Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Never to change, never to pass away. I have talked some wild words, but will no more. In the dread lightning which avenges it; When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never any thing will move me more. Mother, come near me: from this point But now!-Oh blood, which art my father's blood, of time, I am... (Her voice dies away faintly.) | Circling thro' these contaminated veins, Lucretia. Alas! What has befallen If thou, poured forth on the polluted 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, Who tortured me from my forgotten years As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!-Oh, what am I? What name, what place, what memory shall be mine? By which I suffer Who sees and permits evil, and so die: Oh, my lost child, Hide not in proud impenetrable grief What retrospects, outliving even despair? | Thy sufferings from my fear. Lucretia. He is a violent tyrant, surely, child: We know that death alone can make us free; Beatrice. I hide them not. What are the words which you would have me speak? I, who can feign no image in my mind His death or ours. But what can he Of that which has transformed me: I, Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another. Beatrice. 'Tis the restless life Tortured within them. If I try to speak I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; What, yet I know not . . something which shall make whose thought Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up My misery: if another ever knew A punishment and a reward . . . Oh, Lucretia. The peace of innocence; The thing that I have suffered but a Till in your season you be called to Whate'er you may have suffered, you I thought to die; but a religious awe Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself have done No evil. Death must be the punish 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 Might be no refuge from the conscious ness Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak! Orsino. Accuse him of the deed, and let the law Avenge thee. Beatrice. 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 May mock thee, unavenged... it shall With vilest gossips a stale mouthed not be! Self-murder escape, story; no, that might be no A mock, a bye-word, an astonishment :-If this were done, which never shall be For thy decree yawns like a Hell 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 ; Orsino. You will endure it then? It seems your counsel is small profit. All must be suddenly resolved and done. use, His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt, Thine element; until thou mayest be come Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue Its glory on this earth, and their own That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and wrongs Into the hands of men; if they neglect To punish crime. Lucretia. 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, fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As asks atonement; both for what is And lest I be reserved, day after day, Exceed all measure of belief? O To load with crimes an overburthened God! soul, If, for the very reasons which should And be . . . what ye can dream not. make I have prayed Redress most swift and sure, our injurer To God, and I have talked with my triumphs? own heart, And we, the victims, bear worse punish- And have unravelled my entangled will, And have at length determined what is ment As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves And suddenly. We must be brief and For that which it became themselves to Crosses the chasm; and high above there do. Beatrice. grow, Be cautious as ye may, but With intersecting trunks, from crag to prompt. Orsino, What are the means? Would trample out, for any slight caprice, Is marketable here in Rome. They sell Lucretia. To-morrow before dawn, Beatrice. Lucretia. The sun will scarce be set. Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow, crag, Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose Is matted in one solid roof of shade here 'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. Orsino. Before you reach that bridge For spurring on your mules, or loitering Beatrice. What sound is that? Hark! No, it cannot be a servant's step; It must be Cenci, unexpectedly Returned. . . Make some excuse for being here. Beatrice. (ToORSINO, as she goes out.) That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke. [Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE. Orsino. What shall I do? And winds with short turns down the Cenci must find me here, and I must precipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, bear The imperious inquisition of his looks mask Mine own in some inane and vacant smile. Enter GIACOMO, in a hurried manner. Even as a wretched soul hour after How! Have you ventured hither? Know hour, you then Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, That Cenci is from home? Giacomo. leans; I sought him here; And leaning, makes more dark the dread And now must wait till he returns. abyss sons. The slanderer to the slandered; foe to Such was God's scourge for disobedient foe: He has cast Nature off, which was his And then, that I might strike him dumb shield, with shame, And Nature casts him off, who is her I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he shame; coined And I spurn both. Is it a father's A brief yet specious tale, how I had throat Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold; I ask not happy years; nor memories Of tranquil childhood; nor homesheltered love; wasted The sum in secret riot; and he saw And when I knew the impression he Though all these hast thou torn from And felt my wife insult with silent scorn My ardent truth, and look averse and 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, cold, I went forth too: but soon returned again; Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught Or I will... God can understand and My children her harsh thoughts, and This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, For months!" I looked, and saw that Borrowed the dowry of my wife from home was hell. |
