Second Fudge.

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 ! Oh spare! I will confess.
First Judge.

Marzio. I strangled him in his sleep.

First Judge.

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.

This sounds as bad as truth.

Guards there, lead forth the prisoners.

Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded.

Look upon

This man.
Beatrice.

When did you see him last?

We never

Saw him.

Marzio. You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
Beatrice. I know thee! How! where? when?

Marzio.

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,

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

Oh! dart

On the dead earth! Turn them away from me

They wound! 'Twas 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.

You have a good repute for gentleness

Cardinal Camillo,

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,
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
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 dishonourable death.

I pray you, Cardinal, that you 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.

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 colour, 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,

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

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?

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!

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,

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!

And thou-
Marzio.

[Turning to MARZIO.

Oh spare me! Speak to me no more!

That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,
Wound worse than torture.

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 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!
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,

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 thee, 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 VOL. I.

2 F

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?

Marzio.

Judge.

Thou art not!

What is this?

Marzio. I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty.

Judge. Drag him away to torments; let them be Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds

Of the heart's inmost cell.

Till he confess.

Marzio.

Unbind him not

Torture me as ye will:

A keener pain 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.

Camillo.

[Exit MARZIO, guarded.

What say ye now, my lords? Judge. Let tortures strain the truth till it be white

As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.

Camillo. Yet stained with blood.

Judge (to BEATRICE).

Beatrice. Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here

Know you this paper, lady?

Who art my judge?

Accuser, witness, judge,

What, all in one?

Here is Orsino's name;

As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,

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?

Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,

As one who baffles a deep adversary;