Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, You look what I suspected Giacomo. Spare me now. I am as one lost in a midnight wood, I could address a word so full of peace. Orsino. Farewell!-Be your thoughts better-or more bold. I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo To feed his hope with cold encouragement. It fortunately serves my close designs That 'tis a trick of this same family To analyse their own and other minds. Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers, [Exit GIACOMO. Knowing what must be thought and may be done, 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 [After a pause. Now what harm If Cenci should be murdered?-Yet, if murdered, Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee, Her father dead; her brother bound to me Her mother scared and unexpostulating From the dread manner of her wish achieved: And she!-Once more take courage, my faint heart; 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, 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 (she enters staggering, and speaks wildly). Beatrice. 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; 'tis only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow.-Alas! Alas! Beatrice. How comes this hair undone? Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, The pavement sinks under my feet! the walls About me 'tis substantial, heavy, thick; O'er these dull eyes-upon this weary heart! Oh world! Oh life! Oh day! Oh misery! [More wildly. [A pause. Lucretia. What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not. Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not its 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. (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 At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there Horrible things have been in this wild world, [Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself. Lucretia. Oh my sweet child! know you- For then, if this be truth, that other too Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. Yet speak it not: I have talked some wild words, but will no more. [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 That one with white hair and imperious brow, What name, what place, what memory, shall be mine? Lucretia. He is a violent tyrant, surely, child: We know that death alone can make us free,- Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth Tortured within them. If I try to speak, I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; 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 you 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 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 VOL. I. 2 D |