by Lord Byron
My petty wrong, for what is a mere blow,
However vile, to such a thing as I am? —
But the base insult done your state and person. 410
Doge. You overrate my power, which is a pageant.
This Cap is not the Monarch’s crown; these robes
Might move compassion, like a beggar’s rags;
Nay, more, a beggar’s are his own, and these
But lent to the poor puppet, who must play
Its part with all its empire in this ermine.
I. Ber. Wouldst thou be King?
Doge. Yes — of a happy people.
I. Ber. Wouldst thou be sovereign lord of Venice?
Doge. Aye,
If that the people shared that sovereignty,
So that nor they nor I were further slaves 420
To this o’ergrown aristocratic Hydra,
The poisonous heads of whose envenomed body
Have breathed a pestilence upon us all.
I. Ber. Yet, thou wast born, and still hast lived, patrician.
Doge. In evil hour was I so born; my birth
Hath made me Doge to be insulted: but
I lived and toiled a soldier and a servant
Of Venice and her people, not the Senate;
Their good and my own honour were my guerdon.
I have fought and bled; commanded, aye, and conquered; 430
Have made and marred peace oft in embassies,
As it might chance to be our country’s ‘vantage;
Have traversed land and sea in constant duty,
Through almost sixty years, and still for Venice,
My fathers’ and my birthplace, whose dear spires,
Rising at distance o’er the blue Lagoon,
It was reward enough for me to view
Once more; but not for any knot of men,
Nor sect, nor faction, did I bleed or sweat!
But would you know why I have done all this? 440
Ask of the bleeding pelican why she
Hath ripped her bosom? Had the bird a voice,
She’d tell thee ‘twas for all her little ones.
I. Ber. And yet they made thee Duke.
Doge. They made me so;
I sought it not, the flattering fetters met me
Returning from my Roman embassy,
And never having hitherto refused
Toil, charge, or duty for the state, I did not,
At these late years, decline what was the highest
Of all in seeming, but of all most base 450
In what we have to do and to endure:
Bear witness for me thou, my injured subject,
When I can neither right myself nor thee.
I. Ber. You shall do both, if you possess the will;
And many thousands more not less oppressed,
Who wait but for a signal — will you give it?
Doge. You speak in riddles.
I. Ber. Which shall soon be read
At peril of my life — if you disdain not
To lend a patient ear.
Doge. Say on.
I. Ber. Not thou,
Nor I alone, are injured and abused, 460
Contemned and trampled on; but the whole people
Groan with the strong conception of their wrongs:
The foreign soldiers in the Senate’s pay
Are discontented for their long arrears;
The native mariners, and civic troops,
Feel with their friends; for who is he amongst them
Whose brethren, parents, children, wives, or sisters,
Have not partook oppression, or pollution,
From the patricians? And the hopeless war
Against the Genoese, which is still maintained 470
With the plebeian blood, and treasure wrung
From their hard earnings, has inflamed them further:
Even now — but, I forget that speaking thus,
Perhaps I pass the sentence of my death!
Doge. And suffering what thou hast done — fear’st thou death?
Be silent then, and live on, to be beaten
By those for whom thou hast bled.
I. Ber. No, I will speak
At every hazard; and if Venice’ Doge
Should turn delator, be the shame on him,
And sorrow too; for he will lose far more 480
Than I.
Doge. From me fear nothing; out with it!
I. Ber. Know then, that there are met and sworn in secret
A band of brethren, valiant hearts and true;
Men who have proved all fortunes, and have long
Grieved over that of Venice, and have right
To do so; having served her in all climes,
And having rescued her from foreign foes,
Would do the same from those within her walls.
They are not numerous, nor yet too few
For their great purpose; they have arms, and means, 490
And hearts, and hopes, and faith, and patient courage.
Doge. For what then do they pause?
I. Ber. An hour to strike.
Doge (aside). Saint Mark’s shall strike that hour!
I. Ber. I now have placed
My life, my honour, all my earthly hopes
Within thy power, but in the firm belief
That injuries like ours, sprung from one cause,
Will generate one vengeance: should it be so,
Be our Chief now — our Sovereign hereafter.
Doge. How many are ye?
I. Ber. I’ll not answer that
Till I am answered.
Doge. How, sir! do you menace? 500
I. Ber. No; I affirm. I have betrayed myself;
But there’s no torture in the mystic wells
Which undermine your palace, nor in those
Not less appalling cells, the “leaden roofs,”
To force a single name from me of others.
The Pozzi and the Piombi were in vain;
They might wring blood from me, but treachery never.
And I would pass the fearful “Bridge of Sighs,”
Joyous that mine must be the last that e’er
Would echo o’er the Stygian wave which flows 510
Between the murderers and the murdered, washing
The prison and the palace walls: there are
Those who would live to think on’t, and avenge me.
Doge. If such your power and purpose, why come here
To sue for justice, being in the course
To do yourself due right?
I. Ber. Because the man,
Who claims protection from authority,
Showing his confidence and his submission
To that authority, can hardly be
Suspected of combining to destroy it. 520
Had I sate down too humbly with this blow,
A moody brow and muttered threats had made me
A marked man to the Forty’s inquisition;
But loud complaint, however angrily
It shapes its phrase, is little to be feared,
And less distrusted. But, besides all this,
I had another reason.
Doge. What was that?
I. Ber. Some rumours that the Doge was greatly moved
By the reference of the Avogadori
Of Michel Steno’s sentence to the Forty 530
Had reached me. I had served you, honoured you,
And felt that you were dangerously insulted,
Being of an order of such spirits, as
Requite tenfold both good and evil: ‘twas
My wish to prove and urge you to redress.
Now you know all; and that I speak the truth,
My peril be the proof.
Doge. You have deeply ventured;
But all must
do so who would greatly win:
Thus far I’ll answer you — your secret’s safe.
I. Ber. And is this all?
Doge. Unless with all intrusted, 540
What would you have me answer?
I. Ber. I would have you
Trust him who leaves his life in trust with you.
Doge. But I must know your plan, your names, and numbers;
The last may then be doubled, and the former
Matured and strengthened.
I. Ber. We’re enough already;
You are the sole ally we covet now.
Doge. But bring me to the knowledge of your chiefs.
I. Ber. That shall be done upon your formal pledge
To keep the faith that we will pledge to you.
Doge. When? where?
I. Ber. This night I’ll bring to your apartment 550
Two of the principals: a greater number
Were hazardous.
Doge. Stay, I must think of this. —
What if I were to trust myself amongst you,
And leave the palace?
I. Ber. You must come alone.
Doge. With but my nephew.
I. Ber. Not were he your son!
Doge. Wretch! darest thou name my son? He died in arms
At Sapienza for this faithless state.
Oh! that he were alive, and I in ashes!
Or that he were alive ere I be ashes!
I should not need the dubious aid of strangers. 560
I. Ber. Not one of all those strangers whom thou doubtest,
But will regard thee with a filial feeling,
So that thou keep’st a father’s faith with them.
Doge. The die is cast. Where is the place of meeting?
I. Ber. At midnight I will be alone and masked
Where’er your Highness pleases to direct me,
To wait your coming, and conduct you where
You shall receive our homage, and pronounce
Upon our project.
Doge. At what hour arises
The moon?
I. Ber. Late, but the atmosphere is thick and dusky, 570
‘Tis a sirocco.
Doge. At the midnight hour, then,
Near to the church where sleep my sires; the same,
Twin-named from the apostles John and Paul;
A gondola, with one oar only, will
Lurk in the narrow channel which glides by.
Be there.
I. Ber. I will not fail.
Doge. And now retire — —
I. Ber. In the full hope your Highness will not falter
In your great purpose. Prince, I take my leave.
[Exit Isreal Bertuccio.
Doge (solus). At midnight, by the church Saints John and Paul,
Where sleep my noble fathers, I repair — 580
To what? to hold a council in the dark
With common ruffians leagued to ruin states!
And will not my great sires leap from the vault,
Where lie two Doges who preceded me,
And pluck me down amongst them? Would they could!
For I should rest in honour with the honoured.
Alas! I must not think of them, but those
Who have made me thus unworthy of a name
Noble and brave as aught of consular
On Roman marbles; but I will redeem it 590
Back to its antique lustre in our annals,
By sweet revenge on all that’s base in Venice,
And freedom to the rest, or leave it black
To all the growing calumnies of Time,
Which never spare the fame of him who fails,
But try the Cæsar, or the Catiline,
By the true touchstone of desert — Success.
ACT II
Scene I. — An Apartment in the Ducal Palace.
Angiolina (wife of the Doge) and Marianna.
Ang. What was the Doge’s answer?
Mar. That he was
That moment summoned to a conference;
But ‘tis by this time ended. I perceived
Not long ago the Senators embarking;
And the last gondola may now be seen
Gliding into the throng of barks which stud
The glittering waters.
Ang. Would he were returned!
He has been much disquieted of late;
And Time, which has not tamed his fiery spirit,
Nor yet enfeebled even his mortal frame, 10
Which seems to be more nourished by a soul
So quick and restless that it would consume
Less hardy clay — Time has but little power
On his resentments or his griefs. Unlike
To other spirits of his order, who,
In the first burst of passion, pour away
Their wrath or sorrow, all things wear in him
An aspect of Eternity: his thoughts,
His feelings, passions, good or evil, all
Have nothing of old age; and his bold brow 20
Bears but the scars of mind, the thoughts of years,
Not their decrepitude: and he of late
Has been more agitated than his wont.
Would he were come! for I alone have power
Upon his troubled spirit.
Mar. It is true,
His Highness has of late been greatly moved
By the affront of Steno, and with cause:
But the offender doubtless even now
Is doomed to expiate his rash insult with
Such chastisement as will enforce respect 30
To female virtue, and to noble blood.
Ang. ‘Twas a gross insult; but I heed it not
For the rash scorner’s falsehood in itself,
But for the effect, the deadly deep impression
Which it has made upon Faliero’s soul,
The proud, the fiery, the austere — austere
To all save me: I tremble when I think
To what it may conduct.
Mar. Assuredly
The Doge can not suspect you?
Ang. Suspect me!
Why Steno dared not: when he scrawled his lie, 40
Grovelling by stealth in the moon’s glimmering light,
His own still conscience smote him for the act,
And every shadow on the walls frowned shame
Upon his coward calumny.
Mar. ’Twere fit
He should be punished grievously.
Ang. He is so.
Mar. What! is the sentence passed? is he condemned?
Ang. I know not that, but he has been detected.
Mar. And deem you this enough for such foul scorn?
Ang. I would not be a judge in my own cause,
Nor do I know what sense of punishment 50
May reach the soul of ribalds such as Steno;
But if his insults sink no deeper in
The minds of the inquisitors than they
Have ruffled mine, he will, for all acquittance,
Be left to his own shamelessness or shame.
Mar. Some sacrifice is due to slandered virtue.
Ang. Why, what is virtue if it needs a victim?
Or if it must depend upon men’s words?
The dying Roman said, “‘twas but a name:”
It were indeed no more, if human breath 60
Could make or mar it.
Mar. Yet full many a dame,
Stainless and faithful, would feel all the wrong
Of such a slander; and less rigid ladies,
Such as abound in Venice, would be loud
And all-inexorable in their cry
For justice.
Ang. This but proves it is the name
And not the quality they prize: the first
Have found it a hard task to ho
ld their honour,
If they require it to be blazoned forth;
And those who have not kept it, seek its seeming 70
As they would look out for an ornament
Of which they feel the want, but not because
They think it so; they live in others’ thoughts,
And would seem honest as they must seem fair.
Mar. You have strange thoughts for a patrician dame.
Ang. And yet they were my father’s; with his name,
The sole inheritance he left.
Mar. You want none;
Wife to a Prince, the Chief of the Republic.
Ang. I should have sought none though a peasant’s bride,
But feel not less the love and gratitude 80
Due to my father, who bestowed my hand
Upon his early, tried, and trusted friend,
The Count Val di Marino, now our Doge.
Mar. And with that hand did he bestow your heart?
Ang. He did so, or it had not been bestowed.
Mar. Yet this strange disproportion in your years,
And, let me add, disparity of tempers,
Might make the world doubt whether such an union
Could make you wisely, permanently happy.
Ang. The world will think with worldlings; but my heart 90
Has still been in my duties, which are many,
But never difficult.
Mar. And do you love him?
Ang. I love all noble qualities which merit
Love, and I loved my father, who first taught me
To single out what we should love in others,
And to subdue all tendency to lend
The best and purest feelings of our nature
To baser passions. He bestowed my hand
Upon Faliero: he had known him noble,
Brave, generous; rich in all the qualities 100
Of soldier, citizen, and friend; in all
Such have I found him as my father said.
His faults are those that dwell in the high bosoms
Of men who have commanded; too much pride,
And the deep passions fiercely fostered by
The uses of patricians, and a life
Spent in the storms of state and war; and also
From the quick sense of honour, which becomes
A duty to a certain sign, a vice
When overstrained, and this I fear in him. 110
And then he has been rash from his youth upwards,
Yet tempered by redeeming nobleness
In such sort, that the wariest of republics
Has lavished all its chief employs upon him,
From his first fight to his last embassy,
From which on his return the Dukedom met him.
Mar. But previous to this marriage, had your heart
Ne’er beat for any of the noble youth,
Such as in years had been more meet to match
Beauty like yours? or, since, have you ne’er seen 120