Charles Di Tocca - LightNovelsOnl.com
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CARDINAL: Fool! fool!
CHARLES: There are no wise men, O lord Cardinal.
CARDINAL: Heaven let Antonio's death under the sea Make every wave a tongue against your rest, And 'gainst the rock of this impenitence!
(_CHARLES listens as to something afar off._) No wind should blow that has not sting of it, No light stream that it stains not!
CHARLES (_sighing_): You have loosed Your robe, lord prelate--see.
CARDINAL: O stone! thou stone!
CHARLES: Have peace. A keener cry comes up to me Than frenzy can invoke: a vaster pain Than justice from Omnipotence may call.
CARDINAL: My lips shall learn it.
CHARLES: "Father" moans it. "Father!"---- It is my ears' inheritance forever.
_Enter FULVIA_
FULVIA: Lord Cardinal, one of your servants has In quarrel been struck, and mortally 'tis feared.
Quickly to him: then I may plead of you Escort to Rome.
CARDINAL: I do not understand.
FULVIA: But shall.
CARDINAL: To Rome?
FULVIA: Do not pause here to learn With the dear minutes of a dying man.
(_CARDINAL goes._
CHARLES: You baffle and bewilder.
FULVIA: Well.
CHARLES: You--?--Yes!
I am beat off by it.
FULVIA: Ten years of shelter Have you held over me.
CHARLES: Ten years----
FULVIA: Whose days, Whose every moment else had borne a torture.
CHARLES: Now----?
FULVIA: I, perhaps, must go.
CHARLES: Must?--Still I grope.
FULVIA: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calm And melancholy dusk no shadow is Or niche but may remember prayer for thee.
CHARLES: To Rome? You must?--I am under a spell.
FULVIA: We, thou and I, after the battle's foam Or chase's tired return, often have breathed The pa.s.sionate deep hours away in rest And sympathy.
CHARLES: Say on. Your voice--I marvel----
FULVIA: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slow With quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.
CHARLES: You go?--But, on!--your tone--in it I feel----
FULVIA: Have we not fast been friends?
CHARLES: What hath your voice?
FULVIA: Such friends have we not been as grow up from Eternity?
CHARLES: You say it, and I wake.
Fulvia: Such friends--till yesterday you----
CHARLES: Ah!
FULVIA: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.
CHARLES: I had forgot--forgot!--the sun!--the sea!
The sea!--Antonio!--The cliff--the surf!
The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!
FULVIA: Be calm.
CHARLES (_rising excitedly_): I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!
A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them, If he----
FULVIA (_drawing him to his chair_): Be patient--calm.
CHARLES: I--I--remember, 'Tis night!
FULVIA: Yes, night.
CHARLES: The sun's no more! It hath Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.
FULVIA: Beyond?--Ah!
CHARLES (_quickly_): Fulvia?
FULVIA: 'Tis hard to think!
