Because an hundred even as twain at once
Partake it? Boys, my boys, be wise, and rest,
Whatever fire take hold upon your flesh,
Whatever dream set all your life on fire,
Friends.
CÆSAR
Friends? Our father on earth, thy will be done.
FRANCESCO
Christ’s body, Cæsar! dost thou mock?
CÆSAR
Not I.
Hast thou fallen out with me, then, that thy tongue
Disclaims its lingering utterance?
ALEXANDER
Now, by nought,
As nought abides to swear by, folly seen
So plain and heard so loud might well nigh make
Wise men believe in even the devil and God.
What ails you? Whence comes lightning in your eyes,
With hissing hints of thunder on your lips?
Fools! and the fools I thought to make for men
Gods. Is it love or hate divides you - turns
Tooth, fang, or claw, when time provides them prey,
To nip, rip, rend each other?
CÆSAR
Hate or love,
Francesco?
FRANCESCO
Why, I hate thee not - thou knowest
I hate thee not, my Cæsar.
CÆSAR
I believe
Thou dost not hate or love or envy me;
Even as I know, and knowing believe, we all -
Our father, thou and I - triune in heart -
Hold loveliest of all living things to love
This.
Enter LUCREZIA
LUCREZIA
Mother! What do tears and thou for once
Together? Rain in sunshine?
VANNOZZA
Ask thy sire,
Am I not now the moon? Saint Anna bore
Saint Mary Virgin - did not God prefer
The child, and thrust behind with scarce a smile
The mother?
ALEXANDER
Thrust not out thy thorns at heaven,
Rose.
LUCREZIA
But what ailed her? And she will not say.
CÆSAR
Sister, I sinned - sin must be mine. A word
Fell out askance between us, and she wept
Because our father chid us.
LUCREZIA
How should strife
Find here a tongue to hiss with? Are not we,
Brothers and sire and sister, sealed of God
Lovers - made one in love?
ALEXANDER
Deride not God,
Lucrezia.
LUCREZIA
Father, dost thou fear him, then?
ALEXANDER
I say not and I know not if I fear.
FRANCESCO
Thou canst not. Father, were he terrible,
How long wouldst thou live - thou, his mask on earth?
ALEXANDER
Boy, art thou all a child? What knew they more,
The men that loved and feared and died for God,
Than I and thou who know him not? We know
This life is ours, and sweet, if shame and fear
Make us not less than man: and less were they
Who crawled and writhed and cowered and called on God
To save them from him. Here I stand as he,
God, or God’s very figure wrought in flesh,
More godlike than was Jesus. Dare I fear
Whipping and hanging? Thou, my cardinal,
Canst think not to be scourged and crucified -
Ha?
CÆSAR
Nay: there lurks no God in me. And thou,
Father, dost thou fear?
ALEXANDER
I? Nought less than God.
But if we take him lightly on our lips
Too light his name will sound in all men’s ears
Till earth and air, when man says God, respond
Laughter. Forbear him.
CÆSAR
Wisdom lives in thee,
And cries not out along the streets as when
None of God’s folk that heard regarded her,
As all that hear thy word regard - or die,
Being not outside God’s eyeshot. Dost thou sleep
Here in his special keeping - here - to-night,
Brother?
FRANCESCO
What bids thee care to know?
CÆSAR
They say
These holy streets of heaven’s most holiest choice
Lie dangerous now in darkness if a man
Walk not on holiest errands. Thou, they say,
Wert scarce a Christlike sacrifice if slain.
Too many dead flow down the Tiber’s flow
Nightly. They say it.
FRANCESCO
I never called thee yet
Fool.
CÆSAR
Ah, my lord and brother, didst thou now,
Were this not thankless? God - our father’s God -
Guide thee! [Exit FRANCESCO.
He goes, and thanks me not. Our sire,
What says the God that lives upon thy lips
And withers in thy silence?
LUCREZIA
Vex him not,
Cæsar. Thou seest he is weary.
ALEXANDER
Yea. Come ye
With me. Bethink thee, Cæsar. Vex me not.
Exeunt ALEXANDER, VANNOZZA, and LUCREZIA.
CÆSAR
Thou wilt not bid me this, I think, again,
Father.
Enter MICHELOTTO
Thou art swift of speed at need. I bade thee
Abide my bidding.
MICHELOTTO
Till my lord were left
Alone.
CÆSAR
Thou knewest it?
MICHELOTTO
Where my lord may be
And what beseems his thrall to know of him
I were not worthy, knew I not, to know.
CÆSAR
I do not ask thee where my brother sleeps.
And where to-morrow sees him yet asleep -
MICHELOTTO
Ask of the fishers’ nets on Tiber.
CÆSAR
Nay -
Not I but Rome shall ask it. Pass in peace.
The benediction of my sire be thine. [Exeunt.
SCENE II
A narrow street opening on the Tiber
Enter MICHELOTTO and ASSASSINS
MICHELOTTO
Ye know the lordlier harlot’s house - there?
FIRST ASSASSIN
Ay,
Surely.
MICHELOTTO
The first whose foot comes forth is he.
SECOND ASSASSIN
How know we this?
MICHELOTTO
I know it. Ye need but slay.
[Exit.
Enter FRANCESCO
FRANCESCO (singing)
Love and night are life and light;
Sleep and wine and song
Speed and slay the halting day
Ere it live too long.
FIRST ASSASSIN
That shalt not thou. Sing, whosoe’er thou be,
Thy next of songs to Satan.
[They stab him.
FRANCESCO
Dogs! Ye dare?
God! Pity me! God! [Dies.
SECOND ASSASSIN
God receive his soul!
This was a Christian: many a man I have slain
Died with all hell between his lips.
FIRST ASSASSIN
Be thine
Dumb. Lift his feet as I the head.
SECOND ASSASSIN
A boy!
And fair of face as angels
FIRST ASSASSIN
If the nets
Snare not this fish betimes ere others feed,
None that shall heave it airward for the sun
To mock and mar shall
say so. Bring him down.
Tiber hath fed on choicer fare than we
May think to feed his throat with ere we die.
[Exeunt with the body.
SCENE III
The Vatican
ALEXANDER and LUCREZIA
ALEXANDER
The day burns high. Thou hast not seen them - thou?
LUCREZIA
My brethren, sire? Nay, not since yesternight.
ALEXANDER
The night is newly dead. Since yestereven?
LUCREZIA
Nor then. I saw them when we parted here
Last.
ALEXANDER
I believe thou liest not. Girl, the day
Looks pale before thy glory. Brow, cheek, eye,
Lips, throat, and bosom, thou dost overshine
All womanhood man ever worshipped. Once
I held thy mother fairest born of all
That ever turned old Rome to heaven. Thou hast read
Her golden Horace?
LUCREZIA
Else were I cast out
From all their choir who serve the Muses.
ALEXANDER
Ay.
‘Fair mother’s fairer daughter,’ dost thou deem
That praise was ever merited as by thee?
I cannot.
LUCREZIA
I concern myself no whit
If so it were or were not.
ALEXANDER
Thou dost well.
Thou hast not seen, thou sayest, Francesco?
LUCREZIA
Nay -
Give me some reliquary to swear it on -
Some rosary - crucifix or amulet,
Sorcerous or sacred.
ALEXANDER
Never twins were born
More like than thou and he - nor lovelier: yet
No twins were ye.
LUCREZIA
What ails thy Holiness?
ALEXANDER
I am ill at ease: my heart is sick. Last night
No revel here was held, and yet the day
Strikes heavier on me wearier, body and soul,
Than though we had rioted out with raging mirth
The lifelong length of darkness.
LUCREZIA
Evil hours
Fret somewhiles all folk living; none sees why:
No child sleeps always all night long.
ALEXANDER
Wast thou
Wakeful? No trouble clung about thee? Nought
Made the air of night heavier with presage felt
As joy feels fear and withers? I am not
Afraid: methinks I am very fear itself.
Enter an Officer of the household
OFFICER
His holiness be gracious towards me.
ALEXANDER
Speak.
Thy face is death’s: let death upon thy lips
Live.
OFFICER
Sire, the humblest hireling knave in Rome -
A waterman that plies his craft all night -
Craves audience even of thee.
ALEXANDER
A Roman?
OFFICER
Nay.
Some outlander - some Greek - they call the knave
George the Slavonian.
ALEXANDER
They?
OFFICER
The fisherfolk
On Tiber.
ALEXANDER
Bid him in: bid God himself
Come in with doom upon me. [Exit Officer.
Hear’st thou, child -
Daughter?
LUCREZIA
What horror hangs on thee?
ALEXANDER
Abide,
And thou shalt know as I know.
Enter GIORGIO SCHIAVONE
Speak. I say,
Speak. What thou art I know: and what I am
Thou knowest - and yet thou knowest not.
GIORGIO
Holiest sire,
Last night I kept my boat on Tiber - Sire,
The thing I saw was nothing of my deed -
It shook me out of sleep to see it - Lord,
Have mercy: look not so upon me.
ALEXANDER
Dog,
Speak, while thy tongue is thine.
GIORGIO
Two men came down
And peered along the water-side: and two
Came after - men whose eyes raked all the night,
Searching the shore - I lay beneath my boat -
Beside it on the darkling side - and saw.
Then came a horseman - Sire, his horse was white -
The moonshine made his mane like dull white fire -
And on his crupper heavily hung a corpse,
Arms held from swaying on this side, legs on that,
I know not which on either - but the men
Held fast that held: and hard on Tiber side
They swung the crupper towards the water - sharp
And swift as man may steer a horse - and caught
And slung their dead into the stream: and he
Drifted, and caught the moon across his face
That shone like life against it: and the chief
Till then sat silent as the moon at watch,
And then bade hurl stones on the drifting dead
And sink him out of sight; and seeing this done,
Rode thence, and they strode after.
ALEXANDER
Man, and thou -
Thou?
GIORGIO
Sire, I set my heart again to sleep:
I turned and slept under my boatside.
ALEXANDER
Man -
Dog - devil, if this be truth, and if my fear
Lie not - how hadst thou heart to hold thy peace?
How comes it that the warders of the shore
Knew not of thee, while yet the crime was hot,
What crime had made night hell?
GIORGIO
A thousand times
I have seen such sights, but never till this hour
Seen him who cared to hear of them.
ALEXANDER
Till now,
Never. He looks in God’s mute face and mine,
And says it. God be good to me! But God
Will not - or is not. Where is then thy dead,
Devil, called of God from hell to smite - to scourge -
Me?
GIORGIO
Sire, at hand I left him.
ALEXANDER
Stir not. Bid
Thy fellows bring my dead before me. [Exit Officer.
Nay,
But mine it is not yet - it may not be
Mine - while it may not be, it is not. Child,
It shall not be thy brother. Pray no prayer.
Prayer never yet brought profit. Be not pale.
Fear strikes more deep into the fearful heart
The wound it heals not.
Enter Officers with the body of FRANCESCO
What is he they bring?
O God! Thou livest! And my child is dead!
[Falls.
SCENE IV
The Vatican
ALEXANDER and CÆSAR
ALEXANDER
Thou hast done this deed.
CÆSAR
Thou hast said it.
ALEXANDER
Dost thou think
To live, and look upon me?
CÆSAR
Some while yet.
ALEXANDER
I would there were a God - that he might hear.
CÆSAR
’Tis pity there should be - for thy sake - none.
ALEXANDER
Wilt thou slay me?
CÆSAR
Why?
ALEXANDER
Am not I thy sire?
CÆSAR
And Christendom’s to boot.
ALEXANDER
I pray thee, man,
Slay me.
CÆSAR
And then myself? Thou art crazed, but I
Sane.
ALEXANDER
Art thou very flesh and blood?
CÆSAR
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 290
