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.
And these must be the masks of that within,
Which must remain unaltered. Oh, I fear
That what's 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
Fizd the disguise to hide from myself,
At now I skulk from every other eye?

(Exit.)

SCENE II.

A Hall of Justice. CAMILLO, Judges, &c. are discovered seated. MARZIO is led in.

st Judge. Accused, do you persist in your denial? ask you, are you innocent or guilty?

demand who were the participators

In your offence? Speak truth, and the whole truth.

Mar. My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing. Olimpio sold the robe to me from which

You would infer my guilt.

2nd Judge. Away with him!

[kiss,

1st Judge. Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's

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!
Mar. Spare me! O spare! I will confess.
1st. Judge. Then speak.

Mar. I strangled him in his sleep.

1st Judge. Who urged you to it?

Mar. His own son Giacomo, and the young preizte

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.

1st Judge. This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, Lead forth the prisoners.

Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded, Look upon this man ;

When did you see him last?

Beatr. We never saw him.

Mar. You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
Beatr. I know thee! How? where? when?
Mar. 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.)
Oh, dart

The terrible resentment of those eyes

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.

Beatr. Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
Cam. Guards, lead him not away.

Beatr. 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 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 loadstar 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 any thing:"
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
The refuge of dishonourable death.

I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert

My innocence.

Cam. (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. She must be tortured.

Cam. 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 her's 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.

Beatr. What evidence? This man's?
Judge. Even so.

[chosen forth

Beatr. (to Marzio.) Come near. And who art thou thus

Out of the multitude of living men

To kill the innocent?

Mar. I am Marzio,

Thy father's vassal.

Beatr. Fix thine eyes on mine;

Answer to what I ask.

(turning to the Judges.)

I prithee mark

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?

Mar. Oh!

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!

Beatr, My Lords, if by my nature I had been
So stern as to have planned the crime alleged,
Which your suspicious 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
(turning to MARZIO.)

And thou

Hast trampled them like dust; and see, he lives!
Mar. Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!
That stern yei 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.

Cam. Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice.

He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.

Beatr. 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 my 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, shew 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 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,
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood
All that which shews 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