Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Cenci (Act 5 Scene 2) lyrics

SCENE 5.2: A HALL OF JUSTICE. CAMILLO, JUDGES, ETC., ARE DISCOVERED SEATED; MARZIO IS LED IN FIRST JUDGE: Accused, do you persist in your denial? I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty? I demand who were the participators In your offence? Speak truth, and the whole truth. MARZIO: My God! I did not k** him; I know nothing; Olimpio sold the robe to me from which You would infer my guilt. SECOND JUDGE: Away with him! FIRST JUDGE: Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner, That you would bandy lover's talk with it Till it wind out your life and soul? Away! MARZIO: Spare me! O, spare! I will confess. FIRST JUDGE: Then speak. MARZIO: I strangled him in his sleep. FIRST JUDGE: Who urged you to it? MARZIO: His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate Orsino sent me to Petrella; there The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I And my companion forthwith murdered him. Now let me die. FIRST JUDGE: This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, Lead forth the prisoner! [ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.] Look upon this man; When did you see him last? BEATRICE: We never saw him. MARZIO: You know me too well, Lady Beatrice. BEATRICE: I know thee! How? where? when? MARZIO: You know 'twas I Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes To k** your father. When the thing was done You clothed me in a robe of woven gold And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see. You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, You know that what I speak is true. [BEATRICE ADVANCES TOWARDS HIM; HE COVERS HIS FACE, AND SHRINKS BACK.] Oh, dart The terrible resentment of those eyes On the dead earth! Turn them away from me! They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My Lords, Having said this let me be led to d**h. BEATRICE: Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile. CAMILLO: Guards, lead him not away. BEATRICE: Cardinal Camillo, You have a good repute for gentleness And wisdom: can it be that you sit here To countenance a wicked farce like this? When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart And bade to answer, not as he believes, But as those may suspect or do desire Whose questions thence suggest their own reply: And that in peril of such hideous torments As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now The thing you surely know, which is that you, If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, And you were told: 'Confess that you did poison Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child Who was the lodestar of your life:'—and though All see, since his most swift and piteous d**h, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, And all the things hoped for or done therein Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief, Yet you would say, 'I confess anything:' And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, The refuge of dishonourable d**h. I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou a**ert My innocence. CAMILLO [MUCH MOVED]: What shall we think, my Lords? Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul That she is guiltless. JUDGE: Yet she must be tortured. CAMILLO: I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep) As that most perfect image of God's love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy! JUDGE: Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, If you forbid the rack. His Holiness Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime By the severest forms of law; nay even To stretch a point against the criminals. The prisoners stand accused of parricide Upon such evidence as justifies Torture. BEATRICE: What evidence? This man's? JUDGE: Even so. BEATRICE [TO MARZIO]: Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth Out of the multitude of living men To k** the innocent? MARZIO: I am Marzio, Thy father's va**al. BEATRICE: Fix thine eyes on mine; Answer to what I ask. [TURNING TO THE JUDGES.] I prithee mark His countenance: unlike bold calumny Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks, He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends His gaze on the blind earth. [TO MARZIO.] What! wilt thou say That I did murder my own father? MARZIO: Oh! Spare me! My brain swims round…I cannot speak… It was that horrid torture forced the truth. Take me away! Let her not look on me! I am a guilty miserable wretch; I have said all I know; now, let me die! BEATRICE: My Lords, if by my nature I had been So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged, Which your suspicions dictate to this slave, And the rack makes him utter, do you think I should have left this two-edged instrument Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife With my own name engraven on the heft, Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, For my own d**h? That with such horrible need For deepest silence, I should have neglected So trivial a precaution, as the making His tomb the keeper of a secret written On a thief's memory? What is his poor life? What are a thousand lives? A parricide Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives! [TURNING TO MARZIO.] And thou… MARZIO: Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more! That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, Wound worse than torture. [TO THE JUDGES.] I have told it all; For pity's sake lead me away to d**h. CAMILLO: Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice; He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf From the keen breath of the serenest north. BEATRICE: O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge Of life and d**h, pause ere thou answerest me; So mayst thou answer God with less dismay: What evil have we done thee? I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years, And so my lot was ordered, that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul; And my untainted fame; and even that peace Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart; But the wound was not mortal; so my hate Became the only worship I could lift To our great father, who in pity and love, Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off; And thus his wrong becomes my accusation; And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth: Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart. If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path Over the trampled laws of God and man, Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 'My maker, I have done this and more; for there was one Who was most pure and innocent on earth; And because she endured what never any Guilty or innocent endured before: Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought; Because thy hand at length did rescue her; I with my words k**ed her and all her kin.' Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay The reverence living in the minds of men Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame! Think what it is to strangle infant pity, Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, Till it become a crime to suffer. Think What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood All that which shows like innocence, and is, Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent, So that the world lose all discrimination Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt, And that which now compels thee to reply To what I ask: Am I, or am I not A parricide? MARZIO: Thou art not! JUDGE: What is this? MARZIO: I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty. JUDGE: Drag him away to torments; let them be Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not Till he confess. MARZIO: Torture me as ye will: A keener pang has wrung a higher truth From my last breath. She is most innocent! _165 Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me; I will not give you that fine piece of nature To rend and ruin. [EXIT MARZIO, GUARDED.] CAMILLO: What say ye now, my Lords? JUDGE: Let tortures strain the truth till it be white As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind. CAMILLO: Yet stained with blood. JUDGE [TO BEATRICE]: Know you this paper, Lady? BEATRICE: Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he, Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge, What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name; Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what, And therefore on the chance that it may be Some evil, will ye k** us? [ENTER AN OFFICER.] OFFICER: Marzio's dead. JUDGE: What did he say? OFFICER: Nothing. As soon as we Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us, As one who baffles a deep adversary; And holding his breath, died. JUDGE: There remains nothing But to apply the question to those prisoners, Who yet remain stubborn. CAMILLO: I overrule Further proceedings, and in the behalf Of these most innocent and noble persons Will use my interest with the Holy Father. JUDGE: Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile Conduct these culprits each to separate cells; And be the engines ready; for this night If the Pope's resolution be as grave, Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. [EXEUNT.]