DON GARCILASO.
For league with France, for favours from a foe,
For contract with your country’s enemies.
Most hotly I protest.
[To the Cardinals.] This renegade,
If you will yield him to such infamy,
Will still go on from false to false, forswearing
His worldly obligations, as through you
He would forswear his pledges to his God.
The old alliances that prop this Chair—
Naples and Spain—are mute, and all the parley
With France. Take heed, take heed, my good lord Cardinals,
How you raise up a Princedom.
CESARE.
[Turning his back on Garcilaso.] But more humbly
I make petition. How the world esteems me,
How slander rates me, when I am once unfrocked
I will answer to the world. You were my peers,
You are my judges, and from you I ask
Simply for mercy. Of too great indulgence.
I was admitted to your fair assemblage.
Open the door!
DON GARCILASO.
He blazes as a god.
Look, he is trembling! This humility
Is nothing. He who says he cannot play
The hypocrite is hypocrite in full,
And plotting for his patron.
CESARE.
That is very truth:
There, my Lord Cardinals, the word is just.
I am plotting for my patron, for my sole,
My unique benefactor.
[Raising and kissing the hem of the Pope’s robe.
In this habit
I cannot serve His Holiness, whose creature
I am, and all my faculties acute,
Conjoined to serve him. I was born a soldier,
Beckoned to war, and pointed to redemption—
By steel, not holy water—of those lands
Bedevilled, once the Church’s heritage.
’Tis as a Captain
I speak and of my nature. Give me freedom,
A little time ... the rest His Holiness
Shall publish to you of my wars and fortune.