The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts
Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.
When all is done, out in the wide Campagna
I will pile up my silver and my gold;
My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries;
My parchments, and all records of my wealth;
And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave
Of my possessions nothing but my name; 60
Which shall be an inheritance to strip
Its wearer bare as infamy. That done,
My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign
Into the hands of Him who wielded it;
Be it for its own punishment or theirs,
He will not ask it of me till the lash
Be broken in its last and deepest wound;
Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet,
Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make
Short work and sure.
[Going.
LUCRETIA (stops him)
Oh, stay! it was a feint; 70
She had no vision, and she heard no voice.
I said it but to awe thee.
CENCI
That is well.
Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God,
Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie!
For Beatrice worse terrors are in store
To bend her to my will.
LUCRETIA
Oh, to what will?
What cruel sufferings more than she has known
Canst thou inflict?
CENCI
Andrea! go, call my daughter
And if she comes not, tell her that I come.
(To LUCRETIA)
What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step, 80
Through infamies unheard of among men;
She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon
Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad,
One among which shall be — what? canst thou guess?
She shall become (for what she most abhors
Shall have a fascination to entrap
Her loathing will) to her own conscious self
All she appears to others; and when dead,
As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven,
A rebel to her father and her God, 90
Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds;
Her name shall be the terror of the earth;
Her spirit shall approach the throne of God
Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make
Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.
Enter ANDREA
ANDREA
The Lady Beatrice —
CENCI
Speak, pale slave! what
Said she?
ANDREA
My Lord, ‘t was what she looked; she said,
‘Go tell my father that I see the gulf
Of Hell between us two, which he may pass;
I will not.’
[Exit ANDREA.
CENCI
Go thou quick, Lucretia, 100
Tell her to come; yet let her understand
Her coming is consent; and say, moreover,
That if she come not I will curse her.
[Exit LUCRETIA.
Ha!
With what but with a father’s curse doth God
Panic-strike armèd victory, and make pale
Cities in their prosperity? The world’s Father
Must grant a parent’s prayer against his child,
Be he who asks even what men call me.
Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers
Awe her before I speak? for I on them 110
Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came.
Enter LUCRETIA
Well; what? Speak, wretch!
LUCRETIA
She said, ‘I cannot come;
Go tell my father that I see a torrent
Of his own blood raging between us.’
CENCI (kneeling)
God,
Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
This particle of my divided being;
Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil,
Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant 120
To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
If, nursed by thy selectest dew of love,
Such virtues blossom in her as should make
The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake,
As thou the common God and Father art
Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
Poison, until she be encrusted round
With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head 130
The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew
Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
To loathèd lameness! All-beholding sun,
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
With thine own blinding beams!
LUCRETIA
Peace, peace!
For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
When high God grants, he punishes such prayers.
CENCI (leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven)
He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
That if she have a child —
LUCRETIA
Horrible thought! 140
CENCI
That if she ever have a child — and thou,
Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
That thou be fruitful in her, and increase
And multiply, fulfilling his command,
And my deep imprecation! — may it be
A hideous likeness of herself, that as
From a distorting mirror she may see
Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
Smiling upon her from her nursing breast!
And that the child may from its infancy 150
Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
Turning her mother’s love to misery!
And that both she and it may live until
It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
Or what may else be more unnatural;
So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs
Of the loud world to a dishonored grave!
Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
Before my words are chronicled in heaven.
[Exit LUCRETIA.
I do not feel as if I were a man, 160
But like a fiend appointed to chastise
The offences of some unremembered world.
My blood is running up and down my veins;
A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle;
I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
My heart is beating with an expectation
Of horrid joy.
Enter LUCRETIA
What? Speak!
LUCRETIA
She bids thee curse;
And if thy curses, as they cannot do,
Could kill her soul —
CENCI
She would not come. ‘T is well,
I can do both; first take what I demand, 170
And then extort concession. To thy chamber!
Fly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night
That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer
To come between the tiger and his prey.
[Exit LUCRETIA.
It must be late, mine eyes grow weary dim
With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.
Conscience! O thou most insolent of lies!
They say that sleep, that healing dew of heaven,
Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain
Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go, 180
First to belie thee with an hour of rest,
Which will be deep and calm, I feel; and then —
O multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake
Thine arches with the laughter of their joy!
There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven
As o’er an angel fallen; and upon Earth
All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things
Shall, with a spirit of unnatural life,
Stir and be quickened — even as I am now.
[Exit.
SCENE II. — Before the Castle of Petrella. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA above on the ramparts.
BEATRICE
They come not yet.
LUCRETIA
‘T is scarce midnight.
BEATRICE
How slow
Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed,
Lags leaden-footed Time!
LUCRETIA
The minutes pass.
If he should wake before the deed is done?
BEATRICE
O mother! he must never wake again.
What thou hast said persuades me that our act
Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell
Out of a human form.
LUCRETIA
‘T is true he spoke
Of death and judgment with strange confidence
For one so wicked; as a man believing 10
In God, yet recking not of good or ill.
And yet to die without confession! —
BEATRICE
Oh!
Believe that Heaven is merciful and just,
And will not add our dread necessity
To the amount of his offences.
Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO below
LUCRETIA
See,
They come.
BEATRICE
All mortal things must hasten thus
To their dark end. Let us go down.
[Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE from above.
OLIMPIO
How feel you to this work?
MARZIO
As one who thinks
A thousand crowns excellent market price
For an old murderer’s life. Your cheeks are pale. 20
OLIMPIO
It is the white reflection of your own,
Which you call pale.
MARZIO
Is that their natural hue?
OLIMPIO
Or ‘t is my hate, and the deferred desire
To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.
MARZIO
You are inclined then to this business?
OLIMPIO
Ay,
If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns
To kill a serpent which had stung my child,
I could not be more willing.
Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA below
Noble ladies!
BEATRICE
Are ye resolved?
OLIMPIO
Is he asleep?
MARZIO
Is all
Quiet?
LUCRETIA
I mixed an opiate with his drink; 30
He sleeps so soundly —
BEATRICE
That his death will be
But as a change of sin-chastising dreams,
A dark continuance of the hell within him,
Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved?
Ye know it is a high and holy deed?
OLIMPIO
We are resolved.
MARZIO
As to the how this act
Be warranted, it rests with you.
BEATRICE
Well, follow!
OLIMPIO
Hush! Hark! what noise is that?
MARZIO
Ha! some one comes!
BEATRICE
Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest
Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, 40
Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,
That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow!
And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.
[Exeunt.
SCENE III. — An Apartment in the Castle. Enter BEATRICE and LUCRETIA.
LUCRETIA
They are about it now.
BEATRICE
Nay, it is done.
LUCRETIA
I have not heard him groan.
BEATRICE
He will not groan.
LUCRETIA
What sound is that?
BEATRICE
List! ‘t is the tread of feet
About his bed.
LUCRETIA
My God!
If he be now a cold, stiff corpse —
BEATRICE
Oh, fear not
What may be done, but what is left undone;
The act seals all.
Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO
Is it accomplished?
MARZIO
What?
OLIMPIO
Did you not call?
BEATRICE
When?
OLIMPIO
Now.
BEATRICE
I ask if all is over?
OLIMPIO
We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent brow, 10
His veinèd hands crossed on his heaving breast,
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,
Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.
MARZIO
But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave,
And leave me the reward. And now my knife
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man
Stirred in his sleep, and said, ‘God! hear, oh, hear
A father’s curse! What, art thou not our father?’
And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost 20
Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
And could not kill him.
BEATRICE
Miserable slaves!
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
Found ye the boldness to return to me
With such a deed undone? Base palterers!
Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience
Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
Is an equivocation; it sleeps over
A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
And when a deed, where mercy insults heaven — 30
Why do I talk?
(Snatching a dagger from one of them, and raising it)
Hadst thou a tongue to say,
She murdered her own father, I must do it!
But never dream ye shall outlive him long!
OLIMPIO
Stop, for God’s sake!
MARZIO
I will go back and kill him.
OLIMPIO
Give me the weapon, we must do thy will.
BEATRICE
Take it! Depart! Return!
[Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO.
How pale thou art!
We do but that which ‘t were a deadly crime
To leave undone.
LUCRETIA
Would it were done!
BEATRICE
Even whilst
That doubt is passing through your mind, the world
Is conscious of a change. Darkness and hell 40
Have swallowed up the vapor they sent forth
To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath
Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood
Runs freely through my veins. Hark!
Enter OLIMPIO and MARZIO
He is —
OLIMPIO
Dead!
MARZIO
We strangled him, that there might be no blood;
And then we threw his heavy corpse i’ the garden
Under the balcony; ‘t will seem it fell.
BEATRICE (giving them a bag of coin)
Here take this gold and hasten to your homes.
And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed
By that which made me tremble, wear thou this! 50
(Clothes him in a rich mantle)
It was the mantle which my grandfather
Wore in his high prosperity, and men
Envied his state; so may they envy thine.
Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God
To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark,
If thou hast crimes, repent; this deed is none.
(A horn is sounded)
LUCRETIA
Hark, ‘t is the castle horn: my God! it sounds
Like the last trump.
BEATRICE
Some tedious guest is coming.
LUCRETIA
The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp
Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves! 60
[Exeunt OLIMPIO and MARZIO.
BEATRICE
Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;
I scarcely need to counterfeit it now;
The spirit which doth reign within these limbs
Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep
Fearless and calm; all ill is surely past.
[Exeunt.
SCENE IV. — Another Apartment in the Castle. Enter on one side the Legate SAVELLA, introduced by a Servant, and on the other LUCRETIA and BERNARDO.
SAVELLA
Lady, my duty to his Holiness
Be my excuse that thus unseasonably
I break upon your rest. I must speak with
Count Cenci; doth he sleep?
LUCRETIA (in a hurried and confused manner)
I think he sleeps;
Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile.
He is a wicked and a wrathful man;
Should he be roused out of his sleep tonight,
Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,
It were not well; indeed it were not well.
Wait till day break.
(Aside) Oh, I am deadly sick! 10
SAVELLA
I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count
Must answer charges of the gravest import,
And suddenly; such my commission is.
LUCRETIA (with increased agitation)
I dare not rouse him, I know none who dare;
‘T were perilous; you might as safely waken
A serpent, or a corpse in which some fiend
Were laid to sleep.
SAVELLA
Lady, my moments here
Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep,
Since none else dare.
LUCRETIA (aside)
Oh, terror! oh, despair!
(To BERNARDO)
Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to 20
Your father’s chamber.
[Exeunt SAVELLA and BERNARDO.
Enter BEATRICE
BEATRICE
‘T is a messenger
Come to arrest the culprit who now stands
Before the throne of unappealable God.
Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters,
Acquit our deed.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Page 103
