Isa. Takest thou delight to torture misery? 150
Such mercy find thou in the day of doom.
Soul. My lord, here is a holy friar desires
To have some conference with the prisoners.
Enter Roberto, Count of Cyprus, in friar’s weeds.
Rob. It is in private, what I have to say,
With favour of your fatherhood.
Car. Friar, in God’s name, welcome.
[Roberto ascends to Isabella.
Rob. Lady, it seems your eye is still the same—
Forgetful of what most it should behold.
Do not you know me, then?
Isa. Holy sir,
So far you are gone from my memory, 160
I must take truce with time ere I can know you.
Rob. Bear record, all you blessèd saints in heaven,
I come not to torment thee in thy death;
For of himself he’s terrible enough.
But call to mind a lady like yourself;
And think how ill in such a beauteous soul,
Upon the instant morrow of her nuptials,
Apostasy and vild revolt would show:
Withal imagine that she had a lord,
Jealous the air should ravish her chaste looks:[311] 170
Doting like the creator in his models,
Who views them every minute, and with care
Mix’d in his fear of their obedience to him.
Suppose he[r] sung through famous Italy,
More common than the looser songs of Petrarch,
To every several zany’s instrument;
And he, poor wretch, hoping some better fate
Might call her back from her adulterate purpose,
Lives in obscure and almost unknown life,
Till hearing that she is condemn’d to die— 180
For he once loved her—lends his pinèd corpse
Motion to bring him to her stage of honour,
Where drown’d in woe at her so dismal chance,
He clasps her: thus he falls into a trance.