An Apartment in the Castle of Petrella.
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, 'tis her stubborn will,
Which, by its own consent, shall stoop as low
As that which drags it down.
Why-such things are:
No doubt divine revealings may be made.
'Tis plain I have been favoured from above,
For when I cursed my sons, they died.-Ay-so-
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.
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,
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;
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.
Oh, stay! It was a feint: I said it but to awe thee. She had no vision, and she heard no voice.
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?
Andrea! go, call my daughter,
And if she comes not, tell her that I come.
What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,
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,
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.
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
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
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 loathed lameness! All-beholding sun,
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
With thine own blinding beams!
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.com.pr/books/content?id=iIgU7b6j6kcC&output=html_text&pg=RA1-PA146&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&q=sleep&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U1LcyksTDAZndCsSrdo7QO6kvp7Tw&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=117,1250,471,185)
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
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 dishonoured grave.
Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
Before my words are chronicled in heaven.
I do not feel as if I were a man,
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!
Could kill her soul-
And if thy curses, as they cannot do,
It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim
With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.
Conscience! Oh, 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,
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.
A thousand crowns excellent market price
OLIMPIO. What noise is that?
Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest
Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate,
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.
An Apartment in the Castle. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA.
For an old murderer's life. Your cheeks are pale. They are about it now.
I have not heard him groan.
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-
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!
We strangled him, that there might be no blood; And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden Under the balcony; 'twill 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!
[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.
Hark, 'tis the castle horn: my God! it sounds Like the last trump.
Some tedious guest is coming.
The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp Of horses in the court! fly, hide yourselves! [Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO.
Another Apartment in the Castle.
Enter on one side the Legate SAVELLA, introduced by a Servant, and on the other LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.
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 to-night,
Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,
It were not well; indeed it were not well.
Wait till day-break,-
Enter BERNARDO and SAVELLA.
SAVELLA (to his followers).
(Aside.) O, I am deadly sick! Go, search the castle round; sound the alarm; Look to the gates, that none escape!
What is done wisely, is done well.
As thou art just. 'Tis 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,
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,
Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock,
But shakes it not.
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.
Who had an interest in his death?
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.
'Tis 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; 'tis true there was no blood.-
Favour me, sir-it much imports your house
That all should be made clear-to tell the ladies
That I request their presence.
My lord, we found this ruffian and another
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-in-woven robe, which, shining bright
Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon,
Betrayed them to our notice: the other fell
Murder! Murder! Murder! Desperately fighting.
[A cry within and tumult.
|