BERNARDO:
Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst _15
I stand considering what I have to say
My heart will break.
BEATRICE:
See now, thou mak’st me weep:
How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,
If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.
BERNARDO:
They have confessed; they could endure no more _20
The tortures…
BEATRICE:
Ha! What was there to confess?
They must have told some weak and wicked lie
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said
That they were guilty? O white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide _25
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!
[ENTER JUDGE WITH LUCRETIA AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]
Ignoble hearts!
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust? _30
And that eternal honour which should live
Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,
Changed to a mockery and a byword? What!
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
At horses’ heels, so that our hair should sweep _35
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,
Who, that they may make our calamity
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
The churches and the theatres as void
As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude _40
Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity,
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,
Upon us as we pass to pass away,
And leave…what memory of our having been?
Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou, _45
Who wert a mother to the parentless,
Kill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee!
Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
And let us each be silent as a corpse;
It soon will be as soft as any grave. _50
’Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear
Makes the rack cruel.
GIACOMO:
They will tear the truth
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains:
For pity’s sake say thou art guilty now.
LUCRETIA:
Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die; _55
And after death, God is our judge, not they;
He will have mercy on us.
BERNARDO:
If indeed
It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;
And then the Pope will surely pardon you,
And all be well.
JUDGE:
Confess, or I will warp _60
Your limbs with such keen tortures…
BEATRICE:
Tortures! Turn
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!
Torture your dog, that he may tell when last
He lapped the blood his master shed…not me!
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, _65
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall
To see, in this ill world where none are true,
My kindred false to their deserted selves.
And with considering all the wretched life _70
Which I have lived, and its now wretched end,
And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth
To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,
And what slaves these; and what a world we make,
The oppressor and the oppressed…such pangs compel _75
My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?
JUDGE:
Art thou not guilty of thy father’s death?