Marco. Yes (vehemently), pitied, insulted, and despised. Look at me now, surrounded with every luxury that art can invent and gold can purchase. Everybody bows to me. I am a queen. Divest me of these gilded claims to the world’s respect, and what am I? (Bitterly.) The dust—the friends who now follow my carriage, and fight for my smiles, will mock me, spurn me, and trample upon me.
Raph. Marco, Marco! in mercy—
Marco. I have known poverty, and have suffered such tortures in its hideous grasp that my heart sickens and my soul shudders at facing it again. You will perhaps laugh at my fear, and say there is happiness in poverty. (Laughing in scorn.) Yes, for those who are born to it; but to have known better days, and fall! Oh the misery, the heart-desolation, the despair! My father was rich and proud, the descendant of a noble family. He lived in splendor, and brought me up to despise every thing but wealth. He showed me its power: it surrounded him with friends and flatterers, and made life a perpetual summer. An evil day arrived: he speculated, and was reduced to his last crown. Where were his friends? (Laughing in scorn, and speaking in a hoarse voice.) They passed him in the street without recognition, they maligned, they despised, they forgot him. (Sinks into a chair, sobbing, and wiping her eyes.)
Raph. Forbear, Marco, forbear!
Marco. Ten years (oh, how long the days and months!) we lived in poverty,—abject, squalid, starving poverty. I saw my father in the prime of his life grow old, decrepit, and insane. In his ravings he had but one thought, “Money, money, money!” “Cling to it, my child,” he would say to me with glaring eyes and grinding teeth,—“cling to it, Marco, as you would to a raft in shipwreck: it is the all in all of our existence. See what the loss of it has brought to me. Let your heart be marble to every thing but gold, gold, gold!”
Raph. O misery!
Marco. My father died, and I was left dependent on the charity of my relations. (With savage scorn.) Charity! I wore their cast clothes, waited on their will,—their servant, their encumbrance, their hopeless slave. One happy day, Providence came to my relief: I was left a small fortune. (Rising.) From that moment I became a statue. The recollection of my days of misery extinguished the glowing impulses of my youth; and I lived on the surface of the world, mixing in all its gay pleasures, caressed and fêted, the idol of the hour, hating and despising the smiling monster, and devising means to secure my independence. A wealthy marriage was the only course; and for that I have devoted myself, heart and mind; for that I have been cruel, false, and pitiless; for that I am deaf to reproaches, dead to remorse. (Sits.)
Raph. (In amazement.) I hear you, Marco, and disbelieve my ears: I see you, and doubt my eyes. Those fearful words, those evil looks,—is it possible such hideousness can dwell in such a heavenly shrine? (Growing gradually frantic.) But I am glad, very glad, you have at last been candid with me: it relieves me from a world of sorrow, it rescues me from despair. Yet I hoped you had some regard for me, some little regret for—Ah, well! it was my accursed vanity. How could I ever hope to?— (Laughing hysterically, and speaking in a hoarse whisper.) I, too, am a deception: I have pretended to devote to you my heart, my life, my soul—no such thing! I, too, wore a mask—ha, ha, ha! When my eyes looked fondest, my heart was plotting treachery; when I swore you were my happiness, I felt you were my curse; when I vowed I could not live without you, I was devising means to break with you—ha, ha, ha! We owe each other nothing; we are both demons: but the comedy is over now, and the actors have returned to their every-day costumes and natures. I wish to be a gentleman, like Monsieur Veaudore. Mademoiselle Marco, I ask pardon for having annoyed you so long. I leave you to your pleasures. (He endeavors to kiss her hand; but she recoils, alarmed by the wildness of his tone and looks.) What do you fear? (With a burst of maniac laughter.) There is no venom on my lips: it is in my heart! (Kisses her hand.)
Marco. (Alarmed, trying to pacify him.) Come, come, Raphael, let us be friends.
Raph. (With a vacant stare.) Friends!—oh, yes! delighted! (Bowing with cold politeness, in the manner of his first introduction.) Mademoiselle Marco, I believe—beautiful, very beautiful, but (shaking his head mournfully) false, false, fatally false. (Sighing, and putting his hand to his head.) Ah, yes! and now we are friends (shaking both her hands, and looking at her earnestly),—yes, yes, real friends; for we no longer love, no longer deceive each other.