And yet, if you arrest me, Nor thou? You are the judge and executioner
LUCRETIA (her conduct throughout the scene is marked by extreme agitation).
Where was it found? What is it? It should be Orsino's hand! It speaks of that strange horror Which never yet found utterance, but which made Between that hapless child and her dead father A gulf of obscure hatred.
Is it true, lady, that thy father did Such outrages as to awaken in thee Unfilial hate.
Not hate, 't was more than hate; This is most true, yet wherefore question me?
There is a deed demanding question done; Thou hast a secret which will answer not.
What sayest? My lord, your words are bold and rash.
I do arrest all present in the name
Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome.
O, not to Rome! Indeed we are not guilty.
Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My lord, I am more innocent of parricide Than is a child born fatherless-Dear mother, Your gentleness and patience are no shield For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie, Which seems, but is not. What! will human laws, Rather will ye who are their ministers, Bar all access to retribution first,
And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do What ye neglect, arming familiar things To the redress of an unwonted crime, Make ye the victims who demanded it Culprits? "Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed, If it be true he murder'd Cenci, was
A sword in the right hand of justest God. Wherefore should I have wielded it? unless The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name, God therefore scruples to avenge.
Of that which is the life of life: the breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it. "Tis most false
That I am guilty of foul parricide;
Although I must rejoice, for justest cause, That other hands have sent my father's soul To ask the mercy he denied to me. Now leave us free: stain not a noble house With vague surmises of rejected crime; Add to our sufferings and your own neglect No heavier sum; let them have been enough: Leave us the wreck we have.
Why not to Rome, dear mother? There, as here, Our innocence is as an armed heel
To trample accusation. God is there
As here, and with his shadow ever clothes The innocent, the injured, and the weak; And such are we. Cheer up, dear lady, lean On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My lord As soon as you have taken some refreshment, And had all such examinations made Upon the spot, as may be necessary To the full understanding of this matter. We shall be ready. Mother; will you come?
Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest Self-accusation from our agony !
Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio ? All present; all confronted; all demanding Each from the other's countenance the thing Which is in every heart! O, misery!
[She faints, and is borne out
She faints: an ill appearance this.
She knows not yet the uses of the world. She fears that power is as a beast which grasps And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes All things to guilt which is its nutriment. She cannot know how well the supine slaves Of blind authority read the truth of things When written on a brow of guilelessness: She sees not yet triumphant Innocence Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal man, A judge and an accuser of the wrong Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my lord Our suite will join yours in the court below.
An Apartment in ORSINO's Palace.
Enter ORSINO and GIACOMO.
Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end? O, that the vain remorse which must chastise Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!
O, that the hour when present had cast off The mantle of its mystery, and shown The ghastly form with which it now returns When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds Of conscience to their prey! Alas! alas! It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed, To kill an old and hoary-headed father.
Whilst we for basest ends-I fear, Orsino, While I consider all your words and looks, Comparing them with your proposal now, That you must be a villain. For what end Could you engage in such a perilous crime, Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar: No, Thou art a lie! traitor and murderer! Coward and slave! But, no-defend thyself; [Drawing Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue Disdains to brand thee with.
Is it the desperation of your fear Makes you thus rash and sudden with your friend, Now ruin'd for your sake? If honest anger Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed Was but to try you. As for me, I think, Thankless affection led me to this point, From which, if my firm temper could repent,
I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak, The ministers of justice wait below:
They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you Have any word of melancholy comfort
To speak to your pale wife, 't were best to pass Out at the postern, and avoid them so.
Oh, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me? Would that my life could purchase thine!
Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well! Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?
I'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting At his own gate, and such was my contrivance That I might rid me both of him and them. I thought to act a solemn comedy Upon the painted scene of this new world, And to attain my own peculiar ends By some such plot of mingled good and ill As others weave; but there arose a Power Which grasp'd and snapp'd the threads of my device, And turn'd it to a net of ruin—Ha!
[A shout is heard. Is that my name I hear proclaim'd abroad? But I will pass, wrapt in a vile disguise; Rags on my back, and a false innocence Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd Which judges by what seems. "Tis easy then For a new name and for a country new, And a new life, fashion'd on old desires, To change the honors of abandon'd Rome. And these must be the masks of that within. Which must remain unalter'd.-Oh, I fear That what is pass'd 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 Find the disguise to hide me from myself, As now I skulk from every other eye?
CAMILLO, JUDGES, etc., are discovered seated; MARZIO
Accused, do you persist in your denial?
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty? I demand who were the participators
Poor wretch! I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
Guards, lead him not away
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 dragg'd
In your offence? Speak truth, and the whole truth. 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 damn'd. Speak now The thing you surely know, which is that you, If your fine frame were stretch'd upon that wheel, And you were told, Confess that you did poison Your little nephew: that fair blue-eyed child Who was the load-star 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 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 dishonorable death.
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert My innocence.
CAMILLO (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.
Yet she must be tortured. CAMILLO.
I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived, he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes Like hers 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!
Well, be her purity on your head, my lord, If you forbid the rack. His Holiness Enjoin'd 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, You know 'twas I Upon such evidence as justifies Torture.
I know thee! How? where? when?
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.
The terrible resentment of those eyes. On the dread earth! Turn them away from me!
They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My lords, Having said this, let me be led to death.
Fix thine eyes on mine; [Turning to the Judges.
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?
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 kill'd 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,
Spare me! My brain swims round-I cannot speak-Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
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!
My lords, if by my nature I had been So stern, as to have plann'd the crime alleged, Which your suspicions 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 Had trampled them like dust; and see, he lives! [Turning to MARZIO. And thou-
Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more! That stern yet 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.
Guards, lead him nearer the lady Beatrice : He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf From the keen breath of the serenest north.
Oh, thou who tremblest on the giddy verge Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me; So mayest 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 order'd that a father First turn'd the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then Stabb'd with one blow my everlasting soul; And my untainted fame; and even that peace Which sleeps within the core of the 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, Arm'd 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, show justice upon earth: Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart. If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood All that which shows 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 To what I ask: Am I, or am I not A parricide?
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said That they were guilty? O white Innocence! That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide Thine awful and serenest countenance From those who know thee not!
Enter JUDGE with LUCRETIA and GIACOMO, guarded Ignoble hearts! For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least As mortal as the limbs through which they pass, Are centuries of high splendor laid in dust? And that eternal honor which should live Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, Changed to a mockery and a byword? What' Will you give up these bodies to be dragg'd At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd, Who, that they may make our calamity Their worship and their spectacle, will leave The churches and the theatres as void
As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity, Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse, Upon us as we pass to pass away,
And leave-what memory of our having been? Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou,
Who wert a mother to the parentless,
Kill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee! Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
And let us each be silent as a corpse; It soon will be as soft as any grave.
"Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear Makes the rack cruel.
They will tear the truth Even from thee at last, those cruel pains: For pity 's sake, say thou art guilty now.
O, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die; And after death, God is our judge, not they ; He will have mercy on us.
If indeed It can be true, say so, dear sister mine; And then the Pope will surely pardon you, And all be well.
Confess, or I will warp Your limbs with such keen tortures
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel! Torture your dog, that he may tell when last He lapp'd the blood his master shed-not me! My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, And of the soul; ay, of the most soul, Which weeps within tears as of burning gall To sec, in this ill world where none are true, My kindred false to their deserted selves, And with considering all the wretched life Which I have lived, and its now wretched end, And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art, And what slaves these; and what a world we make The oppressor and the oppress'd-such pangs compel My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?
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