And yet, if you arrest me, Nor thou? You are the judge and executioner
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.
Is it true, lady, that thy father did Such outrages as to awaken in thee Unfilial hate.
Not hate, 't was more than hate; This is most true, yet wherefore question me?
There is a deed demanding question done; Thou hast a secret which will answer not.
What sayest? My lord, your words are bold and rash.
I do arrest all present in the name
Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome.
O, not to Rome! Indeed we are not guilty.
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
To the redress of an unwonted crime,
Make ye the victims who demanded it
Culprits? "Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch
Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed,
If it be true he murder'd 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.
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.no/books/content?id=LDtDAAAAIAAJ&hl=no&output=html_text&pg=PA318&img=1&zoom=3&q=editions:UOM39015028313180&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U3baot9hReXmjPxW7en2n2JRe4zXA&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=57,1286,490,306)
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. "Tis 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
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.
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.no/books/content?id=LDtDAAAAIAAJ&hl=no&output=html_text&pg=PA318&img=1&zoom=3&q=editions:UOM39015028313180&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U3baot9hReXmjPxW7en2n2JRe4zXA&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=492,547,463,196)
Why not to Rome, dear mother? There, as here, Our innocence is as an armed heel
To trample accusation. God is there
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?
Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest
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! O, misery!
[She faints, and is borne out
She faints: an ill appearance this.
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.
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.
An Apartment in ORSINO's Palace.
Enter ORSINO and GIACOMO.
Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
O, 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!
O, 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,
To kill an old and hoary-headed father.
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; [Drawing
Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue
Disdains to brand thee with.
Is it the desperation of your fear
Makes you thus rash and sudden with your friend,
Now ruin'd 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. 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.
Oh, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me? Would that my life could purchase thine!
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
By some such plot of mingled good and ill
As others weave; but there arose a Power
Which grasp'd and snapp'd the threads of my device,
And turn'd it to a net of ruin—Ha!
[A shout is heard.
Is that my name I hear proclaim'd abroad?
But I will pass, wrapt 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, fashion'd on old desires,
To change the honors of abandon'd Rome.
And these must be the masks of that within.
Which must remain unalter'd.-Oh, I fear
That what is pass'd 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?
CAMILLO, JUDGES, etc., are discovered seated; MARZIO
Accused, do you persist in your denial?
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?
I demand who were the participators
Poor wretch! I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
Guards, lead him not away
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 dragg'd
In your offence? Speak truth, and the whole truth. From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
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 damn'd. Speak now
The thing you surely know, which is that you,
If your fine frame were stretch'd upon that wheel,
And you were told, Confess that you did poison
Your little nephew: that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the load-star of your life; and though
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time
And all things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,
Yet you would say, I confess any thing-
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 Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul That she is guiltless.
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!
Well, be her purity on your head, my lord,
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness
Enjoin'd 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,
You know 'twas I Upon such evidence as justifies
Torture.
I know thee! How? where? when?
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.
The terrible resentment of those eyes.
On the dread earth! Turn them away from me!
They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My lords,
Having said this, let me be led to death.
Fix thine eyes on mine;
[Turning to the Judges.
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?
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;
Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought,
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;
I with my words kill'd 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,
Spare me! My brain swims round-I cannot speak-Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
It was that horrid torture forced the truth
Take me away! Let her not look on me!
I am a guilty miserable wretch;
I have said all I know; now, let me die!
My lords, if by my nature I had been
So stern, as to have plann'd 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,
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-
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; For pity's sake, lead me away to death.
Guards, lead him nearer the lady Beatrice :
He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
Oh, thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
So mayest 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 order'd that a father
First turn'd the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then
Stabb'd 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,
Arm'd thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation:
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
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood
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?
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.no/books/content?id=LDtDAAAAIAAJ&hl=no&output=html_text&pg=PA322&img=1&zoom=3&q=editions:UOM39015028313180&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U31cZAlgkpe8hbSjN4bgvEriXZGiA&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=56,117,451,1443)
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?
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 dragg'd
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
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.
"Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear
Makes the rack cruel.
They will tear the truth Even from thee at last, those cruel pains: For pity 's sake, say thou art guilty now.
O, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die; And after death, God is our judge, not they ; He will have mercy on us.
If indeed It can be true, say so, dear sister mine; And then the Pope will surely pardon you, And all be well.
Confess, or I will warp Your limbs with such keen tortures
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!
Torture your dog, that he may tell when last
He lapp'd the blood his master shed-not me!
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,
And of the soul; ay, of the most soul,
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall
To sec, in this ill world where none are true,
My kindred false to their deserted selves,
And with considering all the wretched life
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 oppress'd-such pangs compel
My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?
|