Escarpin (aside).
Ah! if beautiful Daria
Would but favour my attachment,
Though I have no house to give her,
Lots of stories I can grant her:— [Exeunt Escarpin and servants.
Claudius.
Now, my lord, we are alone.
Polemius.
Listen then; for though to baffle
Thy desire were my intention,
By my miseries overmastered,
I am forced to tell my secret;
Not so much have I been granted
License to avow my sufferings,
But I am, as 't were commanded
Thus to break my painful silence,
Doing honestly, though sadly,
Willingly the fact disclosing,
Which by force had been extracted.
Hear it, Claudius: my Chrysanthus,
My Chrysanthus is not absent:
In this very house he 's living!—
Would the gods, ah! me, had rather
Made a tomb and not a prison
Of his present locked apartment!
Which is in this house, within it
Is he prisoned, chained, made captive.
This surprises thee, no wonder:
More surprised thou 'lt be hereafter,
When thou com'st to know the reason
Of a fact so strange and startling.
On that fatal day, when I
Sought the mount and thou the garden,
Him I found where thou didst lose him,
Near the wood where he had rambled:
He was taken by my soldiers
At the entrance of a cavern,
With Carpophorus:—oh! here
Patience, patience may heaven grant me!—
It was lucky that they did not
See his face, for thus it happened
That the front of my dishonour
Was not in his face made patent:
Him they captured without knowing
Who he was, it being commanded
That the faces of the prisoners
Should be covered, but ere captured
This effectually was done
By themselves, they flying backward
With averted faces; he
Thus was taken, but his partner,
That strange prodigy of Rome—
Man in mind, wild beast in manners,
Doubly thus a prodigy—
Saved himself by power of magic.
Thus Chrysanthus was sole prisoner,
While the Christian crowd, disheartened,
Fled for safety to the mountains
From their grottoes and their caverns.
These the soldiers quickly followed,
And behind in that abandoned
Savage place remained but two—
Two, oh! think, a son and father.—
One a judge, too, in a cause
Wicked, bad, beyond example,
In a cause that outraged Cæsar,
And the gods themselves disparaged.
There with a delinquent son
Stood I, therefore this should happen,
That both clemency and rigour
In my heart waged fearful battle—
Clemency in fine had won,
I would have removed the bandage
From his eyes and let him fly,
But that instant, ah! unhappy!
Came the soldiers back, and then
It were but more misery added,
If they knew of my connivance:
All that then my care could manage
To protect him was the secret
Of his name to keep well guarded.
Thus to Rome I brought him prisoner,
Where pretending great exactness,
That his friends should not discover
Where this Christian malefactor
Was imprisoned, to this house,
To my own house, I commanded
That he should be brought; there hidden
And unknown, a few days after
I in his place substituted . . .
Ah! what will not the untrammelled
Strength of arbitrary power
Dare attempt? what law not trample?
Substituted, I repeat,
For my son a slave, whose strangled,
Headless corse thus paid the debt
Which from me were else exacted.
You will say, "Since fortune thus
Has the debt so happily cancelled,
Why imprison or conceal him?"—
And, thus, full of doubts, I answer
That though it is true I wished not,
Woe is me! the common scaffold
Should his punishment make public,
I as little wished his hardened
Heart should know my love and pity
Since it did not fear my anger:
Ah! believe me, Claudius,
'Twixt the chastisement a father
And an executioner gives,
A great difference must be granted:
One hand honours what it striketh,
One disgraces, blights, and blackens.
Soon my rigour ceased, for truly,
In a father's heart it lasteth
Seldom long: but then what wonder,
If the hand that in its anger
Smites his son, in his own breast
Leaves a wound that ever rankles—
I one day his prison entered
With the wish (I own it frankly)
To forgive him, and when I
Thought he would have even thanked me
For receiving a reproof,
Not severe, too lenient rather,
He began to praise the Christians
With such earnestness and ardour,
In defence of their new law,
That my clemency departed,
And my angrier mood returned.
I his doors and windows fastened.
In the room where he is lying,
Well secured by gyves and shackles,
Sparingly his food is given him,
Through my hands alone it passes,
For I dare not to another
Trust the care his state demandeth.
You will think in this I reached to
The extreme of my disasters—
The full limits of misfortune,
But not so, and if you hearken,
You 'll perceive they 're but beginning,
And not ended, as you fancied.
All these strange events so much
Have unnerved him and unmanned him,
That, forgetful of himself,
Of himself he is regardless.
Nothing to the purpose speaks he.
In his incoherent language
Frenzy shows itself, delusion
In his thoughts and in his fancies:—
Many times I 've listened to him,
Since so high-strung and abstracted
Is his mind, he takes no note of
Who goes in or who departeth.
Once I heard him deprecating
Some despotic beauty's hardness,
Saying, "Since I die for thee,
Thou thy favour sure wilt grant me".
At another time he said,
"Three in one, oh! how can that be?"
Things which these same Christian people
In their law hold quite established.
Thus it is my life is troubled,
Lost in doubts, emeshed, and tangled.
If to freedom I restore him,
I have little doubt that, darkened
By the Christian treachery, he
Will declare himself instanter
Openly a Christian, which
Would to me be such a scandal,
That my blood henceforth were tainted,
And my noble name were branded.
If I leave him here in prison,
So excessive is his sadness,
So extreme his melancholy,
That I fear 't will end in madness.
In a word, I hold, my nephew,
Hold it as a certain axiom,
That these dark magician Christians
Keep him bound by their enchantments;
Who through hatred of my house,
And my office to disparage,
Now revenge themselves on me
Through my only son Chrysanthus.
Tell me, then, what shall I do;
But before you give the answer
Which your subtle wit may dictate,
I would with your own eyes have thee
See him first, you 'll then know better
What my urgent need demandeth.
Come, he 's not far off, his quarter
Is adjoining this apartment;
When you see him, I am certain
You will think it a disaster
Far less evil he should die,
Than that in this cruel manner
He should outrage his own blood,
And my bright escutcheon blacken.
[He opens a door, and Chrysanthus is seen seated in a chair, with his hands and feet in irons.]
Claudius.
Thus to see my friend, o'erwhelms me
With a grief I cannot master.
Polemius.
Stay, do not approach him nearer;
For I would not he remarked thee,
I would save him the disgrace
Of being seen by thee thus shackled.
Claudius.
What his misery may dictate
We can hear, nor yet attract him.
Chrysanthus.
Was ever human fate so strange as mine?
Were unmatched wishes ever mated so?