Fulvia: To save you the mad blot
Of a son's blood.
Charles: Antonio——?
Fulvia: Lives!
Charles: Low—low——
Joy come too furious has piercing peril.
He lives?—You have done this? With these soft hands,
These little hands, held off the shears of Fate?
Have dared? and have not feared?
Fulvia: Your danger was
My fear—that, and no more.
Charles: He lives?—I have
No worth, no gratitude, no gift that may
Answer this deed—no glow, no eloquence
But would ring poor in rarest words of earth.
He lives?—Years yet are mine. Too brief they'll be
To muse with love of this!
Fulvia: No, no, my lord.
Charles: But where is he? Belief, tho' risen, strains
In me as if 'twere fast in cerements
That seeing must unbind.
Fulvia: Turn then, and see.
(Antonio steps from the curtains.)