Act 3

SCENE 3.1:

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 dewThat starts from your dear brow.--Alas! Alas!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 wallsSpin round! I see a woman weeping there,And standing calm and motionless, whilst ISlide giddily as the world reels...My God!The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!The sunshine on the floor is black! The airIs changed to vapours such as the dead breatheIn charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creepsA clinging, black, contaminating mistAbout me...'tis substantial, heavy, thick,I cannot pluck it from me, for it gluesMy fingers and my limbs to one another,And eats into my sinews, and dissolvesMy flesh to a pollution, poisoningThe subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!My God! I never knew what the mad feltBefore; for I am mad beyond all doubt!No, I am dead! These putrefying limbsShut round and sepulchre the panting soulWhich would burst forth into the wandering air!What hideous thought was that I had even now?'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains hereO'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 awayThe source from which it sprung...

Like Parricide...Misery has killed its father: yet its fatherNever like mine...O, God! What thing am I?

LUCRETIA:My dearest child, what has your father done?

Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,It is a piteous office.Do you knowI thought I was that wretched BeatriceMen speak of, whom her father sometimes halesFrom hall to hall by the entangled hair;At others, pens up naked in damp cellsWhere scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful storySo did I overact in my sick dreams,That I imagined...no, it cannot be!Horrible things have been in this wide world,Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strangeOf good and ill; and worse have been conceivedThan ever there was found a heart to do.But never fancy imaged such a deedAs...Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I dieWith fearful expectation, that indeedThou 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 tooMust 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.I have talked some wild words, but will no more.Mother, come near me: from this point of time,I am...

LUCRETIA:Alas! What has befallen thee, child?What has thy father done?

BEATRICE:What have I done?Am I not innocent? Is it my crimeThat one with white hair, and imperious brow,Who tortured me from my forgotten years,As parents only dare, should call himselfMy father, yet should be!--Oh, what am I?What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?What retrospects, outliving even despair?

LUCRETIA:He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:We know that death alone can make us free;His death or ours. But what can he have doneOf deadlier outrage or worse injury?Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forthA wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twineWith one another.

BEATRICE:'Tis the restless lifeTortured within them. If I try to speak,I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;What, yet I know not...something which shall makeThe thing that I have suffered but a shadowIn the dread lightning which avenges it;Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroyingThe consequence of what it cannot cure.Some such thing is to be endured or done:When I know what, I shall be still and calm,And never anything will move me more.But now!--O blood, which art my father's blood,Circling through these contaminated veins,If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,Could wash away the crime, and punishmentBy which I suffer...no, that cannot be!Many might doubt there were a God aboveWho sees and permits evil, and so die:That faith no agony shall obscure in me.

LUCRETIA:It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,Hide not in proud impenetrable griefThy sufferings from my fear.

BEATRICE:I hide them not.What are the words which yon would have me speak?I, who can feign no image in my mindOf that which has transformed me: I, whose thoughtIs like a ghost shrouded and folded upIn its own formless horror: of all words,That minister to mortal intercourse,Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tellMy misery: if another ever knewAught like to it, she died as I will die,And left it, as I must, without a name.Death, Death! Our law and our religion call theeA punishment and a reward...Oh, whichHave I deserved?

LUCRETIA:The peace of innocence;Till in your season you be called to heaven.Whate'er you may have suffered, you have doneNo evil. Death must be the punishmentOf crime, or the reward of trampling downThe thorns which God has strewed upon the pathWhich leads to immortality.

BEATRICE:Ay, death...The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,Let me not be bewildered while I judge.If I must live day after day, and keepThese limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrestMay mock Thee, unavenged...it shall not be!Self-murder...no, that might be no escape,For Thy decree yawns like a Hell betweenOur will and it:--O! In this mortal worldThere is no vindication and no lawWhich can adjudge and execute the doomOf that through which I suffer.Welcome, Friend!I have to tell you that, since last we met,I have endured a wrong so great and strange,That neither life nor death can give me rest.Ask me not what it is, for there are deedsWhich have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.

ORSINO:And what is he who has thus injured you?

BEATRICE:The man they call my father: a dread name.

ORSINO:It cannot be...

BEATRICE:What it can be, or not,Forbear to think. It is, and it has been;Advise me how it shall not be again.I thought to die; but a religious aweRestrains me, and the dread lest death itselfMight be no refuge from the consciousnessOf what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!

ORSINO:Accuse him of the deed, and let the lawAvenge thee.

BEATRICE:Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!If I could find a word that might make knownThe crime of my destroyer; and that done,My tongue should like a knife tear out the secretWhich cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare,So that my unpolluted fame should beWith vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;A mock, a byword, an astonishment:--If this were done, which never shall be done,Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate,And the strange horror of the accuser's tale,Baffling belief, and overpowering speech;Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrappedIn hideous hints...Oh, most assured redress!

ORSINO:You will endure it then?

BEATRICE:Endure!--Orsino,It seems your counsel is small profit.Ay,All must be suddenly resolved and done.What is this undistinguishable mistOf thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,Darkening each other?

ORSINO:Should the offender live?Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,Thine element; until thou mayest becomeUtterly lost; subdued even to the hueOf that which thou permittest?

Mighty death!Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge!Rightfullest arbiter!

LUCRETIA:If the lightningOf God has e'er descended to avenge...

ORSINO:Blaspheme not! His high Providence commitsIts glory on this earth, and their own wrongsInto the hands of men; if they neglectTo punish crime...

LUCRETIA:But if one, like this wretch,Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power?If there be no appeal to that which makesThe guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs,For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous,Exceed all measure of belief? O God!If, for the very reasons which should makeRedress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?And we, the victims, bear worse punishmentThan that appointed for their torturer?

ORSINO:Think notBut that there is redress where there is wrong,So we be bold enough to seize it.

LUCRETIA:How?If there were any way to make all sure,I know not...but I think it might be goodTo...

ORSINO:Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;For it is such, as I but faintly guess,As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves herOnly one duty, how she may avenge:You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;Me, but one counsel...

LUCRETIA:For we cannot hopeThat aid, or retribution, or resourceWill arise thence, where every other oneMight find them with less need.