Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
The path across the wilderness, lest he,
As my thoughts are, should be — a murderer.
I know you are my friend, and all I dare
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
But now my heart is heavy, and would take
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. 100
Pardon me that I say farewell — farewell!
I would that to my own suspected self
I could address a word so full of peace.
ORSINO
Farewell! — Be your thoughts better or more bold.
[Exit GIACOMO.
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
To feed his hope with cold encouragement.
It fortunately serves my close designs
That ‘t is a trick of this same family
To analyze their own and other minds.
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 110
Dangerous secrets; for it tempts our powers,
Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,
Into the depth of darkest purposes.
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
To which I grow half reconciled. I ‘ll do
As little mischief as I can; that thought
Shall fee the accuser conscience.
(After a pause)
Now what harm 120
If Cenci should be murdered? — Yet, if murdered,
Wherefore by me? And what if I could take
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
In such an action? Of all earthly things
I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words;
And such is Cenci; and, while Cenci lives,
His daughter’s dowry were a secret grave
If a priest wins her. — O fair Beatrice!
Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee,
Could but despise danger and gold and all 130
That frowns between my wish and its effect,
Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape;
Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
And follows me to the resort of men,
And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,
So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;
And if I strike my damp and dizzy head,
My hot palm scorches it; her very name,
But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart
Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably 140
I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights
Till weak imagination half possesses
The self-created shadow. Yet much longer
Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours.
From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo
I must work out my own dear purposes.
I see, as from a tower, the end of all:
Her father dead; her brother bound to me
By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
Her mother scared and unexpostulating 150
From the dread manner of her wish achieved;
And she! — Once more take courage, my faint heart;
What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
I have such foresight as assures success.
Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,
When dread events are near, stir up men’s minds
To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
Not who becomes the instrument of ill,
But who can flatter the dark spirit that makes
Its empire and its prey of other hearts 160
Till it become his slave — as I will do.
[Exit.
Act III
SCENE I. — An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. LUCRETIA; to her enter BEATRICE.
BEATRICE (she enters staggering and speaks wildly)
REACH me that handkerchief! — My brain is hurt;
My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me —
I see but indistinctly.
LUCRETIA
My sweet child,
You have no wound; ‘t is only a cold dew
That starts from your dear brow. — Alas, alas!
What has befallen?
BEATRICE
How comes this hair undone?
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
And yet I tied it fast. — Oh, horrible!
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, 10
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
Slide giddily as the world reels. — My God!
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe
In charnel-pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me—’t is substantial, heavy, thick;
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another, 20
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
(More wildly)
No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air!
(A pause)
What hideous thought was that I had even now?
‘T is gone; and yet its burden remains here 30
O’er these dull eyes — upon this weary heart!
O world! O life! O day! O misery!
LUCRETIA
What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not.
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
But not it cause; suffering has dried away
The source from which it sprung.
BEATRICE (frantically)
Like Parricide —
Misery has killed its father; yet its father
Never like mine — O God! what thing am I?
LUCRETIA
My dearest child, what has your father done?
BEATRICE (doubtfully)
Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. 40
[Aside.
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
(To LUCRETIA, in a slow, subdued voice)
Do you know,
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
From hall to hall by the entangled hair;
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams
That I imagined — no, it cannot be! 50
Horrible things have been in this wild world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do.
But never fancy imaged such a deed
As —
(Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself)
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest — Mother!
LUCRETIA
Oh!
My sweet child, know you —
BEATRICE
Yet speak it not;
For then if this be truth, that other too 60
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of l
ife,
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 70
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? 80
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
‘T is 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
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying 90
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 anything will move me more.
But now! — O blood, which art my father’s blood,
Circling through 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 100
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.
What are the words which yon 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 110
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. 120
Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.
BEATRICE
Ay, 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 130
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. — Oh! 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. 140
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
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.
ORSINO
It cannot be —
BEATRICE
What it can be, or not,
Forbear to think. It is, and it has been;
Advise me how it 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 150
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
With vilest gossips a stale mouthèd story;
A mock, a byword, an astonishment: — 160
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, wrapped
In hideous hints — Oh, most assured redress!
ORSINO
You will endure it then?
BEATRICE
Endure! — Orsino,
It seems your counsel is small profit.
(Turns from him, and speaks half to herself)
Ay,
All must be suddenly resolved and done.
What is this undistinguishable mist 170
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)
LUCRETIA
If the lightning
Of God has e’er descended to avenge — 180
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 190
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 dishonor, and leaves her 200
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
Might find them with less need.
[BEATRICE advances.
ORSINO
Then —
BEATRICE
Peace, Orsino!
And, honored Lady, while I speak, I pray
That you put off, as garments overworn,
Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,
And all the fit restraints of daily life, 210
Which have been borne from childhood, but which now
Would be a mockery to my holier plea.
As I have said, I have endured a wrong,
Which, though it be expressionless, is such
As asks atonement, both for what is passed,
And lest I be reserved, day after day,
To load with crimes an overburdened soul,
And be — what ye can dream not. I have prayed
To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
And have unravelled my entangled will, 220
And have at length determined what is right.
Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true?
Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
ORSINO
I swear
To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,
My silence, and whatever else is mine,
To thy commands.
LUCRETIA
You think we should devise
His death?
BEATRICE
And execute what is devised,
And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.
ORSINO
And yet most cautious.
LUCRETIA
For the jealous laws
Would punish us with death and infamy 230
For that which it became themselves to do.
BEATRICE
Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino,
What are the means?
ORSINO
I know two dull, fierce outlaws,
Who think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they
Would trample out, for any slight caprice,
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 101