ACT III
Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the hanging gardens in the DUKE'S apartments. It is the first warm night of Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out that day, and fill the air with fragrance. Terraces and flights of steps; in the background the dark mass of the palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and there a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the principal yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep blue of the sky. In the course of the scene, the moon gradually emerges from behind a group of poplars on the opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built. During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, with, only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a very distant thrum of mandolines.—The DUKE and DIEGO are walking up and down the terrace.
DUKE
Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that labyrinth which I have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, but well suited, methinks, to blue and gold, upon the ceiling of my new music room. And wouldst have asked, I fancy, as many have done, the hidden meaning of the device surrounding it.—I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and perhaps forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another ailment of thy poor sick master; another of those odd ungracious moods with which, kindest of healing creatures, thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I have often wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some mysterious fashion, I seem myself once more,—able to do my judgment's bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my own past. My strange sickness, which thou hast cured, melting its mists away with thy beneficent music even as the sun penetrates and sucks away the fogs of dawn from our lakes—my sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight from Barbary; the horror, perhaps, of that shipwreck which cast me (so they say, for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian coast——these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm Crusader,—had somehow played strange havoc with my will and recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was this same man, myself.
The DUKE pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the long reflections of the big stars in the water.
But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself.
DIEGO'S face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone dreadful convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for breath before answering; but when he does so, controls his voice into its usual rather artificially cadenced tone.
DIEGO
And now, dear Master, you can recollect——all?