Jul. Conduct him in.
Roderigo enters as a herald.
A messenger of peace! audacious man!
In what attire appearest thou? a herald’s?
Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.
Rod. Thy violence and fancied wrongs I know,
And what thy sacrilegious hands would do,
O traitor and apostate!
Jul. What they would
They cannot: thee of kingdom and of life
’Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,
Thyself the violator of allegiance.
Oh would all-righteous Heaven they could restore
The joy of innocence, the calm of age,
The probity of manhood, pride of arms,
And confidence of honour! the august
And holy laws trampled beneath thy feet.
And Spain! O parent, I have lost thee too!
Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,
Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe,
Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,
Sublime in hardihood and piety:
Her strength was mine: I, sailing by her cliffs,
By promontory after promontory,
Opening like flags along some castle-towers,
Have sworn before the cross upon our mast
Ne’er shall invader wave his standard there.
Rod. Yet there thou plantest it, false man, thyself.
Jul. Accursed he who makes me this reproach,
And made it just! Had I been happy still,
I had been blameless: I had died with glory
Upon the walls of Ceuta.
Rod. Which thy treason
Surrendered to the Infidel.
Jul. ’Tis hard
And base to live beneath a conqueror:
Yet, amid all this grief and infamy,
’Twere something to have rushed upon the ranks
In their advance; ’twere something to have stood
Defeat, discomfiture; and, when around
No beacon blazes, no far axle groans
Through the wide plain, no sound of sustenance
Or succour soothes the still-believing ear,
To fight upon the last dismantled tower,
And yield to valour, if we yield at all.
But rather should my neck lie trampled down
By every Saracen and Moor on earth,
Than my own country see her laws o’erturned
By those who should protect them: Sir, no prince
Shall ruin Spain; and, least of all, her own.
Is any just or glorious act in view,
Your oaths forbid it: is your avarice,
Or, if there be such, any viler passion,
To have its giddy range, and to be gorged,
It rises over all your sacraments,
A hooded mystery, holier than they all.
Rod. Hear me, Don Julian; I have heard thy wrath
Who am thy king, nor heard man’s wrath before.