Scene VIII.
Claudia, Marinelli.
CLAUDIA.
Your master? (espies Marinelli, and starts). Ha! Is this your master? You here, Sir--and my daughter here--and you--you will conduct me to her?
MARINELLI.
With great pleasure, madam.
CLAUDIA.
Hold! It just occurs to me. It was you, I think, who visited Count Appiani this morning at my house,--whom I left alone with him,--and with whom he afterwards had a quarrel?
MARINELLI.
A quarrel? That I did not know. We had a trifling dispute respecting affairs of state.
CLAUDIA.
And your name is Marinelli?
MARINELLI.
The Marquis Marinelli.
CLAUDIA.
True. Hear, then, Marquis Marinelli. Your name, accompanied with a curse----but no--I will not wrong the noble man--the curse was inferred by myself--your name was the last word uttered by the dying Count.
MARINELLI.
The dying Count? Count Appiani?----You hear, Madam, what most surprises me in this your strange address--the dying Count?--What else you mean to imply, I know not.
CLAUDIA (with asperity, and in a deliberate tone).
Marinelli was the last word uttered by the dying Count.--Do you understand me now? I myself did not at first understand it, though it was spoken in a tone--a tone which I still hear. Where were my senses that I could not understand it instantly?
MARINELLI.
Well, Madam, I was always the Count's friend--his intimate friend. If, therefore, he pronounced my name at the hour of death----
CLAUDIA.
In that tone!--I cannot imitate--I cannot describe it--but it signified----everything. What! Were we attacked by robbers? No--by assassins--by hired assassins: and Marinelli was the last word uttered by the dying Count, in such a tone----
MARINELLI.
In such a tone? Did any one ever hear that a tone of voice used in a moment of terror could be a ground of accusation against an honest man?
CLAUDIA.
Oh that I could appear before a tribunal of justice, and imitate that tone? Yet, wretch that I am! I forget my daughter. Where is she--dead too? Was it my daughter's fault that Appiani was thy enemy?
MARINELLI.
I revere the mother's fears, and therefore pardon you.--Come, Madam. Your daughter is in an adjoining room, and I hope her alarms are by this time at an end. With the tenderest solicitude is the Prince himself employed in comforting her.
CLAUDIA.
Who?
MARINELLI.
The Prince.
CLAUDIA.
The Prince! Do you really say the Prince--our Prince?
MARINELLI.
Who else should it be?
CLAUDIA.
Wretched mother that I am!--And her father, her father! He will curse the day of her birth. He will curse me.
MARINELLI.
For Heaven's sake, Madam, what possesses you?
CLAUDIA.
It is clear. To-day--at church--before the eyes of the All-pure--in the presence of the Eternal, this scheme of villainy began. (To Marinelli.) Murderer! Mean, cowardly murderer! Thou wast not bold enough to meet him face to face, but base enough to bribe assassins that another might be gratified. Thou scum of murderers! honourable murderers would not endure thee in their company. Why may I not spit all my gall, all my rancour into thy face, thou panderer?
MARINELLI.
You rave, good woman. Moderate your voice, at any rate, and remember where you are.
CLAUDIA.
Where I am! Remember where I am! What cares the lioness, when robbed of her young, in whose forest she roars?
EMILIA (within).
Ha! My mother! I hear my mother's voice.
CLAUDIA.
Her voice? 'Tis she! She has heard me. Where are you, my child?--I come, I come (rushes into the room, followed by Marinelli).