Burchard. I counted seven.
One mortal in the throat. His hands were tied.
Alexander [with a howl like a lion’s]. God, by God’s blood, my curse!
[He falls in a swoon.
One must not stop to analyse the play, or even this first act, completely. But one ought at least to indicate its extraordinary combination of subtlety with passion. In the scenes we have glanced at, the Pope passes from pole to pole of his nature. The poets have the difficult task of indicating this transit—;from vast sorrow and horror, through remorse and penitence, suspicion, wrath, and dread at the accusation laid against Cesare, to forgiveness, reconciliation, compliance, and even a compact with Giovanni’s murderer. In a cold historical statement one either finds these facts incredible, or is tempted to account for them, in Renaissance fashion, by believing the Borgia nature to have been something monstrous and unhuman. From the artistic standpoint such a transition would appear well-nigh impossible to represent convincingly. Yet it is done, and we never question that the thing really happened so. The means used to this end are often very quiet. By the lightest touches—;a broken phrase, an exclamation, or even a silence—;the poet will register the swiftly changing current of emotion. One cannot easily illustrate this by quotation; but an example occurs in a passage already quoted—;that in which the Pope, having seen a vision of Giovanni, is filled with remorse. It will be remembered that he rails against his children, and particularly Lucrezia. Yet two minutes afterward, when he inquires for her and is informed that she is praying in the convent, he murmurs “Sweet soul!”; and one sees his rage and remorse crumble, and the whole fabric of his penitence come toppling down. In touches like this the incredible is made to look only too easy to the ductile Borgia temperament. But they are often the merest hints, as in this tiny masterpiece, Scene 4. The papal Court is by this time seething with rumour. Suspicion has fallen upon one after another of the enemies of Giovanni; but within the innermost circle there is a whisper that Cesare was the murderer. It is this that has driven Lucrezia to her convent; but at midnight she creeps out and comes to Cesare:
Lucrezia. Madonna Adriana brought me here;
She stays without: I go back to the convent.
Cesare—;tell me all that I should pray.
Cesare [turning his head back towards her from
the couch]. Amanda, that your scruples be removed.
That I be Cesar.
Lucrezia. Take a little rest.
Cesare. Shall you, from prayer?
To-night you look a sibyl.
Who did this deed?
Lucrezia. Let Juan play the lute;
You must have music through these restless nights.
How lost you look!
Cesare. You startled me. How lost!
[He closes his eyes.
Lucrezia. He is dreaming; he has quite forgotten me.
Come, Adriana, soft! As an astronomer
He must not be disturbed: he is quite lost.
One leaves Borgia reluctantly, having done so much less than justice to it: nevertheless, it is refreshing to turn to Deirdre after an atmosphere so charged and tropical. Not that Deirdre is set on any lower plane of emotion, for it also deals with vast passions. But in this play we pass visibly to a more northerly latitude, to an austerer race and a more primitive age; and it is in an air swept clean by storm that the business of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind goes forward.