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,
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;
Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue
Disdains to brand thee with.

Orsino.

45

50

[Drawing.

55

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
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.
Have any word of melancholy comfort

Now if you

To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best to pass
Out at the postern, and avoid them so.

60

65

Giacomo. O, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me? Would that my life could purchase thine!

Orsino.

That wish 71

[Exit GIACOMO.

Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well!
Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?
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

75

80

85

By some such plot of mingled good and ill
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. 'Tis easy then
For a new name and for a country new,
And a new life, fashioned on old desires,
To change the honours of abandoned Rome.

58 a friend ed. 1821; your friend ed. 1839.

90

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;

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?

95

100

[Exit.

SCENE II-A Hall of Justice. CAMILLO, JUDGES, &c., 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; 5 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
Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!
Marzio. Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.
First Judge.

Marzio. I strangled him in his sleep.
First Judge.

10

Then speak.

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.

15

This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, Lead forth the prisoner!

Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded.

Look upon this man;

We never saw him.

When did you see him last?
Beatrice.
Marzio. You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
Beatrice. I know thee! How? where? when?
Marzio.

20

You know 'twas 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

25

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

Lucretia. (Stops him.)

бо

65

[Going.

Oh, stay! It was a feint:

70

She had no vision, and she heard no voice.
I said it but to awe thee.

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.

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.

Enter ANDREA.

Andrea. The Lady Beatrice...

Cenci.

Said she?

75

Speak, pale slave! What,

Andrea. My Lord, 'twas 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.

100

She said, I cannot come;

God!

my father that I see a torrent wn blood raging between us.' neeling).

! If this most specious mass of flesh,

hou hast made my daughter; this my blood, icle of my divided being;

, this my bane and my disease,

ght infects and poisons me; this devil

rung from me as from a hell, was meant
good use; if her bright loveliness
led to illumine this dark world;
by Thy selectest dew of love

ues blossom in her as should make
of life, I pray Thee for my sake,
the common God and Father art
d me, and all; reverse that doom!
the name of God, let her food be
ntil she be encrusted round

rous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
ering drops of the Maremma's dew,
De speckled like a toad; parch up
e-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
d lameness! All-beholding sun,
thine envy those life-darting eyes

e own blinding beams!

Peace! Peace!

own sake unsay those dreadful words.

gh God grants He punishes such prayers.

105

110

115

120

125

130

135

aping up, and throwing his right hand towards Heaven). does His will, I mine! This in addition,

e have a child . . .

Horrible thought!

That if she ever have a child; and thou,

ture! I adjure thee by thy God, be fruitful in her, and increase

iply, fulfilling his command,

140

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.

145

150

155

[Exit LUCRETIA,

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.

160

165

Lucretia.

Enter LUCRETIA.

What? Speak!

She bids thee curse;

With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.

Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!

And if thy curses, as they cannot do,
Could kill her soul . . .

Cenci.

...

She would not come. Tis well,

I can do both: first take what I demand,

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

170

To come between the tiger and his prey. [Exit LUCRETIA. It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim

They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,

175

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

185

Stir and be quickened. even as I am now.

[Exit.