A Chamber in the Vatican.
Enter CAMILLO and GIACOMO, in conversation.
There is an obsolete and doubtful law, By which you might obtain a bare provision of food and clothing.
Nothing more? Alas! Bare must be the provision which strict law Awards, and aged sullen avarice pays. Why did my father not apprentice me To some mechanic trade? I should have then Been trained in no high-born necessities Which I could meet not by my daily toil. The eldest son of a rich nobleman Is heir to all his incapacities;
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you, Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food, An hundred servants, and six palaces,
To that which nature doth indeed require?—
Nay, there is reason in your plea; 'twere hard.
"Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father, Without a bond or witness to the deed: And children, who inherit her fine senses, The fairest creatures in this breathing world; And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal, Do you not think the Pope would interpose And stretch authority beyond the law?
Though your peculiar case is hard, I know The Pope will not divert the course of law. After that impious feast the other night I spoke with him, and urged him then to check Your father's cruel hand; he frowned, and said, "Children are disobedient, and they sting Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair, Requiting years of care with contumely. I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; His outraged love perhaps awakened hate, And thus he is exasperated to ill. In the great war between the old and young, I, who have white hairs and a tottering body, Will keep at least blameless neutrality."
But a friend's bosom Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, And from the all-communicating air. You look what I suspected
I am as one lost in a midnight wood, Who dares not ask some harmless passenger The path across the wilderness, lest he, As my thoughts are, should be a murderer. I know you are my friend, and all I dare Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. But now my heart is heavy, and would take Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. Pardon me, that I say farewell-farewell! I would that to my own suspected self I could address a word so full of peace.
Farewell!-Be your thoughts better or more bold. [Exit GIACOMO.
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. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes:
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 As little mischief as I can; that thought Shall fee the accuser conscience.
[After a pause. Now what harm
If Cenci should be murdered?-Yet, if murdered, Wherefore by me? And what if I could take The profit, yet omit the sin and peril In such an action? Of all earthly things
I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words; And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives His daughter's dowry were a secret grave If a priest wins her.-Oh, fair Beatrice! Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee, Could but despise danger, and gold, and all That frowns between my wish and its effect,
Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape: Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, And follows me to the resort of men, And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams, So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire; And if I strike my damp and dizzy head, My hot palm scorches it: her very name, But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights, Till weak imagination half possesses The self-created shadow. Yet much longer Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours: From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo I must work out my own dear purposes. I see, as from a tower, the end of all: Her father dead; her brother bound to me By a dark secret, surer than the grave; Her mother scared and unexpostulating From the dread manner of her wish achieved: And she!-Once more take courage, my faint heart;
What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
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.
An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
LUCRETIA; to her enter BEATRICE.
BEATRICE (she enters staggering, and speaks wildly). Reach me that handkerchief!-My brain is hurt; My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me I see but indistinctly.--
My sweet child, You have no wound; 'tis only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow.-Alas! alas! What has befallen?
How comes this hair undone ? Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, And yet I tied it fast. - O, horrible! The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, And standing calm and motionless, whilst I Slide giddily as the world reels.- My God! The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood! The sunshine on the floor is black! The air Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe In charnel-pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me 'tis substantial, heavy, thick; I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another, And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life! My God! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul, Which would burst forth into the wandering air! [A pause. What hideous thought was that I had even now? 'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here O'er these dull eyes-upon this weary heart! O, world! O, life O, day! O, misery!
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.-
Like ParricideMisery has killed its father: yet its father Never like mine-O, God! What thing am I?
My dearest child, what has your father done?
Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.
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 From hall to hall by the entangled hair; At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there, Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams, That I imagined-no, it cannot be ! Horrible things have been in this wild world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived Than ever there was found a heart to do. But never fancy imaged such a deed As-
[Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself. Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest-Mother!
What, yet I know not-something which shall make The thing that I have suffered but a shadow In the dread lightning which avenges it; Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying The consequence of what it cannot cure. Some such thing is to be endured or done: When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never anything will move me more. But now!-Oh blood, which art my father's blood, Circling through these contaminated veins, If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, Could wash away the crime, and punishment By which I suffer--no, that cannot be ! Many might doubt there were a God above Who sees and permits evil, and so die : That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
Ay, death- The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God, Let me not be bewildered while I judge. If I must live day after day, and keep These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit, As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest
May mock thee, unavenged-it shall not be! Self-murder-no that might be no escape, For thy decree yawns like a Hell between Our will and it.-Oh! in this mortal world There is no vindication and no law, Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer.
(She approaches him solemnly.) Welcome, Friend! I have to tell you that, since last we met,
I have endured a wrong so great and strange, That neither life nor death can give me rest. Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!
If I could find a word that might make known The crime of my destroyer; and that done, My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare, So that my unpolluted fame should be With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story; A mock, a by-word, an astonishment:- If this were done, which never shall be done, Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate, And the strange horror of the accuser's tale, Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt In hideous hints-Oh, most assured redress!
But if one, like this wretch, Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power? If there be no appeal to that which makes The guiltiest tremble! If, because our wrongs, For that they are unnatural, strange, and monstrous, Exceed all measure of belief? Oh, God! If, for the very reasons which should make Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs? And we, the victims, bear worse punishment Than that appointed for their torturer?
But that there is redress where there is wrong, So we be bold enough to seize it.
If there were any way to make all sure, I know not-but I think it might be good To-
Why, his late outrage to Beatrice; For it is such, as I but faintly guess, As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her Only one duty, how she may avenge: You, but one refuge from ills ill endured; Me, but one counsel
For we cannot hope That aid, or retribution, or resource Will arise thence, where every other one Might find them with less need.
And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray, That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, Which have been borne from childhood, but which Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As I have said, I have endured a wrong, Which, though it be expressionless, is such As asks atonement, both for what is past, And lest I be reserved, day after day, To load with crimes an overburthened soul, And be-what ye can dream not. I have prayed To God, and I have talked with my own heart, And have unravelled my entangled will, And have at length determined what is right. Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true? Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
I swear To dedicate my cunning, and my strength, My silence, and whatever else is mine, To thy commands.
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow, And winds with short turns down the precipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming down; Even as a wretched soul hour after hour Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans; And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns-below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns, and a bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow, With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy's twine. At noon-day here 'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.
Before you reach that bridge make some excuse For spurring on your mules, or loitering Until-
Hark! No, it cannot be a servant's step; It must be Cenci, unexpectedly
Returned-Make some excuse for being here.
BEATRICE (to ORSINO as she goes out). That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke.
[Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE.
Cenci must find me here, and I must bear The imperious inquisition of his looks As to what brought me hither: let me mask Mine own in some inane and vacant smile.
Enter GIACOMO, in a hurried manner. How! Have you ventured thither! know you then That Cenci is from home?
I sought him here; And now must wait till he returns.
Weigh you the danger of this rashness?
Does my destroyer know his danger? We Are now no more, as once, parent and child, But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed; The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe. He has cast Nature off, which was his shield, And Nature casts him off, who is her shame; And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat Which I will shake? and say, I ask not gold; I ask not happy years; nor memories Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love; Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more; But only my fair fame; only one hoard Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate, Under the penury heaped on me by thee; Or I will-God can understand and pardon, Why should I speak with man?
Well, I will calmly tell you what he did. This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, And then denied the loan; and left me so In poverty, the which I sought to mend By holding a poor office in the state. It had been promised to me, and already I bought new clothing for my ragged babes, And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose; When Cenci's intercession, as I found, Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus He paid for vilest service. I returned With this ill news, and we sate sad together Solacing our despondency with tears Of such affection and unbroken faith As temper life's worst bitterness: when he, As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, Mocking our poverty, and telling us
Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons. And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame, I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he coined A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted The sum in secret riot; and he saw
My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.
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