There creeps

A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me 't is substantial, heavy, thick, I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My fingers and my limbs to one another, And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning

The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!

My God! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! (More wildly.) No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs

Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul,

Which would burst forth into the wandering air!

(A pause.) What hideous thought was that I had even now?

'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here

O'er these dull eyes-upon this weary heart!

O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!

Lucr. My dearest child, what has your father done?

Beatr. (Doubtfully.) Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.

(Aside.) She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,

It is a piteous office. (To Lucretia, in a slow, subdued voice.) Do you know

I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales

From hall to hall by the entangled hair; At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves

her there,

Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story

So did I overact in my sick dreams, That I imagined-no, it cannot be! Horrible things have been in this wild world,

Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange

Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived

Than ever there was found a heart to do.
But never fancy imaged such a deed
As-

(Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself.)

Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemestMother!

Who tortured me from my forgotten years,

As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!-Oh, what am I?

What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?

What retrospects, outliving even despair? Lucr. 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 done

Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth

A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,

Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine

With one another. Beatr.

'Tis the restless life If I try to speak,

Tortured within them.

I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;

What, yet I know not-something which

Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost

child,

Hide not in proud impenetrable grief
Thy sufferings from my fear.

Beatr.
I hide them not.
What are the words which you would
have me speak?

I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me: I, ||
whose thought

Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up
In its own formless horror: of all words.
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is
none to tell

My misery; if another ever knew
Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death! Death! Our law and our re-

Beatr.

Ay, deathThe punishment of crime. I pray thee,

God,

the secret

Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay
all bare,

So that my unpolluted fame should be
With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;
A mock, a bye-word, 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;
Searce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt
In hideous hints-Oh, most assured
redress!

Ors. You will endure it then?
Beatr.

Endure! Orsino, It seems your counsel is small profit. (Turns from him, and speaks half to herself.) Ay,

All must be suddenly resolved and done
What is this undistinguishable mist
Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after
shadow,

Darkening each other?

Ors.

Should the offender live? Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by

use,

His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,

And all the fit restraints of daily life, Which have been borne from childhood, but which now

Would be a mockery to my holier plea.
As I have said, I have endured a wrong,
Which, though it be expressionless, is
such

As asks atonement, both for what is past,
And lest I be reserved, day after day,
To load with crimes an overburthened
soul,

And be what ye can dream not. I have prayed

To God, and I have talked with my own heart,

And have unravelled my entangled will, And have at length determined what is

Crosses a deep ravine; 't is rough and narrow,

And winds with short turns down the precipice;

And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulph, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming
down;

Even as a wretched soul hour after hour, Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;

And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss

In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag,

Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns; below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent

Raging among the caverns, and a bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above there

Does my destroyer know his danger? We

Are now no more, as once, parent and child,

But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;

The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe.

He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,

And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;

And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;

I ask not happy years; nor memories Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;

Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more;

But only my fair fame; only one hoard Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,

Under the penury heaped on me by thee; Or I will God can understand and pardon,

Be calm, dear friend.

Why should I speak with man?
Ors.
Giac. Well, I will calmly tell you what he
did.

This old Francesco Cenci, as you know,
Borrowed the dowry of my wife from

me,

And then denied the loan; and left me

SO

In poverty, the which I sought to mend
By holding a poor office in the state.
It had been promised to me, and already
I bought new clothing for my ragged
babes,

And my wife smiled; and my heart knew

repose;

When Cenci's intercession, as I found, Conferred this office on a wretch, whom

thus

He paid for vilest service. I returned With this ill news, and we sate sad together

Solacing our despondency with tears
Of such affection and unbroken faith
As temper life's worst bitterness; when
he,

As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,
Mocking our poverty, and telling us

Such was God's scourge for disobedient

sons.

And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame,

I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he coined

A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted

The sum in secret riot; and he saw

My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.

And when I knew the impression he had made,

And felt my wife insult with silent scorn My ardent truth, and look averse and cold,

I went forth too: but soon returned again;

Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught

My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried,

"Give us clothes, father! Give us better food!

What you in one night squander were enough

For months!" I looked, and saw that

home was hell;