(Beatrice advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back.) Oh, dart

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,

Beatr. Poor wretch! I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
Cam. Guards, lead him not away.

Beatr. 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 dragged

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 damned. Speak now
The thing you surely know, which is, that you,
If your fine frame were stretched 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 the 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 dishonourable death.

I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert

My innocence.

Cam. (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.

Judge.

Yet she must be tortured.

Cam. I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived he would be just her age;

His hair, too, was her colour, 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!

Judge. Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,

If you forbid the rack. His Holiness

Enjoined 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,
Upon such evidence as justifies

Torture.

Beatr. What evidence? This man's?
Judge.

Beatr. (to Marzio.) Come near.
Out of the multitude of living men,

To kill the innocent?

Mar.

Thy father's vassal.

Beatr.

Even so. [chosen forth,

And who art thou, thus

I am Marzio,

Fix thine eyes on mine;

I prithee mark

Answer to what I ask.

(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

Oh!

That I did murder my own father?

Mar.

Spare me! My brain swims round—I cannot speak—
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!

Beatr. My Lords, if by my nature I had been
So stern as to have planned 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-

Mar. 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.

Cam. Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice.

He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf

From the keen breath of the serenest north.

Beatr. O thou, who tremblest on the giddy verg
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 ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life

To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then
Stabbed 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
Armed 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, shew justice upon earth:
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path
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 killed 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,
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood
All that which shews 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?

Mar. Judge.

Thou art not!

What is this?

Mar. I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty.

Judge. Drag him away to torments: let them be Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds

Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not

Till he confess.

Mar.

Torture me as ye will:

A keener pang has wrung a higher truth

From my last breath. She is most innocent!
Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me!
I will not give you that fine piece of nature
To rend and ruin.

(Exit Marzio, guarded.)

Cam.
What say ye now, my Lords?
Judge. Let tortures strain the truth till it be white
As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.

Cam. Yet stained with blood.

Judge. (to Beatrice.)

Know you this paper, Lady!

Beatr. Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here

As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,

Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,

What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name.

Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.

What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what,
And therefore on the chance that it may be

Some evil, will ye kill us?

Officer.

Enter an Officer.

Marzio's dead.

Nothing. As soon as we

Judge. What did he say?

Officer.

Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,

As one who baffles a deep adversary;

And, holding his breath, died.

Judge.

There remains nothing

I overrule

But to apply the question to those prisoners
Who yet remain stubborn.

Cam.

Further proceedings, and in the behalf

Of these most innocent and noble persons

Will use my interest with the Holy Father.

Judge. Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;

And be the engines ready: for this night,

If the Pope's resolution be as grave,

Pious, and just, as once, I'll wring the truth
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.

The Cell of a Prison.

on a Couch.

SCENE III.

(Exeunt.)

BEATRICE is discovered asleep
Enter BERNARDO.

Ber. How gently slumber rests upon her face,
Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent,
Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.

After such torments as she bore last night,
How light and soft her breathing comes. Ah, me!
Methinks that I shall never sleep again.

But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest

From this sweet folded flower, thus-wake! awake!
What, sister, canst thou sleep?

Beatr. (awaking.)

I was just dreaming

That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest
This cell seems like a kind of Paradise,

After our father's presence.

Ber.

Dear, dear sister,

Would that thy dream were not a dream! O God!
How shall I tell?

Beatr.

What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother? Ber. Look not so calm and happy, or, even whilst I stand considering what I have to say,

My heart will break.

Beatr.

See now, thou makest me weep:

How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,

If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.

Ber. They have confessed: they could endure no more The tortures

Beatr.

Ha! What was there to confess?

They must have told some weak and wicked lie,

To fatter 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 splendour laid in dust,
And that eternal honour which should live,
Sun-like, above the wreck of mortal fame,
Changed to a mockery and a bye-word? What,
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
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 flow'rs 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,