LUCRETIA.

My sweet child, know you...

Oh!

BEATRICE.

Yet speak it not:

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For then if this be truth, that other too

Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
Never to change, never to pass away.

Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.

I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
I am... (her voice dies away faintly)

LUCRETIA.

Alas! What has befallen 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?
What retrospects, outliving even despair?

LUCRETIA.

He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:

We know that death alone can make us free;
His death or ours. But what can he have done
Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?

Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,
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. Aye, something must be done;
What, yet I know not... something which shall make

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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 any thing will move me more.
But now!-Oh blood, which art my father's blood,
Circling thro' 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.
LUCRETIA.

It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief

Thy sufferings from my fear.

BEATRICE

I hide them not.

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What are the words which you would have me speak? I, who can feign no image in my mind

Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up

In its own formless horror: of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,

Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery if another ever knew

Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
And left it, as I must, without a name.

Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward... Oh, which

Have I deserved?

LUCRETIA.

The peace of innocence;

Till in your season you be called to heaven.
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment

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Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.

BEATRICE.

Aye, 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:-0! In this mortal world
There is no vindication and no law
Which can adjudge and execute the doom
Of that through which I suffer.

Enter ORSINO.

(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

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Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.

ORSINO.

And what is he who has thus injured you?

BEATRICE.

The man they call my father: a dread name.

It cannot be...

Forbear to think.

Advise me how it

ORSINO.

BEATRICE.

What it can be, or not,

It is, and it has been ;
shall not be again.

I thought to die; but a religious awe

Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself
Might be no refuge from the consciousness
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!

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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; aye, lay all bare
So that my unpolluted fame should be
With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;
A mock, a bye-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!

ORSINO.

You will endure it then?

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BEATRICE.

Endure?-Orsino,

It seems your counsel is small profit.

(Turns from him, and speaks half to herself) Aye,
All must be suddenly resolved and done.
What is this undistinguishable mist

Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,
Darkening each other?

ORSINO.

Should the offender live?
Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,
His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,
Thine element; until thou mayest become
Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue.
Of that which thou permittest?

BEATRICE (To herself).

Mighty death!

Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge!

Rightfullest arbiter! (She retires absorbed in thought.)

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LUCRETIA.

If the lightning

Of God has e'er descended to avenge...

ORSINO.

Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits
Its glory on this earth, and their own 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,
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?

ORSINO.

Think not

But that there is redress where there is wrong,
So we be bold enough to seize it.

LUCRETIA.

How?

If there were any way to make all sure,
I know not... but I think it might be good

To...

ORSINO.

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...

LUCRETIA.

For we cannot hope

That aid, or retribution, or resource

Will arise thence, where every other one

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Might find them with less need. (BEATRICE advances.)

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VOL. I.

T