Act 1

SCENE 1.1:

CAMILLO:That matter of the murder is hushed upIf you consent to yield his HolinessYour fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.--It needed all my interest in the conclaveTo bend him to this point; he said that youBought perilous impunity with your gold;That crimes like yours if once or twice compoundedEnriched the Church, and respited from hellAn erring soul which might repent and live: --But that the glory and the interestOf the high throne he fills, little consistWith making it a daily mart of guiltAs manifold and hideous as the deedsWhich you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.

CENCI:The third of my possessions--let it go!Ay, I once heard the nephew of the PopeHad sent his architect to view the ground,Meaning to build a villa on my vinesThe next time I compounded with his uncle:I little thought he should outwit me so!Henceforth no witness--not the lamp--shall seeThat which the vassal threatened to divulgeWhose throat is choked with dust for his reward.The deed he saw could not have rated higherThan his most worthless life:--it angers me!Respited me from Hell! So may the DevilRespite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement,And his most charitable nephews, prayThat the Apostle Peter and the SaintsWill grant for their sake that I long enjoyStrength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of daysWherein to act the deeds which are the stewardsOf their revenue.--But much yet remainsTo which they show no title.

CAMILLO:Oh, Count Cenci!So much that thou mightst honourably liveAnd reconcile thyself with thine own heartAnd with thy God, and with the offended world.How hideously look deeds of lust and bloodThrough those snow white and venerable hairs!--Your children should be sitting round you now,But that you fear to read upon their looksThe shame and misery you have written there.Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things elseBeauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.Why is she barred from all societyBut her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?Talk with me, Count,--you know I mean you well.I stood beside your dark and fiery youthWatching its bold and bad career, as menWatch meteors, but it vanished not--I markedYour desperate and remorseless manhood; nowDo I behold you in dishonoured ageCharged with a thousand unrepented crimes.Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,And in that hope have saved your life three times.

CENCI:For which Aldobrandino owes you nowMy fief beyond the Pincian.--Cardinal,One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,And so we shall converse with less restraint.A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter--He was accustomed to frequent my house;So the next day HIS wife and daughter cameAnd asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:I think they never saw him any more.

CAMILLO:Thou execrable man, beware!--

CENCI:Of thee?Nay, this is idle: --We should know each other.As to my character for what men call crimeSeeing I please my senses as I list,And vindicate that right with force or guile,It is a public matter, and I care notIf I discuss it with you. I may speakAlike to you and my own conscious heart--For you give out that you have half reformed me,Therefore strong vanity will keep you silentIf fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.All men delight in sensual luxury,All men enjoy revenge; and most exultOver the tortures they can never feel--Flattering their secret peace with others' pain.But I delight in nothing else. I loveThe sight of agony, and the sense of joy,When this shall be another's, and that mine.And I have no remorse and little fear,Which are, I think, the checks of other men.This mood has grown upon me, until nowAny design my captious fancy makesThe picture of its wish, and it forms noneBut such as men like you would start to know,Is as my natural food and rest debarredUntil it be accomplished.

CAMILLO:Art thou notMost miserable?

CENCI:Why miserable?--No.--I am what your theologians callHardened;--which they must be in impudence,So to revile a man's peculiar taste.True, I was happier than I am, while yetManhood remained to act the thing I thought;While lust was sweeter than revenge; and nowInvention palls:--Ay, we must all grow old--And but that there remains a deed to actWhose horror might make sharp an appetiteDuller than mine--I'd do,--I know not what.When I was young I thought of nothing elseBut pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,And I grew tired:--yet, till I killed a foe,And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans,Knew I not what delight was else on earth,Which now delights me little. I the ratherLook on such pangs as terror ill conceals,The dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip,Which tell me that the spirit weeps withinTears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.I rarely kill the body, which preserves,Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,Wherein I feed it with the breath of fearFor hourly pain.

CAMILLO:Hell's most abandoned fiendDid never, in the drunkenness of guilt,Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;I thank my God that I believe you not.

ANDREA:My Lord, a gentleman from SalamancaWould speak with you.

CENCI:Bid him attend meIn the grand saloon.

CAMILLO:Farewell; and I will prayAlmighty God that thy false, impious wordsTempt not his spirit to abandon thee.

CENCI:The third of my possessions! I must useClose husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword,Falls from my withered hand. But yesterdayThere came an order from the Pope to makeFourfold provision for my cursed sons;Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,Hoping some accident might cut them off;And meaning if I could to starve them there.I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!Bernardo and my wife could not be worseIf dead and damned:--then, as to Beatrice--I think they cannot hear me at that door;What if they should? And yet I need not speakThough the heart triumphs with itself in words.O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hearWhat now I think! Thou, pavement, which I treadTowards her chamber,--let your echoes talkOf my imperious step scorning surprise,But not of my intent!--Andrea!

ANDREA:My lord?

CENCI:Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamberThis evening:--no, at midnight and alone.

SCENE 1.2:

BEATRICE:Pervert not truth,Orsino. You remember where we heldThat conversation;--nay, we see the spotEven from this cypress;--two long years are pastSince, on an April midnight, underneathThe moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,I did confess to you my secret mind.

ORSINO:You said you loved me then.

BEATRICE:You are a Priest.Speak to me not of love.

ORSINO:I may obtainThe dispensation of the Pope to marry.Because I am a Priest do you believeYour image, as the hunter some struck deer,Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?

BEATRICE:As I have said, speak to me not of love;Had you a dispensation I have not;Nor will I leave this home of miseryWhilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle ladyTo whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,Must suffer what I still have strength to share.Alas, Orsino! All the love that onceI felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.Ours was a youthful contract, which you firstBroke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.And thus I love you still, but holily,Even as a sister or a spirit might;And so I swear a cold fidelity.And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.You have a sly, equivocating veinThat suits me not.--Ah, wretched that I am!Where shall I turn? Even now you look on meAs you were not my friend, and as if youDiscovered that I thought so, with false smilesMaking my true suspicion seem your wrong.Ah, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seemSterner than else my nature might have been;I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,And they forebode,--but what can they forebodeWorse than I now endure?

ORSINO:All will be well.Is the petition yet prepared? You knowMy zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;Doubt not but I will use my utmost skillSo that the Pope attend to your complaint.

BEATRICE:Your zeal for all I wish;--Ah me, you are cold!Your utmost skill...speak but one word...Alas!Weak and deserted creature that I am,Here I stand bickering with my only friend!This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,Orsino; he has heard some happy newsFrom Salamanca, from my brothers there,And with this outward show of love he mocksHis inward hate. 'Tis bold hypocrisy,For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:Great God! that such a father should be mine!But there is mighty preparation made,And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,And all the chief nobility of Rome.And he has bidden me and my pale MotherAttire ourselves in festival array.Poor lady! She expects some happy changeIn his dark spirit from this act; I none.At supper I will give you the petition:Till when--farewell.

ORSINO:Farewell.I know the PopeWill ne'er absolve me from my priestly vowBut by absolving me from the revenueOf many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,I think to win thee at an easier rate.Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:He might bestow her on some poor relationOf his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,And I should be debarred from all access.Then as to what she suffers from her father,In all this there is much exaggeration:--Old men are testy and will have their way;A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,And live a free life as to wine or women,And with a peevish temper may returnTo a dull home, and rate his wife and children;Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.I shall be well content if on my conscienceThere rest no heavier sin than what they sufferFrom the devices of my love--a netFrom which he shall escape not. Yet I fearHer subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerveAnd lay me bare, and make me blush to seeMy hidden thoughts.--Ah, no! A friendless girlWho clings to me, as to her only hope:--I were a fool, not less than if a pantherWere panic-stricken by the antelope's eye,If she escape me.

SCENE 1.3:

CENCI:Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,Whose presence honours our festivity.I have too long lived like an anchorite,And in my absence from your merry meetingsAn evil word is gone abroad of me;But I do hope that you, my noble friends,When you have shared the entertainment here,And heard the pious cause for which 'tis given,And we have pledged a health or two together,Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.

FIRST GUEST:In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,Too sprightly and companionable a man,To act the deeds that rumour pins on you.I never saw such blithe and open cheerIn any eye!

Some most desired event,In which we all demand a common joy,Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.

CENCI:It is indeed a most desired event.If when a parent from a parent's heartLifts from this earth to the great Father of allA prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,And when he rises up from dreaming it;One supplication, one desire, one hope,That he would grant a wish for his two sons,Even all that he demands in their regard--And suddenly beyond his dearest hopeIt is accomplished, he should then rejoice,And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,And task their love to grace his merriment,--Then honour me thus far--for I am he.

Great God! How horrible! some dreadful illMust have befallen my brothers.

LUCRETIA:Fear not, child,He speaks too frankly.

BEATRICE:Ah! My blood runs cold.I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.

CENCI:Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;Beatrice, read them to your mother. God!I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.My disobedient and rebellious sonsAre dead!--Why, dead!--What means this change of cheer?You hear me not, I tell you they are dead;And they will need no food or raiment more:The tapers that did light them the dark wayAre their last cost. The Pope, I think, will notExpect I should maintain them in their coffins.Rejoice with me--my heart is wondrous glad.BEATRICE :It is not true!--Dear Lady, pray look up.Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven,He would not live to boast of such a boon.Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.

CENCI:Ay, as the word of God; whom here I callTo witness that I speak the sober truth;--And whose most favouring Providence was shownEven in the manner of their deaths. For RoccoWas kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy,The rest escaped unhurt. CristofanoWas stabbed in error by a jealous man,Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;All in the self-same hour of the same night;Which shows that Heaven has special care of me.I beg those friends who love me, that they markThe day a feast upon their calendars.It was the twenty-seventh of December:Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.

FIRST GUEST:Oh, horrible! I will depart--