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A mean Apartment in GIACOMO’S House. | |
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GIACOMO alone | |
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| Giacomo. ’Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. [Thunder, and the sound of a storm. | |
| What! can the everlasting elements | |
| Fell with a worm like man? If so the shaft | 5 |
| Of mercy-wingèd lightning would not fall | |
| On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep: | |
| They are now living in unmeaning dreams: | |
| But I must wake, still doubting if that deed | |
| Be just which was most necessary. O, | 10 |
| Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire | |
| Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge | |
| Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame, | |
| Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls, | |
| Still flickerest up and down, how very soon, | 15 |
| Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be | |
| As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks | |
| Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine: | |
| But that no power can fill with vital oil | |
| That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! ’tis the blood | 20 |
| Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold: | |
| It is the form that moulded mine that sinks | |
| Into the white and yellow spasms of death: | |
| It is the soul by which mine was arrayed | |
| In God’s immortal likeness which now stands | 25 |
| Naked before Heaven’s judgment seat! (A bell strikes.) | |
| One! Two! | |
| The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white, | |
| My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, | |
| Tortured between just hate and vain remorse; | 30 |
| Chiding the tardy messenger of news | |
| Like those which I expect; I almost wish | |
| He be not dead, although my wrongs are great; | |
| Yet … ’tis Orsino’s step… | |
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Enter ORSINO | 35 |
| Speak! | |
| Orsino. I am come | |
| To say he has escaped. | |
| Giacomo. Escaped! | |
| Orsino. And safe | 40 |
| Within Petrella. He past by the spot | |
| Appointed for the deed an hour too soon. | |
| Giacomo. Are we the fools of such contingencies? | |
| And do we waste in blind misgivings thus | |
| The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder, | 45 |
| Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter | |
| With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth | |
| Will ne’er repent of aught designed or done | |
| But my repentance. | |
| Orsino. See, the lamp is out. | 50 |
| Giacomo. If no remorse is ours when the dim air | |
| Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail | |
| When Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits | |
| See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever? | |
| No, I am hardened. | 55 |
| Orsino. Why, what need of this? | |
| Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse | |
| In a just deed? Altho’ our first plan failed, | |
| Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. | |
| But light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark. | 60 |
| Giacomo (lighting the lamp). And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume | |
| My father’s life: do you not think his ghost | |
| Might plead that argument with God? | |
| Orsino. Once gone | |
| You cannot now recall your sister’s peace; | 65 |
| Your own extinguished years of youth and hope; | |
| Nor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts | |
| Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes; | |
| Nor your dead mother; nor… | |
| Giacomo. O, speak no more! | 70 |
| I am resolved, although this very hand | |
| Must quench the life that animated it. | |
| Orsino. There is no need of that. Listen: you know | |
| Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella | |
| In old Colonna’s time; him whom your father | 75 |
| Degraded from his post? And Marzio, | |
| That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year | |
| Of a reward of blood, well earned and due? | |
| Giacomo. I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated | |
| Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage | 80 |
| His lips grew white only to see him pass. | |
| Of Marzio I know nothing. | |
| Orsino. Marzio’s hate | |
| Matches Olimpio’s. I have sent these men, | |
| But in your name and as at your request, | 85 |
| To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia. | |
| Giacomo. Only to talk? | |
| Orsino. The moments which even now | |
| Pass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour | |
| May memorise their flight with death: ere then | 90 |
| They must have talked, and may perhaps have done | |
| And made an end… | |
| Giacomo. Listen! What sound is that? | |
| Orsino. The house-dog moans, and the beams crack nought else. | |
| Giacomo. It is my wife complaining in her sleep: | 95 |
| I doubt not she is saying bitter things | |
| Of me; and all my children round her dreaming | |
| That I deny them sustenance. | |
| Orsino. Whilst he | |
| Who truly took it from them, and who fills | 100 |
| Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps | |
| Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly | |
| Mocks thee in visions of successful hate | |
| Too like the truth of day. | |
| Giacomo. If e’er he wakes | 105 |
| Again, I will not trust to hireling hands… | |
| Orsino. Why, that were well. I must be gone; good-night: | |
| When next we meet—may all be done! | |
| Giacomo. And all | |
| Forgotten: Oh, that I had never been! [Exeunt. | 110 |
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