of men
\forcelinebreak
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!
\forcelinebreak
Think what it is to strangle infant pity,\forcelinebreak Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
\forcelinebreak
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
\forcelinebreak
What ’tis to blot with infamy and blood
\forcelinebreak
All that which shows like innocence, and is,
\forcelinebreak
Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,\forcelinebreak So that the world lose all discrimination
\forcelinebreak
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
\forcelinebreak
And that which now compels thee to reply
\forcelinebreak
To what I ask: Am I, or am I not
\forcelinebreak
A parricide?\forcelinebreak \emph{Marzio.} Thou art not!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} What is this?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} I here declare those whom I did accuse
\forcelinebreak
Are innocent. ’Tis I alone am guilty.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Drag him away to torments; let them be\forcelinebreak Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds
\forcelinebreak
Of the heart’s inmost cell. Unbind him not
\forcelinebreak
Till he confess.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Marzio.} Torture me as ye will:
\forcelinebreak
A keener pain has wrung a higher truth\forcelinebreak From my last breath. She is most innocent!
\forcelinebreak
Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me;
\forcelinebreak
I will not give you that fine piece of nature
\forcelinebreak
To rend and ruin. [\emph{Exit} MARZIO, \emph{guarded.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} What say ye now, my Lords?\forcelinebreak \emph{Judge.} Let tortures strain the truth till it be white
\forcelinebreak
As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Yet stained with blood.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge} (\emph{to} BEATRICE). Know you this paper, Lady?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here\forcelinebreak As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,
\forcelinebreak
Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,
\forcelinebreak
What, all in one? Here is Orsino’s name;
\forcelinebreak
Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.
\forcelinebreak
What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what,\forcelinebreak And therefore on the chance that it may be
\forcelinebreak
Some evil, will ye kill us?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter an Officer}
\noindent
\emph{Officer.} Marzio’s dead.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} What did he say?\forcelinebreak \emph{Officer.} Nothing. As soon as we
\forcelinebreak
Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,
\forcelinebreak
As one who baffles a deep adversary;
\forcelinebreak
And holding his breath, died.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} There remains nothing\forcelinebreak But to apply the question to those prisoners,
\forcelinebreak
Who yet remain stubborn.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} I overrule
\forcelinebreak
Further proceedings, and in the behalf
\forcelinebreak
Of these most innocent and noble persons\forcelinebreak Will use my interest with the Holy Father.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Let the Pope’s pleasure then be done. Meanwhile
\forcelinebreak
Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;
\forcelinebreak
And be the engines ready: for this night
\forcelinebreak
If the Pope’s resolution be as grave,\forcelinebreak Pious, and just as once, I’ll wring the truth
\forcelinebreak
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. [\emph{Exeunt.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene III}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{The Cell of a Prison.}
\bigskip
BEATRICE \emph{is discovered asleep on a couch. Enter} BERNARDO
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} How gently slumber rests upon her face,
\forcelinebreak
Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent
\forcelinebreak
Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.\forcelinebreak After such torments as she bore last night,
\forcelinebreak
How light and soft her breathing comes. Ay, me!
\forcelinebreak
Methinks that I shall never sleep again.
\forcelinebreak
But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest
\forcelinebreak
From this sweet folded flower, thus \dots{} wake! awake!\forcelinebreak What, sister, canst thou sleep?
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{awaking}). I was just dreaming
\forcelinebreak
That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest
\forcelinebreak
This cell seems like a kind of Paradise
\forcelinebreak
After our father’s presence.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} Dear, dear sister,
\forcelinebreak
Would that thy dream were not a dream! O God!
\forcelinebreak
How shall I tell?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst\forcelinebreak I stand considering what I have to say
\forcelinebreak
My heart will break.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} See now, thou mak’st me weep:
\forcelinebreak
How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,
\forcelinebreak
If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} They have confessed; they could endure no more
\forcelinebreak
The tortures\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Ha! What was there to confess?
\forcelinebreak
They must have told some weak and wicked lie
\forcelinebreak
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said\forcelinebreak That they were guilty? O white innocence,
\forcelinebreak
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
\forcelinebreak
Thine awful and serenest countenance
\forcelinebreak
From those who know thee not!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} JUDGE \emph{with} LUCRETIA \emph{and} GIACOMO, \emph{guarded}
\noindent Ignoble hearts!
\forcelinebreak
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
\forcelinebreak
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
\forcelinebreak
Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust?
\forcelinebreak
And that eternal honour which should live\forcelinebreak Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,
\forcelinebreak
Changed to a mockery and a bye-word? What!
\forcelinebreak
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
\forcelinebreak
At horses’ heels, so that our hair should sweep
\forcelinebreak
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,\forcelinebreak Who, that they may make our calamity
\forcelinebreak
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
\forcelinebreak
The churches and the theatres as void
\forcelinebreak
As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude
\forcelinebreak
Fling at their choice, curses or faded pity,\forcelinebreak Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,
\forcelinebreak
Upon us as we pass to pass away,
\forcelinebreak
And leave \dots{} what memory of our having been?
\forcelinebreak
Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou,
\forcelinebreak
Who wert a mother to the parentless,\forcelinebreak Kill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee!
\forcelinebreak
Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
\forcelinebreak
And let us each be silent as a corpse;
\forcelinebreak
It soon will be as soft as any grave.
\forcelinebreak
’Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear\forcelinebreak Makes the rack cruel.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} They will tear the truth
\forcelinebreak
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains:
\forcelinebreak
For pity’s sake say thou art guilty now.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die;\forcelinebreak And after death, God is our judge, not they;
\forcelinebreak
He will have mercy on us.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} If indeed
\forcelinebreak
It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;
\forcelinebreak
And then the Pope will surely pardon you,\forcelinebreak And all be well.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Confess, or I will warp.
\forcelinebreak
Your limbs with such keen tortures\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Tortures! Turn
\forcelinebreak
The rack henceforth into a spinning wheel!\forcelinebreak Torture your dog, that he may tell when last
\forcelinebreak
He lapped the blood his master shed \dots{} not me!
\forcelinebreak
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,
\forcelinebreak
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,
\forcelinebreak
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall\forcelinebreak To see, in this ill world where none are true,
\forcelinebreak
My kindred false to their deserted selves.
\forcelinebreak
And with considering all the wretched life
\forcelinebreak
Which I have lived, and its now wretched end,
\forcelinebreak
And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth\forcelinebreak To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,
\forcelinebreak
And what slaves these; and what a world we make,
\forcelinebreak
The oppressor and the oppressed \dots{} such pangs compel
\forcelinebreak
My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Art thou not guilty of thy father’s death?\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Or wilt thou rather tax high judging God
\forcelinebreak
That he permitted such an act as that
\forcelinebreak
Which I have suffered, and which he beheld;
\forcelinebreak
Made it unutterable, and took from it
\forcelinebreak
All refuge, all revenge, all consequence,\forcelinebreak But that which thou hast called my father’s death?
\forcelinebreak
Which is or is not what men call a crime,
\forcelinebreak
Which either I have done, or have not done;
\forcelinebreak
Say what ye will. I shall deny no more.
\forcelinebreak
If ye desire it thus, thus let it be,\forcelinebreak And so an end of all. Now do your will;
\forcelinebreak
No other pains shall force another word.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} She is convicted, but has not confessed.
\forcelinebreak
Be it enough. Until their final sentence
\forcelinebreak
Let none have converse with them. You, young Lord,\forcelinebreak Linger not here!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Oh, tear him not away!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Judge.} Guards, do your duty.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Bernardo} (\emph{embracing} BEATRICE).
\forcelinebreak
Oh! would ye divide\forcelinebreak Body from soul?
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Officer.} That is the headsman’s business. [\emph{Exeunt all but} LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, \emph{and} GIACOMO.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Have I confessed? It is all over now?
\forcelinebreak
No hope! No refuge! O weak, wicked tongue
\forcelinebreak
Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been\forcelinebreak Cut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed
\forcelinebreak
My father first, and then betrayed my sister;
\forcelinebreak
Ay, thee! the one thing innocent and pure
\forcelinebreak
In this black guilty world, to that which I
\forcelinebreak
So well deserve! My wife! my little ones!\forcelinebreak Destitute, helpless, and I \dots{} Father! God!
\forcelinebreak
Canst thou forgive even the unforgiving,
\forcelinebreak
When their full hearts break thus, thus!\dots{} [\emph{Covers his face and weeps.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} O my child!
\forcelinebreak
To what a dreadful end are we all come!\forcelinebreak Why did I yield? Why did I not sustain
\forcelinebreak
Those torments? Oh, that I were all dissolved
\forcelinebreak
Into these fast and unavailing tears,
\forcelinebreak
Which flow and feel not!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} What ’twas weak to do,\forcelinebreak ’Tis weaker to lament, once being done;
\forcelinebreak
Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made
\forcelinebreak
Our speedy act the angel of his wrath,
\forcelinebreak
Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us.
\forcelinebreak
Let us not think that we shall die for this.\forcelinebreak Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand,
\forcelinebreak
You had a manly heart. Bear up! Bear up!
\forcelinebreak
O dearest Lady, put your gentle head
\forcelinebreak
Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile:
\forcelinebreak
Your eyes look pale, hollow and overworn,\forcelinebreak With heaviness of watching and slow grief.
\forcelinebreak
Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune,
\forcelinebreak
Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing,
\forcelinebreak
Some outworn and unused monotony,
\forcelinebreak
Such as our country gossips sing and spin,\forcelinebreak Till they almost forget they live: lie down!
\forcelinebreak
So, that will do. Have I forgot the words?
\forcelinebreak
Faith! They are sadder than I thought they were.
SONG
\noindent
False friend, wilt thou smile or weep\forcelinebreak When my life is laid asleep?
\forcelinebreak
Little cares for a smile or a tear,
\forcelinebreak
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier!
\forcelinebreak
Farewell! Heigho!
\forcelinebreak
What is this whispers low?\forcelinebreak There is a snake in thy smile, my dear;
\forcelinebreak
And bitter poison within thy tear.
\forcelinebreak
\noindent
Sweet sleep, were death like to thee,
\forcelinebreak
Or if thou couldst mortal be,
\forcelinebreak
I would close these eyes of pain;\forcelinebreak When to wake? Never again.
\forcelinebreak
O World! Farewell!
\forcelinebreak
Listen to the passing bell!
\forcelinebreak
It says, thou and I must part,
\forcelinebreak
With a light and a heavy heart. [\emph{The scene closes.}
\bigskip
\chapter{\textbf{Scene IV}
\forcelinebreak}
\emph{A Hall of the Prison.}
\bigskip
\emph{Enter} CAMILLO \emph{and} BERNARDO
\bigskip
\noindent
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.
\forcelinebreak
He looked as calm and keen as is the engine
\forcelinebreak
Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself\forcelinebreak From aught that it inflicts; a marble form,
\forcelinebreak
A rite, a law, a custom: not a man.
\forcelinebreak
He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick
\forcelinebreak
Of his machinery, on the advocates
\forcelinebreak
Presenting the defences, which he tore\forcelinebreak And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice:
\forcelinebreak
“Which among ye defended their old father
\forcelinebreak
Killed in his sleep?” Then to another: “Thou
\forcelinebreak
Dost this in virtue of thy place; ’tis well.”
\forcelinebreak
He turned to me then, looking deprecation,\forcelinebreak And said these three words, coldly: “They must die.”
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} And yet you left him not?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} I urged him still;
\forcelinebreak
Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong
\forcelinebreak
Which prompted your unnatural parent’s death.\forcelinebreak And he replied: “Paolo Santa Croce
\forcelinebreak
Murdered his mother yester evening,
\forcelinebreak
And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife
\forcelinebreak
That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young
\forcelinebreak
Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.\forcelinebreak Authority, and power, and hoary hair
\forcelinebreak
Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,
\forcelinebreak
You come to ask their pardon; stay a moment;
\forcelinebreak
Here is their sentence; never see me more
\forcelinebreak
Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.”\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} O God, not so! I did believe indeed
\forcelinebreak
That all you said was but sad preparation
\forcelinebreak
For happy news. Oh, there are words and looks
\forcelinebreak
To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,
\forcelinebreak
Now I forget them at my dearest need.\forcelinebreak What think you if I seek him out, and bathe
\forcelinebreak
His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?
\forcelinebreak
Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain
\forcelinebreak
With my perpetual cries, until in rage
\forcelinebreak
He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample\forcelinebreak Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood
\forcelinebreak
May stain the senseless dust on which he treads,
\forcelinebreak
And remorse waken mercy? I will do it!
\forcelinebreak
Oh, wait till I return! [\emph{Rushes out.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} Alas! poor boy!\forcelinebreak A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray
\forcelinebreak
To the deaf sea.
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, \emph{and} GIACOMO, \emph{guarded}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} I hardly dare to fear
\forcelinebreak
That thou bring’st other news than a just pardon.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} May God in heaven be less inexorable
\forcelinebreak
To the Pope’s prayers, than he has been to mine.
\forcelinebreak
Here is the sentence and the warrant.
\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak
\emph{Beatrice} (\emph{wildly}). O
\forcelinebreak
My God! Can it be possible I have\forcelinebreak To die so suddenly? So young to go
\forcelinebreak
Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
\forcelinebreak
To be nailed down into a narrow place;
\forcelinebreak
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
\forcelinebreak
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again\forcelinebreak Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost—
\forcelinebreak
How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
What? Oh, were am I? Let me not go mad!
\forcelinebreak
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
\forcelinebreak
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;\forcelinebreak The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
\forcelinebreak
If all things then should be \dots{} my father’s spirit,
\forcelinebreak
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
\forcelinebreak
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
\forcelinebreak
If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,\forcelinebreak Even the form which tortured me on earth,
\forcelinebreak
Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come
\forcelinebreak
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
\forcelinebreak
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
\forcelinebreak
For was he not alone omnipotent\forcelinebreak On Earth, and ever present? Even tho’ dead,
\forcelinebreak
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
\forcelinebreak
And work for me and mine still the same ruin,
\forcelinebreak
Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned
\forcelinebreak
To teach the laws of death’s untrodden realm?\forcelinebreak Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,
\forcelinebreak
Oh, whither, whither?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Trust in God’s sweet love,
\forcelinebreak
The tender promises of Christ: ere night,
\forcelinebreak
Think, we shall be in Paradise.\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} ’Tis past!
\forcelinebreak
Whatever comes my heart shall sink no more.
\forcelinebreak
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:
\forcelinebreak
How tedious, false and cold seem all things. I
\forcelinebreak
Have met with much injustice in this world;\forcelinebreak No difference has been made by God or man,
\forcelinebreak
Or any power moulding my wretched lot,
\forcelinebreak
’Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.
\forcelinebreak
I am cut off from the only world I know,
\forcelinebreak
From light, and life, and love, in youth’s sweet prime.\forcelinebreak You do well telling me to trust in God,
\forcelinebreak
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else
\forcelinebreak
Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold. [\emph{During the latter speeches} GIACOMO \emph{has retired conversing with} CAMILLO, \emph{who now goes out;} GIACOMO \emph{advances.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Giacomo.} Know you not, Mother \dots{} Sister, know you not?
\forcelinebreak
Bernardo even now is gone to implore\forcelinebreak The Pope to grant our pardon.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Lucretia.} Child, perhaps
\forcelinebreak
It will be granted. We may all then live
\forcelinebreak
To make these woes a tale for distant years:
\forcelinebreak
Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart\forcelinebreak Like the warm blood.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Yet both will soon be cold.
\forcelinebreak
Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
\forcelinebreak
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:
\forcelinebreak
It is the only ill which can find place\forcelinebreak Upon the giddy, sharp and narrow hour
\forcelinebreak
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
\forcelinebreak
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:
\forcelinebreak
Plead with awakening earthquake, o’er whose couch
\forcelinebreak
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free:\forcelinebreak Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead
\forcelinebreak
With famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,
\forcelinebreak
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!
\forcelinebreak
Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,
\forcelinebreak
In deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must die:\forcelinebreak Since such is the reward of innocent lives;
\forcelinebreak
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.
\forcelinebreak
And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
\forcelinebreak
Smiling and slow, walk thro’ a world of tears
\forcelinebreak
To death as to life’s sleep; ’twere just the grave\forcelinebreak Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
\forcelinebreak
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
\forcelinebreak
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,
\forcelinebreak
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
\forcelinebreak
Live ye, who live, subject to one another\forcelinebreak As we were once, who now\dots{} [BERNARDO \emph{rushes in.}
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} Oh, horrible,
\forcelinebreak
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
\forcelinebreak
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
\forcelinebreak
Should all be vain! The ministers of death\forcelinebreak Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
\forcelinebreak
Blood on the face of one \dots{} What if ’twere fancy?
\forcelinebreak
Soon the heart’s blood of all I love on earth
\forcelinebreak
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
\forcelinebreak
As if ’twere only rain. O life! O world!\forcelinebreak Cover me! let me be no more! To see
\forcelinebreak
That perfect mirror of pure innocence
\forcelinebreak
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
\forcelinebreak
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
\forcelinebreak
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon\dots{}\forcelinebreak Thee, light of life \dots{} dead, dark! while I say, sister,
\forcelinebreak
To hear I have no sister; and thou, Mother,
\forcelinebreak
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves\dots{}
\forcelinebreak
Dead! The sweet bond broken!
\forcelinebreak
\emph{Enter} CAMILLO \emph{and Guards}
\noindent They come! Let me
\forcelinebreak
Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
\forcelinebreak
Are blighted \dots{} white \dots{} cold. Say farewell, before
\forcelinebreak
Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear
\forcelinebreak
You speak!\forcelinebreak \forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Farewell, my tender brother. Think
\forcelinebreak
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now;
\forcelinebreak
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
\forcelinebreak
Thy sorrow’s load. Err not in harsh despair,
\forcelinebreak
But tears and patience. One thing more, my child,\forcelinebreak For thine own sake be constant to the love
\forcelinebreak
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,
\forcelinebreak
Tho’ wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
\forcelinebreak
Lived ever holy and unstained. And tho’
\forcelinebreak
Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name\forcelinebreak Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
\forcelinebreak
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
\forcelinebreak
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
\forcelinebreak
Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.
\forcelinebreak
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain\forcelinebreak Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Bernardo.} I cannot say, farewell!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Camillo.} O Lady Beatrice!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak \emph{Beatrice.} Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
\forcelinebreak
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie\forcelinebreak My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
\forcelinebreak
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
\forcelinebreak
And yours I see is coming down. How often
\forcelinebreak
Have we done this for one another, now
\forcelinebreak
We shall not do it any more. My Lord,\forcelinebreak We are quite ready. Well, ’tis very well.
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The Anarchist Library
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Anti-Copyright
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Cenci
1819
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https:\Slash{}\Slash{}www.bartleby.com\Slash{}18\Slash{}4\Slash{}
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\textbf{theanarchistlibrary.org}
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