FAITHFUL PRINCE [To the EMPRESS]
I venture to suggest to your Majesty that it might be better perhaps to imprison these men in a dungeon. We do not know who they are, nor of how great importance in the eyes of the enemy. What secrets might we not indeed extract from these two!——
EMPRESS
What! After what they have done, you would have them see the light of another day?——remember that they have dared to lay a hand on the sacred person of him in whom lives all our hope; they have bruised his neck, frail as a stem of a flower. To kidnap him as hostage, they said! How do I know that they did not rather mean to kill my child.
ALL
Death! Death!
EMPRESS
Yes, death! And have them thrown to the beasts that eat dead bodies. Their graves will be the maws of crows and dogs. At once!
[The FAITHFUL PRINCE gives a signal, and the condemned prisoners are lifted to their feet.]
FIRST SPY