No More Learning

[ENTER BEATRICE. ]

BEATRICE [IN A HURRIED VOICE]:
Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?
Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs;
'Tis nearer now; his hand is on the door;
Mother, if I to thee have ever been _15
A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,
Whose image upon earth a father is,
Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes;
The door is opening now; I see his face;
He frowns on others, but he smiles on me, _20
Even as he did after the feast last night.
[ENTER A SERVANT. ]
Almighty God, how merciful Thou art!
'Tis but Orsino's servant. --Well, what news?

SERVANT:
My master bids me say, the Holy Father
Has sent back your petition thus unopened. _25
[GIVING A PAPER. ]
And he demands at what hour 'twere secure
To visit you again?

LUCRETIA:
At the Ave Mary.
[EXIT SERVANT. ]
So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me!
How pale you look; you tremble, and you stand
Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation, _30
As if one thought were over strong for you:
Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!
Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.

BEATRICE:
You see I am not mad: I speak to you.

LUCRETIA:
You talked of something that your father did _35
After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse
Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead! '
And every one looked in his neighbour's face
To see if others were as white as he?
At the first word he spoke I felt the blood _40
Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;
And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;
Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words
Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see
The devil was rebuked that lives in him. _45
Until this hour thus you have ever stood
Between us and your father's moody wrath
Like a protecting presence; your firm mind
Has been our only refuge and defence:
What can have thus subdued it? What can now _50
Have given you that cold melancholy look,
Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?

BEATRICE:
What is it that you say? I was just thinking
'Twere better not to struggle any more.
Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody, _55
Yet never--Oh! Before worse comes of it
'Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.

LUCRETIA:
Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once
What did your father do or say to you?
He stayed not after that accursed feast _60
One moment in your chamber. --Speak to me.

BERNARDO:
Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!

BEATRICE [SPEAKING VERY SLOWLY, WITH A FORCED CALMNESS]:
It was one word, Mother, one little word;
One look, one smile.
[WILDLY. ]
Oh! He has trampled me
Under his feet, and made the blood stream down _65
My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all
Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh
Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,
And we have eaten. --He has made me look
On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust _70
Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,
And I have never yet despaired--but now!
What could I say?
[RECOVERING HERSELF. ]
Ah, no! 'tis nothing new.
The sufferings we all share have made me wild:
He only struck and cursed me as he passed; _75
He said, he looked, he did;--nothing at all
Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me.
Alas! I am forgetful of my duty,
I should preserve my senses for your sake.

LUCRETIA:
Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl. _80
If any one despairs it should be I
Who loved him once, and now must live with him
Till God in pity call for him or me.
For you may, like your sister, find some husband,
And smile, years hence, with children round your knees; _85
Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil
Shall be remembered only as a dream.

BEATRICE:
Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.
Did you not nurse me when my mother died?
Did you not shield me and that dearest boy? _90
And had we any other friend but you
In infancy, with gentle words and looks,
To win our father not to murder us?
And shall I now desert you? May the ghost
Of my dead Mother plead against my soul _95
If I abandon her who filled the place
She left, with more, even, than a mother's love!

BERNARDO:
And I am of my sister's mind. Indeed
I would not leave you in this wretchedness,
Even though the Pope should make me free to live _100
In some blithe place, like others of my age,
With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.
Oh, never think that I will leave you, Mother!

LUCRETIA:
My dear, dear children!

[ENTER CENCI, SUDDENLY. ]

CENCI:
What! Beatrice here!
Come hither!
[SHE SHRINKS BACK, AND COVERS HER FACE. ]
Nay, hide not your face, 'tis fair; _105
Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look
With disobedient insolence upon me,
Bending a stern and an inquiring brow
On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide
That which I came to tell you--but in vain. _110

BEATRICE [WILDLY STAGGERING TOWARDS THE DOOR]:
Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!

CENCI:
Then it was I whose inarticulate words
Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps
Fled from your presence, as you now from mine.
Stay, I command you--from this day and hour _115
Never again, I think, with fearless eye,
And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,
And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,
Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;
Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber! _120
Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother,
[TO BERNARDO. ]
Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate!
[EXEUNT BEATRICE AND BERNARDO. ]
[ASIDE. ]
So much has passed between us as must make
Me bold, her fearful. --'Tis an awful thing
To touch such mischief as I now conceive: _125
So men sit shivering on the dewy bank,
And try the chill stream with their feet; once in. . .
How the delighted spirit pants for joy!

LUCRETIA [ADVANCING TIMIDLY TOWARDS HIM]:
O husband! Pray forgive poor Beatrice.
She meant not any ill.

CENCI:
Nor you perhaps? _130
Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote
Parricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo?
Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred
Enmity up against me with the Pope?
Whom in one night merciful God cut off: _135
Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.
You were not here conspiring? You said nothing
Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman;
Or be condemned to death for some offence,
And you would be the witnesses? --This failing, _140
How just it were to hire assassins, or
Put sudden poison in my evening drink?
Or smother me when overcome by wine?
Seeing we had no other judge but God,
And He had sentenced me, and there were none _145
But you to be the executioners
Of His decree enregistered in heaven?
Oh, no! You said not this?

LUCRETIA:
So help me God,
I never thought the things you charge me with!

CENCI:
If you dare to speak that wicked lie again _150
I'll kill you. What! It was not by your counsel
That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?
You did not hope to stir some enemies
Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn
What every nerve of you now trembles at? _155
You judged that men were bolder than they are;
Few dare to stand between their grave and me.

LUCRETIA:
Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation
I knew not aught that Beatrice designed;
Nor do I think she designed any thing _160
Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.

CENCI:
Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this!
But I will take you where you may persuade
The stones you tread on to deliver you:
For men shall there be none but those who dare _165
All things--not question that which I command.
On Wednesday next I shall set out: you know
That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:
'Tis safely walled, and moated round about:
Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers _170
Never told tales; though they have heard and seen
What might make dumb things speak. --Why do you linger?
Make speediest preparation for the journey!
[EXIT LUCRETIA. ]
The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear
A busy stir of men about the streets; _175
I see the bright sky through the window panes:
It is a garish, broad, and peering day;
Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,
And every little corner, nook, and hole
Is penetrated with the insolent light. _180
Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?
And wherefore should I wish for night, who do
A deed which shall confound both night and day?
'Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist
Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven _185
She shall not dare to look upon its beams;
Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night;
The act I think shall soon extinguish all
For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom
Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air, _190
Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,
In which I walk secure and unbeheld
Towards my purpose. --Would that it were done!

[EXIT. ]

SCENE 2. 2:
A CHAMBER IN THE VATICAN.
ENTER CAMILLO AND GIACOMO, IN CONVERSATION.

CAMILLO:
There is an obsolete and doubtful law
By which you might obtain a bare provision
Of food and clothing--

GIACOMO:
Nothing more? Alas!
Bare must be the provision which strict law
Awards, and aged, sullen avarice pays. _5
Why did my father not apprentice me
To some mechanic trade? I should have then
Been trained in no highborn necessities
Which I could meet not by my daily toil.
The eldest son of a rich nobleman _10
Is heir to all his incapacities;
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,
Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once
From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,
An hundred servants, and six palaces, _15
To that which nature doth indeed require? --

CAMILLO:
Nay, there is reason in your plea; 'twere hard.

GIACOMO:
'Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I
Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,
Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father _20
Without a bond or witness to the deed:
And children, who inherit her fine senses,
The fairest creatures in this breathing world;
And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,
Do you not think the Pope would interpose _25
And stretch authority beyond the law?

CAMILLO:
Though your peculiar case is hard, I know
The Pope will not divert the course of law.
After that impious feast the other night
I spoke with him, and urged him then to check _30
Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said,
'Children are disobedient, and they sting
Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair,
Requiting years of care with contumely.
I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; _35
His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,
And thus he is exasperated to ill.
In the great war between the old and young
I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,
Will keep at least blameless neutrality. ' _40
[ENTER ORSINO. ]
You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.

ORSINO:
What words?

GIACOMO:
Alas, repeat them not again!
There then is no redress for me, at least
None but that which I may achieve myself,
Since I am driven to the brink. --But, say, _45
My innocent sister and my only brother
Are dying underneath my father's eye.
The memorable torturers of this land,
Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
Never inflicted on their meanest slave _50
What these endure; shall they have no protection?

CAMILLO:
Why, if they would petition to the Pope
I see not how he could refuse it--yet
He holds it of most dangerous example
In aught to weaken the paternal power, _55
Being, as 'twere, the shadow of his own.
I pray you now excuse me. I have business
That will not bear delay.

[EXIT CAMILLO. ]

GIACOMO:
But you, Orsino,
Have the petition: wherefore not present it?

ORSINO:
I have presented it, and backed it with _60
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;
It was returned unanswered. I doubt not
But that the strange and execrable deeds
Alleged in it--in truth they might well baffle
Any belief--have turned the Pope's displeasure _65
Upon the accusers from the criminal:
So I should guess from what Camillo said.

GIACOMO:
My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
Has whispered silence to his Holiness:
And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. _70
What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
For he who is our murderous persecutor
Is shielded by a father's holy name,
Or I would--

[STOPS ABRUPTLY. ]

ORSINO:
What? Fear not to speak your thought.
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover: _75
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
A father who is all a tyrant seems, _80
Were the profaner for his sacred name.

NOTE:
_77 makes Truth edition 1821; makes the truth editions 1819, 1839.

GIACOMO:
Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
Imagination with such fantasies
As the tongue dares not fashion into words, _85
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
To the mind's eye. --My heart denies itself
To think what you demand.

ORSINO:
But a friend's bosom
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, _90
And from the all-communicating air.
You look what I suspected--

GIACOMO:
Spare me now!
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
The path across the wilderness, lest he, _95
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 _105
To feed his hope with cold encouragement:
It fortunately serves my close designs
That 'tis a trick of this same family
To analyse 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, _115
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 _125
And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives
His daughter's dowry were a secret grave
If a priest wins her. --Oh, 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, _135
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 _145
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, _155
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. ]

END OF ACT 2.


ACT 3.

SCENE 3.
1:
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; 'tis only a cold dew
That starts from your dear brow. --Alas! Alas! _5
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 vapours such as the dead breathe _15
In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me. . . 'tis 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! _25
[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?
'Tis gone; and yet its burthen 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 its cause; suffering has dried away _35
The source from which it sprung. . .

BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]:
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; _45
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 wide 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 _55
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 life,
Never to change, never to pass away.
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. _65
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? _75
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:
'Tis the restless life
Tortured within them. If I try to speak, _85
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, _95
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 _105
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, _115
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. . . _125
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:--O! In this mortal world
There is no vindication and no law _135
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.

NOTE:
_140 nor edition 1821; or editions 1819, 1839 (1st).

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, _145
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, _155
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 mouthed 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 _165
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 _175
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? _185
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? O 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? _195
If there were any way to make all sure,
I know not. . . but I think it might be good
To. . .