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Earth, in the name of God, let her So he may hunt her through the clamor

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Cenci (leaping up, and throwing

his right hand towards Heaven). He does his will, I mine! This in addition,

That if she have a child...

Lucretia.
Horrible thought!
Cenci. That if she ever have a
child; and thou,

Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy
God,

That thou be fruitful in her, and increase And multiply, fulfilling his command, And my deep imprecation! May it be A hideous likeness of herself, that as From a distorting mirror, she may see Her image mixed with what she most abhors,

Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.

And that the child may from its infancy Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,

Turning her mother's love to misery: And that both she and it may live until

It shall repay her care and pain with hate,

Or what may else be more unnatural.

come,

Go, bid her

Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.

[Exit LUCRETIA. I do not feel as if I were a man, But like a fiend appointed to chastise The offences of some unremembered world.

My blood is running up and down my veins;

A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:

I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe; My heart is beating with an expectation Of horrid joy.

Lucretia.

Enter LUCREtia. What? Speak! She bids thee curse; And if thy curses, as they cannot do, Could kill her soul... Cenci.

She would not come. 'Tis well,

I can do both: first take what I demand,
And then extort concession.
To thy

chamber!

Fly ere I spurn thee: and beware this night

That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer

To come between the tiger and his prey. [Exit LUCRETIA.

It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!

They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,

Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain

Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go First to belie thee with an hour of rest, Which will be deep and calm, I feel:

and then...

O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake

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Behind the course of thought, even sick To kill a serpent which had stung my

with speed,

Lags leaden-footed time!

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child,

I could not be more willing.

Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA, below.

Noble ladies!

Beatrice. Are ye resolved?

Olimpio. Marzio.

What thou hast said persuades me that Quiet?

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Is he asleep? Is all

I mixed an opiate with

He sleeps so soundly. . .

Beatrice.

That his death will be But as a change of sin-chastising dreams, A dark continuance of the Hell within him,

Which God extinguish! resolved?

But ye are

Ye know it is a high and holy deed?
Olimpio. We are resolved.
Marzio.

As to the how this act
Be warranted, it rests with you.
Beatrice.
Well, follow!
Olimpio. Hush! Hark! What noise
is that?

Marzio.
Ha! some one comes!
Beatrice. Ye conscience - stricken

cravens, rock to rest

Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,

That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, Stirred in his sleep, and said, “God!

hear, O, hear,

follow! And be your steps like mine, light, A father's curse! What, art thou not

quick and bold.

our father?"
[Exeunt. And then he laughed.
the ghost

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I knew it was

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[Snatching a dagger from one of them and raising it.

Hadst thou a tongue to say,

What? She murdered her own father, I must

Now.

I ask if all is over? Olimpio. We dare not kill an old

and sleeping man ;

His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent

brow,

His veined hands crossed on his heaving

breast,

And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay, Quelled me. do it. Marzio. But I was bolder; for I

Indeed, indeed, I cannot

chid Olimpio,

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And bade him bear his wrongs to his That doubt is passing through your

own grave

And leave me the reward. And now

my knife

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Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when Have swallowed up the vapour they

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To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath

Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood

Runs freely thro' my veins. Hark!
Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO.

Olimpio.

He is .. Dead!

SCENE IV. ANOTHER APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE. Enter on one side the LEGATE SAVELLA, introduced by a Servant, and on the other LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.

Savella. Lady, my duty to his

Holiness

Marzio. We strangled him that Be my excuse that thus unseasonably there might be no blood; I break upon your rest. I must speak

And then we threw his heavy corpse i'

the garden

Under the balcony; 'twill seem it fell. Beatrice (giving them a bag of coin). Here, take this gold, and hasten to your homes. And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed By that which made me tremble, wear thou this!

[Clothes him in a rich mantle. It was the mantle which my grandfather Wore in his high prosperity, and men Envied his state: so may they envy thine.

Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God To a just use. Live long and thrive!

And, mark,

If thou hast crimes, repent: this deed is none.

[A horn is sounded. Lucretia. Hark, 'tis the castle horn;

my God! it sounds

Like the last trump.

Beatrice.

Some tedious guest

is coming. Lucretia. The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp

Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves!

[Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO. Beatrice. Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;

I scarcely need to counterfeit it now:

with

Count Cenci; doth he sleep?

Lucretia (in a hurried and confused manner). I think he sleeps; Yet wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile,

He is a wicked and a wrathful man; Should he be roused out of his sleep to-night,

Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,

It were not well; indeed it were not well. Wait till day break . . . (aside) O, I am deadly sick!

Savella. I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count

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Savella. Lady, my moments here Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep, Since none else dare. Lucretia (aside). spair!

O, terror! O, de

The spirit which doth reign within these (To Bernardo) Bernardo, conduct you

limbs

Seems strangely undisturbed. I could Your father's chamber.

the Lord Legate to

even sleep

Fearless and calm: all ill is surely past. [Exeunt.

[Exeunt SAVELLA and BERNARDO. Enter BEATRICE.

Beatrice.

'Tis a messenger

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I know not what to say. my father's dead. Beatrice. How; dead! he only sleeps;

you mistake, brother.

His sleep is very calm, very like death; 'Tis wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps.

Even now they search the tower, and He is not dead? find the body;

Now they suspect the truth; now they

consult

Bernardo.

Dead; murdered.

Lucretia (with extreme agitation).
Oh no, no,

Before they come to tax us with the He is not murdered though he may be

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As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant We will retire; my mother is not well:

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Bernardo.

Alas! I can name none who had not, and those

most

And fear no other witness but thy fear.
For if, as cannot be, some circumstance
Should rise in accusation, we can blind
Suspicion with such cheap astonishment, Who most lament that such a deed is
Or overbear it with such guiltless pride,
As murderers cannot feign. The deed

is done,
And what may follow now regards not me.
I am as universal as the light;

Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm
As the world's centre. Consequence,

to me,

Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock

done;

My mother, and my sister, and myself.
Savella. 'Tis strange! There were
clear marks of violence.
I found the old man's body in the moon-
light

Hanging beneath the window of his
chamber,

Among the branches of a pine: he could not

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