DANIEL. What is your pleasure, my master?
FRANCIS. Nothing. Go, fill this goblet with wine, and quickly! (Exit DANIEL.) Wait a little, old man! I shall find you out! I will fix my eye upon you so keenly that your stricken conscience shall betray itself through your mask! He shall die! He is but a sorry bungler who leaves his work half finished, and then looks on idly, trusting to chance for what may come of it.
Enter DANIEL, with the wine.
Bring it here! Look me steadfastly in the face! How your knees knock together! How you tremble! Confess, old man! what have you been doing?
DANIEL. Nothing, my honored master, by heaven and my poor soul!
FRANCIS. Drink this wine! What? you hesitate? Out with it quickly! What have you put into the wine?
DANIEL. Heaven help me! What! I in the wine?
FRANCIS. You have poisoned it! Are you not as white as snow? Confess, confess! Who gave it you? The count? Is it not so? The count gave it you?
DANIEL. The count? Jesu Maria! The count has not given me anything.
FRANCIS (grasping him tight). I will throttle you till you are black in the face, you hoary-headed liar! Nothing? Why, then, are you so often closeted together? He, and you, and Amelia? And what are you always whispering about? Out with it! What secrets, eh? What secrets has he confided to you?