BEATRICE [SHE ENTERS STAGGERING AND SPEAKS WILDLY]:
Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt;
My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me…
I see but indistinctly…
LUCRETIA:
My sweet child,
You have no wound; ’tis only a cold dew
That starts from your dear brow.—Alas! Alas! _5
What has befallen?
BEATRICE:
How comes this hair undone?
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
And yet I tied it fast.—Oh, horrible!
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, _10
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
Slide giddily as the world reels…My God!
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe _15
In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me…’tis substantial, heavy, thick,
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another, _20
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! _25
[MORE WILDLY.]
No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air!
[A PAUSE.]
What hideous thought was that I had even now?
’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here _30
O’er these dull eyes…upon this weary heart!
O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
LUCRETIA:
What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not:
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
But not its cause; suffering has dried away _35
The source from which it sprung…
BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]:
Like Parricide…
Misery has killed its father: yet its father
Never like mine…O, God! What thing am I?
LUCRETIA:
My dearest child, what has your father done?
BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]:
Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. _40
[ASIDE.]
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.]
Do you know
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
From hall to hall by the entangled hair; _45
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams,
That I imagined…no, it cannot be! _50
Horrible things have been in this wide world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do.
But never fancy imaged such a deed _55
As…
[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.]
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest…Mother!
LUCRETIA:
Oh!
My sweet child, know you…
BEATRICE:
Yet speak it not:
For then if this be truth, that other too _60
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
Never to change, never to pass away.
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. _65
I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
I am…
[HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]
LUCRETIA:
Alas! What has befallen thee, child?
What has thy father done?