Tuesday, March 1, 2016
I CENCI
Speranza
On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be destitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites was the capacity of forming and following-up a story or plot. He fancied himself to be defective in this portion of imagination: it was that which gave him least pleasure in the writings of others, though he laid great store by it as the proper framework to support the sublimest efforts of poetry. He aserted that he was too metaphysical and abstract, too fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as a tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I shared this opinion with himself; for he had hitherto shown no inclination for, nor given any specimen of his powers in framing and supporting the interest of a story, either in prose or verse. Once or twice, when he attempted such, he had speedily thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to him as an occupation.
The subject he had suggested for a tragedy was Charles I: and he had written to me: 'Remember, remember Charles I. I have been already imagining how you would conduct some scenes. The second volume of [Godwin's] St. Leon begins with this proud and true sentiment: "There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute." Shakespeare was only a human being.' These words were written in 1818, while we were in Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a work of his own would prove a proud comment on the passage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript account of the story of The Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast the reflection of its own grace over her appalling story. Shelley's imagination became strongly excited, and he urged the subject to me as one fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I entreated him to write it instead; and he began, and proceeded swiftly, urged on by intense sympathy with the sufferings of the human beings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during its progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together. I speedily saw the great mistake we had made, and triumphed in the discovery of the new talent brought to light from that mine of wealth (never, alas, through his untimely death, worked to its depths) -- his richly gifted mind.
We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child [William Shelley], who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss.1 Some friends of ours were residing in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and at night the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: Nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water spouts that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of The Cenci. He was making a study of Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished lady [Maria Gisborne] living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed during the following year. He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgement and originality, that, though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet, none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of The Cenci; and there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he himself alludes, as suggested by one in El Purgatorio de San Patricio.
Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted. He was not a playgoer, being of such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling-up of the inferior parts. While preparing for our departure from England, however, he saw Miss O'Neil several times; she was then in the zenith of her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, and sublime vehemence of passion she displayed. She was often in his thoughts as he wrote: and, when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished actress to fill the part of the heroine. With this view he wrote the following letter to a friend [Thomas Love Peacock, July, 1819] in London:
Universal approbation soon stamped The Cenci as the best tragedy of modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: 'I have been cautious to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition; diffuseness, a profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet says, words, words.' There is nothing that is not purely dramatic throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding, from vehement struggle to horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly to the elevated dignity of calm suffering, joined to passionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful that the poet seems to have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely countenance of the unfortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet. The varying feelings of Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His success was a double triumph; and often after was he earnestly entreated to write again in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was not less instinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went the other way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest depended on character and incident, he would start off in another direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could depict in so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the expression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human nature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul.
1. Such feelings haunted him when, in The Cenci, he makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of
The Cenci
Mary Shelley's Introductory Note, 1839 edition
The sort of mistake that Shelley made as to the extent of his own genius and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a curious instance of his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human mind uses at once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to make its way out of error into the path which Nature has marked out as its right one. He often incited me to attempt the writing of a tragedy: he conceived that I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always most earnest and energetic in his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent I possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate of my powers; and above all (though at that time not exactly aware of the fact) I was far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even moderately, in a species of composition that requires a greater scope of experience in, and sympathy with, human passion than could then have fallen to my lot, -- or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever possessed, even at the age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be destitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites was the capacity of forming and following-up a story or plot. He fancied himself to be defective in this portion of imagination: it was that which gave him least pleasure in the writings of others, though he laid great store by it as the proper framework to support the sublimest efforts of poetry. He aserted that he was too metaphysical and abstract, too fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as a tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I shared this opinion with himself; for he had hitherto shown no inclination for, nor given any specimen of his powers in framing and supporting the interest of a story, either in prose or verse. Once or twice, when he attempted such, he had speedily thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to him as an occupation.
The subject he had suggested for a tragedy was Charles I: and he had written to me: 'Remember, remember Charles I. I have been already imagining how you would conduct some scenes. The second volume of [Godwin's] St. Leon begins with this proud and true sentiment: "There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute." Shakespeare was only a human being.' These words were written in 1818, while we were in Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a work of his own would prove a proud comment on the passage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript account of the story of The Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast the reflection of its own grace over her appalling story. Shelley's imagination became strongly excited, and he urged the subject to me as one fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I entreated him to write it instead; and he began, and proceeded swiftly, urged on by intense sympathy with the sufferings of the human beings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during its progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together. I speedily saw the great mistake we had made, and triumphed in the discovery of the new talent brought to light from that mine of wealth (never, alas, through his untimely death, worked to its depths) -- his richly gifted mind.
We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child [William Shelley], who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss.1 Some friends of ours were residing in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and at night the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: Nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water spouts that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of The Cenci. He was making a study of Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished lady [Maria Gisborne] living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed during the following year. He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgement and originality, that, though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet, none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of The Cenci; and there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he himself alludes, as suggested by one in El Purgatorio de San Patricio.
Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted. He was not a playgoer, being of such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling-up of the inferior parts. While preparing for our departure from England, however, he saw Miss O'Neil several times; she was then in the zenith of her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, and sublime vehemence of passion she displayed. She was often in his thoughts as he wrote: and, when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished actress to fill the part of the heroine. With this view he wrote the following letter to a friend [Thomas Love Peacock, July, 1819] in London:
'The object of the present letter is to ask a favour of you. I have written a tragedy on the subject of a story well known in Italy, and, in my conception, eminently dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my play fit for representation, and those who have already seen it judge favourably. It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development. I send you a translation of the Italian MS. on which my play is founded; the chief circumstance of which I have touched very delicately; for my principal doubt as to whether it would succeed as an acting play hangs entirely on the question as to whether any such a thing as incest in this shape, however treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think, however, it will form no objection; considering, first, that the facts are matter of history, and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it.2'I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt of mine will succeed or no. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at present; founding my hopes on this -- that, as a composition, it is certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted, with the exception of [Coleridge's] Remorse; that the interest of its plot is incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond what the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand, either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete incognito, and can trust to you that, whatever else you do, you will at least favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential, deeply essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully (could I hope such a thing), I would own it if I pleased, and use the celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.The play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. He pronounced the subject to be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to Miss O'Neil for perusal, but expressed his desire that the author would write a tragedy on some other subject, which he would gladly accept. Shelley printed a small edition at Leghorn, to insure its correctness; as he was much annoyed by the many mistakes that crept into his text when distance prevented him from correcting the press.
'What I want you to do, is to procure for me its presentation at Covent Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss O'Neil, and it might even seem written for her (God forbid that I should ever see her play it -- it would tear my nerves to pieces); and in all respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief male character I confess I should be very unwilling that any one but Kean should play. That is impossible, and I must be contented with an inferior actor.'
Universal approbation soon stamped The Cenci as the best tragedy of modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: 'I have been cautious to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition; diffuseness, a profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet says, words, words.' There is nothing that is not purely dramatic throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding, from vehement struggle to horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly to the elevated dignity of calm suffering, joined to passionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful that the poet seems to have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely countenance of the unfortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet. The varying feelings of Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His success was a double triumph; and often after was he earnestly entreated to write again in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was not less instinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went the other way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest depended on character and incident, he would start off in another direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could depict in so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the expression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human nature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul.
1. Such feelings haunted him when, in The Cenci, he makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of
'that fair blue-eyed child Who was the lode-star of your life:' --and say
'All see, since his most swift and piteous death, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, And all the things hoped for or done therein Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief.'2. In speaking of his mode of treating this main incident, Shelley said that it might be remarked that, in the course of the play, he had never mentioned expressly Cenci's worst crime. Every one knew what it must be, but it was never imaged in words -- the nearest allusion to it being that portion of Cenci's curse, beginning --
'That, if she have a child,' etc.
The Cenci
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Dedication to Leigh Hunt, Esq.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts.Those writings which I have hitherto published have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor and am content to paint, with such colors as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honorable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never knew; and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.All happiness attend you!Your affectionate friend,PERCY B. SHELLEY.ROME, May 29, 1819.The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Author's Preface
A MANUSCRIPT was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 1599. The story is that an old man, having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind at the price of a hundred thousand crowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions and opinions, acting upon and with each other yet all conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart.On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of people knew the outlines of this history and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. I had a copy of Guido's picture of Beatrice which is preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of La Cenci.This national and universal interest which the story produces and has produced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great City, where the imagination is kept forever active and awake, first suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and success. Nothing remained as I imagined but to clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Oedipus is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and interest, before Shakespeare and Sophocles made them familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of mankind.This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous; anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the contemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly no person can be truly dishonored by the act of another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character. The few whom such an exhibition would have interested could never have been sufficiently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest among the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, -- that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists.I have endeavored as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith confess himself to be so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is, according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dedicated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and established masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the fourth act Lucretia's design in exposing herself to the consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having administered the opiate was to induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself before death, this being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she perceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to new outrages.I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of that nature.In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects I have written more carelessly; that is, without an overfastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what I have attempted; I need not be assured that success is a very different matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly been awakened to the study of dramatic literature.I endeavored whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story as might be accessible to a stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art; it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features; she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another; her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and, though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of openwork. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript.The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Dramatis Personæ
COUNT FRANCESCO CENCI. GIACOMO, BERNARDO, his Sons. CARDINAL CAMILLO. PRINCE COLONNA. ORSINO, a Prelate. SAVELLA, the Pope's Legate. OLIMPIO, MARZIO, Assassins. ANDREA, Servant to CENCI. NOBLES. JUDGES. GUARDS, SERVANTS. LUCRETIA, Wife of CENCI and Stepmother of his children. BEATRICE, his Daughter. The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines. TIME. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.Act I
SCENE I. -- An Apartment in the CENCI Palace. Enter COUNT CENCI and CARDINAL CAMILLO.CAMILLO THAT matter of the murder is hushed up If you consent to yield his Holiness Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate. It needed all my interest in the conclave To bend him to this point; he said that you Bought perilous impunity with your gold; That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded Enriched the Church, and respited from hell An erring soul which might repent and live; But that the glory and the interest 10 Of the high throne he fills little consist With making it a daily mart of guilt As manifold and hideous as the deeds Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes. CENCI The third of my possessions--let it go! Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope Had sent his architect to view the ground, Meaning to build a villa on my vines The next time I compounded with his uncle. I little thought he should outwit me so! 20 Henceforth no witness--not the lamp--shall see That which the vassal threatened to divulge, Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward. The deed he saw could not have rated higher Than his most worthless life--it angers me! Respited me from Hell! So may the Devil Respite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement, And his most charitable nephews, pray That the Apostle Peter and the saints Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy 30 Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards Of their revenue.--But much yet remains To which they show no title. CAMILLO Oh, Count Cenci! So much that thou migh'st honorably live And reconcile thyself with thine own heart And with thy God and with the offended world. How hideously look deeds of lust and blood Through those snow-white and venerable hairs! Your children should be sitting round you now 40 But that you fear to read upon their looks The shame and misery you have written there. Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter? Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you. Why is she barred from all society But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs? Talk with me, Count,--you know I mean you well. I stood beside your dark and fiery youth, Watching its bold and bad career, as men 50 Watch meteors, but it vanished not; I marked Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now Do I behold you in dishonored age Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes. Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, And in that hope have saved your life three times. CENCI For which Aldobrandino owes you now My fief beyond the Pincian. Cardinal, One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth, And so we shall converse with less restraint. 60 A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter; He was accustomed to frequent my house; So the next day his wife and daughter came And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled. I think they never saw him any more. CAMILLO Thou execrable man, beware! CENCI Of thee? Nay, this is idle. We should know each other. As to my character for what men call crime, Seeing I please my senses as I list, And vindicate that right with force or guile, 70 It is a public matter, and I care not If I discuss it with you. I may speak Alike to you and my own conscious heart, For you give out that you have half reformed me; Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent, If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt. All men delight in sensual luxury; All men enjoy revenge, and most exult Over the tortures they can never feel, Flattering their secret peace with others' pain. 80 But I delight in nothing else. I love The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, When this shall be another's and that mine; And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other men. This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish--and it forms none But such as men like you would start to know-- Is as my natural food and rest debarred 90 Until it be accomplished. CAMILLO Art thou not Most miserable? CENCI Why miserable? No. I am what your theologians call Hardened; which they must be in impudence, So to revile a man's peculiar taste. True, I was happier than I am, while yet Manhood remained to act the thing I thought,-- While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now Invention palls. Ay, we must all grow old. And but that there remains a deed to act 100 Whose horror might make sharp an appetite Duller than mine--I 'd do,--I know not what. When I was young I thought of nothing else But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets. Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,-- And I grew tired; yet, till I killed a foe, And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans, Knew I not what delight was else on earth,-- Which now delights me little. I the rather Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals-- 110 The dry, fixed eyeball, the pale, quivering lip, Which tell me that the spirit weeps within Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ. I rarely kill the body, which preserves, Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear For hourly pain. CAMILLO Hell's most abandoned fiend Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt, Speak to his heart as now you speak to me. I thank my God that I believe you not. 120 Enter ANDREA ANDREA My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca Would speak with you. CENCI Bid him attend me In the grand saloon. [Exit ANDREA. CAMILLO Farewell; and I will pray Almighty God that thy false, impious words Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. [Exit CAMILLO. CENCI The third of my possessions! I must use Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword, Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday There came an order from the Pope to make Fourfold provision for my cursèd sons, 130 Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca, Hoping some accident might cut them off, And meaning, if I could, to starve them there. I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them! Bernardo and my wife could not be worse If dead and damned. Then, as to Beatrice-- [Looking around him suspiciously. I think they cannot hear me at that door. What if they should? And yet I need not speak, Though the heart triumphs with itself in words. O thou most silent air, that shalt not hear 140 What now I think! Thou pavement which I tread Towards her chamber,--let your echoes talk Of my imperious step, scorning surprise, But not of my intent!--Andrea! Enter ANDREA ANDREA My Lord? CENCI Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber This evening:--no, at midnight and alone. [Exeunt.SCENE II. -- A Garden of the Cenci Palace. Enter BEATRICE and ORSINO, as in conversation.BEATRICE Pervert not truth, Orsino. You remember where we held That conversation; nay, we see the spot Even from this cypress; two long years are passed Since, on an April midnight, underneath The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine, I did confess to you my secret mind. ORSINO You said you loved me then. BEATRICE You are a priest. Speak to me not of love. ORSINO I may obtain The dispensation of the Pope to marry. 10 Because I am a priest do you believe Your image, as the hunter some struck deer, Follows me not whether I wake or sleep? BEATRICE As I have said, speak to me not of love; Had you a dispensation, I have not; Nor will I leave this home of misery Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady To whom I owe life and these virtuous thoughts, Must suffer what I still have strength to share. Alas, Orsino! All the love that once 20 I felt for you is turned to bitter pain. Ours was a youthful contract, which you first Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose. And thus I love you still, but holily, Even as a sister or a spirit might; And so I swear a cold fidelity. And it is well perhaps we shall not marry. You have a sly, equivocating vein That suits me not.--Ah, wretched that I am! Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me 30 As you were not my friend, and as if you Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles Making my true suspicion seem your wrong. Ah, no, forgive me; sorrow makes me seem Sterner than else my nature might have been; I have a weight of melancholy thoughts, And they forebode,--but what can they forebode Worse than I now endure? ORSINO All will be well. Is the petition yet prepared? You know My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice; 40 Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill So that the Pope attend to your complaint. BEATRICE Your zeal for all I wish. Ah me, you are cold! Your utmost skill--speak but one word-- (Aside) Alas! Weak and deserted creature that I am, Here I stand bickering with my only friend! (To ORSINO) This night my father gives a sumptuous feast, Orsino; he has heard some happy news From Salamanca, from my brothers there, And with this outward show of love he mocks 50 His inward hate. 'T is bold hypocrisy, For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths, Which I have heard him pray for on his knees. Great God! that such a father should be mine! But there is mighty preparation made, And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there, And all the chief nobility of Rome. And he has bidden me and my pale mother Attire ourselves in festival array. Poor lady! she expects some happy change 60 In his dark spirit from this act; I none. At supper I will give you the petition; Till when--farewell. ORSINO Farewell. [Exit BEATRICE. I know the Pope Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly vow But by absolving me from the revenue Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice, I think to win thee at an easier rate. Nor shall he read her eloquent petition. He might bestow her on some poor relation Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister, 70 And I should be debarred from all access. Then as to what she suffers from her father, In all this there is much exaggeration. Old men are testy, and will have their way. A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal, And live a free life as to wine or women, And with a peevish temper may return To a dull home, and rate his wife and children; Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny. I shall be well content if on my conscience 80 There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer From the devices of my love--a net From which he shall escape not. Yet I fear Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, Whose beams anatomize me, nerve by nerve, And lay me bare, and make me blush to see My hidden thoughts.--Ah, no! a friendless girl Who clings to me, as to her only hope! I were a fool, not less than if a panther Were panic-stricken by the antelope's eye, 90 If she escape me. [Exit.SCENE III. -- A magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet. Enter CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, NOBLES.CENCI Welcome, my friends and Kinsmen; welcome ye, Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church, Whose presence honors our festivity. I have too long lived like an anchorite, And in my absence from your merry meetings An evil word is gone abroad of me; But I do hope that you, my noble friends, When you have shared the entertainment here, And heard the pious cause for which 't is given, And we have pledged a health or two together, 10 Will think me flesh and blood as well as you; Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so, But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful. FIRST GUEST In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart, Too sprightly and companionable a man, To act the deeds that rumor pins on you. [To his companion. I never saw such blithe and open cheer In any eye! SECOND GUEST Some most desired event, In which we all demand a common joy, Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count. 20 CENCI It is indeed a most desired event. If when a parent from a parent's heart Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep, And when he rises up from dreaming it; One supplication, one desire, one hope, That he would grant a wish for his two sons, Even all that he demands in their regard, And suddenly beyond his dearest hope It is accomplished, he should then rejoice, 30 And call his friends and Kinsmen to a feast, And task their love to grace his merriment,-- Then honor me thus far, for I am he. BEATRICE (to LUCRETIA) Great God! How horrible! some dreadful ill Must have befallen my brothers. LUCRETIA Fear not, child, He speaks too frankly. BEATRICE Ah! My blood runs cold. I fear that wicked laughter round his eye, Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair. CENCI Here are the letters brought from Salamanca. Beatrice, read them to your mother. God! 40 I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform, By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought. My disobedient and rebellious sons Are dead!--Why, dead!--What means this change of cheer? You hear me not--I tell you they are dead; And they will need no food or raiment more; The tapers that did light them the dark way Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not Expect I should maintain them in their coffins. Rejoice with me--my heart is wondrous glad. 50 BEATRICE (LUCRETIA sinks, half fainting; BEATRICE supports her) It is not true!--Dear Lady, pray look up. Had it been true--there is a God in Heaven-- He would not live to boast of such a boon. Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false. CENCI Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call To witness that I speak the sober truth; And whose most favoring providence was shown Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others, When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy; 60 The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano Was stabbed in error by a jealous man, Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival, All in the self-same hour of the same night; Which shows that Heaven has special care of me. I beg those friends who love me that they mark The day a feast upon their calendars. It was the twenty-seventh of December. Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath. [The assembly appears confused; several of the guests rise. FIRST GUEST Oh, horrible! I will depart. SECOND GUEST And I. THIRD GUEST No, stay! 70 I do believe it is some jest; though, faith! 'T is mocking us somewhat too solemnly. I think his son has married the Infanta, Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado. 'T is but to season some such news; stay, stay! I see 't is only raillery by his smile. CENCI (filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up) O thou bright wine, whose purple splendor leaps And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do, To hear the death of my accursèd sons! 80 Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood, Then would I taste thee like a sacrament, And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell, Who, if a father's curses, as men say, Climb with swift wings after their children's souls, And drag them from the very throne of Heaven, Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine to-night. Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around. 90 A GUEST (rising) Thou wretch! Will none among this noble company Check the abandoned villain? CAMILLO For God's sake, Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane. Some ill will come of this. SECOND GUEST Seize, silence him! FIRST GUEST I will! THIRD GUEST And I! CENCI (addressing those who rise with a threatening gesture) Who moves? Who speaks? [Turning to the company. 'T is nothing, Enjoy yourselves.--Beware! for my revenge Is as the sealed commission of a king, That kills, and none dare name the murderer. [The Banquet is broken up; several of the Guests are departing. BEATRICE I do entreat you, go not, noble guests; What although tyranny and impious hate 100 Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair? What if 't is he who clothed us in these limbs Who tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we, The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh, His children and his wife, whom he is bound To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find No refuge in this merciless wide world? Oh, think what deep wrongs must have blotted out First love, then reverence, in a child's prone mind, Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! Oh, think! 110 I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke Was perhaps some paternal chastisement! Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt Remained, have sought by patience, love and tears To soften him; and when this could not be, I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights, And lifted up to God, the father of all, Passionate prayers; and when these were not heard, I have still borne,--until I meet you here, 120 Princes and Kinsmen, at this hideous feast Given at my brothers' deaths. Two yet remain; His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not, Ye may soon share such merriment again As fathers make over their children's graves. Oh! Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman; Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain; Camillo, thou art chief justiciary; Take us away! CENCI (he has been conversing with CAMILLO during the first part of BEATRICE'S speech; he hears the conclusion, and now advances) I hope my good friends here Will think of their own daughters--or perhaps 130 Of their own throats--before they lend an ear To this wild girl. BEATRICE (not noticing the words of CENCI) Dare no one look on me? None answer? Can one tyrant overbear The sense of many best and wisest men? Or is it that I sue not in some form Of scrupulous law that ye deny my suit? Oh, God! that I were buried with my brothers! And that the flowers of this departed spring Were fading on my grave! and that my father Were celebrating now one feast for all! 140 CAMILLO A bitter wish for one so young and gentle. Can we do nothing?-- COLONNA Nothing that I see Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy; Yet I would second any one. A CARDINAL And I. CENCI Retire to your chamber, insolent girl! BEATRICE Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself Where never eye can look upon thee more! Wouldst thou have honor and obedience, Who art a torturer? Father, never dream, Though thou mayst overbear this company, 150 But ill must come of ill. Frown not on me! Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat! Cover thy face from every living eye, And start if thou but hear a human step; Seek out some dark and silent corner--there Bow thy white head before offended God, And we will kneel around, and fervently Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee. CENCI My friends, I do lament this insane girl 160 Has spoiled the mirth of our festivity. Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels. Another time.-- [Exeunt all but CENCI and BEATRICE. My brain is swimming round. Give me a bowl of wine! (To BEATRICE) Thou painted viper! Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible! I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame, Now get thee from my sight! [Exit BEATRICE. Here, Andrea, Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said I would not drink this evening, but I must; 170 For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail With thinking what I have decreed to do. (Drinking the wine) Be thou the resolution of quick youth Within my veins, and manhood's purpose stern, And age's firm, cold, subtle villainy; As if thou wert indeed my children's blood Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well. It must be done; it shall be done, I swear! [Exit.Act II
SCENE I. -- An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. Enter LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.LUCRETIA WEEP not, my gentle boy; he struck but me, Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed. O God Almighty, do thou look upon us, We have no other friend but only thee! Yet weep not; though I love you as my own, I am not your true mother. BERNARDO Oh, more, more Than ever mother was to any child, That have you been to me! Had he not been My father, do you think that I should weep? 10 LUCRETIA Alas! poor boy, what else could'st thou have done! Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE (in a hurried voice) Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother? Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs; 'T is nearer now; his hand is on the door; Mother, if I to thee have ever been A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God, Whose image upon earth a father is, Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes; The door is opening now; I see his face; He frowns on others, but he smiles on me, 20 Even as he did after the feast last night. Enter a Servant Almighty God, how merciful thou art! 'T is but Orsino's servant.--Well, what news? SERVANT My master bids me say the Holy Father Has sent back your petition thus unopened. (Giving a paper) And he demands at what hour 't were secure To visit you again? LUCRETIA At the Ave Mary. [Exit Servant. So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me, How pale you look! you tremble, and you stand Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation, 30 As if one thought were overstrong for you; Your eyes have a chill glare; oh, dearest child! Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me. BEATRICE You see I am not mad; I speak to you. LUCRETIA You talked of something that your father did After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!' And every one looked in his neighbor's face To see if others were as white as he? At the first word he spoke I felt the blood 40 Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance; And when it passed I sat all weak and wild; Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see The devil was rebuked that lives in him. Until this hour thus you have ever stood Between us and your father's moody wrath Like a protecting presence; your firm mind Has been our only refuge and defence. What can have thus subdued it? What can now 50 Have given you that cold melancholy look, Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear? BEATRICE What is it that you say? I was just thinking 'T were better not to struggle any more. Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody; Yet never--oh! before worse comes of it, 'T were wise to die; it ends in that at last. LUCRETIA Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once What did your father do or say to you? He stayed not after that accursèd feast 60 One moment in your chamber.--Speak to me. BERNARDO Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us! BEATRICE (speaking very slowly, with a forced calmness) It was one word, mother, one little word; One look, one smile. (Wildly) Oh! he has trampled me Under his feet, and made the blood stream down My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve, And we have eaten. He has made me look On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust 70 Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs; And I have never yet despaired--but now! What would I say? (Recovering herself) Ah no! 't is nothing new. The sufferings we all share have made me wild; He only struck and cursed me as he passed; He said, he looked, he did,--nothing at all Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me. Alas! I am forgetful of my duty; I should preserve my senses for your sake. LUCRETIA Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl. 80 If any one despairs it should be I, Who loved him once, and now must live with him Till God in pity call for him or me. For you may, like your sister, find some husband, And smile, years hence, with children round your knees; Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil, Shall be remembered only as a dream. BEATRICE Talk not to me, dear Lady, of a husband. Did you not nurse me when my mother died? Did you not shield me and that dearest boy? 90 And had we any other friend but you In infancy, with gentle words and looks, To win our father not to murder us? And shall I now desert you? May the ghost Of my dead mother plead against my soul, If I abandon her who filled the place She left, with more, even, than a mother's love! BERNARDO And I am of my sister's mind. Indeed I would not leave you in this wretchedness, Even though the Pope should make me free to live 100 In some blithe place, like others of my age, With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air. Oh, never think that I will leave you, mother! LUCRETIA My dear, dear children! Enter CENCI, suddenly CENCI What! Beatrice here! Come hither! [She shrinks back, and covers her face. Nay, hide not your face, 't is fair; Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look With disobedient insolence upon me, Bending a stern and an inquiring brow On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide That which I came to tell you--but in vain. 110 BEATRICE (wildly staggering towards the door) Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God! CENCI Then it was I whose inarticulate words Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps Fled from your presence, as you now from mine. Stay, I command you! From this day and hour Never again, I think, with fearless eye, And brow superior, and unaltered cheek, And that lip made for tenderness or scorn, Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind; Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber! 120 Thou too, loathed image of thy cursèd mother, (To BERNARDO) Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate! [Exeunt BEATRICE and BERNARDO. (Aside) So much has passed between us as must make Me bold, her fearful.--'T is an awful thing To touch such mischief as I now conceive; So men sit shivering on the dewy bank And try the chill stream with their feet; once in-- How the delighted spirit pants for joy! LUCRETIA (advancing timidly towards him) O husband! pray forgive poor Beatrice. She meant not any ill. CENCI Nor you perhaps? 130 Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote Parricide with his alphabet? nor Giacomo? Nor those two most unnatural sons who stirred Enmity up against me with the Pope? Whom in one night merciful God cut off. Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill. You were not here conspiring? you said nothing Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman; Or be condemned to death for some offence, And you would be the witnesses? This failing, 140 How just it were to hire assassins, or Put sudden poison in my evening drink? Or smother me when overcome by wine? Seeing we had no other judge but God, And he had sentenced me, and there were none But you to be the executioners Of his decree enregistered in heaven? Oh, no! You said not this? LUCRETIA So help me God, I never thought the things you charge me with! CENCI If you dare to speak that wicked lie again, 150 I'll kill you. What! it was not by your counsel That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night? You did not hope to stir some enemies Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn What every nerve of you now trembles at? You judged that men were bolder than they are; Few dare to stand between their grave and me. LUCRETIA Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation I knew not aught that Beatrice designed; Nor do I think she designed anything 160 Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers. CENCI Blaspheming liar! you are damned for this! But I will take you where you may persuade The stones you tread on to deliver you; For men shall there be none but those who dare All things--not question that which I command. On Wednesday next I shall set out; you know That savage rook, the Castle of Petrella; 'T is safely walled, and moated round about; Its dungeons under ground and its thick towers 170 Never told tales; though they have heard and seen What might make dumb things speak. Why do you linger? Make speediest preparation for the journey! [Exit LUCRETIA. The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear A busy stir of men about the streets; I see the bright sky through the window panes. It is a garish, broad, and peering day; Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears; And every little corner, nook, and hole, Is penetrated with the insolent light. 180 Come, darkness! Yet, what is the day to me? And wherefore should I wish for night, who do A deed which shall confound both night and day? 'T is she shall grope through a bewildering mist Of horror; if there be a sun in heaven, She shall not dare to look upon its beams; Nor feel its warmth. Let her, then, wish for night; The act I think shall soon extinguish all For me; I bear a darker, deadlier gloom Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air, 190 Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud, In which I walk secure and unbeheld Towards my purpose.--Would that it were done! [Exit.SCENE II. -- A Chamber in the Vatican. Enter CAMILLO and GIACOMO, in conversation.CAMILLO There is an obsolete and doubtful law By which you might obtain a bare provision Of food and clothing. GIACOMO Nothing more? Alas! Bare must be the provision which strict law Awards, and aged sullen avarice pays. Why did my father not apprentice me To some mechanic trade? I should have then Been trained in no highborn necessities Which I could meet not by my daily toil. The eldest son of a rich nobleman 10 Is heir to all his incapacities; He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you, Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food, An hundred servants, and six palaces, To that which nature doth indeed require?-- CAMILLO Nay, there is reason in your plea; 't were hard. GIACOMO 'T is hard for a firm man to bear; but I Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father, 20 Without a bond or witness to the deed; And children, who inherit her fine senses, The fairest creatures in this breathing world; And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal, Do you not think the Pope will interpose And stretch authority beyond the law? CAMILLO Though your peculiar case is hard, I know The Pope will not divert the course of law. After that impious feast the other night I spoke with him, and urged him then to check 30 Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said, 'Children are disobedient, and they sting Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair, Requiting years of care with contumely. I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; His outraged love perhaps awakened hate, And thus he is exasperated to ill. In the great war between the old and young, I, who have white hairs and a tottering body, Will keep at least blameless neutrality.' 40 Enter ORSINO You, my good lord Orsino, heard those words. ORSINO What words? GIACOMO Alas, repeat them not again! There then is no redress for me; at least None but that which I may achieve myself, Since I am driven to the brink.--But, say, My innocent sister and my only brother Are dying underneath my father's eye. The memorable torturers of this land, Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin, Never inflicted on their meanest slave 50 What these endure; shall they have no protection? CAMILLO Why, if they would petition to the Pope, I see not how he could refuse it; yet He holds it of most dangerous example In aught to weaken the paternal power, Being, as 't were, the shadow of his own. I pray you now excuse me. I have business That will not bear delay. [Exit CAMILLO. GIACOMO But you, Orsino, Have the petition; wherefore not present it? ORSINO I have presented it, and backed it with 60 My earnest prayers and urgent interest; It was returned unanswered. I doubt not But that the strange and execrable deeds Alleged in it--in truth they might well baffle Any belief--have turned the Pope's displeasure Upon the accusers from the criminal. So I should guess from what Camillo said. GIACOMO My friend, that palace-walking devil, Gold, Has whispered silence to His Holiness; And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. 70 What should we do but strike ourselves to death? For he who is our murderous persecutor Is shielded by a father's holy name, Or I would-- [Stops abruptly. ORSINO What? Fear not to speak your thought. Words are but holy as the deeds they cover; A priest who has forsworn the God he serves, A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree, A friend who should weave counsel, as I now, But as the mantle of some selfish guile, A father who is all a tyrant seems,-- 80 Were the profaner for his sacred name. GIACOMO Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain Feigns often what it would not; and we trust Imagination with such fantasies As the tongue dares not fashion into words-- Which have no words, their horror makes them dim To the mind's eye. My heart denies itself To think what you demand. ORSINO But a friend's bosom Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day 90 And from the all-communicating air. You look what I suspected-- GIACOMO Spare me now! I am as one lost in a midnight wood, Who dares not ask some harmless passenger The path across the wilderness, lest he, As my thoughts are, should be--a murderer. I know you are my friend, and all I dare Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. But now my heart is heavy, and would take Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. 100 Pardon me that I say farewell--farewell! I would that to my own suspected self I could address a word so full of peace. ORSINO Farewell!--Be your thoughts better or more bold. [Exit GIACOMO. I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo To feed his hope with cold encouragement. It fortunately serves my close designs That 't is a trick of this same family To analyze their own and other minds. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 110 Dangerous secrets; for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes. So Cenci fell into the pit; even I, Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, And made me shrink from what I cannot shun, Show a poor figure to my own esteem, To which I grow half reconciled. I 'll do As little mischief as I can; that thought Shall fee the accuser conscience. (After a pause) Now what harm 120 If Cenci should be murdered?--Yet, if murdered, Wherefore by me? And what if I could take The profit, yet omit the sin and peril In such an action? Of all earthly things I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words; And such is Cenci; and, while Cenci lives, His daughter's dowry were a secret grave If a priest wins her.--O fair Beatrice! Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee, Could but despise danger and gold and all 130 That frowns between my wish and its effect, Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape; Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, And follows me to the resort of men, And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams, So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire; And if I strike my damp and dizzy head, My hot palm scorches it; her very name, But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably 140 I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights Till weak imagination half possesses The self-created shadow. Yet much longer Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours. From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo I must work out my own dear purposes. I see, as from a tower, the end of all: Her father dead; her brother bound to me By a dark secret, surer than the grave; Her mother scared and unexpostulating 150 From the dread manner of her wish achieved; And she!--Once more take courage, my faint heart; What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee? I have such foresight as assures success. Some unbeheld divinity doth ever, When dread events are near, stir up men's minds To black suggestions; and he prospers best, Not who becomes the instrument of ill, But who can flatter the dark spirit that makes Its empire and its prey of other hearts 160 Till it become his slave--as I will do. [Exit.Act III
SCENE I. -- An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. LUCRETIA; to her enter BEATRICE.BEATRICE (she enters staggering and speaks wildly) REACH me that handkerchief!--My brain is hurt; My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me-- I see but indistinctly. LUCRETIA My sweet child, You have no wound; 't is only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow.--Alas, alas! What has befallen? BEATRICE How comes this hair undone? Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, And yet I tied it fast.--Oh, horrible! The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, 10 And standing calm and motionless, whilst I Slide giddily as the world reels.--My God! The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood! The sunshine on the floor is black! The air Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me--'t is substantial, heavy, thick; I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My fingers and my limbs to one another, 20 And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life! My God! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! (More wildly) No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul Which would burst forth into the wandering air! (A pause) What hideous thought was that I had even now? 'T is gone; and yet its burden remains here 30 O'er these dull eyes--upon this weary heart! O world! O life! O day! O misery! LUCRETIA What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not. Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not it cause; suffering has dried away The source from which it sprung. BEATRICE (frantically) Like Parricide-- Misery has killed its father; yet its father Never like mine--O God! what thing am I? LUCRETIA My dearest child, what has your father done? BEATRICE (doubtfully) Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. 40 [Aside. She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, It is a piteous office. (To LUCRETIA, in a slow, subdued voice) Do you know, I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales From hall to hall by the entangled hair; At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams That I imagined--no, it cannot be! 50 Horrible things have been in this wild world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived Than ever there was found a heart to do. But never fancy imaged such a deed As-- (Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself) Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest--Mother! LUCRETIA Oh! My sweet child, know you-- BEATRICE Yet speak it not; For then if this be truth, that other too 60 Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Never to change, never to pass away. Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace; Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. I have talked some wild words, but will no more. Mother, come near me; from this point of time, I am-- (Her voice dies away faintly) LUCRETIA Alas! what has befallen thee, child? What has thy father done? BEATRICE What have I done? Am I not innocent? Is it my crime 70 That one with white hair and imperious brow, Who tortured me from my forgotten years As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!--Oh, what am I? What name, what place, what memory shall be mine? What retrospects, outliving even despair? LUCRETIA He is a violent tyrant, surely, child; We know that death alone can make us free; His death or ours. But what can he have done Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? 80 Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me, Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another. BEATRICE 'T is the restless life Tortured within them. If I try to speak, I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; What, yet I know not--something which shall make The thing that I have suffered but a shadow In the dread lightning which avenges it; Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying 90 The consequence of what it cannot cure. Some such thing is to be endured or done; When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never anything will move me more. But now!--O blood, which art my father's blood, Circling through these contaminated veins, If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, Could wash away the crime and punishment By which I suffer--no, that cannot be! Many might doubt there were a God above 100 Who sees and permits evil, and so die; That faith no agony shall obscure in me. LUCRETIA It must indeed have been some bitter wrong; Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child, Hide not in proud impenetrable grief Thy sufferings from my fear. BEATRICE I hide them not. What are the words which yon would have me speak? I, who can feign no image in my mind Of that which has transformed me; I, whose thought Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up 110 In its own formless horror--of all words, That minister to mortal intercourse, Which wouldst thou hear? for there is none to tell My misery; if another ever knew Aught like to it, she died as I will die, And left it, as I must, without a name. Death, death! our law and our religion call thee A punishment and a reward; oh, which Have I deserved? LUCRETIA The peace of innocence, Till in your season you be called to heaven. 120 Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done No evil. Death must be the punishment Of crime, or the reward of trampling down The thorns which God has strewed upon the path Which leads to immortality. BEATRICE Ay, death-- The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God, Let me not be bewildered while I judge. If I must live day after day, and keep These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit, As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest 130 May mock thee unavenged--it shall not be! Self-murder--no, that might be no escape, For thy decree yawns like a Hell between Our will and it.--Oh! in this mortal world There is no vindication and no law, Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer. Enter ORSINO (She approaches him solemnly) Welcome, friend! I have to tell you that, since last we met, I have endured a wrong so great and strange That neither life nor death can give me rest. 140 Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue. ORSINO And what is he who has thus injured you? BEATRICE The man they call my father; a dread name. ORSINO It cannot be-- BEATRICE What it can be, or not, Forbear to think. It is, and it has been; Advise me how it shall not be again. I thought to die; but a religious awe Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself Might be no refuge from the consciousness 150 Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak! ORSINO Accuse him of the deed, and let the law Avenge thee. BEATRICE Oh, ice-hearted counsellor! If I could find a word that might make known The crime of my destroyer; and that done, My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare, So that my unpolluted fame should be With vilest gossips a stale mouthèd story; A mock, a byword, an astonishment:-- 160 If this were done, which never shall be done, Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate, And the strange horror of the accuser's tale, Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped In hideous hints--Oh, most assured redress! ORSINO You will endure it then? BEATRICE Endure!--Orsino, It seems your counsel is small profit. (Turns from him, and speaks half to herself) Ay, All must be suddenly resolved and done. What is this undistinguishable mist 170 Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow, Darkening each other? ORSINO Should the offender live? Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use, His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt, Thine element; until thou mayest become Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue Of that which thou permittest? BEATRICE (to herself) Mighty death! Thou double-visaged shadow! only judge! Rightfullest arbiter! (She retires, absorbed in thought) LUCRETIA If the lightning Of God has e'er descended to avenge-- 180 ORSINO Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits Its glory on this earth and their own wrongs Into the hands of men; if they neglect To punish crime-- LUCRETIA But if one, like this wretch, Should mock with gold opinion, law and power? If there be no appeal to that which makes The guiltiest tremble? if, because our wrongs, For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous, Exceed all measure of belief? Oh, God! If, for the very reasons which should make 190 Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs? And we, the victims, bear worse punishment Than that appointed for their torturer? ORSINO Think not But that there is redress where there is wrong, So we be bold enough to seize it. LUCRETIA How? If there were any way to make all sure, I know not--but I think it might be good To-- ORSINO Why, his late outrage to Beatrice-- For it is such, as I but faintly guess, As makes remorse dishonor, and leaves her 200 Only one duty, how she may avenge; You, but one refuge from ills ill endured; Me, but one counsel-- LUCRETIA For we cannot hope That aid, or retribution, or resource Will arise thence, where every other one Might find them with less need. [BEATRICE advances. ORSINO Then-- BEATRICE Peace, Orsino! And, honored Lady, while I speak, I pray That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, 210 Which have been borne from childhood, but which now Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As I have said, I have endured a wrong, Which, though it be expressionless, is such As asks atonement, both for what is passed, And lest I be reserved, day after day, To load with crimes an overburdened soul, And be--what ye can dream not. I have prayed To God, and I have talked with my own heart, And have unravelled my entangled will, 220 And have at length determined what is right. Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true? Pledge thy salvation ere I speak. ORSINO I swear To dedicate my cunning, and my strength, My silence, and whatever else is mine, To thy commands. LUCRETIA You think we should devise His death? BEATRICE And execute what is devised, And suddenly. We must be brief and bold. ORSINO And yet most cautious. LUCRETIA For the jealous laws Would punish us with death and infamy 230 For that which it became themselves to do. BEATRICE Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino, What are the means? ORSINO I know two dull, fierce outlaws, Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they Would trample out, for any slight caprice, The meanest or the noblest life. This mood Is marketable here in Rome. They sell What we now want. LUCRETIA To-morrow, before dawn, Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. 240 If he arrive there-- BEATRICE He must not arrive. ORSINO Will it be dark before you reach the tower? LUCRETIA The sun will scarce be set. BEATRICE But I remember Two miles on this side of the fort the road Crosses a deep ravine; 't is rough and narrow, And winds with short turns down the precipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony 250 With which it clings seems slowly coming down; Even as a wretched soul hour after hour Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans; And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall; beneath this crag Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns; below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns, and a bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow, 260 With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday here 'T is twilight, and at sunset blackest night. ORSINO Before you reach that bridge make some excuse For spurring on your mules, or loitering Until-- BEATRICE What sound is that? LUCRETIA Hark! No, it cannot be a servant's step; It must be Cenci, unexpectedly 270 Returned--make some excuse for being here. BEATRICE (to ORSINO as she goes out) That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke. [Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE. ORSINO What shall I do? Cenci must find me here, and I must bear The imperious inquisition of his looks As to what brought me hither; let me mask Mine own in some inane and vacant smile. Enter GIACOMO, in a hurried manner How! have you ventured hither? know you then That Cenci is from home? GIACOMO I sought him here; And now must wait till he returns. ORSINO Great God! 280 Weigh you the danger of this rashness? GIACOMO Ay! Does my destroyer know his danger? We Are now no more, as once, parent and child, But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed, The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe. He has cast Nature off, which was his shield, And Nature casts him off, who is her shame; And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold; I ask not happy years; nor memories 290 Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love; Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more; But only my fair fame; only one hoard Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate Under the penury heaped on me by thee; Or I will--God can understand and pardon, Why should I speak with man? ORSINO Be calm, dear friend. GIACOMO Well, I will calmly tell you what he did. This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, 300 And then denied the loan; and left me so In poverty, the which I sought to mend By holding a poor office in the state. It had been promised to me, and already I bought new clothing for my ragged babes, And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose; When Cenci's intercession, as I found, Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus He paid for vilest service. I returned With this ill news, and we sate sad together 310 Solacing our despondency with tears Of such affection and unbroken faith As temper life's worst bitterness; when he, As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, Mocking our poverty, and telling us Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons. And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame, I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he coined A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted The sum in secret riot; and he saw 320 My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth. And when I knew the impression he had made, And felt my wife insult with silent scorn My ardent truth, and look averse and cold, I went forth too; but soon returned again; Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried, 'Give us clothes, father! Give us better food! What you in one night squander were enough For months!' I looked, and saw that home was hell. 330 And to that hell will I return no more, Until mine enemy has rendered up Atonement, or, as he gave life to me, I will, reversing Nature's law-- ORSINO Trust me, The compensation which thou seekest here Will be denied. GIACOMO Then--Are you not my friend? Did you not hint at the alternative, Upon the brink of which you see I stand, The other day when we conversed together? My wrongs were then less. That word, parricide, 340 Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear. ORSINO It must be fear itself, for the bare word Is hollow mockery. Mark how wisest God Draws to one point the threads of a just doom, So sanctifying it; what you devise Is, as it were, accomplished. GIACOMO Is he dead? ORSINO His grave is ready. Know that since we met Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter. GIACOMO What outrage? ORSINO That she speaks not, but you may Conceive such half conjectures as I do 350 From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief Of her stern brow, bent on the idle air, And her severe unmodulated voice, Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last From this; that whilst her step-mother and I, Bewildered in our horror, talked together With obscure hints, both self-misunderstood, And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk, Over the truth and yet to its revenge, She interrupted us, and with a look 360 Which told, before she spoke it, he must die-- GIACOMO It is enough. My doubts are well appeased; There is a higher reason for the act Than mine; there is a holier judge than me, A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice, Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised A living flower, but thou hast pitied it With needless tears! fair sister, thou in whom Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom 370 Did not destroy each other! is there made Ravage of thee? O heart, I ask no more Justification! Shall I wait, Orsino, Till he return, and stab him at the door? ORSINO Not so, some accident might interpose To rescue him from what is now most sure; And you are unprovided where to fly, How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen; All is contrived; success is so assured That-- Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE 'T is my brother's voice! You know me not? 380 GIACOMO My sister, my lost sister! BEATRICE Lost indeed! I see Orsino has talked with you, and That you conjecture things too horrible To speak, yet far less than the truth. Now stay not, He might return; yet kiss me; I shall know That then thou hast consented to his death. Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God, Brotherly love, justice and clemency, And all things that make tender hardest hearts, Make thine hard, brother. Answer not--farewell. 390 [Exeunt severally.SCENE II. -- A mean Apartment in GIACOMO'S House. GIACOMO alone.GIACOMO 'T is midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. (Thunder, and the sound of a storm) What! can the everlasting elements Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft Of mercy-wingèd lightning would not fall On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep; They are now living in unmeaning dreams; But I must wake, still doubting if that deed Be just which was most necessary. Oh, Thou unreplenished lamp, whose narrow fire Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge 10 Devouring darkness hovers! thou small flame, Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls, Still flickerest up and down, how very soon, Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine; But that no power can fill with vital oil,-- That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 't is the blood Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold; It is the form that moulded mine that sinks 20 Into the white and yellow spasms of death; It is the soul by which mine was arrayed In God's immortal likeness which now stands Naked before Heaven's judgment-seat! (A bell strikes) One! Two! The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white, My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, Tortured between just hate and vain remorse; Chiding the tardy messenger of news Like those which I expect. I almost wish He be not dead, although my wrongs are great; 30 Yet--'t is Orsino's step. Enter ORSINO Speak! ORSINO I am come To say he has escaped. GIACOMO Escaped! ORSINO And safe Within Petrella. He passed by the spot Appointed for the deed an hour too soon. GIACOMO Are we the fools of such contingencies? And do we waste in blind misgivings thus The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder, Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done, 40 But my repentance. ORSINO See, the lamp is out. GIACOMO If no remorse is ours when the dim air Has drunk this innocent flame, why should we quail When Cenci's life, that light by which ill spirits See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink forever? No, I am hardened. ORSINO Why, what need of this? Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse In a just deed? Although our first plan failed, Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. But light the lamp; let us not talk i' the dark. 50 GIACOMO (lighting the lamp) And yet, once quenched, I cannot thus relume My father's life; do you not think his ghost Might plead that argument with God? ORSINO Once gone, You cannot now recall your sister's peace; Your own extinguished years of youth and hope; Nor your wife's bitter words; nor all the taunts Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes; Nor your dead mother; nor-- GIACOMO Oh, speak no more! I am resolved, although this very hand Must quench the life that animated it. 60 ORSINO There is no need of that. Listen; you know Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella In old Colonna's time; him whom your father Degraded from his post? And Marzio, That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year Of a reward of blood, well earned and due? GIACOMO I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage His lips grew white only to see him pass. Of Marzio I know nothing. ORSINO Marzio's hate 70 Matches Olimpio's. I have sent these men, But in your name, and as at your request, To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia. GIACOMO Only to talk? ORSINO The moments which even now Pass onward to to-morrow's midnight hour May memorize their flight with death; ere then They must have talked, and may perhaps have done, And made an end. GIACOMO Listen! What sound is that? ORSINO The house-dog moans, and the beams crack; nought else. GIACOMO It is my wife complaining in her sleep; 80 I doubt not she is saying bitter things Of me; and all my children round her dreaming That I deny them sustenance. ORSINO Whilst he Who truly took it from them, and who fills Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly Mocks thee in visions of successful hate Too like the truth of day. GIACOMO If e'er he wakes Again, I will not trust to hireling hands-- ORSINO Why, that were well. I must be gone; good night! 90 When next we meet, may all be done! GIACOMO And all Forgotten! Oh, that I had never been! [Exeunt.Act IV
SCENE I. -- An Apartment in the Castle of Petrella. Enter CENCI.CENCI SHE comes not; yet I left her even now Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty Of her delay; yet what if threats are vain? Am I not now within Petrella's moat? Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome? Might I not drag her by the golden hair? Stamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain Be overworn? tame her with chains and famine? Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone What I most seek! No, 't is her stubborn will, 10 Which, by its own consent, shall stoop as low As that which drags it down. Enter LUCRETIA Thou loathèd wretch! Hide thee from my abhorrence; fly, begone! Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither. LUCRETIA Oh, Husband! I pray, for thine own wretched sake, Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee Through crimes, and through the danger of his crimes, Each hour may stumble o'er a sudden grave. And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray; As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell, 20 Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend In marriage; so that she may tempt thee not To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be. CENCI What! like her sister, who has found a home To mock my hate from with prosperity? Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee, And all that yet remain. My death may be Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go, Bid her come hither, and before my mood Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair. 30 LUCRETIA She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance; And in that trance she heard a voice which said, 'Cenci must die! Let him confess himself! Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear If God, to punish his enormous crimes, Harden his dying heart!' CENCI Why--such things are. No doubt divine revealings may be made. 'T is plain I have been favored from above, For when I cursed my sons, they died.--Ay--so. 40 As to the right or wrong, that 's talk. Repentance? Repentance is an easy moment's work, And more depends on God than me. Well--well-- I must give up the greater point, which was To poison and corrupt her soul. (A pause, LUCRETIA approaches anxiously, and then shrinks back as he speaks) One, two; Ay--Rocco and Cristofano my curse Strangled; and Giacomo, I think, will find Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave; Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate, Die in despair, blaspheming; to Bernardo, 50 He is so innocent, I will bequeath The memory of these deeds, and make his youth The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb. When all is done, out in the wide Campagna I will pile up my silver and my gold; My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries; My parchments, and all records of my wealth; And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave Of my possessions nothing but my name; 60 Which shall be an inheritance to strip Its wearer bare as infamy. That done, My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign Into the hands of Him who wielded it; Be it for its own punishment or theirs, He will not ask it of me till the lash Be broken in its last and deepest wound; Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet, Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make Short work and sure. [Going. LUCRETIA (stops him) Oh, stay! it was a feint; 70 She had no vision, and she heard no voice. I said it but to awe thee. CENCI That is well. Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God, Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie! For Beatrice worse terrors are in store To bend her to my will. LUCRETIA Oh, to what will? What cruel sufferings more than she has known Canst thou inflict? CENCI Andrea! go, call my daughter And if she comes not, tell her that I come. (To LUCRETIA) What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step, 80 Through infamies unheard of among men; She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad, One among which shall be--what? canst thou guess? She shall become (for what she most abhors Shall have a fascination to entrap Her loathing will) to her own conscious self All she appears to others; and when dead, As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven, A rebel to her father and her God, 90 Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds; Her name shall be the terror of the earth; Her spirit shall approach the throne of God Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. Enter ANDREA ANDREA The Lady Beatrice-- CENCI Speak, pale slave! what Said she? ANDREA My Lord, 't was what she looked; she said, 'Go tell my father that I see the gulf Of Hell between us two, which he may pass; I will not.' [Exit ANDREA. CENCI Go thou quick, Lucretia, 100 Tell her to come; yet let her understand Her coming is consent; and say, moreover, That if she come not I will curse her. [Exit LUCRETIA. Ha! With what but with a father's curse doth God Panic-strike armèd victory, and make pale Cities in their prosperity? The world's Father Must grant a parent's prayer against his child, Be he who asks even what men call me. Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers Awe her before I speak? for I on them 110 Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came. Enter LUCRETIA Well; what? Speak, wretch! LUCRETIA She said, 'I cannot come; Go tell my father that I see a torrent Of his own blood raging between us.' CENCI (kneeling) God, Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh, Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood, This particle of my divided being; Or rather, this my bane and my disease, Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil, Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant 120 To aught good use; if her bright loveliness Was kindled to illumine this dark world; If, nursed by thy selectest dew of love, Such virtues blossom in her as should make The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake, As thou the common God and Father art Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom! Earth, in the name of God, let her food be Poison, until she be encrusted round With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head 130 The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs To loathèd lameness! All-beholding sun, Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes With thine own blinding beams! LUCRETIA Peace, peace! For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words. When high God grants, he punishes such prayers. CENCI (leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven) He does his will, I mine! This in addition, That if she have a child-- LUCRETIA Horrible thought! 140 CENCI That if she ever have a child--and thou, Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God, That thou be fruitful in her, and increase And multiply, fulfilling his command, And my deep imprecation!--may it be A hideous likeness of herself, that as From a distorting mirror she may see Her image mixed with what she most abhors, Smiling upon her from her nursing breast! And that the child may from its infancy 150 Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed, Turning her mother's love to misery! And that both she and it may live until It shall repay her care and pain with hate, Or what may else be more unnatural; So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs Of the loud world to a dishonored grave! Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come, Before my words are chronicled in heaven. [Exit LUCRETIA. I do not feel as if I were a man, 160 But like a fiend appointed to chastise The offences of some unremembered world. My blood is running up and down my veins; A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle; I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe; My heart is beating with an expectation Of horrid joy. Enter LUCRETIA What? Speak! LUCRETIA She bids thee curse; And if thy curses, as they cannot do, Could kill her soul-- CENCI She would not come. 'T is well, I can do both; first take what I demand, 170 And then extort concession. To thy chamber! Fly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer To come between the tiger and his prey. [Exit LUCRETIA. It must be late, mine eyes grow weary dim With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. Conscience! O thou most insolent of lies! They say that sleep, that healing dew of heaven, Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go, 180 First to belie thee with an hour of rest, Which will be deep and calm, I feel; and then-- O multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake Thine arches with the laughter of their joy! There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven As o'er an angel fallen; and upon Earth All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things Shall, with a spirit of unnatural life, Stir and be quickened--even as I am now. [Exit.SCENE II. -- Before the Castle of Petrella. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA above on the ramparts.BEATRICE They come not yet. LUCRETIA 'T is scarce midnight. BEATRICE How slow Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed, Lags leaden-footed Time! LUCRETIA The minutes pass. If he should wake before the deed is done? BEATRICE O mother! he must never wake again. What thou hast said persuades me that our act Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell Out of a human form. LUCRETIA 'T is true he spoke Of death and judgment with strange confidence For one so wicked; as a man believing 10 In God, yet recking not of good or ill. And yet to die without confession!-- BEATRICE Oh! Believe that Heaven is merciful and just, And will not add our dread necessity To the amount of his offences. Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO below LUCRETIA See, They come. BEATRICE All mortal things must hasten thus To their dark end. Let us go down. [Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE from above. OLIMPIO How feel you to this work? MARZIO As one who thinks A thousand crowns excellent market price For an old murderer's life. Your cheeks are pale. 20 OLIMPIO It is the white reflection of your own, Which you call pale. MARZIO Is that their natural hue? OLIMPIO Or 't is my hate, and the deferred desire To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood. MARZIO You are inclined then to this business? OLIMPIO Ay, If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns To kill a serpent which had stung my child, I could not be more willing. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA below Noble ladies! BEATRICE Are ye resolved? OLIMPIO Is he asleep? MARZIO Is all Quiet? LUCRETIA I mixed an opiate with his drink; 30 He sleeps so soundly-- BEATRICE That his death will be But as a change of sin-chastising dreams, A dark continuance of the hell within him, Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved? Ye know it is a high and holy deed? OLIMPIO We are resolved. MARZIO As to the how this act Be warranted, it rests with you. BEATRICE Well, follow! OLIMPIO Hush! Hark! what noise is that? MARZIO Ha! some one comes! BEATRICE Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, 40 Which ye left open, swinging to the wind, That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow! And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold. [Exeunt.SCENE III. -- An Apartment in the Castle. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA.LUCRETIA They are about it now. BEATRICE Nay, it is done. LUCRETIA I have not heard him groan. BEATRICE He will not groan. LUCRETIA What sound is that? BEATRICE List! 't is the tread of feet About his bed. LUCRETIA My God! If he be now a cold, stiff corpse-- BEATRICE Oh, fear not What may be done, but what is left undone; The act seals all. Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO Is it accomplished? MARZIO What? OLIMPIO Did you not call? BEATRICE When? OLIMPIO Now. BEATRICE I ask if all is over? OLIMPIO We dare not kill an old and sleeping man; His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent brow, 10 His veinèd hands crossed on his heaving breast, And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay, Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it. MARZIO But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio, And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave, And leave me the reward. And now my knife Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'God! hear, oh, hear A father's curse! What, art thou not our father?' And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost 20 Of my dead father speaking through his lips, And could not kill him. BEATRICE Miserable slaves! Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man, Found ye the boldness to return to me With such a deed undone? Base palterers! Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge Is an equivocation; it sleeps over A thousand daily acts disgracing men; And when a deed, where mercy insults heaven-- 30 Why do I talk? (Snatching a dagger from one of them, and raising it) Hadst thou a tongue to say, She murdered her own father, I must do it! But never dream ye shall outlive him long! OLIMPIO Stop, for God's sake! MARZIO I will go back and kill him. OLIMPIO Give me the weapon, we must do thy will. BEATRICE Take it! Depart! Return! [Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO. How pale thou art! We do but that which 't were a deadly crime To leave undone. LUCRETIA Would it were done! BEATRICE Even whilst That doubt is passing through your mind, the world Is conscious of a change. Darkness and hell 40 Have swallowed up the vapor they sent forth To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood Runs freely through my veins. Hark! Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO He is-- OLIMPIO Dead! MARZIO We strangled him, that there might be no blood; And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden Under the balcony; 't will seem it fell. BEATRICE (giving them a bag of coin) Here take this gold and hasten to your homes. And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed By that which made me tremble, wear thou this! 50 (Clothes him in a rich mantle) It was the mantle which my grandfather Wore in his high prosperity, and men Envied his state; so may they envy thine. Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark, If thou hast crimes, repent; this deed is none. (A horn is sounded) LUCRETIA Hark, 't is the castle horn: my God! it sounds Like the last trump. BEATRICE Some tedious guest is coming. LUCRETIA The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves! 60 [Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO. BEATRICE Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest; I scarcely need to counterfeit it now; The spirit which doth reign within these limbs Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep Fearless and calm; all ill is surely past. [Exeunt.SCENE IV. -- Another Apartment in the Castle. Enter on one side the Legate SAVELLA, introduced by a Servant, and on the other LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.SAVELLA Lady, my duty to his Holiness Be my excuse that thus unseasonably I break upon your rest. I must speak with Count Cenci; doth he sleep? LUCRETIA (in a hurried and confused manner) I think he sleeps; Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile. He is a wicked and a wrathful man; Should he be roused out of his sleep tonight, Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams, It were not well; indeed it were not well. Wait till day break. (Aside) Oh, I am deadly sick! 10 SAVELLA I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count Must answer charges of the gravest import, And suddenly; such my commission is. LUCRETIA (with increased agitation) I dare not rouse him, I know none who dare; 'T were perilous; you might as safely waken A serpent, or a corpse in which some fiend Were laid to sleep. SAVELLA Lady, my moments here Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep, Since none else dare. LUCRETIA (aside) Oh, terror! oh, despair! (To BERNARDO) Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to 20 Your father's chamber. [Exeunt SAVELLA and BERNARDO. Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE 'T is a messenger Come to arrest the culprit who now stands Before the throne of unappealable God. Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters, Acquit our deed. LUCRETIA Oh, agony of fear! Would that he yet might live! Even now I heard The Legate's followers whisper as they passed They had a warrant for his instant death. All was prepared by unforbidden means, Which we must pay so dearly, having done. 30 Even now they search the tower, and find the body; Now they suspect the truth; now they consult Before they come to tax us with the fact. Oh, horrible, 't is all discovered! BEATRICE Mother, What is done wisely is done well. Be bold As thou art just. 'T is like a truant child, To fear that others know what thou hast done, Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself, 40 And fear no other witness but thy fear. For if, as cannot be, some circumstance Should rise in accusation, we can blind Suspicion with such cheap astonishment, Or overbear it with such guiltless pride, As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done, And what may follow now regards not me. I am as universal as the light; Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm As the world's centre. Consequence, to me, 50 Is as the wind which strikes the solid rook, But shakes it not. (A cry within and tumult) VOICES Murder! Murder! Murder! Enter BERNARDO and SAVELLA SAVELLA (to his followers) Go, search the castle round; sound the alarm; Look to the gates, that none escape! BEATRICE What now? BERNARDO I know not what to say--my father 's dead. BEATRICE How, dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, brother. His sleep is very calm, very like death; 'T is wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps. He is not dead? BERNARDO Dead; murdered! LUCRETIA (with extreme agitation) Oh, no, no! He is not murdered, though he may be dead; 60 I have alone the keys of those apartments. SAVELLA Ha! is it so? BEATRICE My Lord, I pray excuse us; We will retire; my mother is not well; She seems quite overcome with this strange horror. [Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE. SAVELLA Can you suspect who may have murdered him? BERNARDO I know not what to think. SAVELLA Can you name any Who had an interest in his death? BERNARDO Alas! I can name none who had not, and those most Who most lament that such a deed is done; My mother, and my sister, and myself. 70 SAVELLA 'T is strange! There were clear marks of violence. I found the old man's body in the moonlight, Hanging beneath the window of his chamber Among the branches of a pine; he could not Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped And effortless; 't is true there was no blood. Favor me, sir--it much imports your house That all should be made clear--to tell the ladies That I request their presence. [Exit BERNARDO. Enter Guards, bringing in MARZIO GUARD We have one. OFFICER My Lord, we found this ruffian and another 80 Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci; Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore A gold-inwoven robe, which, shining bright Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon, Betrayed them to our notice; the other fell Desperately fighting. SAVELLA What does he confess? OFFICER He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him May speak. SAVELLA Their language is at least sincere. (Reads) "TO THE LADY BEATRICE. That the atonement of what my nature 90 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. Thy devoted servant, ORSINO." Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and BERNARDO Knowest thou this writing, lady? BEATRICE No. SAVELLA Nor thou? LUCRETIA (her conduct throughout the scene is marked by extreme agitation) Where was it found? What is it? It should be Orsino's hand! It speaks of that strange horror Which never yet found utterance, but which made Between that hapless child and her dead father A gulf of obscure hatred. SAVELLA Is it so, 100 Is it true, Lady, that thy father did Such outrages as to awaken in thee Unfilial hate? BEATRICE Not hate, 't was more than hate; This is most true, yet wherefore question me? SAVELLA There is a deed demanding question done; Thou hast a secret which will answer not. BEATRICE What sayest? My Lord, your words are bold and rash. SAVELLA I do arrest all present in the name Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome. LUCRETIA Oh, not to Rome! indeed we are not guilty. 110 BEATRICE Guilty! who dares talk of guilt? My Lord, I am more innocent of parricide Than is a child born fatherless. Dear mother, Your gentleness and patience are no shield For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie, Which seems, but is not. What! will human laws, Rather will ye who are their ministers, Bar all access to retribution first, And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do What ye neglect, arming familiar things 120 To the redress of an unwonted crime, Make ye the victims who demanded it Culprits? 'T is ye are culprits! That poor wretch Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed, If it be true he murdered Cenci, was A sword in the right hand of justest God. Wherefore should I have wielded it? unless The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name God therefore scruples to avenge. SAVELLA You own That you desired his death? BEATRICE It would have been 130 A crime no less than his, if for one moment That fierce desire had faded in my heart. 'T is true I did believe, and hope, and pray, Ay, I even knew--for God is wise and just-- That some strange sudden death hung over him. 'T is true that this did happen, and most true There was no other rest for me on earth, No other hope in Heaven. Now what of this? SAVELLA Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both; I judge thee not. BEATRICE And yet, if you arrest me, 140 You are the judge and executioner Of that which is the life of life; the breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life Which is a mask without it. 'T is most false That I am guilty of foul parricide; Although I must rejoice, for justest cause, That other hands have sent my father's soul To ask the mercy he denied to me. Now leave us free; stain not a noble house 150 With vague surmises of rejected crime; Add to our sufferings and your own neglect No heavier sum; let them have been enough; Leave us the wreck we have. SAVELLA I dare not, Lady. I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome. There the Pope's further pleasure will be known. LUCRETIA Oh, not to Rome! Oh, take us not to Rome! BEATRICE Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here Our innocence is as an armèd heel To trample accusation. God is there, 160 As here, and with his shadow ever clothes The innocent, the injured, and the weak; And such are we. Cheer up, dear Lady! lean On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord, As soon as you have taken some refreshment, And had all such examinations made Upon the spot as may be necessary To the full understanding of this matter, We shall be ready. Mother, will you come? LUCRETIA Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest 170 Self-accusation from our agony! Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio? All present; all confronted; all demanding Each from the other's countenance the thing Which is in every heart! Oh, misery! (She faints, and is borne out) SAVELLA She faints; an ill appearance this. BEATRICE My Lord, She knows not yet the uses of the world. She fears that power is as a beast which grasps And loosens not; a snake whose look transmutes All things to guilt which is its nutriment. 180 She cannot know how well the supine slaves Of blind authority read the truth of things When written on a brow of guilelessness; She sees not yet triumphant Innocence Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal man, A judge and an accuser of the wrong Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord. Our suite will join yours in the court below. [Exeunt.SCENE I. -- An Apartment in ORSINO'S Palace. Enter ORSINO and GIACOMO.GIACOMO Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end? Oh, that the vain remorse which must chastise Crimes done had but as loud a voice to warn As its keen sting is mortal to avenge! Oh, that the hour when present had cast off The mantle of its mystery, and shown The ghastly form with which it now returns When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds Of conscience to their prey! Alas, alas! It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed, 10 To kill an old and hoary-headed father. ORSINO It has turned out unluckily, in truth. GIACOMO To violate the sacred doors of sleep; To cheat kind nature of the placid death Which she prepares for overwearied age; To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul, Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers A life of burning crimes-- ORSINO You cannot say I urged you to the deed. GIACOMO Oh, had I never Found in thy smooth and ready countenance 20 The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou Never with hints and questions made me look Upon the monster of my thought, until It grew familiar to desire-- ORSINO 'T is thus Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts Upon the abettors of their own resolve; Or anything but their weak, guilty selves. And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness Of penitence; confess 't is fear disguised 30 From its own shame that takes the mantle now Of thin remorse. What if we yet were safe? GIACOMO How can that be? Already Beatrice, Lucretia and the murderer are in prison. I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak, Sent to arrest us. ORSINO I have all prepared For instant flight. We can escape even now, So we take fleet occasion by the hair. GIACOMO Rather expire in tortures, as I may. What! will you cast by self-accusing flight 40 Assured conviction upon Beatrice? She who alone, in this unnatural work Stands like God's angel ministered upon By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong As turns black parricide to piety; Whilst we for basest ends--I fear, Orsino, While I consider all your words and looks, Comparing them with your proposal now, That you must be a villain. For what end Could you engage in such a perilous crime, 50 Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles, Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No, Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer! Coward and slave! But no--defend thyself; (Drawing) Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue Disdains to brand thee with. ORSINO Put up your weapon. Is it the desperation of your fear Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend, Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed 60 Was but to try you. As for me, I think Thankless affection led me to this point, From which, if my firm temper could repent, I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak, The ministers of justice wait below; They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you Have any word of melancholy comfort To speak to your pale wife, 't were best to pass Out at the postern, and avoid them so. GIACOMO O generous friend! how canst thou pardon me? 70 Would that my life could purchase thine! ORSINO That wish Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well! Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor? [Exit GIACOMO. I 'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting At his own gate, and such was my contrivance That I might rid me both of him and them. I thought to act a solemn comedy Upon the painted scene of this new world, And to attain my own peculiar ends By some such plot of mingled good and ill 80 As others weave; but there arose a Power Which grasped and snapped the threads of my device, And turned it to a net of ruin--Ha! (A shout is heard) Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad? But I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise, Rags on my back and a false innocence Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd, Which judges by what seems. 'T is easy then, For a new name and for a country new, And a new life fashioned on old desires, 90 To change the honors of abandoned Rome. And these must be the masks of that within, Which must remain unaltered.--Oh, I fear That what is past will never let me rest! Why, when none else is conscious, but myself, Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly My own reproaches? Shall I be the slave Of--what? A word? which those of this false world Employ against each other, not themselves, 100 As men wear daggers not for self-offence. But if I am mistaken, where shall I Find the disguise to hide me from myself, As now I skulk from every other eye? [Exit.SCENE II. -- A Hall of Justice. CAMILLO, JUDGES, etc., are discovered seated; MARZIO is led in.FIRST JUDGE Accused, do you persist in your denial? I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty? I demand who were the participators In your offence. Speak truth, and the whole truth. MARZIO My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing; Olimpio sold the robe to me from which You would infer my guilt. SECOND JUDGE Away with him! FIRST JUDGE Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss, Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner That you would bandy lover's talk with it, 10 Till it wind out your life and soul? Away! MARZIO Spare me! Oh, spare! I will confess. FIRST JUDGE Then speak. MARZIO I strangled him in his sleep. FIRST JUDGE Who urged you to it? MARZIO His own son Giacomo and the young prelate Orsino sent me to Petrella; there The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I And my companion forthwith murdered him. Now let me die. FIRST JUDGE This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, lead forth the prisoners. Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE and GIACOMO, guarded Look upon this man; 20 When did you see him last? BEATRICE We never saw him. MARZIO You know me too well, Lady Beatrice. BEATRICE I know thee! how? where? when? MARZIO You know 't was I Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes To kill your father. When the thing was done, You clothed me in a robe of woven gold, And bade me thrive; how I have thriven, you see. You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, You know that what I speak is true. [BEATRICE advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back. Oh, dart The terrible resentment of those eyes 30 On the dead earth! Turn them away from me! They wound; 't was torture forced the truth. My Lords, Having said this, let me be led to death. BEATRICE Poor wretch, I pity thee; yet stay awhile. CAMILLO Guards, lead him not away. BEATRICE Cardinal Camillo, You have a good repute for gentleness And wisdom; can it be that you sit here To countenance a wicked farce like this? When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart 40 And bade to answer, not as he believes, But as those may suspect or do desire Whose questions thence suggest their own reply; And that in peril of such hideous torments As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now The thing you surely know, which is, that you, If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, And you were told, 'Confess that you did poison Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child Who was the lodestar of your life;' and though 50 All see, since his most swift and piteous death, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, And all the things hoped for or done therein, Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief, Yet you would say, 'I confess anything,' And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, The refuge of dishonorable death. I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert My innocence. CAMILLO (much moved) What shall we think, my Lords? Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen 60 Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul That she is guiltless. JUDGE Yet she must be tortured. CAMILLO I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived, he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep) As that most perfect image of God's love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy! JUDGE Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, 70 If you forbid the rack. His Holiness Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime By the severest forms of law; nay, even To stretch a point against the criminals. The prisoners stand accused of parricide Upon such evidence as justifies Torture. BEATRICE What evidence? This man's? JUDGE Even so. BEATRICE (to MARZIO) Come near. And who art thou, thus chosen forth Out of the multitude of living men, To kill the innocent? MARZIO I am Marzio, 80 Thy father's vassal. BEATRICE Fix thine eyes on mine; Answer to what I ask. (Turning to the Judges) I prithee mark His countenance; unlike bold calumny, Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks, He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends His gaze on the blind earth. (To MARZIO) What! wilt thou say That I did murder my own father? MARZIO Oh! Spare me! My brain swims round--I cannot speak-- It was that horrid torture forced the truth. Take me away! Let her not look on me! 90 I am a guilty miserable wretch! I have said all I know; now, let me die! BEATRICE My Lords, if by my nature I had been So stern as to have planned the crime alleged, Which your suspicions dictate to this slave And the rack makes him utter, do you think I should have left this two-edged instrument Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife, With my own name engraven on the heft, Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, 100 For my own death? that with such horrible need For deepest silence I should have neglected So trivial a precaution as the making His tomb the keeper of a secret written On a thief's memory? What is his poor life? What are a thousand lives? A parricide Had trampled them like dust; and see, he lives! (Turning to MARZIO) And thou-- MARZIO Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more! That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, Wound worse than torture. (To the Judges) I have told it all; 110 For pity's sake lead me away to death. CAMILLO Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice; He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf From the keen breath of the serenest north. BEATRICE O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me; So mayst thou answer God with less dismay. What evil have we done thee? I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years, And so my lot was ordered that a father 120 First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul, And my untainted fame; and even that peace Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart. But the wound was not mortal; so my hate Became the only worship I could lift To our great Father, who in pity and love Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off; And thus his wrong becomes my accusation. 130 And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth; Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart. If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path Over the trampled laws of God and man, Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 'My Maker, I have done this and more; for there was one Who was most pure and innocent on earth; And because she endured what never any, Guilty or innocent, endured before, 140 Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought, Because thy hand at length did rescue her, I with my words killed her and all her kin.' Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay The reverence living in the minds of men Towards our ancient house and stainless fame! Think what it is to strangle infant pity, Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, Till it become a crime to suffer. Think What 't is to blot with infamy and blood 150 All that which shows like innocence, and is-- Hear me, great God!--I swear, most innocent; So that the world lose all discrimination Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt, And that which now compels thee to reply To what I ask: Am I, or am I not A parricide? MARZIO Thou art not! JUDGE What is this? MARZIO I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. 'T is I alone am guilty. JUDGE Drag him away to torments; let them be 160 Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not Till he confess. MARZIO Torture me as ye will; A keener pang has wrung a higher truth From my last breath. She is most innocent! Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me! I will not give you that fine piece of nature To rend and ruin. [Exit MARZIO, guarded. CAMILLO What say ye now, my Lords? JUDGE Let tortures strain the truth till it be white As snow thrice-sifted by the frozen wind. 170 CAMILLO Yet stained with blood. JUDGE (to BEATRICE) Know you this paper, Lady? BEATRICE Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he, Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge, What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name; Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what. And therefore on the chance that it may be Some evil, will ye kill us? Enter an Officer OFFICER Marzio 's dead. JUDGE What did he say? OFFICER Nothing. As soon as we 180 Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us, As one who baffles a deep adversary; And holding his breath died. JUDGE There remains nothing But to apply the question to those prisoners Who yet remain stubborn. CAMILLO I overrule Further proceedings, and in the behalf Of these most innocent and noble persons Will use my interest with the Holy Father. JUDGE Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile Conduct these culprits each to separate cells; 190 And be the engines ready; for this night, If the Pope's resolution be as grave, Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. [Exeunt.SCENE III. -- The Cell of a Prison. BEATRICE is discovered asleep on a couch.Enter BERNARDO BERNARDO How gently slumber rests upon her face, Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent, Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged. After such torments as she bore last night, How light and soft her breathing comes. Ay me! Methinks that I shall never sleep again. But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest From this sweet folded flower, thus--wake, awake! What, sister, canst thou sleep? BEATRICE (awaking) I was just dreaming That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest 10 This cell seems like a kind of Paradise After our father's presence. BERNARDO Dear, dear sister, Would that thy dream were not a dream! Oh, God, How shall I tell? BEATRICE What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother? BERNARDO Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst I stand considering what I have to say, My heart will break. BEATRICE See now, thou mak'st me weep; How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child, If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say. BERNARDO They have confessed; they could endure no more 20 The tortures-- BEATRICE Ha! what was there to confess? They must have told some weak and wicked lie To flatter their tormentors. Have they said That they were guilty? O white innocence, That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide Thine awful and serenest countenance From those who know thee not! Enter JUDGE, with LUCRETIA and GIACOMO, guarded Ignoble hearts! For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least As mortal as the limbs through which they pass, Are centuries of high splendor laid in dust? 30 And that eternal honor, which should live Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, Changed to a mockery and a byword? What! Will you give up these bodies to be dragged At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd, Who, that they may make our calamity Their worship and their spectacle, will leave The churches and the theatres as void As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude 40 Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity, Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse, Upon us as we pass to pass away, And leave--what memory of our having been? Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou Who wert a mother to the parentless, Kill not thy child! let not her wrongs kill thee! Brother, lie down with me upon the rack, And let us each be silent as a corpse; It soon will be as soft as any grave. 50 'T is but the falsehood it can wring from fear Makes the rack cruel. GIACOMO They will tear the truth Even from thee at last, those cruel pains; For pity's sake say thou art guilty now. LUCRETIA Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die; And after death, God is our judge, not they; He will have mercy on us. BERNARDO If indeed It can be true, say so, dear sister mine; And then the Pope will surely pardon you, And all be well. JUDGE Confess, or I will warp 60 Your limbs with such keen tortures-- BEATRICE Tortures! Turn The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel! Torture your dog, that he may tell when last He lapped the blood his master shed--not me! My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul, Which weeps within tears as of burning gall To see, in this ill world where none are true, My kindred false to their deserted selves; And with considering all the wretched life 70 Which I have lived, and its now wretched end; And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art, And what slaves these; and what a world we make, The oppressor and the oppressed--such pangs compel My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me? JUDGE Art thou not guilty of thy father's death? BEATRICE Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God That he permitted such an act as that Which I have suffered, and which he beheld; 80 Made it unutterable, and took from it All refuge, all revenge, all consequence, But that which thou hast called my father's death? Which is or is not what men call a crime, Which either I have done, or have not done; Say what ye will. I shall deny no more. If ye desire it thus, thus let it be, And so an end of all. Now do your will; No other pains shall force another word. JUDGE She is convicted, but has not confessed. 90 Be it enough. Until their final sentence Let none have converse with them. You, young Lord, Linger not here! BEATRICE Oh, tear him not away! JUDGE Guards! do your duty. BERNARDO (embracing BEATRICE) Oh! would ye divide Body from soul? OFFICER That is the headsman's business. [Exeunt all but LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO. GIACOMO Have I confessed? Is it all over now? No hope! no refuge! O weak, wicked tongue, Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been Cut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed My father first, and then betrayed my sister-- 100 Ay thee! the one thing innocent and pure In this black, guilty world--to that which I So well deserve! My wife! my little ones! Destitute, helpless; and I--Father! God! Canst thou forgive even the unforgiving, When their full hearts break thus, thus? (Covers his face and weeps) LUCRETIA O my child! To what a dreadful end are we all come! Why did I yield? Why did I not sustain Those torments? Oh, that I were all dissolved Into these fast and unavailing tears, 110 Which flow and feel not! BEATRICE What 't was weak to do, 'T is weaker to lament, once being done; Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made Our speedy act the angel of his wrath, Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us. Let us not think that we shall die for this. Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand, You had a manly heart. Bear up! bear up! O dearest Lady, put your gentle head Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile; 120 Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn, With heaviness of watching and slow grief. Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune, Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing, Some outworn and unused monotony, Such as our country gossips sing and spin, Till they almost forget they live. Lie down-- So, that will do. Have I forgot the words? Faith! they are sadder than I thought they were. SONG False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 130 When my life is laid asleep? Little cares for a smile or a tear, The clay-cold corpse upon the bier! Farewell! Heigh-ho! What is this whispers low? There is a snake in thy smile, my dear; And bitter poison within thy tear. Sweet sleep! were death like to thee, Or if thou couldst mortal be, I would close these eyes of pain; 140 When to wake? Never again. O World! farewell! Listen to the passing bell! It say, thou and I must part, With a light and a heavy heart. (The scene closes)SCENE IV. -- A Hall of the Prison. Enter CAMILLO and BERNARDO.CAMILLO The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent. He looked as calm and keen as is the engine Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself From aught that it inflicts; a marble form, A rite, a law, a custom, not a man. He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick Of his machinery, on the advocates Presenting the defences, which he tore And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice-- 'Which among ye defended their old father 10 Killed in his sleep?' then to another--'Thou Dost this in virtue of thy place; 't is well.' He turned to me then, looking deprecation, And said these three words, coldly--'They must die.' BERNARDO And yet you left him not? CAMILLO I urged him still; Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong Which prompted your unnatural parent's death. And he replied--'Paolo Santa Croce Murdered his mother yester evening, And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife, 20 That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs. Authority, and power, and hoary hair Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew, You come to ask their pardon; stay a moment; Here is their sentence; never see me more Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.' BERNARDO Oh, God, not so! I did believe indeed That all you said was but sad preparation For happy news. Oh, there are words and looks 30 To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them, Now I forget them at my dearest need. What think you if I seek him out, and bathe His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears? Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain With my perpetual cries, until in rage He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood May stain the senseless dust on which he treads, And remorse waken mercy? I will do it! 40 Oh, wait till I return! [Rushes out. CAMILLO Alas, poor boy! A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray To the deaf sea. Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded BEATRICE I hardly dare to fear That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon. CAMILLO May God in heaven be less inexorable To the Pope's prayers than he has been to mine. Here is the sentence and the warrant. BEATRICE (wildly) Oh, My God! Can it be possible I have To die so suddenly? so young to go Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground! 50 To be nailed down into a narrow place; To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost! How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be-- What? Oh, where am I? Let me not go mad! Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world-- The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world! If all things then should be--my father's spirit, 60 His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me; The atmosphere and breath of my dead life! If sometimes, as a shape more like himself, Even the form which tortured me on earth, Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come, And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down! For was he not alone omnipotent On Earth, and ever present? even though dead, Does not his spirit live in all that breathe, 70 And work for me and mine still the same ruin, Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned To teach the laws of death's untrodden realm? Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now, Oh, whither, whither? LUCRETIA Trust in God's sweet love, The tender promises of Christ; ere night, Think we shall be in Paradise. BEATRICE 'T is past! Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more. And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill; How tedious, false, and cold seem all things! I 80 Have met with much injustice in this world; No difference has been made by God or man, Or any power moulding my wretched lot, 'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me. I am cut off from the only world I know, From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime. You do well telling me to trust in God; I hope I do trust in him. In whom else Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold. (During the latter speeches GIACOMO has retired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out; GIACOMO advances) GIACOMO Know you not, mother--sister, know you not? 90 Bernardo even now is gone to implore The Pope to grant our pardon. LUCRETIA Child, perhaps It will be granted. We may all then live To make these woes a tale for distant years. Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart Like the warm blood. BEATRICE Yet both will soon be cold. Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope; It is the only ill which can find place Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour 100 Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost That it should spare the eldest flower of spring; Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free; Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead With famine, or wind-walking pestilence, Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man-- Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words, In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die; Since such is the reward of innocent lives, 110 Such the alleviation of worst wrongs. And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men, Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears To death as to life's sleep; 't were just the grave Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death, And wind me in thine all-embracing arms! Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom, And rock me to the sleep from which none wake. Live ye, who live, subject to one another As we were once, who now-- BERNARDO rushes in BERNARDO Oh, horrible! 120 That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer, Even till the heart is vacant and despairs, Should all be vain! The ministers of death Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw Blood on the face of one--what if 't were fancy? Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off As if 't were only rain. O life! O world! Cover me! let me be no more! To see That perfect mirror of pure innocence 130 Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good, Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice, Who made all lovely thou didst look upon-- Thee, light of life--dead, dark! while I say, sister, To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother, Whose love was as a bond to all our loves-- Dead! the sweet bond broken! Enter CAMILLO and Guards They come! Let me Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves Are blighted--white--cold. Say farewell, before Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear 140 You speak! BEATRICE Farewell, my tender brother. Think Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now; And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair, But tears and patience. One thing more, my child; For thine own sake be constant to the love Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I, Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame, Lived ever holy and unstained. And though Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name 150 Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow For men to point at as they pass, do thou Forbear, and never think a thought unkind Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves. So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell! BERNARDO I cannot say farewell! CAMILLO O Lady Beatrice! BEATRICE Give yourself no unnecessary pain, My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair 160 In any simple knot; ay, that does well. And yours I see is coming down. How often Have we done this for one another; now We shall not do it any more. My Lord, We are quite ready. Well--'t is very well.
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