The Project Gutenberg eBook of Borgia.

“ ... Autant en emporte ly vens”

All are for her! Each an epitome
Of her—the very skin of them her own,
Our Pearl above all others. So your monarch
Will mate his nephew with her?

He consents, Holiness,
Having o’erlooked the letter
Giovanni, lord of Pesaro, has written
In affirmation of her virgin state—
The fault being his.

This sorry Milanese!
He raves with spite and proves himself a man
By foul detraction of her family.
We chuckle at the weakling. He may hoot!
Your Don Alfonso is a noble lad,
A girl’s new phœnix....{2}

But your master pauses
To give his only daughter to my son?

A cardinal!

A cardinal, we cannot yet release him
From vows—your ear!—he holds detestable.
My second son, where were his livelihood
Without the Church’s revenue? All prudence
Must hold him to the priesthood for a while.
Betroth him to the daughter of your king—
Your king and I, at leisure, will provide
Some principality for Cesare
To match his sees and yielded cardinalate.

Make it God’s law your Cardinal may wed,
And then, his scarlet hat within his hand,
My lord the king would take him as a son.
Now, the proposals of your Holiness
Are but—poetic.

No, no! The royal princess
Carlotta—is her bent our way?

She flat refuses the lord Cardinal.

She has not seen him, blond and beautiful.
A churchman! You may look with candlelight
To find his tonsure. Even my dear Giovanni
Is only half a prince, his brother by,
Although a rare one in his splendid right.
And as for mode and elegance all know
Our youthful Cardinal is just a gallant
Most Frenchified in form.
Well, well, well! I am dreaming:
Poetry, you call my dreams....
This pleasant marriage
Of Don Alfonso and my Donna Lucrece{3}
Will make us jaunty in the Vatican.
My pearls!—
You watch them through my fingers—lucent lumps;
This pear-shaped ovule heavy with its light;
The pearls and pearlets dropping
With patters loud and soft together—listen!
My daughter will have more and lovelier pearls
Than any woman in the greedy world.
Would you have sight of one large coffer filled,
This emulates?
[Rising]. There is the treasury door,
There the Lord Casanova, full of winks
At voices from the cave.

Your Holiness,
I sought his Excellence the Duke Giovanni
In his apartments, but he is not there.

[To the Envoy.] So strange! My son the Duke of Gandia, fails me
To-day with greeting, and to-day we fix
The hour when I review his armaments
Under our blessèd gonfalon. ’Tis strange.
[To Poto.] Go to Madonna de’ Catanei’s house:
His mother made a supper, I was told,
For him and for his brother. [Exit Poto.
[To the Envoy.] You conduct
Don Cesare when, next month, as our Legate,
He goes to crown your king?

My hope!

And now the pearls!
Open, Lord Casanova.

Indiscreet?
Laugh, ladies—do not blush. A pair of swans!

[Taking Giulia’s wrist.] No, no, Madonna—no,
My Giulia—not the ruby! You must match
Your lovely eyelets with the diamond.

Always
The diamond, Holiness.

You shine, you shine!
Lucrece, my softer radiance—what, my Pearl? [He kisses her.
Draw out the heavy coffer,
Lord Casanova. Open it! The sight
Grows slippery on these burnished domes!
There, there—ah, there
Is patrimony....

Wondrous!

Tell your master.

[His arm round his daughter.] Lucrece, the King of Naples sends his nephew
To cheer your maiden widowhood. Next month
You will be bride and wife.

So soon!

Santi! she quarrels
In maidenwise with time! You shall not leave me,
As when you wept at Pesaro. Your Prince
Consents! Alfonso is of lusty frame—
Good face and eyes.... I speak him as he is?

The handsomest youth of Naples.
{5}

There, my girl!
So end your troubles! ’Tis a swelling shoot,—
This bridegroom.

May Madonna prosper me!

[Crossing himself.] The glorious Virgin—to that prayer, Amen!

[To the Envoy.] Our daughter bent obedient to our will
Her idle marriage should be set aside,
By mercy flawless and canonical,
With modesty’s reluctance: she will bless
Our older wisdom in Alfonso’s arms.
No clouding, Pearl!
We can but laugh exultantly to open
Our treasury and find, as in a case,
Two perfect jewels of Pandora’s kind.

[In a whisper to the Pope.] The orator will disesteem me thus,
In spreading hair and schiavonetto.

Never
Will any man but worship loveliness
Wrapt loosely and dishevelled.
Charm, my fair ones, charm
Is simple in ascendency.

Madonna
Vanozza de’ Catanei bids me say
His Excellence the Duke of Gandia left her
At nightfall, riding with Don Cesare,
After a merry supper. Shall we search, Holiness,
His lordship’s haunts?
{6}

O Poto, Poto, search
His haunts! The malice of these chamberlains!
Madonna Giulia, Monsignore Poto
Would search the place where Don Giovanni hides.
Have mercy on my son!

Monsignore finds
Your Holiness so jovial he is conquered

Excuse him!

Even our ladies, Poto,
Plead for the Duke’s seclusion. Without doubt
He waits for sundown to forsake the place
Where he was sociable.

Then is Giovanni
So wary in his fancies?

Oh, for my sake—
But you forget it—for his father’s sake ...
To-night he will be with us—we have patience:
Though not to fix when we review his troops,
That is a fault and we must chide our Captain.
Well, my Lord Casanova, close
Your treasury: we would not lose such jewels!
{7}

The worshipful Lord Cardinal is coming;
I have announced you. The ambassadors
Had taken leave.

[Examining the sword in the hands of Messer Ercole.

By Hercules—your pardon,
Yet by your name, as if it were divine—
This queen of swords is warlike, not of peace
In its adornment as a legate’s sword ...
A legate, tamquam pacis angelus,
In Holy Father’s phrase. O sirs, the shame
That such a soldier—what condottiere
In Italy would match our Cardinal—
Is wasted on the Church.

Lord Bonafede!

I speak out of my flesh. I have gone ever cursing
The tonsure where the helmet should have been.
I am a man-at-arms, the jangling glories
Of panoply are dearer than the bell
That dins the raising of God’s sacrifice.
Come, Messer Bernardino, you can mingle
Your saints with Pagan bulls and goddesses
Who love their gods by Nile.
Cesar!

The sword!
So I receive my fate. Cum numine
{8}Cesaris omen. [He holds the sword erect and kisses the motto.
The Lord Cardinal’s Sword,
The Legate’s Sword! I laugh ... it is at others,
The names they call me, when I have one name
Hot at the core of fixedness, my heart.
O antique Cesar, conqueror and fount
Of empire, thou wert made my saint at birth;
Thou art my spirit and my augury,
Thy laurels guard me and thy eagles’ wings.
My eyes are on thee and thou lead’st my dreams
To homage and thy triumph. Dive Cesar,
Here is thy name
Cut as I bade upon thy chariot-wheel,
Since triumphers can use the spokes of Fortune
For carriage of their prevalence.
My thanks
To you, dear Bernardino, I have always
Loved for your gifts, esteemed as one of ours,
Who wove our life round with the signs and legends
Denoting us by power of phantasy;
I thank you for this emblem of my soul,
Prefigured in these lovely images.
My equal thanks
To you, good Messer Ercole, for strength
And nobleness of handiwork, the craft
That has subverted matter, as the god
Turned chaos to a fabric. Ah, and the work,
Your work, is done, signed of your fame and done.
You are most happy. Mine is all an absence
As yet, a future! But the pledge is mine—
This sword, your creature, and my prophecy.

Beloved and Cesar, you have been our poet;
From you our valid agency, from you
The teeming of the parable.

You notice
The azure guard? It pleases you?

As spring’s
Sky-blue. Lord Bonafede, you that savour{9}
The taste of steel, run with your finger down
These grooves: now see the contour and the curves,
The equilibrium, so beautiful
I worship it with reverence. Now bend
Above the glass, like adamant, and trace
My hero in his deeds.
Here is a mighty deed,
And one that was of doom. This floating ensign,
These naked horsemen at the riverside,
The child, with wreath of laurel, by the flood
Playing his flute to outset of a life....
For this is Cesar crossing Rubicon.
Here are his very words: “The die is cast.” ...

Your Worship,
His Holiness requires you instantly;
For he is gnawed by deep inquietude.
The Duke your brother has been missed two nights,
Has disappeared without a trace....

What, lost?

The Holy Father shakes with agitation;
His emissaries seek the city through,
And he is grievously impatient, asking
The aid of heaven and earth. You saw the Duke
At the Madonna de’ Catanei’s house.
His Holiness would question you.

I come.

[They wait while Cesare stands absorbed.

Pardon! The Holy Father is in wrath
As well as fear.

I come. Oh, my Lord Bonafede,
The sword is in your charge....{10}
And see this picture—
The Borgian Bull,
A victim at its feet. The flames are blown;
There will be sacrifice! It was a dream
I told to Messer Bernardino....
[To Poto.] Swift,
Come swiftly to the Vatican! Giovanni—
Well, is he dead, or will he yet return?

[Pausing by the Cardinals.]

Those lights ... those fireflies
Out on the river, do they dance above him
Fast as they swarm and change?

You must not watch them.

It takes my mind off from the pictures sweeping
As in a fever, through it. Fast they come....

Cesare’s picture
Of how they parted on the Banchi Vecchi;
The strange masked figure that Giovanni swung
Up to his saddle as he rode away,
Away—
I see him in the midsummer, calm night—
Toward the Jews’ quarter in Sant’ Angelo,{11}
Toward the dark Sistine Convent, and beyond ...
Ha, to the quarter of our deadly foemen,
The Bears, the vile Orsini.

That looks ill.

And he was never seen again. His brother
Says the masked recreant came behind a vine-stock,
And motioned to Giovanni secretly:
He says Giovanni
Was red and vehement as he turned back
To feasting at the table.... Ah, more pictures!
A new one, painted wet upon my brain
Over the rest!

Where is he,—my young son,
My beautiful Giovanni? You stand round,
Wise with the Church’s wisdom, but where is he?
He may be living, tortured, gagged.... He is not!
No, there is come a change in me; I know
He is not breathing with me any more,
And yet I cannot bid you pray for him;
I do not count him dead. He is but lost,
And lost so deep I do not think a creature,
Nor even his Creator knows the place
That he has wandered to. The lost must wander,
They have no goal, not even hell, no rest.
They have their freedom as the unbaptized
To rove in horror where none plucks the sleeve
Or questions them or bids good-day.
They wander on till they are flitting ghosts,
Till they are elemental and dissolved,
And when they would entreat us, they must rail
In the howling wind about our chimney-stacks.
So I encounter my Giovanni—so!
So I was tutored of the storm last night.
He is not breathing with us any more!

Have faith, his body will be found.
{12}

His body!
When last I saw the boy
He shook his golden poll with merriment
That I received his Spanish mistress here,
A most devout and humble Catholic,
With eyes dark wells for Cupid’s thirst. He laughed,
Till all the room was sunbeams from his mirth.

If God
Turn such a thing as that to carrion—then
I shall curse God. [He makes a gesture of imprecation.
[Turning to Lucrezia.] Well, wanton, you look white!
What comfort have you? Would you be a nun
That you crept to San Sisto from your palace
Soon as you heard? Is not this missing boy
Your brother? You would steal from any noise.
The tumult of the people and its rage
Is round Giovanni’s name; but yesterday
The bruit of the town was of Lucrezia.
If any, you should suffer from men’s tongues,
And you refuse to suffer. All reproaches
Drive you more dumb. But now you shall not cloak
This mystery as if it were a relic.
You have been with the boy: you know
Where he loved, where he was hated. All our loves
And hates are in your hands. You have grown more blind
Than any woman ever made herself
That she might see in the dark.
Give up your witness.

A little devil, circumspect,
When I would have rank truth.
[To the Cardinals.] Are these my children?
Oh, but I spare them ... we must spare our bastards,
It says in Holy Writ. [He goes towards the further window.

[In a whisper to Adriana.] Giovanni.... Yes....
He is very rash and very quick to wrath,
Yet dear in his quick temper. I have seen him{13}
Too little since he came from Spain. Pray God
I may look on him again!

[From the back.] Joffré, you stand
Like a fixed statue draughty in a niche:
I do not pin you there. Go all of you! Go hence!
Sancia, I am ashamed that you should sit
Weeping what is not of your blood. Get up!
Out of my presence! You all stand and gaze
As at a play—perhaps a comedy.

[To Lucrezia.] And you—unnatural, go hence!

God’s breath,
His mother!

We are here in privacy.

To Cardinal Borgia.] Bring her in hither to me.

O Vanozza,
Poor heart!

My Lord, your Holiness, I came—
Forgive me.

Nay! [He falls sobbing on her shoulder.
We mourn together. Where we had a son
For eyes’ delight, there is nothing.
[Soothing and patting Vanozza.] Hush, you must not!
Little beloved, you suckled him. You must not!
Go home; pray to Madonna.—She will hear.
And let me see your face.
[Drawing her veil.] It is the same;
As honest and as good.

I have good children.
I am so richly blessed ... and this dear boy,
A Prince from Spain, came back again and kissed me.

Good son and enviable righteousness
To kiss this face in filial piety.
There, there, you must forget him!

Poto,
You pull my skirts.

Come quick. A waterman....

Then tell me, Poto.... Let me know from you.

I cannot tell you more; he waits to speak.

Cesare!... Mother, we must cling to him.

Where is he? In these halls? It dazes me....

God’s image on the earth! I was profane....
And you a Princess, too! O my Giovanni!
You, all of you, are but as visitants;
You are enskied afar. Happy, unhappy mother!
Child! O sweet, floating hair against my cheek,
And your cold cheek....

Mother, but you were happy
When Cesar and Giovanni supped together?
{15}

I never saw them both more gay or fair;
They plagued each other like two golden lances
Crossed in the sunshine at a tournament—
And so till Cesare had warned the hour.

We must cling to him.

Can I give a thought
To any but my lost, my lost Giovanni,
My all but God—and to my God? Lucrece
Turns with her mother to His Throne of Mercy?
O Child! [Her cry echoes one from the Pope.

Hush, hush!... It is incredible.
The horror swallows me. Hush, hush!
Laid over
The white horse!...

[Advancing.] O Madonna de’ Catanei,
Go with the girl away. You shall have tidings.
His mother—go!
My blessing, child. I have no more to say.

[Exeunt Vanozza and Lucrezia.

Good Adriana, follow them.

And you, Rodrigo?

Follow them. [Exit Adriana.

Sancta Dei Genetrix,
Turris Davidica, Refugium
Peccatorum, Virgo clemens!—

[Returning.] What is this, Francesco,
He tells you further? Nay,
You will not broach the facts? He saw these men
Creep back and other two come stealing downward,
And the white horse—and what it bore.

[To Cardinal Segovia.] Your arm!
{16}

Spare yourself, Holiness.

I told the Inquisitors
All as it happened.

Tell me.

By the Tiber
They turned the horse and swung the body down
In heavy mire and litter. I could see
A bulrush sucked at by the risen billow,
And how a winding object swam along,
Lapped by the current—’twas the dead man’s cloak.
They pelted it with stones: then....

[To Cardinal Borgia, who supports him.]
Cousin—O Francesco,
And I have wit to ask where this was seen.

On the Rispetti, by the Ospedale.

[To Giorgio.] Then go and tell the fishermen; direct
Those foolish, flitting lights that drive me mad.

[Giorgio moves away.

Why have you held your peace?

A hundred times,
From my beached boat
What I have seen I saw—none cared to hear.

[Exit with Inquisitor.

Thrown out as dust and refuse to the river,
My worship!—leaving me
As one who is no more. My life’s high hope{17}
Snatched under darkness, sodden,
A dead boy, who was proud and beautiful.
Francesco, in a single night! O Cousin,
I thought that he was comforting his youth
In a kind Thaïs’ arms and he was down
At the bottom of that river!

Nay, dear Holiness,
Has not this Giorgio seen a hundred times....

You think Giovanni lives?

God grant it!

He has ridden
Beyond the walls, at some castello wooing
Maiden or wife, since summer bans the chase;
A foolish pastime ’mid infested country!
But now the vineyards are as silken tents
For Amor’s camp. I am too precipitous
In passion: I must wait another night,
And then ... fold him again
Upon my heart! Go back, go back, my heart!
Patience! [He finds himself at the window.
But see, there, see
The lights are sailing to one point. Out yonder
What is that spot of dusk?

The Ospedale.

A constellation!
Malign, bright stars! Giovanni! But the lights
Are moving onward to Sant’ Angelo.
They move along in state. It is my son!
They dazzle me.... They pass me....
{18}

Holy Father,
The illustrious Duke of Gandia has been found
In velvet coat and cloak, the dagger sheathed,
His ducats in his purse.

It sails, it sails, it sails
On to Sant’ Angelo. The torches....

Nothing is stol’n?

No, not a single gem.

Vendetta? Are there wounds?

I counted seven;
One mortal in the throat. His hands were tied.

[With a howl like a lion’s.] God, by God’s blood, my curse!

[He falls in a swoon.

[Lifting both hands.] His Vicar here on earth!

[Who kneels and supports the Pope.] Beware!
His father must not see him.

Washed and habited
As Gonfalonier, on an open bier,
He will be borne,
With flambeaux, to his mother’s private chapel,
And will be swiftly hidden!
[Shrugging his shoulders.] But, my lords,{19}
The populace is ribald: it acclaims
His Holiness the fisher of his son,
Though not, by rights, of men.

[Poto and the Cardinals laugh.

[Slowly opening his eyes.] Francesco, are they talking of my son?

Madonna Adriana brought me here;
She stays without: I go back to the convent.
Cesare—tell me all that I should pray.

[Turning his head back towards her from the couch.

Amanda, that your scruples be removed;
That I be Cesar.

Take a little rest.
{20}

Shall you, from prayer?
To-night you look a sibyl.
Who did this deed?

Let Juan play the lute;
You must have music through these restless nights.
How lost you look!

You startled me. How lost!

[He closes his eyes.

[Stealing away to Adriana.] He is dreaming; he has quite forgotten me.
Come, Adriana, soft! As an astronomer
He must not be disturbed: he is quite lost.

I thank God for this sleep. Those fearful days
I knelt against his door! The raving wildness
I heard at times—inhospitable sorrow,
Aloof from our Creator! Then, dashed down,
The heavy frame wept like a haunted child’s.
Then silence
Too perilous to spread! I beat the door.

We stood and watched and prayed you might prevail.
{21}

And when he opened—Jesu, he was faded
As a dead fish; slack chin, and Arab eyes
Glassy in fever, with a vengeful thirst.
If only he had known the murderer,
And could have struck him down to deepest hell—

Each moment
He snatches ends of this dark mystery,
As he unravelled at the dead of night
The broidery on a frame he could but feel.

True, true! It turns the brain that no one knows.
Some whisper ’twas the Lord of Pesaro
Revenged himself for ridicule and the shame
Of his divorce.

[Shaking his head.] He has no credit here.

Some roundly have it
The Lord Ascanio Sforza did the deed,
For he and Gandia quarrelled the same day
That our fine Duke was struck.

It was a masterpiece
Of secrecy—this murder.

No more news?

By item all I know is told to you,
My Lord Segovia.

[From the bed.] Ah!
{22}

I will retire,
And send the Lord Francesco Borgia up
To urge his cousin’s appetite.
Behold!

[Poto, turning to the bed, finds the Pope sitting up, a
beatific smile on his face.

But I have seen my son in Paradise....

How fares your Holiness this morning?

Poto,
There was no scar on him, not the least wound;
That is the truth: and he stood armed again.
As bright as San Michele he looked down
Upon us from the wall, his gonfalon
Swathing around him as he stood. His face
Was to me as an angel’s.
[He weeps quietly.] I repent,
I will change all to meet that boy again
In Paradise, no wound on him, no scar.
And yet the sight of him,
O Poto, drove down to the rasping quick
Of conscience through my heart. All shall be changed,
The Vatican be cleared of sin. These bastards ...
Let me not see them more! Joffré, Lucrezia—
Joffré must mind his government afar,
I banish him. Lucrece—oh, I shall gather
The seas between us; she shall dwell in Spain,
Dwell in Valencia, deep, where I was born,
White little demon-girl!
[He rises, trembling, and Poto robes him.] No priest henceforward
Shall hold two benefices; simony
No more shall breed among us. God would punish
Some sin in us; it could not be Giovanni
Deserved a death so cruel. Gently, Poto,
You are too violent.
{23}

Patience, Holiness,
You slit the silk.

Where is the Cardinal
I called my son? Unnatural, where are they?
The children I have fostered in my bosom,
Where are they?

Holiness,
Donna Lucrezia in the Sistine Convent
Prays day and night.

Sweet soul!

The Lord Valencia—

Ah, what of him? Where is his piety?

When your affliction broke on you, before it
Men fled as from a pest. Lord Cesare
Is shut within his palace; duteously,
Almost from hour to hour, his servants pass
For tidings of your health.

The Governor
Of Rome prays for the Presence.

He has tidings?
Oh, it will break my heart! I would lie down
Within my coffin—and that tapestry
About the portal, with its shaking folds,
Opens and shuts the lid. Let him come in.

[The Governor comes to the Pontiff’s feet.

I would not question you; give full relation;
Do not repeat the tales of yesterday.
{24}

Most Holy Father, there is little new
Of the Lord Duke to certify—his mule
Was found hard by the Palace Barbarini.

[To Poto.] My lad, my lad! We know what beauty there
Looks into Tiber like the moon!
I thank you
For your devotion.

Shall we still further search?

Expressly, till the recreant be slain.
He dies within my thoughts a several death
Each time I front the dark where he is lost.
God damn him deeper every day! Search, search!

[Exit Governor.

His mule, and at that spot! Gaspare, breathe around
The Palace, bribe the women. If a stab
From jealousy—we stop the inquisition.
Mea culpa, mea culpa!

O Francesco,
What do you bear so carefully—the Host?

Nay, but a little food.

I cannot eat.
Gaspare, bear it from the room. Go all
Away from me!

[Exeunt all save Cardinal Borgia, who quietly remains.

Cousin, you wait for news?
It is too true
The boy has perished by his father’s sins.
I must make expiation for his lust:
I have lived ill. Before the Consistory
I will make full confession.
{25}

Holiness,
If I may trust the murmur in my ears
From men to whose free speech
I gave safe conduct, it is not for you
To make avowal. Heaven requires of you
Such greatness and capacity of pardon
As in extent it touched the limits of,
Setting its brand of safety upon Cain.

What, Joffré?

No, not Joffré ... but a son.
Belovèd, exercise the privilege
Of God’s vicegerent. Wash away this guilt,
Remove it from you; pardon secretly.

Not Joffré? Joffré is my heir.... You lay
A heavy stone upon Giovanni’s grave
To keep me from him. But it is not true,
It cannot be! We Borgia do no harm
To any of our kin.

And yet to certainty
Drive the suspicion, and forgive the crime.

[The Pope paces, wringing his hands.

He never made complaint. I have been thoughtless,
Thoughtless to Cesare.... He has been absent
Too often from our ceremonials,
From our investitures. I drove him jealous
By welcome of his brother out of Spain.
I did him wrong.
Good kinsman, you have taught me
To dry my tears ... and I have still a son.
Fetch me again the little dish of food,
The wine.... I am grown faint.
See that this bruit
Come never to his mother. He is all{26}
To her as if he were her eldest born.
God knows my love to him is infinite!
But—bid him keep his palace. I forbid
His presence here.... My sins have plunged my children
In death and hell, and I must live alone.

How dare you thus intrude?

But it is rumoured
It is your will
The Lord Ascanio Sforza be your legate
In this affair of Naples.

Ay, my will.

Your Holiness will recollect he lies
Under suspicion of Giovanni’s death.
You send a blood-stained envoy on this business,
And thrust me from my place. You have yourself
To thank for your Giovanni’s death; the honours
You heaped on him have brought him to his doom.
Will you bring more
And greater desolation on your years?

You shall not go
To Naples. You forget your brother’s death.
{27}

I am your legate, if before, so after.
As for my brother’s death, that is but Fortune—
The spokes of her wheel turned bright on me. I was
Your second son, enslaved to your vocation;
Profane, I touched your sacred things and trembled
You dared to put me to such use: in secret
I wrought my sword, my legend. I am Cesar,
And he is all my omen. By a fate
So marvellous it rocks my very dreams
I wake, I rouse myself
To majesty you put on me, or let it
Drop downward to the void.

[Motioning to the Pope that he must continue speaking.

You did not reckon
With me, you let Giovanni take my place
Beside you and your throne. None noted me
Level among the scarlet hats, except
This goddess with a rudder, this fair child
Of Jove, this liberator. I am silent,
Except before confusion such as yours.

[Coming closer to the Pope.

Blind to the moment—you have not been blind.
I watched you from Spoleto setting gins,
I watched you bribe on bribe....

Ay, there you track me,
And I must answer for my wickedness.
I owe my seat to wickedness.

Leave weeping!
There should be pact between us. How your coffers
Are filled I know, and where your heart is lavish,
And what you dream. I kneel before your throne
With faculty
As boundless as a god’s, with strength as supple,
To be your instrument, to win you lands,
To give you rule. You have forbidden me
Your presence: if I pass from it forbidden,
I leave you—up and down to wave your hands
In blessing on the powers you supplicate.{28}
While, if you bid me to your side, I build
An army for the Church; there will be legions....

[Hiding his face in his cope.] Ah me! of darkest angels!

Citizens
As once in Rome; and the Eternal City
Safe from her foes.

You came on me so sudden,
You overwhelm me....
But you shall go to Naples,
And not Ascanio.

Father!

[Drawing Cesare to him.] I have wronged you.
Come to my heart.

I will redress the wrong.

[The Pope kisses Cesare coldly on his forehead, and
blesses him. Cesare passes out.

How swift he moves away—as if
With something he had snatched!
Is it my soul?
{29}

[His hand touches his hilt.

[He whirls her swiftly round Pasquino.

[Exit Cardinal Ippolito, dismissed by a gesture from
Sancia.

[He advances up the church steps with Sancia,
followed by Djem.

It is one who rode a white horse.
—You would say a sumpter-mule, for the beast had packs.
—Who is it?
—It is an Infidel.
—Let us stone him!
—It is one with claws—it is the Devil.
—He walks with Princess Sancia.
—The Duke Giovanni did that.

Does the crowd still keep the legend?
Off, gentles, you do not know me.

What are you?
[He turns and fronts them.] The Lord Cardinal!
—The Pope’s son!
{34}

You are the brother of a ghost.

[Two Spanish Gentlemen of Cesare’s train pass and doff to him.

—Ugh, the Spaniards!
—Hidalgo!
—Moor!
—Infidel!
—Where is your cut-throat?

You are the Lord Cesar.

[Cesare goes up to the Boy and flings a chain round his neck.

More allegiance!
Cesar, Cesar! [He scatters largesse.

[Exit into San Giacomo with Sancia and Djem.

But he has the face of a king.
—I picked a stone and threw—it grew like a millstone when he smiled at me.
—He has a face full of pardon.
—You shamed him with the ghost.
—La, la, la! He is shameless as a child. You may be ribald before him; he cannot for very innocence reprove.
—He bade us read Pasquino.
—Come!
—Messer Millini, you are a notary.
—Read!
—Catch these doves round Pasquino, and let us hear them coo.
—What part does he play?

’Tis Proteus.

And what is Proteus?
{35}

[He reads.

Whelm the Bull-calves, O vengeful Tiber, deign
To take them to thy raging breast;
And let the monster-bearing Bull be slain,
victim to Infernal Jove addressed.

[He draws them, laughing, after him among the booths.

Behold!

[Advancing and patting the jewelled clasp on his shoulder.

O Cesare, this lovely guise!
You make me feel
A Princess and an Eastern Princess. Jewels
And dusk of jewels.... Oh, the snowy turban—
But I have never seen your eyes so blue.
You will despise me in this mourning garb,
Great Sultan.

[She half-closes her veil and looks round on the group.

Mother, but your son is bowing,
Is bowing low—salute him. By his side
The Princess Sancia.

I salute the Princess.
{38}

[Advancing to Lucrezia.] And I—

[Returning to him.] Don Cesar, but you comprehend
This pearl is for the merchant-men and not
For any private owner in the world:
She must not walk with mothers.

[Absently.] Then convert her!
You can convert a woman in a trice
To any worship, if you worship her.

[Returning to Lucrezia.] You are the moon,
The crescent moon. I have seen that in the church.

You have seen the moon beneath our Lady’s feet.

You are the Lady. [Lucrezia laughs irrepressibly.

Come, Lucrece, away!

But have you, little mother, eyes too pious
To own your son?

I cannot understand.
You are drest as a Turk.

[Catching Djem’s arm.] This is my brother.
{39}

Hush, hush! An infidel!
And your own brother....

Ah, so lately murdered!
Madonna de’ Catanei, I condole.

Peace, Sancia!
[To Vanozza.] This noble Turkish Captain
Is brother to the Sultan: Cesare
Instructs him in our Church’s mysteries.

I am instructed; it is excellent.
A good Church!

Mother, this is ill-behaved;
You are not quite yourself.
Give me your blessing....
Here is the sacred spot.

[He bends and points to his tonsure in the midst of his turban.

—Then pass away
To the dark shrines and weep!
Mother!

[Shaking her head.] I have no blessing. I refuse.

Then pass away to the dark shrines and weep!

[Vanozza goes slowly up the steps to the church.

Hither, Lucrezia, hither! Through the market
For the last time while I am Cardinal!
Hither, sweet boon-fellow!

[Pulling at the fringe of his turban.] But call her back.
{40}

How fares His Holiness? You cannot dance
While there are ghostly footsteps on the stair;
But you can entertain him, make him laugh,
Till the sunny tears
Break out from all the creases of his eyes,
With the report of Djem before the shrines,
Cesare so profoundly heretic
He may no more be Cardinal.

[Showing her small teeth as she smiles.] Come on!
I will report with great fidelity.
I will report
Djem is a Christian and must be baptized.
But you! Now as I am your boon-fellow,
And for the laughter of His Holiness,
Let us make sport together.... Comfits, Djem!

Vitula! She is for Tiber!
—Her new husband is there in the Vatican.
—Her last husband has told us ... it is not to be spoken.
—That Turk might be her bridegroom.
—We know he is her brother.
—Where is Don Alfonso?
—Berenice!
—Pasiphaë!
—And she laughs like the sky of the first year!
—Her throat—its pearls are but shadows.
—She is beautiful as the good Madonna.
{41}

... From my most early years
I have been secular. Not the least vocation
Is found in me, not in my secret thoughts,
Not in my will, not anywhere within me.
Therefore I sit apostate in your midst,
And therefore do you wrong; therefore I taint you,
Beside you, and no more your peer. Most humbly
I pray you to release me from my vow.

[There is a guttural murmur.

As you have urged
Both eloquently and without offence
Ere this dispute grew hot, His Blessedness
Constrained you in this matter: trust his wisdom.
So Heaven puts shackles on us in our youth,
That in our years we may walk free, Heaven’s choice
Become our privilege.

I have received
Rich benefices; I resign them all.

For league with France, for favours from a foe,
For contract with your country’s enemies.
Most hotly I protest.
[To the Cardinals.] This renegade,
If you will yield him to such infamy,
Will still go on from false to false, forswearing
His worldly obligations, as through you{42}
He would forswear his pledges to his God.
The old alliances that prop this Chair—
Naples and Spain—are mute, and all the parley
With France. Take heed, take heed, my good lord Cardinals,
How you raise up a Princedom.

[Turning his back on Garcilaso.] But more humbly
I make petition. How the world esteems me,
How slander rates me, when I am once unfrocked
I will answer to the world. You were my peers,
You are my judges, and from you I ask
Simply for mercy. Of too great indulgence.
I was admitted to your fair assemblage.
Open the door!

He blazes as a god.
Look, he is trembling! This humility
Is nothing. He who says he cannot play
The hypocrite is hypocrite in full,
And plotting for his patron.

That is very truth:
There, my Lord Cardinals, the word is just.
I am plotting for my patron, for my sole,
My unique benefactor.

[Raising and kissing the hem of the Pope’s robe.

In this habit
I cannot serve His Holiness, whose creature
I am, and all my faculties acute,
Conjoined to serve him. I was born a soldier,
Beckoned to war, and pointed to redemption—
By steel, not holy water—of those lands
Bedevilled, once the Church’s heritage.
’Tis as a Captain
I speak and of my nature. Give me freedom,
A little time ... the rest His Holiness
Shall publish to you of my wars and fortune.

Stay!
The Scriptures tell us there are many gods
And lords as many....
{43}

True! Lord Lucifer
Is one of them, and he is kept in bonds
By God’s divine discretion.

Gently!

Why set him up aloft—why, why? Such eagles
Have dropped down tortoises on shining pates.
Look to your safety!

Yet we need not shear
Our Samson of his martial strength: Delilah,
And not the Lord, put tonsure on that head.

[The Pope laughs in his robe.

But all this jesting
Is little to the point, and the point is grave.
Release him—but we cannot. He is bound,
As we, by vows that irk and must be borne.

[Softly.] We do not speak it by the Holy Ghost,
But to your private ear and as a Spaniard;
Such benefices as are vacant now,
And such as shall be vacant by your leave,
We shall dispose....
Ambassador, your monarch
Will own us friendly as we fill those Sees.
But, look, we tax too much this youthful patience!
Give your decision, as the Heavenly Dove
Whispers you, fluttering on from head to head.

[There is murmured discussion for awhile.

[Very softly.] Thirty-five thousand florins are renounced,
Are in our hands for gift.
O mercy, mercy, mercy!
[Pointing to Cesare.] Do you not know
Such guilt is clung about him he must perish{44}
If still he live in blasphemy. I plead,
I am pleading for his soul. Think, there are frocks in Hell;
Think of the scandal
His licence breeds if we deny him marriage:
While he is in the Church no reformation
Can spread against his check.
It is as if you all—each one of you—
Sealed with your sapphires his eternal ruin.
I forced him to this habit, and behold him!
He has never crooked the knee. Look there, my Lords,
Look there—Achilles peering from disguise....
[Chuckling.] Pardon, my Lords, as from his maiden dress.
Mine is the fault, the error. Shall he sulk
Useless among his tents?

[Kneeling.] Before you
I plead for liberty—and, being released,
Whom should I serve save him who honours me,
Fixing on me his love, on me who have no merit,
Nor any place nor office in the world
Except to love him back?

Be comforted, O Blessèdness!
[To Cesare.] Farewell, farewell,
Lord Cardinal; excel, as in our ranks you cannot.
Though often bitter to us in your mood,
Our skies will miss the lightning and the light
Without you, and our skies are colourless.

The Duke of Valentinois—so my king
Greets you with patents disembarked to-day.

[Between his teeth.] Our obstacles
No more in our condition! Solitary!
No longer of a flock!

I shall not leave you,
Not ever, not like Joffré, for a wife.
You shall not sit there looking lone—beside you,
Father, a power we have not measured yet,
That we shall measure. After all my wars,
And all my wars will be to draw you peace,
I shall return.
Kiss me.

My heart,
No blessing—oh, a kiss!

You have seen the little mother?

To what end?
My mother?—No, Lucrezia.

Then some farewell message
That I may comfort her. You start for France,
Cesare, and you leave us for a bride.
{46}

What of our mother
In my alliance? Dead forgetfulness!
O Beauty, we are passing on our ways
Of policy; we must pass eagle-eyed,
For we have thrones to conquer.
Curse your Naples!
I would be wedded there.

[Stroking his eye-brows.] There I am wedded;
Therefore no curse.

[Suddenly turning and resting his elbow on her knee.

Lucrece, do you like this boy
We call your husband? Will he move your love;
Will you forget your godhead?

Do not forget that you yourself have chosen
My husband for me.

’Tis but for a season.
We keep the paces of the gods, and all
Our actions are as theirs irrelevant
Beside ourselves, as we conceive ourselves.
Lucrezia, do but feel how thick my hair
Is brushing up beside the little tonsure!
There springs the Cesar. You have seen me amble
Beside Giovanni’s stallion on my mule....
And I am tempered through and through for war.
While others all day long were waging battle,
I have gone out to chase—oh, think of it!—
That I might follow some mean animal,
And catch the sound of Mars across the lake.
... Your fingers press me ...
Why is their touch less soft?

You so desired
What now you have.
{47}

Giovanni....

Yes? [She waits but he says nothing.
Poor Giovanni! We have enemies.

We have. I silence yours. Are you all tears?

You start for France—
Give me some charge. We part so suddenly....
His Holiness....

Be gamesome to our father
While I am absent, for he has a trick
Of dwindling down as Tiber on his bed,
Parched Tiber on his bed, when I withdraw.
We are his twin divinities, his Pollux,—
Since Castor is by chance thrust out—his Pollux,
And his most gracious Helen.... The rare smile,
The cypher smile! Your spells are on again.
Our father loves the dance—dance to fatigue.

Pas seul; I cannot!

Then....

[As they break off.] This is the perfect spectacle, I own;
This swells the veins upon the father’s brow.
But thou canst dance,
Lucrezia, to thyself as airily
As any creature of the air: dance thus.
{48}

[Laughing.] Oh, I will dance to giddiness, and yet
So slow it is the dance within a jewel,
And infinite movement in a prisoned spark—
The poets say. I heed them not.

How wisely!

To you I dance.

Oh, when you speak
From the bosom of your silence.... Little, fair One,
But you are dull; I want you
To feel how great are the fresh lusts that haunt me,
And with complaisance take their part and smile.

[Lifting her hand to his breast and keeping it there.

Once and for ever—and you falter now!

[Closing her eyes.] You are no more a priest....

O little, fair One,
That deadly languor
Of being a priest, cut off! You draw a cry,
An anguish from me. When I am a king
You are my counterpart, for evermore
A place beside me vacant, or your throne.
When I am Emperor, still I have chosen you
My counterpart. We played, a little flock,
Luis, Giovanni, Joffré—you and I
Were sole to one another.

[Standing apart.] We are sole.

[Cesare scrutinises her a long time, then says suddenly.
{49}

Come, little Venus,
Come with me, see the cramoisie, the jewels
For Cesar’s wedding triumph, for the Duke
Of Valentinois’ progress. All my trappings
Are gold—d’or frizé: thirty thousand ducats
Lie in the damasks of my equipage.
I will put on my doublets—and you too
Shall try them on.

Fie, fie! [She hastily takes a veil and mask.

[Leading her to the door.] What readiness!—
Answering, as a woman should, with answer
So even to my pleasure. [A knock.
Ah, is that your husband?
Who is it knocks? [He moves away and masks.

But enter!

[The Lord Alexander VI. stands at the door.

[With a short laugh, unmasking.] Oh, my father!

But enter, enter, Holiness.

[To Cesare, as he embraces Lucrezia.] My heart,
Where do you draw the sweetheart? Cesare,
Stay—let her breathe the morning to me. Where
Would Cesare conduct you?

Blessèd Father,
To show me all his jewelled taffetas
And cloth of gold, brocades and silver damasks.
{50}

His! He will look a Phœbus
That rose and clomb in gold. But for my daughter—
Her eyes shall rest on veils enmeshed of light,
Darting their gems of parti-coloured flash
On stuffs dark-grained enough to set them free,
Or of a tissue white to blandish them.
You need not view his gauds, Lucrece.
It is immoment
For her to learn your worldly splendour, boy,
She, who is treasure.
Sweet, yet we will chuckle
At all the benefices in his stars
Of gems, his satins. Lead on, Cesare;
For we will go together, laugh together.

César de France!
This gold-haired bastard, with his dubious eyes
And sullen majesty, each day more splendid
In silks and gold, more sullen every hour
Behind his patient smile.... Mon Dieu, mon Dieu
How I have toiled to wed him, and content
The Pope, who has contented
My happiness, divorcing my sad wife,
And joining to my crown my Breton Queen—
How I have toiled! If César wants a crown,
Then in Carlotta he espoused the claim:
But Naples and his daughter would not listen.

He wants a crown!
{51}

Monseigneur Jules as you a triple crown—
Son of Ligurian peasants!

Ay,
Of Italy’s own soil. But as the vines
Breed flavour by the sod, Liguria
Creates in me survivance to ascend
The Throne my uncle Sixtus made august,
Holding each force ingenerate in man
Executive, building as Titans build.
Only Rodrigo Borgia’s Spanish gold
Has kept me unachieved, to bear the sorrow
Of Destiny’s elect that wait their star:
There is prepotency in such. This bastard
Tears through his day—a comet—to his fall.

O Seigneur Dieu!
What bombast and vain glory in his coming.
The Kings of Fez or Ethiopia
Climb out of fewer jewels: our street-gazers
Have scarcely drawn their breath since he passed by,
The little Duke we titled Valentinois!
Yet, by all saints, he loads the air with sway
Of such duplicity and blandishment,
He puts such grace about magnificence,
Such a cold and heat about his speech—I, Louis
Of France, have promised
Soldiers to win him land, my niece to marry.
The papers all are signed. Acquaint the Pontiff,
With largest swell of triumph, Charlotte D’Albret
Of the blood royal is his César’s bride.
Cor meum—so he names this slip of his!
And he has been in fury like the Bull
Of his escutcheon at the scarlet waving
Of royal-hearted, contumacious Naples.
Felicitate our weary guest. The lady
Shall meet him in your presence. Saint Denys,
This unfrocked bastard of a priest, what order,
Or what precedence notes him, even his birth{52}
Is sacrilege—he bows too low! God grant me
One day to set my face against his prayer!

[Exit King Louis.

God grant that to Pope Julius! Domine,
Exaudi me, Pater omnnipotens!
I hate these Borgia! At their corner-stone,
Where lie their votive gifts of blood and gold
To Fortune, I will shake them—though, in exile,
I serve them for a while, to please this monarch
Whose voice can triple-crown.

Illustrious,
I give you joy—a bridegroom, formerly
A Cardinal—much joy!

Thanks! Are campaigns of war
As tedious as these contracts? Naples first....
Naples will rue her part.

And then old D’Albret.

His clutch on ducats and on documents!
My lord, you have reported....

That the King hangs his wrist upon your shoulder,
That you have won all hearts, all company,
And now a bride is won—the Fleur-de-Luce.

More! I have royal pledge
Of aid to raise an army that will conquer
The Castles of Romagna for the Church.

I give you joy, seeing you never yet
Have formed a line of battle, grouped your pieces....
{53}

Did Mercury have lessons for the lyre,
Or Hercules in wrestling? Were they not born
Each to his art’s perfection?

Rarely spoken!

Mon Duc de Valentinois,
I bring our Dian’s youngest nymph, our Queen’s
Sixteen-year maiden. Grow acquainted! Lotta,
You will be well contented with this bridegroom,
As young as he is handsome.

Madame, we are wedded,
A maytime couple, in two days.
Lord Giuliano, tell his Holiness:
Do not delay your letters.

Come with me and write them,
Monseigneur Jules.

So is the world my bauble....

How sweet the fragrance!

Do not touch it, child!
Now, to be plain, I hear you pleaded hard
That I should be your bridegroom. Have you courage
To mate this dreaded Cesar?
{54}

Since Carlotta
Refuses you.... [Cesare starts up.
If you will have the truth,
As among royal princes, I am chosen
To wed you by the King and by my father.

[Letting his hand fall softly on her.

Princess, this is a colloquy of love.

[Lifting the hand and kissing it.

Oh, then, lord César, then I take this hand;
Then—you are mine.

[In a murmur, looking away.] I shall have lawful heirs.

Already looking out;
The balcony already crammed with watchers,
That strain beyond the roofs! But this impatience
Is almost genius in its quality.
Poor children, you were hurried from your beds.
{55}

As if there were a fire; and I am sleepy.
The early morning sleep, the beauty sleep
Dashed from our eyes! I am not half awake;
My eyes close, and I must to sleep again.

You laggard, fie!
You will be out of favour.

No!
I shall please him better if I am asleep.
He will not wake me,
His Holiness remembers I am young.

Young! If the young may take their fill of slumber—

Come, I so softly stirred you—come, the dawn
Had not more softly coaxed you to awake.

I am sick and gaping.

Hush!

To wake in Naples, not this deadly Rome—
It is the air that kills!

A wish
I echo from my heart. We are roused as slaves,
As slaves put in subservient offices.

To ride with Prince Squillace by your side
After Duke Cesare is such distinction
You need not sulk from, prince.
{56}

But we are dead afraid.

Ah, you have cause!

What cause? Ippolito is fled.

Ippolito—your beautiful Ippolito!
Poor little Sancia.

[Putting her arms round Alfonso.

But you must not fly—
Never again. Carissimo, I want you
For the bloom of every hour.

My daughter,
My child, you feel it....

[Taking her hand and laying it on his heart.

As my heart is beating,
So beats your heart. There is within my substance
A change, a miracle. Too great a coming
And close descent of glory on my head!
So drooped
Our blessèd Lady at the infinite
Assault of the Almighty. In my bosom
How can I crush such agony of joy
As to receive a Prince,
A Governor, a Counsellor, all names
Of prophecy in one....

Render to Cesar what is Cesar’s—praise
For a most rare agility. The triumph
He wills is Pagan. He is young.
{57}

Half the Romagna vanquished, Imola,
Forli with battered walls, and the Virago,
Fierce Catarina Sforza, like a Queen
Of Amazon, our Theseus’ prisoner.

For sixteen days she held his arms at bay.

The seventeenth found her ringed around with fire.

[Assuagingly.] Dear father,
Think of our Cesar—he is coming home;
We shall embrace him!
No—you are crying? He will wear the collar
Of the king’s gift. It makes me laugh for gladness.
Laugh too! I must not cry.

[Crying and laughing as he clasps her.] Alfonso, hopeless
The hope that ever you will sunder us!
She is eternal to me as my saints;
She saves me from all sorrow by her smile,
And she is ever smiling.

Then indeed her frowns
She must give me, and I shall take them if
She has not given them away before.
A husband should have something of his own.

Ho, child, we eat with varying appetite,
With varying zest: we savour as our palates
Extract the essences. I savour her.
La, la, I speak but as a fool, and gladly
You cannot suffer fools, not being wise.
{58}

[Kissing her neck.] See, Father!

Bacchus, she is blushing red!
My goblet full of pearls has left her marble.
Out on her, out! I must console myself!

[Pushing her to Alfonso and approaching Giulia.

Here is my idol, my carnality,
My rose of the flesh—how warm!

Lucrezia wrapped her thus.

[The Pope nods; then advances to the Loggia.

Heigh, sentinels,
What recognition of this enemy
Who takes so easily our sacred streets,
For whom our women don their best attire?

[He shakes with laughter.

This is too scandalous! The balconies,
The heads in wreaths—the mothers and the daughters—
Fie! But the mothers do not move me.

[Turning to Giulia Farnese whom Sancia has awaked.

Giulia,
Look forth, my child. No, do not fix your gaze
On me, on what I look at.

Holiness,
I fix my eyes on you that you may fix
Your eyes full on La Bella.

Ha, ha! Morning dew
Salutes us with more dazzle than at eve.
Sleep has been kind.

But I am drowsy still.
It is not well I should so early stir;
And I must sleep; I am so young.
{59}

A flower—
You please me well—a poppy-lidded flower!
Lord Cardinals,
With your lynx-eyes what do you track beyond
The open street?

Standards, long lances
At Ponte Milvio.

Ha! We shall be surprised:
This victor travels as he made retreat.
Come, Joffré, you have learnt your part: or is it
Alfonso plays the squire when he alights?
But start each one of you; in rivalry
Toil for the privilege.

To hold the stirrup!
I must decline: I cannot stoop so far.

Prince of Squillace, you will hold the stirrup,
And in your company take Don Alfonso.

My wife forbids me leave her.

Nay, Lucrezia
Has never said forbid. I yield my husband
For just this hour, knowing that all his hours,
And mine—even Cesare’s—are but one glass

[Kissing the Pope’s hand.

This hand may run the sands of at its pleasure.
Go, and be mannerly.

[Exeunt Don Joffré and Don Alfonso.
{60}

It seems
This bridegroom travels homeward with no bride.
Is he ashamed that, jewelled to the eyes,
He could not win my cousin’s hand—Carlotta’s?

[The Pope takes Sancia’s fan from a table and tears it.

His bride is Italy.

I thought she was of France.

He is of France. The fleur-de-luce is broidered
On his banners with our Bull. César de France,
Of Italy—the world. You may retire
From our presence: later we will give you rooms
Convenient in Sant’ Angelo. [Exit Sancia.
Fair ladies, Adriana,
I warn you that this Charlotte of Navarre
Is of no further interest than a city
Captured and left behind. The confidences....

[Pinching Lucrezia’s chin.

What have you heard, Discretion? Not the story....
Enough!
We no more lose our Cesar for a wife,
Treasure, then we have lost you in a groom.

[Turning to the Cardinals.

Francesco, there is flutter in your robe,
You crane your neck. What of the cavalcade?

We cannot see it yet.

We can but see the flags
Beating the sky about Sant’ Angelo.

The cavalcade itself we shall not see,
Not till the cannon roar at its approach.
{61}

Triumphs—St. Peter!...
In a bossy car,
Its base the wide spine of an elephant,
Rode Alexander into Babylon,
Invincible, my namesake and a god.
But not for me the riding, not the shouts,
Though mine the empire: it is Cesar, Cesar,
Who comes to Rome, and this is Cesar’s triumph.
The chariots and the laurels and the helmets,
The antique cuirasses and helmets—laurels
Fresh from my gardens: we will act it all
Before the eye to-morrow, and translate
This modern triumph into classic glory,
As epitaphs go down in sounding Latin
To generations after. Cesar’s Triumph!
Burcardus shall arrange the pomp, the order,
The circuit of the pageant. Alexander ... Cesar ...
Cesar....

[The cannon boom, all rush to the Loggia.

[Running to her father as if for protection.

O Holiness, but he is coming now!
Oh!

Out to the Loggia! Cease your clinging, child!
You check my haste, you flutter,
And check me.

[There is tumult of cannon, shouting and trumpet-blasts.

[In the Loggia.] O my lords, where is he, where?
[Looking down.] My God, what splendour! But ...

See, see, that simple rider
In black, the foil to all—you know him, father!
You see his collar of Saint Michel gleam;
His hair in golden circle—Cesare!
{62}

A presence, oh, a presence! Recollect,
Daughter, we must receive him as the Pope
Receives his Captain-General. He is riding
As in a picture.... Help, Lord Cardinals, help me!
Is the Triregno set about my head
With nicety? This jewel flames aside,
That should be central. Shift my cope. There, there!
We will go in and take the throne.

[Throwing a kiss down.] He has alighted, father.

[The Pope, seated, waits, his Court round him.

How this remoteness enervates! Come, come, come, come!

[With another deep reverence]. Your Holiness,
How can I thank you for the benefits
That even in absence weighed me with the blessing.
Of your great recollection.

No, my son, the Church
Would give you thanks upon my lips for service
Of princely measure—service....

Cesare!
My son! Superb this beauty! Home at last,
Son of my bowels!

Holiness, your captain,
Your servant, and your creature.
{63}

[Close to his ear.] No, no, no, my son
By nature, my dear flesh, my very substance
Gone out to victory! Rise! Rise! We must not
Beggar all welcomes other than our own.
Donna Lucrezia—see!... Children!

A loving couple!
Though one of them fled off awhile ago.
[To Alfonso.] Lured back?
Lucrezia, do you welcome me?
Then welcome me with hands and lips.

[As he kisses her.] Come home!
{64}

How high the storm is rumbling! Crack! What fell?
Look through the window.

’Tis an old ilex-bough,
That sails along like a black, ruffled swan
A space above the ground.

Draw in, draw in, draw in,
My light of service, Gaspare—the wind
Would, if it could, extinguish you.
Go yonder!
Set further in upon the table there
That vase ... enamel with the whirl-blast round it,
And the enamel matchless! Did you tell me
My lord Antoniotto Pallavicini
Waits for an audience? Of a truth, the tempest
Drove not His peace from Christ within the ship.
Well—introduce the Cardinal St. Praxede. [Exit Poto.
Vespers will sound directly; but the bell
Of the old, dying day will shape a tinkle
In this mad, hammering gale, and no one hear.

[Re-enter Monsignore Gaspare Poto with the Lord
Cardinal Antoniotto Pallavicini.]

Good even, lord Antoniotto.
{65}

Holiness,
What wind!

Santi, it wrenches everything it handles—
No touching, but possession. Lord Antoniotto,
You come to seek the dispensation. Poto
Will tell you when I reached my bed last night;
Yet with all industry your business lingered
Still far beyond my goal. I crave your patience.
So many festivals this jubilee,
Processions, triumphs! O my Lord Cardinal,
Think—and the great rejoicing yesterday
When our young Duke received from Holy Church
The Order of the Mystic Rose that blossoms
Upon the banks of the abundant rivers—
Crown of the Church triumphant, militant.
My lord, the pity you were held at sea,
Delayed at Ostia too! Our Duke knelt down;
He took the emblem, kissed the hand, and kissed
The foot of Christ’s vicegerent; then together
We stood erect, and he advanced; for once
He went before me—that was joy!—before me,
The Rose in his right hand, the hovering Dove
On his beretta, with its fretted rays,
A nimbus round him from the monster pearls,
And he before me like a star of heaven!
You have heard the Sacred College makes him Vicar,
Duke of Romagna, Count of Imola,
Forli? There were some seventeen Cardinals
Signed, when I signed the Bull.

And I away from Rome!

Poto, shut down that casement.
Hoo! I shiver—shiver!
A cold so keen and violent.
{66}

I will aid him.
Your Holiness is prudent.
[At the window.] What a shock
And surge among the roofs.

[With a crash the ceiling falls in over the Pope.

O God!
What is it? What has happened?
Is he dead?

Oh, oh, oh! The Pope is dead.

The Pope
Is dead, is dead.

[Re-entering.] What horror!
His Blessèdness, where is he? Jammed behind
Those ribs of vaulting—but the throne still stands,
Veiled by a dais-curtain.

O my lord, look there!

[They discover the Pope.

Ah, God on earth, he keeps his throne! Not dead;
See, see, he moves the ruin from his hands.

His brow bleeds.... [to Guard.] Gently, the great daïs-nails
Will harrow up his arm.

But he is still as death!
Now pass him through the crevice the dropped vaultings
A-tilt have made.

[They bring the Pope out and raise him slowly on his feet.
{67}

Yes ... to my room,

[He is helped into the next chamber.

Thank God!

My father ...
The Lord Lorenzo Chigi is stone-dead
Above.... My father!

Excellency, safe;
But hurt, but bleeding.

Publish wide the news;
Shout his escape! Send doctors, send the best—
The Bishop of Venosa.

[Exit into the Pope’s chamber.

[Passing out.] Your Excellency, the Pope’s Holiness
Has at the very edge of death been spared.

I am so thankful! [Physicians come out.

Nothing of danger! He is torn, he is shaken.
He asked for you.

I will go straight.
{68}

No, no, Madonna,
He is asleep, and even your steps would rouse him!
He will demand you later as his nurse,
His cook, his smiling comfort. God be thanked!

[They pass out.

I am so thankful ...
That chasm—the marbles in their deadly blocks,
I feel them as their falling were on me.
Cesare! [He comes out of the chamber.

Pearl, how white!

But you are whiter far. You are not hurt?
Cesare, are you reeling? Take my hand.

Nothing—a chasm.... As from the pit of hell,
When I look up through this destruction, up!
I will not look. It is all over now;
That snatch of Chaos is an empty mouth.
The tower fell—four were killed above this room;
No matter there, nor who.... But have you thought,
Lucrezia, how brief our dazzled hours?
This tower a’crumble, had it buried him,
Instead of bruising! Diva, we are gods,
But all Olympus perishes with Jove,
And Jove we know must perish. Come away!
I will conduct you.

No, no, Cesare.
There will be need to swiftly publish forth
A Brief to calm the people from their fear.

Lucrezia, but you lay
The cool of softest snow to my hot brain.
Our Queen of Beauty love you!
{69}

Take some wine—
The light, white wine.... To-morrow we shall laugh
At this big rent.

Avernus, we shall laugh!

[They go out, the wind blowing on them from the gap.

Why do you sigh?

You are so full of bliss—
You contemplate me as I were a jewel.

You are, and mine.

Why, you have many jewels.

The gift of others: but this jewelled thing
Is you. Alfonso!—and the painters say
You are the loveliest boy in Italy.
You sigh again—why do you sigh? You shall not.

[She caresses him and offers him half of a peach.

Ay, half—
Half of a pleasure! I would have you all,
And always. If I am to stay in Rome{70}
Is it to shun your brother up and down
The streets of Rome, so to escape temptation?
Even yesterday ... Lucrece, he concentrates
Such fury in me as I look on him
I shiver, and for hours, after long hours
I find myself still trembling.

[With deep acquiescence.] Yes....

And you can suffer
That I should bear the insult of his carriage;
That is the wound: no flashing from your lips,
When I am injured, and no least regret
When you are summoned from me to confer
With His Holiness apart, or by his side
Parry the orators when they grow angry,
And growl from their chafed monarchs.
If to please you
I stay in Rome....

[Laying her hands firmly over his.] You are too young, impatient,
To bear long audience of the orators.
[Twining her arm in his.] But come—why will you speak of yesterday
Or of to-morrow? It is midsummer:
Lucrezia is your own, Lucrezia
So blissful in your arms that, malcontent,
You sigh.

I would you loved me less, I would
You did not hold me here as in your clutches.
Midsummer! I shall never see my own:
I have seen you. Beauty, you have no season,
Nor warmth, I think: you are a cruel goddess,
That loves her mortal, and can let him die,
Her fit of doting ended.

Will you quarrel?

[The Pope’s voice is heard calling through the halls.
{71}

Where is she?
Lucrezia, Lucrezia! My little nurse!
Lucrezia! [He enters.

[Rising with Alfonso.] We are here, dear father.

Ha!
Feast of S. John, is this austerity?
Skinning cool peaches in a vestibule?
You should have seen the bull-fight, my fair Spaniard.
Cesare....
But he is Hercules! There, in his doublet,
With his short sword he faced five bulls.
I watched
The issue, not the contest; for ... conceive!—
Five spurting carcases, the animals
So swiftly struck one could not draw one’s breath
Between the passes. But the beasts were slain
Before his presence as in sacrifice!
The bloody smoke rose up as to a god.
Ah, little Spaniard, and you kept the hour
Toying with Naples.
[He gives a chuckling whistle.] An arena, child—
Above a reeking tiger there was silence
When Commodus, the golden-haired, stood up;
But when our Spada smote, and at one blow down tumbled
A huge, protesting head, the multitude
Lifted a crowd of shouts into the sky,
And saw no more; hearing was everywhere.
Then, as the noise grew thinner, he emerged
In beauty ... oh, an athlete! oh, a David!

You must record this as a miracle.
Does it belong, your Blessèdness,
To Pagan legend or the Church?

To us.
But I repent I did not see him there,
Magnificent before all Rome.
{72}

You sparkle!
I pardon you. He scarcely will.

[The Pope nods his head and rises to go.

[Detaining him.] A peach!...
It is a little fountain
That grottoes under cloud of this red skin.
There, father, from my hand.

[The Pope seats himself again.

And this dear Cesare,
You will no more reproach him,
When he grows dull and drowses in the sun:
We let our lions drowse.

[Eating the fruit.] Delicious!
So cordial in its essence it revives,
But sets the senses light enough to slumber.
We let our lions drowse ...
I am drowsing now;
A midsummer sweet napping. Guard my rest,
Bright angels!
Nay, Alfonso, do not budge.
I shall be fast asleep.

[The Pope falls asleep; at intervals he snores.

[To Alfonso.] Dear Blessèdness,
How could you flee from him? Look, there is kindness
In every crease of his face; look at his lips
That almost bubble in his sleep with mirth
And comfort that he takes in every pleasure.
He never could make sorrowful, Alfonso.

I did not flee from him.

But you make sorrow,
Alfonso, with your fears. You are growing restless,{73}
Restless again.
On this midsummer-day
When even the little demons of the wood
Are turned delighted into lovers’ elves,
When all things take enchantment, even sin,
And pardon waits if one should sin too deep
[Pointing to the Pope.] Of Heaven itself, shall we not be content?
Shall we not cease from talking?

[Vehemently drawing her to his breast.] While he sleeps.

Eigh, Michelotto, shall a vermin kill?
Conceive! Alfonso flicked me with an arrow,
Shot from the chamber where Lucrezia watches.

The Duchess did not see?

It makes no matter,
It is of no account.... Swift, Michelotto,
A rope.... Conceive! This little pipe of breath,
This spawn, this Naples sought the overthrow
Of my large destinies ... and his kind Duchess
Simmers the pipkin that he may not die
Of poisoned food! Not even the sharp vendetta
Of the Sanseverini fallen upon him
A month ago has mangled him to death;{74}
He keeps his tower, mending his wounds apace.
But, swish!—an arrow flies to end me.... Ecco!
She is hard by, the silky wife grown fulsome,
Dragged on a husband’s chain. Swift, Michelotto, swift!

The poignard or the little rope? I serve you
Close as my bone to flesh.

So God in silence
Contracts with San Michele. Die for me——
You were not such a fool! I choose who dies.
Fetch me your instruments—the steel, the rope.
Quick, and return! [Exit Michelotto.
I wait a thousand years!
Aha, Carlotta, little Sancia too!
Ay, and Lucrezia ... she can watch so much,
I doubt not she was watching when he shot:
She would not warn me—she has seen so much,
And never stirred in tongue or eye.... But listen!

[He bends his ear toward the door.

I hear the cooing voice; she sings to him.

[Lucrezia’s voice is heard from the Borgia Tower.

Sweetest Mother,
Thy suit is won:
Flowers for thee,
Flowers for thy Son,
Flowers at thy knee
For the Trinity!
She is soothing him with little, airy notes,
Like the rustle of the leaves.

O Michelotto,
These jewels
Have never shone so bright—steel, steel, and necklets
Twisted and coiled so deftly round the throat
The breath heaves up—then plumb back to its void.
Conceal yourself.... I drag the women out....

My lord, I cannot warrant
Some little noise may lucklessly escape.
{75}

Myself I will be present if you palter,
Will watch his features crying for the air.
Swift, swift—— [He goes into the Borgia Tower.

His fangs drip blood!
But she shall not suspect.
To the dark with me.

Loose, loose! It bites my wrist.
Why do you bring us here?

You said that we must come.

Let loose; loose, Cesare!

[To Lucrezia.] Sit there....
[To Sancia.] You writhing viper.
I fling you off!

[He pushes her away. She is at the door, trying the handle.

What is it?

What?—White eyes, who shot the arrow?

Alfonso—

In your sight!
{76}

[Stroking him.] Your brow, your cheeks, your hands.
No blood.... Alfonso—

Do you plead for him?

You are safe....

You sang to him. Is that your triumph?

That you were safe....
The little song.... I sang it to myself.
I sang.... [A cry is heard.

Fool Michelotto!

[Breaking from the door, and crying to Lucrezia.

Can you not hear? Do you not understand?
Are you of flesh or stone? They are killing him,
As they killed Giovanni....
[To Cesare.] Murderer! For I know,
Ah, now I know you are his murderer.
You did the deed—you, you!
She can forgive a brother’s death: I cannot!
I am blood of Naples, and will be avenged.

Alfonso! [She sits motionless.

Ay, Alfonso! He is murdered.
I will be heard! [She beats on the door.
Lucrece, Lucrece! She could divorce one husband:
Oh, she can sever!... Cold as death her eyes
Beat on me. O Lucrezia, do you hear? [She mutters.
They are murdering my brother—he is murdered.
Now all is gone to silence.... [She sinks down in her sobs.
{77}

[To Lucrezia.] Star, you fade!

[Cesare sways Lucrezia toward the Maids of Honour.

There, take her, Angela—she clings....

[Coming to herself and looking round.] Alfonso?

Cesar ... but weep your tears, your destined tears.

[He goes toward the door.

[Moving from Angela and following Cesare, with a cry.

Alfonso!

Has she lost her wits?

[Arrested.] How wondrous
She is! And she is wailing for a ghost!

[With the same cry.] Alfonso!

[With a gesture after Cesare.] Gone!...
Look at her, look! She rises like a nymph
In a cloud of water—look!

She is parted from us....
{78}

[Suddenly falling from her height full length on the ground.

Jesu miserere!

Ah, ah, and the babe too!—Giovanni!... So
I named him, so, to speak once more the name.

[The child reaches up to him.

Blue eyes! Come, come, no tears!
Angel, I cannot be your nurse, I cannot.

[He passes on, slipping a rosary into the child’s lap.

How he inhabits
The air he breathes ... no need of clothing here,
Embellishments and laces—all is Cesare,
His lusts, his pride, his loneliness....

Aut Cesar—fie! Aut nihil! He is Cesar;
Duke of Romagna first,
My bastard!—presently
King of all Italy. Am I, indeed, his father?
But if I am not, Roman Jupiter
Stole to my couch and got him such a son
As the whole earth acclaims. More beautiful
He is growing day by day. We interact;
We are together, or, if separate{79}—
He breeding armies and I breeding gold—
What colloquy at nightfall.... And submissive,
He is submissive toward me as Lucrece.
What children these have been to me!

Ah, Fiammetta, welcome!
Nay, ’tis your right, child.... Here I am intruder,
In the Lord Cesar’s absence. Take my blessing.

[As she rises.] Lord Cesare bade me this hour ...

It is
The hour for worship. With discretion, child,
You soon will be the mistress of a king.
[Fiammetta winces.] Madonna!
How like, how like! You are good. Why should you blush?
You are good and honest ... and a strength of heart
Is in you to bear princes. You will suckle
One day a playmate for this royal child,
Infans Romanus!

[Looking round in terror.] The Lord Cesare
Bade me attend ...

Scared at the Vatican,
Seat of the gods, sweet child, and seat of Him
Whose first command is Multiply! These chambers
Are given to my son. But all these motley walls
We will have re-created—fading frescoes,
Of hands that moulder.... We will have your Cesar—
Nay, we will have yourself set on a throne,
Or rising ’mid the lilies ... not historic:
In history there is no art; and life
Is life and death, and never resurrection.
My fair Fiammetta, we will have you painted.
There is a prayer in your bright eyes—
{80}

Lord Cesare ...
And represented as King Solomon.

[Patting her on the back.] Assuredly ... while David rests with God.

[The Pope continues rubbing the frescoes with his hands.

All new—
I will make all things new.

[With a wide smile.] You know that Prince Alfonso has been killed?

[Trembling.] Killed?
The boy was up and dressed, and felt his feet
For the first time to-day.... Why do you stand there
So overwhelming in your aspect, lofty
As you had won a fortress? On my soul,
And by the Holy Fisherman I swear,
You frighten me.... And I regret the lad—
A pretty, flaunting flower of pomegranate
Jerked from the bough....

But we must cloak this death.
[Laying his hand on Cesare.] I will not listen; it is policy
In most things to be ignorant.... You, Cesare,
Must have the ordering of the funeral.
Poor lad! A restless creature, like a dog
That strays about your hearth, and may be here
To-morrow or be gone—Satan that wanders
The earth alone knows where.... But murdered!
I think I will not know; my ears refuse{81}
All knowledge from you.... We must cloak this death
Among ourselves.

[The Pope turns away tottering.

We cannot:
For his physicians said he would not die,
But live, as pertinacious as a weed.
It cannot and it shall not be a secret
Why he was killed.

[Turning sharply back on Cesare.] By whom?

By me.

The boy
Was young and fair; but scarcely crossed your path.

His stealthy arrow did; he let it whizz
Across the garden as I trod the grass.
Such little splits of wood may in a moment
End years of ripening fame. A month ago
The hurried marble thundered down on you,
To-day an arrow swept my hair. Say, Holiness,
Would you prefer to have that lad of Naples
Teasing your moments with his fears and murmurs
Or me shot dead, our dead dreams under me?

My tawny Splendour, wherefore ask?

[Spreading his palms.] Then wherefore?

Cesare, the avowal!
{82}

I killed in self-defence?

Son, that you killed....
Well, it is done!
Well, it is done!

And if your Holiness
Will deign to listen—do not let the tongue
Be running and returning like a wheel:
All gossip of my action,
If you refrain, will end within his grave.
Unless you speak there cannot be an echo.

Ay, ay—die out—the gossip will die out;
Ay, ay, if you would have it so....
The vaults? For we must bury him in private.

[As he nods.] Without bell-ringing and a storm of dirges.

Lucrece!
Ah, she will weep her eyes out: rain, rain, rain,
Above this broken flower, this bridegroom.

Banish her.

I could not bear to see a lifelessness
Of sorrow in the dear one.

Banish her.
Unless you banish her,
The Vatican nor any street in Rome
Will see me.
{83}

She shall spend her tears at Nepi,
At Nepi—my own gift to her—no exile!
She shall retire where she is Governor,
Attended and in honour. La, sweet child!
The iris-sprinkled side-locks, amber sheaves,
A widow’s! She, a dove of desert-waters,
A widow!

Let her keep
Her dule ’mid dead volcanoes!

[As if watching.] ... Figliuolo,
Luck is your Guardian Angel! Have you thought
Romagna needs protection against Venice,
Romagna that so soon will be your own?
The Estes of Ferrara ... could we mate
Lucrezia with the princely house! Ah, then, to northward
You were impregnable. The heir is named
Alfonso.... To a woman there is matter
Of comfort in a name. For poor Alfonso—
God rest his soul!—who now is lying dead,
Alfonso d’Este shall be sought for her.

[Abruptly leaving his game with the child and animal.

Has Lord Gianstefano Ferreri yet
Paid down the sum due for his Cardinalate?
I want the money.

[In a murmur.] Such a tiger-clutch
Upon our treasuries! Fio di putta,
Bastardo! ... More, more, more,
As I made gold for Mommus!

Can I
Found you a power in your estates and cities{84}
Without the wages of my soldiers? Sooner
I would pawn my Indian rubies
And ceremonial pearls than let my army
Starve for its hire. Ten thousand ducats—

[Passing his hand across his brow.] I am coining day and night and in my dreams:
I cannot.... I am bare
Of treasure, save these vestments that the Church
Casts on my poverty. I have no jewels,
No raiment, no reserve....
But Cardinal Lopez
Is fading every day.

I cannot wait.

Pish! You shall have the wages. But last evening
You plained you needed more artillery,
And Messer Leonardo would be idle
Among the forts unless I furnished you—
Fate will: for Lopez dies.
These busy Cardinals
Build each a piece of honeycomb in mass
Sufficient.... Why, Michele, Giambattista
Orsini, and Ferrari
Have sweet within their cells for all Romagna.
Ah, we shall need
More than the harvest of the Jubilee,
A tithe, a fresh Crusade.... What else?

[In a vibrating voice.] The King of France
Sanctions my new campaign. I kissed his envoy,
Lifting my mask off—father.

He grants you freedom, will molest no more?
My policy of months confirmed!
{85}

And seldom
Has France been so outwitted. Now you are laughing?
I curse them, to the very lees of laughter,
These dung-hill French, that I must fight beside.
—Ah, now your eye is caught by the escutcheon,
Our challenge!

[Shaking his head.] Flagrant blazoning! Christ Jesus!
Yet if you are not Cesar—nihil, nihil!
Come with me to the treasury.

And silence,
Silence and secrecy about this death.

[Making a step back, as if from a gulf.] Cesare, but you sway me like your mother,
When she inhabited my will. Ah, God!
My Captain and my Gonfalonier
Suppling my nature like a mistress, fah!
Come with me.... Take the gold!

I would that I had kept it in my heart,
Even as that other secret. Christ’s dear wounds
Printed on me! And now the multitude
Would see the trace and crowd up to my cavern,
I do not want the impress any more:
I do not want the crowd,
Nor anything to happen any more.

Most noble princess,
I pray you, by your sorrows, let me be.
I have no signs to show you.

Let me lay
My hands against your hands.

[Astonished.] Then you believe?

And you will pray for me?

The stigmata—
Would you receive them?

I am with the lost.
Give me these hands,
And let me stroke them up and down.
This land
Of the Dies Irae, O this bitter land!
The hills
Heavy with crusted blood, the streams that hiss
So low, as if from pits of hell—this land!

[Slowly watching her.] You would win pardon? Do not be afraid....
The Lord was there;
In purple and in darkness.

Oh, I would feel the wounds!

But this is perfect faith, a miracle.
My hands are coarse and hard and only striped{87}
Where I have touched the oxen’s leather thongs.
She does not ask for any history,
Or trouble me to hope.

[Lucrezia opens her eyes and smiles.

You smile: you have had dreams?

[Rising.] No: I have rested, I have been asleep.
I am governor
Of this drear Nepi. Where you have found peace,
None shall disturb you; none shall take away
This peace, or question. I am Governor.

[She embraces Suor Lucia, and, still smiling, passes out.

But speak of her,
But give me leave to speak—perplexity
Is on us of her escort: we were bid
Accompany her as she were led to prison;
And in this Nepi that is hers we know
She is a captive—we would rescue her;
She is a victim—we would slay the tyrant.
Oh, she is like a girl, a younger sister,
Still shut up with her tutors, whose fair face
Climbs from a narrow casement, and spreads torture,
Cursing and disbelief through idle time.
What dwells within those plaits of saffron hair?
Speak, secretary, for all our patience ends.
{88}

It must not. Hers will never end. Her passions
Lie in a bed of patience.

In a sea
That overwhelms them!

No, in a bed of patience;
And there she fosters them. She will not die.

Will she be wed again, again revive
As the seasons alternate from cold to hot,
With a great patience till the years be spent?

Don Federico, she will never wed
Save as her father’s policy decrees;
She is a sainted daughter.

And a sister—
How would you rate her there?

It is the Duke himself
That banished her: he could not tolerate
The tears he caused to flow. If you would serve her,
Let those in Rome about His Holiness
Be taught she languishes for Rome; effect
Her swift recall. I will provide you taste
Sweetness of her sweet gratitude. I have served her
Through many bitter days and found her sweetness
As the perfume of her patience.

She approaches.
My orders are most strict: you must retire.
{89}

[After a profound obeisance.] But in the name of your whole escort, sovereign,
If we can aid——

[Lucrezia looks down on him and remains dumb.

[To Don Federico.] Receive our sovereign’s thanks.

[Exit Don Federico.

There are so many letters.
So many letters that I cannot write.
My poor Cristofero,
We meet this way together every morning;
I cannot write; I cannot sign my name.
It startles me to see my name....
Put by your papers.

[Cristofero lays manuscripts into drawers.

But there is an action:
Write to the Cardinal San Severini
That he may have new prayers, new prayers—all day
Said in the monasteries on account
Of the great sorrow I have had to bear.

[Laying her hand on Cristofero.

Provide that Vincent take
The gold I gave him to the Cardinal,
That a great requiem be solemnised
For the Prince Duke my husband—for his soul.
The glory of the saints play over him
And mingle him among them in their bliss!
I cannot bear my shadowy court of folk
That make no feast, that speak in low-toned voices,
And yet are raising up no prayers to Heaven
To draw down peace on him. There must be peace;
And I must lay my sorrow down to rest
Soft and for ever as I laid my dead.

There is no truth
In staying here, in all this haggard country,
With all its miles on miles of withering turf.
Must I be sovereign of this sultry air,{90}
This land that gapes on me? And there are chasms,
Great fissures that affright.... Of the miasma too
My babe may die. Are there no posts from Rome?

None, Excellency—yet I would convey
News of your health, of the young Prince’s health,
If it should please you, to his Holiness.

Nay, we must not be forward. Posts will come
To Nepi, if at Nepi I abide....

Give me the child.

Fie, he will set you weeping!

[Throwing back her widow’s veil. While he smiles? Bambino,
How thou wilt charm thy grand-dad.
Up and down,
Then up again—ha, ha!

The child is growing.

Is it possible to grow—away from Rome?

[She sets Rodrigo on a table before her.

Hieronyma, see the small, beating feet!
This babe will dance before he learn to walk.

His mother’s babe!

Roble, we must to Rome!
’Tis there one dances.
{91}

Gently, kinswoman,
The child is here in safety.

From what foe? In safety?
The child is mine.... He will protect the child.
[Dancing Rodrigo.] Pat, pat—bare toes!
Cristofero, your Prince
Is clad as quaintly as a traveller
In haste, and seeking refuge. Write to Vincent
That he send quickly stuffs and broideries;
Write for the little coat,
Punctured with gold, I wrought him.

Not the gold one;
Our Prince wears mourning.

Babe, what we must wear!
But I shall make your garments, one by one,
Even till you grow a man.
He snatches pearls!
I love their slide about my throat—nay, Roble,
Their touch is silkier than a baby’s thumb.
Fie, little cricket!

Donna!—

[Turning.] Posts from Rome?
You have tidings?

No, Madonna....

Say!
{92}

Duke Valentino
Is here, is at the doors.

I have not seen....

None ever sees, Madonna: from the ground
His army springs.

[Standing quietly and wringing her hands.

And his commands?

To bid farewell.
Madonna, he is busy,
His one thought of his conquests. But an instant,
Give him an instant’s audience and God speed.

Where is he?

In soft converse with Capello.

And whither—?

Sweet mistress, ask him whither; that will make
Matter of speech between you. Ask him whither.

I cannot see him! If he come, he comes
As the thunder that one cannot bear, or as
The earthquake that one suffers.

He was most tender
You should not be disturbed.

The Duke must march
Within an hour....
{93}

[To Hieronyma.] But I will mind the child.

Your benediction
Upon our arms and our diplomacy!

We start for Pesaro. None in the army
Has learnt that secret. We are here in conclave.
I go to conquer Pesaro. Giovanni
De Sforza has made havoc of your fame—
In tongue and hand
He shall be rendered impotent.
[Drawing closer]. For you
I fight, Lucrezia: you burned so hot
For vengeance of that enemy. I marked
The rage enkindled in your very substance,
As it must be when women are traduced.
Lucrece, I am no more a Cardinal;
I am a soldier with an army, such
As princes covet, and my first assault
Will be on Pesaro.
Are you a corpse,
A sentinel beside the child? You stand
So solid and so simple, like a block
Of marble that is dragged into a room
Long as its beauty pleases, and dragged forth,
If it can take no lustre from our moods.
{94}

[Moving a little forward.] There is my lord Torella, always faithful;
Agapito, who loves you—I commend
The Duke to you, to you....
[Turning back.] The child awakens!

[Cesare lifts Rodrigo, who resists.

He will not ... but he must.

... At Pesaro
You will find my lute; I remember where I left it—
In the fourth chamber: you will find my books;
Take care of them. Farewell....

A rivederla!
The lady here would haunt us. Will you fear,
Michelotto, you, a pacing ghost?
You have laid many such!
[To his cortege.] I led you here
That you might look on her, and Pesaro
Fall without aid of cannon. Ha, a fool!

[He laughs and turns on his heel.

[Looking after him wistfully and addressing Calmeta.

Your lord may be a king—I have dreamed it thus—
I would your lord should be a king....
Dear captains,
And soldiers, and the poet ... give him glory.

But we would fight for you.

Then give him glory.

[Half turning.] I am ashamed a poet should behold you!
Cavaliere, she was in our thoughts
A statue of fair Victory, a winged{95}
And silent creature that creates the air
She flees along....
Turn from her, she will damp
The stoutest hearts—a weather to discourage
An army from the field!
[Taking up a fold of Lucrezia’s veil.] In widow’s weeds—
For my assassin! These are widow’s weeds,
Are they not? They displease me; they deform.

[In a low, firm voice, while she trembles.

They will remain upon me the full time;
Their darkness on me my whole life till death.

Your future is irrelevant. Till death?
But nothing matters then. [Addressing his cortege.
To Pesaro!

[Turning again to Lucrezia.

You look a lady fit to nurse the wounds
Of men who fight for other women’s love.

Demon!
[She weeps bitterly.] ... I am a toy
In hands that play their game of rivalry
Over the stream of death.
O child!

[She crushes Rodrigo to her breast.

.... You are our shepherd
And ruler of our flocks: we are your flock.
{96}

Signore, I am happy, being blind
To sit in the sun: I feel you are the sun.

Lord Duke, you are our shepherd—
The reason this, that we forget our flocks,
And yet our flocks graze placidly and seek
The shadow and the stream as they were led.

You are our king; you have danced with us—our maidens
Consent to any yoke, for by-and-by
They will bear children you will train in arms.

[Speaking together.] We are your kingdom, and we worship you.
You have made us as a flock.

[With a flute.] You are secret
As the god Pan was secret to the folds.
Lord Cesare, we love you.

[Touching the lad’s flute.] And the flute.

He cannot sing the kings: it is in battle
When we hiss down in rage to die for them
Our blood runs music.

You shall die in battle.

We will all die: we will all live for you,
Ready to die;
Though we lie down, encompassing a city,
Beneath your rule we can lie down in peace.
{97}

You are my chosen warriors.

We are your shepherds, we must stay at home;
We cannot leave our flocks.

You are Romagna,
You are my people.

We are his people: we are Italy.
He consecrates us too; he loves the valleys
Where we rear up our lambs and sing our loves.

What shall we do? Beat on our castanets,
Fall on our knees, bring tribute?... But our prince
Has infinite treasure.

You shall keep my castles.
You are my garrisons; while you defend them
I shall rest quiet, all Romagna mine. [Rising.

You will not go from us?

First, I command a song.

The great lord Cesar Julius
Crossed the Rubicon—
The army was great,
It passed in state:
And the host was gone.{98}

There was none to see
That mighty lord;
The light on his face,
The light on his sword,
—And the history.

But a child on the bank
Of the Rubicon,
On his knees he sank,
He stooped and drank,
For his heart was faint that his lord was gone.

[The Shepherds all weep.

[Embracing the boy.] A master!—he shall sing you all I am.
And now I pass to Rome, without farewell,
For I am dwelling here and in your midst,
And with you through all ages, in your music,
Your sorrows, with the shadows on the hills,
So close to you, a presence in your hearts.
O my Romagna, there is no farewell! [Exit.

He has slipped away: I knew he was a god.
Boy, are you stricken? You should look up proudly.

[Taking up his flute and looking after Cesare.

I am stricken to the heart; he is a god.
{99}

My head aches.

Soon her Excellence
Will feel relief.

You look a wave-drenched siren
In those long folds of hair cloyed with the honey
By which the lees of the white wine cling close.
The sun is brilliant!

And it was kindly done
To save us freckles by the grace of hats
Worn in the presence. Ah, sweet Pope,
Until his Holiness returns to-day
Venus is Sovereign of the Church, its princes
Her laughing hierophants, the Sacred College
Her Loves, her Doves, her Swallows, what you will,
All twittering of her till the air is crazy,
And every breeze a gossip.
{100}

Hush!
A pretty jest—
But when it thundered yesterday I sobbed,
And headache like a terror hung on me
All the night long.... I am a daughter
Guarding her father’s house—the Universe:
I am no Pope, and, though the Cardinals
Laugh gallantly or slyly, though I laugh
At all the salt and spice of travesty,
Yet this obedience to my father’s will
Has turned my prayers to stone.
Dear girls,
Here at the toilet let me be a woman,
Whose handmaid forehead the triregno’s weight
Burthens to faintness.
Clarice, did you bruise
The celandine and greater cleaver’s madder
The full time Messer Giambattista Porta
Ordains?

Before you climbed up to the sun,
The roots were bruised and mixed with cummin-oil,
The boxwood slivers and the saffron, Donna.

Then lay our compound on....
The Envoy from Ferrara cannot enter,
Nor my two Cardinal Secretaries, until
You draw my hair out through the crownless hat,
And spread it like a halo on the brim.

[Clarice dyes her golden hair deeper.

There is a whisper that the Duke was seen,
Masked, at dead midnight....

[Starting.] He will keep his chamber;
He sleeps by day. I were ashamed
To play to him the Pope of Christendom;
I could not play it—I should flow no laughter.{101}
Haste, Clarice, haste, I am longing
For Messer Saracini and his news
Of when I shall be married.
Angela
How long, how long I wait!
A woman is a prisoner till a husband
Unlock her to her aim. When I am giddy
With dancing for my father, I recall
What Messer Saracini tells me often
Of the quiet, ordered court and the proud pomp
Of the old Este castle.... Don Alfonso,
So full of occupation with his cannon,
Artillery as brilliant as my brother’s;
But he himself in careless trim, as sons
Of an old princely house may dare to be.
Clarice, my tresses wide as sun-rays!
[Her hair is spread over a frame.] Bid
The Chamberlain bring Messer Saracini. [Exit Clarice.

A tent of yellow silk! I peep at you,
White, captive lady, Don Alfonso’s bride.

Hush, hush!

Most humble greeting!
Duke Ercole informs your Excellence
This week the wedding-train forsakes Ferrara.

Ah, you bring joy!
And joy is in my feet as in the lyre-strings
The golden music.
Messer Saracini,{102}
Is the great cortege for my capture started?
Oh, caught in dancing as a mermaiden,
And carried to Ferrara! Shortly
His Holiness will enter Rome, and shortly
The bells will clamour joy above our heads
Till the air dances, and the sunshine dances!
Girls, I will send my jester
Dressed in my newest clothes—the gold-scaled petticoat,
And crimson sleeves—to dance out to the people
My joy, and cry up Viva la Duchcessa,
Viva il Papa! Girls....
[To Saracini.] Oh, you are grave and full of wisdom’s smiling
Behind the gravity!
Clarice, my hat!
Tent me again for the Ambassador.

[Clarice spreads her hair once more over the frame.

Your future father, the Duke Ercole,
Sends me these pearls, his noble Duchess wore,
For Don Alfonso’s bride—ancestral pearls,
Not lately sea-washed, held by sovereign fingers
While years made generations.

[Lifting them.] Golden pearls!

Duke Ercole informs your Excellence
His health revives.

By letter
Commend me to his Excellence your Duke;
Say, she who is his daughter in her heart
Rejoices for his welfare.... I can nurse....
[To her Maids.] Tell Messer Saracini—night and day,
Alone, without repose, I tended
His Holiness when injured by the falling
Of a wind-toppled tower.
To-night
Be present at my ball.
{103}

Most flattered thanks.

And I will dance with you.

Day dance as well,
And bring me to that hour, sweet promiser! [Exit.

Ha, ha!—the limed, old bird! Ha, ha!

A post, from Spain.
His Catholic Majesty writes threateningly
Of the French rape of Naples, Holy Father
Assisted through the Duke.

My lord,
His Holiness returns this afternoon;
Await his wisdom.
[Holding out her hair.] See, is this a Pope?

Apollo!

[Smiling.] Leave him to his spokes.
I will report you diligent, my lords.

Your blessing, Holy Father! [Laughing, she gives it.
So the beam
Of heaven bears down a dove. [Kissing her finger-tips.
{104}

Your blessing!
Christ heal me!

Clarice, I am almost dozing!
This gold sun heaps me with such weight of gold.
Leave me and lay out the white satin robe—
No, for a warmth may rest upon my whiteness
A little space: I dance to-night in black,
With rubies of their violence grasping pearls,
With these ancestral drops of my old duchy.
Give me the verses on our Borgian Bull
That Porcius wrote—that little book. My eyes
Will rest on it half-closed and full of ease,
As sunny cats that stretch themselves to dream.

[They go out.

How strange!
I feel as I should never grow a woman
Save at Ferrara, miles away from Rome.
Alfonso does not love me—every day
Humiliates my humbler race, is fearful
I shall be found in nature sinister
And fatal.... But I am not so, and therefore
He cannot find that I am anything
But just his young Lucrece, he soon will love,
As creatures sent for gifts, if they are gentle,
Are cherished in reception.... Oh!

Amanda!

[To herself.] Castelian!... One, one voice....

Amanda?

You,
Cesare! You are come?
{105}

I cannot see:
Is there a smile behind these rays or no?
Is it dark weather, masks—or lip to lip?

Your voice ... I lost my breath
To welcome you.

Then to black hell my mask!

[He throws it away and kneels.

O Excellency of Ferrara, have I
Come here too late? Do all the Cupids
Hold over this white, little face the saffron
Of Hymen’s veil already? But I dare
A kiss beneath this gold, although Alfonso
Lose one sweet, nuptial joy....
Ah, the beretta
Must off in blaze of noon, if I would reach
Beneath your brim. [Holding her chin.] Return my happiness!

[They kiss.

What strands of amber! O magnificence!
My blond is grey-ashamed to touch such yellow
Of crocus triumph. So it seems my sister
Will be a sovereign Duchess.

Cesare,
This Este marriage—you would prosper it?

My fortress!
Behind your towers Venice can rage and curse....
But there is joy beyond—we shall be neighbour-princes,
Romagna in your sight as you look out,
And you in reach if I should mount a horse.
Rome will be left, but not the Duke, your brother,
We cannot be divided.... Holiness!

[He laughs mockingly.
{106}

You must not, Cesare.... Had you been home
The Holy Father had not set me up....
It burns me! [She lifts her hands to her face.

Curse the folly!
To make a jest of you—our secret! You
To be a Pope, a Governor—my secret
Of the veiled hours, of the sealed lips!
Our father can be garrulous in action
As well as tongue. Forget, forget, love-goddess,
All but the whelming sea-deep and your pearls!

[He lifts the great Este necklace from her knee.

Cloud, cloud, be dumb, my moon—shine under cloud!
... Were letters sent from Spain?

I would not read them.

We will receive them presently and answer.

I marvel
To see you up and in the morning sun.

I waked—then heard you sat against the sun,
Fixed to one spot in glory.

And the wars?

—Gained me Faënza, Castel-Bolognese,
Corneto, Piombino: for the French
I entered Capua....

And you were cruel there.
{107}

Transcendently. Naples is crushed to earth,
Is gone, stamped French in bloodshed.
That vendetta
I look on, round and perfect—Naples,
That once eclipsed my moon and shot its arrow
Athwart my omen, Naples
Hurled down as throne and kingdom!

Cesare! My hand—
You grasp as if to break.... Your long, white hand!

It hurts? Lucrece, I rule at Pesaro.

Well, dear, you need not look so venomous.
You rule—where is it that you do not rule?

With all his heart the illustrious Don Alfonso
Sends by my hand this ring.
{108}

With all my heart
I take this ring.

[Cardinal Ippolito puts it on her finger.

So now we are made an Este!
Donna Lucrezia Borgia d’Este, come,
The Church enfolds thee dearly.

Lord Ippolito,
Open the nuptial gift, Duke Ercole’s.

Fair sister, white as moonlight for the stars,
Would in this prison all the constellations,
That dew the paths of heaven when Luna shines,
Were clustered for your taking! Fair,
How you would set with twisted gold Orion,
And all the planets from the rubious Mars
To emerald-dartling Mercury. O Fair,
We are not gods to homage our Elect,
To wrench the sky and rob its flowering lights;
But all that mines and rocks can make eternal
Of those pure rays that span mortality
Are at your feet.

My lord Ippolito,
Your words with admirable beauty heighten
The preciousness of this most precious gift.

Ha! The lips suck, and even upon the palate
These sparkles dance and twang. Oh, marvellous!
Inert we call this body, yet it seeks
The corners of the chamber as with song;
A voice strikes on our fibres. Cesare,
These rubies.... You are poor!
Collars! Who would not
Be captive to these links?
{109}[Putting one on.] See, on the breast
This great rock-sapphire sullen!
Pearls—the pearls! the pearls!
Soft—ah, but soft. I smile, as old Tithonus
At the rainbow-paps of Dawn. This ring, a woman’s,
Can sit on my first joint to pipe its tale
Of shepherds in the showery grass. What joyance,
Heartiness as from cordial-glasses, drunk
By eyes and touch and spirit, in this treasure!
My lord, my lord!
You set resplendent eyes upon the Bride.
Ah, lord Ippolito! Serenely
She gives their posts of beauty to these jewels;
For her they strike and bleed, herself they honour,
For her they strike and bleed, herself they honour,
Their chief ally your gaze.

Gifts, gifts—more gifts!
The Church, the World munificent.

[Lucrezia smiles and thanks the Princes and Cardinals
with deep inclinations.

Burcardus,
Remove the magic table; in its room
We too must weave our magic.
Bring the sweetmeats!
A shower of pleasant hail in these warm bosoms;
Not golden rain of Jove, but feastful sugar....

[Softly sucking a sweetmeat.] My lord Ippolito, this crucifix,
And this, and this—your gifts ... they will know my hand
Close as the nuptial ring.

Fairest, and most devout!

The floors are clear; and I have my petition.
Cesare, grant us joy! Dance with your sister.
My stars, my Gemini! Lead forth the Duchess....
Delay? My prayer!
{110}

My prayer!

[Lucrezia lays her hand in Cesare’s.

[Laughing and bowing to the Pope.] The tambourines!

[Clapping and humming with delight.

More, more!
Could I but make these orbits everlasting,
God on the Earth had then His praise forever,
His music of the heavens.... My gold stars,
Each with its angel in a glory.
More!

[The dance goes on to music and hand-clapping.

And now we part!

Dear Holiness, my Father....

Ah, Child—Lucrezia! The pale eyes are rounding
To pearls, great precious pearls, that feed their orbs
Upon a sea of tears.... But you are young,
Scarce twenty-two, and, yonder in the north,{111}
One half of you
Is now already at your sovereign home.
Listen, my little girl: be circumspect
Among the Este, blameless to their watching:
But with a gentle steadfastness of pride
Meet and overthrow their arrogance ... God keep you
From cold disdain or cruelty!

Father, my courage
Is sure for I have won my husband’s father:
His brothers too, though nobly formal still,
As fashion rules their manners, have kind faces,
An air that makes me brave.
You must not pine, dear father,
Nor look for me too often, nor remember
I am so far away.

Nay, no caught breath!
Sobs will not help my Duchess home.
Ah, sweeting,
They do not do up at Ferrara there
As we in Rome: they live less joyously.
But you, a woman, will be sensitive
To all I stumble at the hinting of.
The peg you sing to must be set less high,
Less near Olympus. My bold horsewoman,
You must not tarry as with me to watch
The stallions worship Venus: those rich flames
Are out of mode for Don Alfonso’s wife....
Your feet will often weary for the dance—
You shake your head.... Well, then, a fruitful couch,
A sturdy race of princes be engendered
To comfort you! Lucrezia, O Lucrece,
The Vatican without you—the procession
Of gaudy midnights and no feather-footed,
Sweet daughter making grace, embroidering
The torchlight with her silver attitudes,
And floating flash of diamonds, till the dawn
Came to me from her swaying pearls, and eyes
Half-open in the languid Spanish dance!
Day after day my coffers will boil up
With pearl on pearl for you.... To-morrow morning{112}
I shall drop in the largest of the East.
And, Duchess of Ferrara, anything
We can perform for you is done the moment
It is but a desire within your hope.

Dear Holiness, you whelm me with your love!
Take care for me, my father, of your health.
Cesare will be dutiful and anxious
To make your evenings merry—but so soon
Cesare will be from you at his wars.

And I be left a gray, old priest alone!
Well, I must bear my age and loneliness
As of the time of life.
If you would comfort me,
Daughter, in desolation—for already
The Vatican is chilling, growing hollow
Behind your cavalcade—then write to me
At every sleeping-place or tarrying-place
Along your way: and do not anger me
With negligence. Be diligent and careful,
As of your duty, to inform my thoughts
With each event that touches you. To-night
You rest at Castelnovo. Rest and eat!
Then out with pen and let the little hand,
Tired with the reins, yet for my foolish sake
Write me good-night, thy health, the courtesy
Shown to thee on thy way.

Even beside my prayers
I set this duty.

Sweet, and most sweetly promised!
Oh, my Lucrezia, you will never know,
For Nature will not in her rule betray
Her elder secrets to young ears, how fondly
I love you in your fairness,
That was your mother’s lure about my soul....
Lucrece, your mother is both loyal and good:{113}
Alfonso d’Este may acclaim your virtue,
If you are hers in worth as loveliness.

Cesare and your little son!

[Clasping her child.] Rodrigo,
I leave you with your grandsire.... Ah, my feather!
You laugh to see it dancing. I will send you
Long feathers from the city where I dwell....
O father, let me kiss you, let me see
Your hand upon his head. I cannot stay!
I am no more a bride—rather a corse
To leave all this behind.

There, there, there! Do not cry!
The child is sobbing, and my eyes ... White Fairy,
Enchantress, you are loved and you are wept
By generations: by your sire, his son,
And by your son.

Cesare does not weep.

His eyes burn threateningly, his face is cold;
That is a warrior’s weeping.
Cesare,
We shall be dull as monks when she is gone.
To-night ... I am the Pontiff, you almost
A Cardinal again. To think one woman,
A little bride, with streaming hair, can set me
Alone upon St. Peter’s rock to weep!
Now guard thy health, pray ever to Madonna,
The glorious Virgin. Benedicite!
Into my arms once more! O Cesare,
What I have lost to found you as a Prince,
To wed her safe to sovereignty! My Este,
My own Lucrezia—
And the letter, child;
Do not forget.
{114}

Come, come!

Do not be ill;
Do not forget.

[They part: Cesare leads her to the door.

[Suddenly still and turning.] One kiss, but not farewell—
One kiss here in the Vatican!

[Shaking his pastoral staff at Cesare.] O Traitor,
My temporal power would over-reach me thus?
The last kiss from the Vatican will float
Out from the window yonder where I watch
The last long arrow-streak of your array
Toward Castelnovo. It will be a kiss,
And fly like autumn cranes to Africa.

[Exeunt Cesare and Lucrezia.

Gone, gone!
Here gather all the Cardinals.

Quick, to the window....
[Lifting Rodrigo.] Up, my little man,
And see your mother leave us.
Ha, how trim
She sits, beside her Cesare, how grand!
I shall take journey
In April to Ferrara.... What if never,
If never I should see her any more!...
My lord Antoniotto,
That is a sight Vergilian gods would praise!
{115}

Where is the Duke?

With Messer Leonardo,
Learning the secret of an engine needing
A fortune for its efficacy. Where,
My lord Martino, is his Holiness?

Gone with his cousin, it may be to join
Duke Valentino.

Coming hither
We had encountered.

Search the armoury. [Exit Michelotto.
We live and breathe for armaments, for choice
Of this Condottiere or another
To lead them. In two days the Duke will march.
Then news and letters, or discourse of these,
Will fill our ears and fill the Vatican.
His Holiness is chafing, and on fire
With all the wishes of Duke Cesare.
He laughs; but sometimes clouds:
—Comes to the Treasury, then leaves the door
Unopened, and the wrinkles of his face
Take seed of thoughts and teem.

He is gone below....
Gone to the buried rooms where young Astorre,{116}
Faënza’s lord, for now a twelvemonth past,
Lies captive.
Have you seen the catapult?
It terrorises by its fashion. Come!

Would he were in the Tiber!
A child so fresh and vigorous, a lad
As fair as Alexander, and a fame
As crescent. If we shut him up in marble,
A statue, we were justified: his body
Is of the ageless sculptures.

Cousin,
You should not seek the prison-cells below.

Our Lord looked on the Spirits shut in darkness:
Scarce He remitted sentence, but His face
Melted the iron; there was Paradise
And fragrance with His breathing.
This Astorre....
Curse his fell jailor—triple murderer!

Nay, in defence....

Of his ambition, of his majesty....
O Tiber, but you do not heave; your current
Flows smooth!
And I, should not I pardon sin?
Here am I bleeding for his great offences,
With love not strong enough to snatch their load,
And fling them from my sight.
{117}

You have absolved him, Father,
By your great power.

Francesco,
Shall I absolve him with chained hands that tremble
Playing their gest of benison in Hell?
I will look up and curse him where he stands
Among the gods....
Cousin, there is a succour
I drink of, as St. Bernard drank the breast
Stooped to him in his ecstasy. Our Lady
Keeps me in adoration.... But this Power
That bows us to his ends, as resolute
And cold as growing winter, is a god.

Ah, Lucifer—his creature Michelotto!
I hate these dun, blue eyes:
This executioner, with trains of ghosts
And drops of gore behind him for a trail.

Your Holiness,
Will you be private with his Excellence?

Cousin, retire! [Exit Cardinal Borgia.
We are in privacy.

[Michelotto bows and retires. The Pope seats himself.

’Tis Camerino first to be besieged....
Ah, and the secret spring upon Urbino—
My leopard!—that must come to me as news!

Cesare, you have plighted oath of freedom
To that fair boy below.

[Cesare smiles and lifts his shoulders.
{118}

The hour is portioned mine.
Of my demand you listen, Holiness.

Aut Cesar,
Aut Nihil! There is danger
From Fortune in this new campaign. My Captains,
The cursed Condottieri,
Are plotting to betray me. Holy Father,
Between us, you and me, there must be action
Of policy as ductile and as cool
As ever was concerted.

True! With France
Incessantly adroit I must secure
Continuance of her aid....
Danger and treason?
To you, my mystic Angel, treachery?
You take my heart out....
Mary, Queen of Angels,
Protect our arms, protect my son!
And you—?

[Suddenly on his knees, close to his father’s ear.

These mercenaries—Baglioni,
Vitelli, the Orsini, in one grave
Shall sink entrammelled.... Do they know me yet?...
And their injurious arms be drawn of sting,
Their troops unweaponed.

Ah!

I shall be slow in this:
You must not press my schemes.
Then I shall muster
Another army, fresh and of my land,
My own Romagnole shepherds from their fells.
These people of the slopes of Apennine{119}
Sing me and weave my rule into their thews—
My Dragon’s teeth, my arms of Italy!

And these Romagnole shepherds are my flock;
A spiritual army and a power
To keep you safe.
This combat pleases me;
A conflict in the air—wit against craft!

I have learnt all the Romans and the Grecians
Have taught of armies, of a prince’s justice.
Both France and Spain will seek my armaments
To join my powers with theirs.
[Raising himself.] In this campaign

[Still kneeling, he fixes the Pope with his eyes.

You have your own campaign to wage in peace,
Campaign of death. When I shall give you warning,
Seize the Orsini left in Rome, imprison
Lord Giambattista in the Borgia Tower;
His coffers and proprietorships embrace
Armies and succours.
That great pearl is his,
The cardinal, benign, soft pearl.

Aurora,
The whiteness of its orb!

And he will die.
Aut nihil!

[With a slight shudder.] Ah!... Send letters every day.

What is this parchment?
{120}

You have read it,
They told me. ’Tis the libel from Taranto
Sent to Savelli.
Christ, we are a kindred!
Carnage and rapine, perfidy....

Why mince it?
Assassination, incest!

[Rising from the ground with clenched hands.

But the Latin!
The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style!
What sap in all this rankness. Cesare,
I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes—
Literae humaniores—so the salt
Of the strong farce compelled me.
Do you stoop
To anger? Consul Julius Cesar laughed
When choice Catullus spat an epigram,
And dined him that same evening.

Ho, but this poisoned insult
Is danger such as that I have to charm
Out of my army into sepulchre.
The scribblers—fah! the mercenary pens—
Shall have their lesson in good manners: silence
Laid on slit tongue and mutilated hand.

You are too young!

Lampoons
Debase our currency.

Hoo, hoo! [Reading.] “The New Mahomet,
Antichrist”—with his treasure lumped in jewels
A little Duchess wears. Ha, ha!
{121}

Plague me no more! You shall find all grown still.
Nascitur magnus ordo. ...
But to achieve my work! Italian Vergil,
How much to do, how much!... I must have time,
Have time before me, a wide path,
A silent; I must have my soldiery,
Sons of the sheepfold, of the vineyard: time
And patience and no noise, no sleep, no hastening,
No languor. This new order is my will;
It is beautiful.
Guard deep my plot, my secret.
We breathe combined?

[Nodding.] Letters?

[Kissing the Pope’s hand.] Each instant
I need your counsel or may do you good,
Sending good news.

What of that lad below?

[With an amused laugh.] I shall not take him back to his Faënza. [Exit.
[His voice outside.] Don Michelotto!

[Calling.] Cousin! [As Cardinal Borgia re-enters.
Quick! quick, Francesco; I am ready.
Give me your escort to the Vatican.
Francesco,
I knew the lad was doomed. God rest his soul!
{122}

I shall visit thee again: for that revive!
Open thy eyes, Lucrece.
... Not dare to bleed her!
Give me the little foot....
No sobs, Alfonso,
For I must have the surety of a smile.
Listen, Lucrece—

[To one of the Doctors, who deprecates speech.

This child is my chief captain,
We must confer. Keep quiet to your work.

[The Doctors operate.

[To Lucrece.] But if you cannot listen, then remember!
What was my last assault?

On Camerino....
Straightway I took a little strength ... the letter—

[She makes a movement towards her pillow.

You do not stir!

An iron-grip, and yet
I do not cry for mercy: it supports.
{123}

The need is past—and but for mastery
I keep my hold.
I shall visit thee again;
But ere I can make speed I promise thee
Such tidings—!

I am dizzy.

No, Lucrece,
You are not dizzy: for I promise you,
If you will pledge me to remain alive,
That I will vanquish all my enemies.
But I must have the oath.

A prayer—

The oath

I cannot, death is on me.... Oh, I faint....
[The Doctors press round.] A cordial....

No, a treaty!

All my foes—
You can lay them in the hollow of my hand;
Or, perishing, you can put out the fires....
And all the engines of my brain extinct!

What plots? What would you do?

[Bending over her.] I would fill all your cup.

[In response to a movement from Lucrezia, Cesare
{124}

The danger is quite passed: let us give thanks.

[He folds Lucrezia’s hands for prayer.

[Raising herself.] The danger is quite passed, and I shall live.

See, Messer Niccolo!
We are even with our enemies. This rope—
New rope ... the enemy
Of Florence, Vitellozzo, and with him
Oliveretto soon will tassel it.
Ha, ha!
The false Condottieri in one net,
Fast as the souls in Hell!

The fairest trap set by the coolest hand!
Madonna’s blood! Stupendous!—
Tell how the prey was trapped, Don Michelotto.
For since the Duke received me at Cesena
I met delay unlooked for. Artfully
These fools, these traitors had been brought to terms,
Bribes and dissensions seeding in their midst,
Till in mock penitence they won this town:
The Duke had quartered all their troops afar,
On pretext of the ground his troops must cover
When he marched in to hold the citadel—
So much was rumoured at Cesena. Thrill me
To the last fibre of my brain: relate!
{125}

The crazy fools, the bankrupts
In fortune and in wit!
Our Duke with gentleness, mansuetude
Landed the waverers.... His smile—
Had you seen it finger this doomed shoal—his welcome,
His kiss ... the lure, a heavy spell
We, his executants, broke off from, anxious:
Such air a dragon sleeps in. Altogether
Riding, they chatted conquests, paused at last
Outside the palace ... but a smile, the tickle
Of expert angler, and a steady gesture—
Solid they were within, their host excused
For change of dress....
Then cries, then execrations!
Changed men, our prisoners, in our power, outwitted,
White to the lids—for, Messer Macchiavelli,
They had shaken us with ruin.

True!
Florence—and Rome—believed your master lost!
A captain with no army, with rebellion
The stuff of his command, and France unsure!
He ruled himself as gods do. Of my knowledge,
This lord Duke, divus Borgia, is superb,
Magnificent and in himself a king.

Messer Ambassador, if thus you worship,
Let Florence strike alliance with my lord:
Your fruitless praise but brings his brow down, shapes
His lips unkindly when the name of Florence
Or that of Messer Niccolo drifts by.

I have written and will write
To Florence and her Gonfalonier.
{126}

Basta!
Always what you will do, and Florence always
A paralytic!
Messer Macchiavelli,
Your face, while I related, took my eyes,
As you had been a fiery gallant, hearing
His love’s deliverance vouched. Will a cold hanging-off
Bring any man to his desire? Satana!
I think your whole of statecraft is the rack;
Your smile puts to the question ... bah, my fingers,
My toes knot under it!

Then leave me, friend,
And knot your rope for Vitellozzo fast,
Fast for Oliveretto.

[Turning toward the archway.] Nay—behold!

Congratulations, Excellence! Believe me,
You have the brightest face in all the world.

Come close!
Your Florence, Messer Niccolo, has reason
To love me: all her petty enemies
Are in this hand for swallowing. Have I not
Betokened what I feed on, by my blazon—
A snake that gorges reptiles? Ha, the meal!
Do you remember
The ogres in our nurses’ tales laughed out
Before they gulped?... To-night, to-night a supper
Of creeping tyrants!

Vitellozzo,
Oliveretto....
{127}

Hoo! My appetite!
Let Florence eat with me!
[Closing his eyes and laughing.] It was a game,
The catching of these imps!
Truth, Messer Niccolo,
I am a boy again!
Ho-heigh! There will be music,
Romagnole pipes ... I love that rocky hills
And streams should be in music....
Michelotto,
Those rascal French are pillaging—see, there!
Go, hang a dozen, swing them high!
My citizens of Sinigaglia shall not
Be plucked by crows—up with a dozen, high!

[Exit Michelotto.

[To Macchiavelli.] Tell Florence she had better be my friend
Than enemy.

Always....

No words—
Eloquent acts like mine! Ingratitude
It were—no less—now I have made this banquet
If Florence show reluctance any more;
And it would be resented.
We must ride
Round to the fortress: as the sun goes down
A conqueror’s eye must look upon his army
To rule it as by light....
And afterward ... ha, ha!
The ogre’s banquet, the Romagnole pipes!
Heigh, festa, festa! [He rides on.

Enchantment take me! What a singular
And terrifying creature! Dragon—yea,
Intelligent and deep; a libbard faithless
As any spotted beast; a Roman Eagle.
He fires me as some sovereign Cleopatra,{128}
Infecting whom she animates.
O my poor Florence,
And I adore your Dread ... ah, but with lust,
Not love, for I could injure him, bring ruin
Upon him, for your sake.... And yet those shoulders
Are high above all princes, Italy!
Those eyes droop over reaches of wide dream;
The hand a vice! Lilies of Florence, day
And night he is my fire; I need no chafing—
Always a fire—not in my heart, good wife,
My scolding Marietta; but in my head;
And all my faculties a throng around it,
With reddened aspect and the cheer of life.
I am bewitched, growing in my enchantment
Magician rather than Ambassador
Of the Signoria: I possess a kingdom;
And, when this Borgia smiles on me, a Prince.

[The sun has set and stars come out over the snow.

How cold! [Stirring the fuel.
And cold too in the turret. Ice and fire!
And the ice stronger than the fire—the fire
Mere dying ash!
O God, this Cesar!
Ancient of Days, what art Thou
Except Thou hast a Son executant,
And all Thy crafty thoughts are in His heart?
Ancient of Days!
My forces
Are failing, I have lost my grip. This Cesar....
Oh, he is tyrant over me! I feel him
As a great stone my heart gives way beneath:
If he encroaches
There will be nothing in my breast but stone.
{129}

Well, Messer Pincione? Is it cold?
Can you not answer when I question you?

Eh, Blessèdness.
I bring this from His Excellence the Duke. [Giving a letter.

Warm yourself.... [Reading].... Mortal cold!
But warm yourself.
Say, Messer Pincione, to your master,
Lord Cardinal Orsini languishes
In the strict prison of the Borgia Tower;
And so has languished
Since his vile traitor-nephew was entangled
At Sinigaglia in the wondrous net.

Until he be Death’s treasure, can you pounce,
Holiness, on his treasure? Can you feed
The troops that press the verge of Tuscany?

True, true: our Duke requires his requiem, true!
Ah, Sinigaglia; ah, the wondrous net!
And these Orsini—
A brood of enemies, the murderers
It may be of Giovanni.... Ho! what cold!...
Well, well!
A cruel kindred, a most wicked race,
Our enemies, our enemies, and worthy
Of death’s extinguishing. [Reading again.
The postscript? Show me
This cantarella. [Pincione gives him a phial.
Ha! It is like a sugar
Of pearl; like the rare dust that Cleopatra
Drank of a dis-orbed pearl. Its facture? Tell me
The elements, how braised and how compounded?
{130}

Eh, eh—your Blessèdness.
A boar being killed, and arsenic-poison salted
About the entrails thrown to putrefaction,
From thence at last a liquid is withdrawn
In thrice-stilled deadliness.

The action?

Slow,
But sure in death....

[Calling.] Poto!

Monsignore Burchard
Finds the Lord Cardinal Orsini weary,
And struggling with a pain that trusses him,
A wild-fire inflammation?

Sick,
And troubled with a flux.

[Sotto voce.] Pain—and its end!

Your Blessèdness will give authority
For what must intervene?

Good Poto,
Take Messer Pincione to the jailer
Who keeps the Tower. [To Pincione.] To-night, after the play,
“Epidicus”—I cannot miss the play,
Not for the quick or dead, and lenience,
Some lenience we should give to sluggish nature—
To-night I will receive you privately.{131}
Well, Messer Pincione, will you stand
Till doomsday with your little heap
Of cruel pearls?

[Outside.] A gift for Holy Father!

No, boy, go back!
The chamber is deep-secret. On the pain
Of death, go back.

A gift!
Gifts are warm faggots on the winter coldness.
A gift! We will receive it.
Poto, hasten!
Take Messer Pincione to the Tower—
From the Duke Cesare. [Exit Poto with Pincione.
’Twere merciful!
Queen Cleopatra drank the like for glory,
As this Orsini for his body’s ease....
The cold! How sudden is my age
Upon me as a drift! By all the devils,
I might be turned to stone!

Sa, sa! My present! Hither!
Anticipation has a zest.... God’s rattle,
I am astounded—
This lightsome whiteness! The Orsini pearl,
The well-beloved, the whitest light of pearls,
The sun-confronting rainbows, moist and purple!
Boy, did you steal it?

No. In his munificence
Lord Cardinal Orsini on his mistress
Bestowed this wonder; at his mother’s prayer
It is presented to you for the boon
That she herself prepare his food. O Father,
She fed him in his helpless infancy;
Now, in his danger and imprisonment,
Create for her afresh the power sweet nature
Endowed her with, at need.
{132}

[Gazing at the pearl.] Arched, various,
Of shower, of cloud, sun-braving, sun-embroidered,
The breast-drop of a goddess!... All your prayer!

The order—now?

The order from my hand.
Poto....

Bring pen and parchment.
It wooes—ah, it assails! [Exit Poto.
Abundance of enchantment!

The paper—so! An order Prius cibum
Et potum ministrare Cardinali.
This charitable Brief well buys such beauty.
Comfort his mother; bid her
Season his dishes, but take cognizance
We must not set our heart upon our sons.
The motherly, rich heart—deny her? Nay,
But I am warmed to hear of such devotion.
A handsome woman too! Her son is sick,
Remember! Addio!

[Monsignore Burchard takes the Boy out.

[Holding up the pearl.] Sweet child, on thy forehead,
My spotless Este, my far evening-star,
This white crest on thy white!

[He stands absorbed and sad awhile.

Now it comes over me the hand that offered
This pearl, the voice that offered was a woman’s.
Venus! Lord Cardinal Orsini’s mistress!
A pretty piece of faith. Santi—O Venus,
A kind heart that could lay this wonder out
To buy him wholesome feeding.... Yea, a woman!
I would have kissed the boy had I divined—
A woman!... Sancta Virgo Virginum,
Foederis Arca, thou hast saved my soul!
Saved of a pearl, Janna Coeli, saved!
I would not take an aged life: I appeal{133}
To Providence to feed my raven, my
Young, ominous, black raven! He will come
Down on me from his camp: then ... Dio meo!
I would give half my Papacy if never
He might return.... Nay, nay!...
Mater Purissima,
O gracious sun-pearl!

[Without unmasking.] Splendid! Put it by—
France has forbidden me another stroke
Of arms, and I have ridden
Swift as the wind rides air, by day, by night,
To reach your counsel, fix our policy.

I have found France of late a slackening friend;
And I have dandled Spain and sung her soft;
At the first open moment she is ours.

Spain! You would threaten France?
Diavolo,
It is a game of patience quivering
Upon its leash....

Are all the rebel-mercenaries slaughtered?

Of the Orsini only one—Giordano
Braves us at Bracciano.... Some one knocks.
Send them away. [He hides in a further closet.

Enter!

Your Blessedness,
Lord Cardinal Orsini died this morning;
All our physicians
Could not subdue his terror that has summoned
The death it feared.

You watched?

I watched him; as a babe, he breathed his last.

Good, good Orsini—as a babe! His mother
Bears but the common loss.
I am shaking, Poto.
Quick, to his private house, surprise the treasure;
Go, seal it ours; go, inventory all. [Exit Poto.
[At the door.] Command Burcardus lay the Cardinal
Where it is public to the scrutiny
Of the whole world he died a natural death.

Burcardus, Holiness, refuses portion
In this affair.

Poltroonery! Then, Poto,
Command his office.
[Returning.] Heaven has interposed.
[To Cesare, who advances.] Lord Cardinal Orsini
Is dead now....

Cantarella does not check.
It is game!

Most sure. But, Cesare,
The joy, the fortune—he has died by nature,
And can be shown lying in simple death....

[Cesare laughs derisively.

Your coming struck him dead, fair basilisk.
Unshadow you.... The face!
{135}

No, I am soiled and marred.
I am not well.

Giordano
Flaunts it at Bracciano? Cesare,
Unroost him; we will finish the whole brood.

He clings to France; we must not threaten him
Till we can threaten Louis.

Straight
You shall unroost him.

No! The Lilies
Of France are the white badges of my fortune.
I shall not break with France too suddenly.

This is my will and I must be obeyed.

[His fingers twisting his sword-chain.] Not mine.

Unless you do this thing and bury
The brood that hates us, I withdraw from you
My treasure and I excommunicate
A disobedient son. It is my will.

I am your fool....
The fool of all these Kings, this Pope. No throne!
There is no throne....
[With a low bow.] Your abject servitor!
{136}

Hush! But in this my will. Paternity
Sees with hot passion where the foe is hidden.
You yield obedience, son?

Your fool, your fool!

The voice so slack, my heart,
Its cordiality unbraced! Nay, nay,
You are over-wearied. Come into your Stanze.
At your bedside, when you are laid to rest,
And have drunk wine and eaten, I will ponder
Our state-craft, and receive from you the story
Of Sinigaglia.

That is past.
Our talk must all lie onward.... Whew, the pain
Of riding rough for hours!

I hate you black like this—night on your face.

I am marred.

—But as you will. Come, rest.
{137}

My lusts are heavy in me,
Heavy and idle. I have poisoned Rome;
It gasps and wriggles: not an ounce of flesh
In all this Rome but quivers in my shadow.
And what is next to do? And who will fall?
They dream all fixed{138}
Within this brain—and I am but an eagle
Moving subservient to the ranker air.

[Another masked figure advances stealthily.

Eigh, Michelotto!

[In a whisper.] Caught, gagged—those false Albanians!

Shall I sentence
A troop of tetchy mercenaries? Ho,
Boon fellow, have I brought you here to-night,
By this dim waterside, to give me tidings
Of a few minnows trapped, that should be landed
Unconscious in the haul?
I have seen burthen
Of princes on this back; I have seen their jewels
Dangling from belt and chains. What sights
I have beheld....

And shall, if you will trust me with your hopes.

Uncertain! [They are silent.
Hopes—a hollow!
Slaughter the flocks of Ajax!

Stay!
God’s health, you have your plans, or I am palsied!

[Pulling Michelotto’s ear-ring.

Fondling, I have my plans: but not as God
Hovers His hand among the elements
To pick His missile; rather as Olympus,
Blustering and fickle, backs the game at Troy.
[After a pause.] I am tense and weary;
I dream too much—the fever of my dreaming
Strikes me at head of hosts,
And some in Spanish armour, some in French,
Innumerable hosts....
{139}

Come with me, come eaves-dropping! Ho, my wits
Were never nimbler; to each blood-caprice
I will give satisfaction, as a mistress
Stirs to appease her lord’s carnality.

[In the same tone.] I watched you strangling Trocchio ... but my father
Wept with shut eyes his trusted secretary
Fled from his table to betray our dealings
With Spain to France. The Vatican is dull!
Scruples are there and injuries and age....
[On his feet.] Why, like a hawk in ringing flight, I harassed
The creature for an hour to find if secret
From France we had cut off his treachery:
And in the Papagallo
My father wept! Ho, Trocchio swings out now
Where all can see him from Sant’ Angelo—
His master and the Curia and the people.
My father wept.... At noon was he not merry
When Cardinal Michele’s death assured us
One hundred fifty thousand ducats? Ecco!
I did not sing my cantarella’s praise.
Dull at the Vatican!
And what to do?
Join Spain and join Gonsalvo, a commander
Even of my wing, the conqueror of Naples;
Or hold obsequious in my tethered hand
The Gallic fleur-de-luce?
Unpleasant gulfs,
Shoals!... And to poise before the Balances
Watching their poise!

But you regret no action?

[Stalking to the edge of the water.] I do not weep by graves!...
Looking across the cities that I love,{140}
Across the sheepfolds and the little cities....

Pastoral! And for cause Vicarius sum
Sanctae Ecclesiae!... Good Michelotto,
Hire me a boat, and row me down the stream.

The sun eats as a canker.

Rome
Is festering with this fever like a pest.
I move and speak with strange uneasiness,
As if the motions of my life had fear.

Sol in Leone! There is nothing pleasant
When the year fills that tract ... rage, rage, and sandy,
Consuming light!
I live a damp, old horse,
O’er-ridden by the ardour of the air:
No neatness round my throat, the cope flung off,
And all the passion of my flesh for shade.
Here there are shady grottoes from the darkness
Of trees; the heat is here unpressed by walls;

Here children at their play
Show us their lissome bodies and red faces
Sol in Leone cannot agitate.
My lords, you see we sink on holiday,
And, fearful, take much care to keep our person{141}
From danger—so persuaded by these deaths
Of daily happening: under ilex-trees
We ply our statecraft.
France has bidden us
Prove our fidelity and help her king
To oust from Naples Spain. Our holy troops
And gonfalon will be in readiness
Within six days, and we must part awhile
From our Duke Cesare.

Wise sacrifice!
You know the Church has all to gain from France.

So it is thought, my lord.
... Well, mite, Giovanni!
You run across the gravel with a shell,
A little, empty house, and hot as lead
Fired from a cannon?
Nestle all your curls
Under a few, large vine-leaves. Tell Rodrigo
He must not dip his head within the fountain—
The cold will make him break out of a plague.
Run, run and pull him from the brim.... Yes, baby,
Leave me your shell.
My lords, go in awhile.
Poto shall serve cooled wine.

No, no!
To drink increases thirst. I will not drink.

Cooled wine—

No, no!

[The Pope laughs deprecatingly.

I have not poisoned it.
{142}

No, no!

[To one of the children, as he perceives his son.

Roble, play further off!

Just up and had your meal?
There is some sense in your strange hours when Sol
Is in Leone—night for day!
But, though your room be marble, what Inferno
Of flame to sleep through the bare hotness.

Father,
If you enjoy the fresher feel of night,
I bring an invitation you will welcome
From the Lord Adrian of Cornuto.

Ah,
He has a vineyard under broad-leaved shadow,
Where gods could sup.

Where you will sup,
To-morrow evening.

Baccho!
It will be cool. The country is a blessing
To think of when it darkens and revives.

You will not heat with riding at that hour.

And I am careful now ... a little anxious
To see you start.
{143}

Too hot and still
For camps or marches ... like a painful dream!

[He sits by his father.

Ay, so, so!
Cesare, if this strong heat
Struck me with apoplexy, pest, or fever,
You would be struck with peril.... O my heart,
My prince, could you endure from your own root,
And bear the shock of onset?

Always
I built broad the foundations of my power.
The kindred
Of all I dispossessed are gone from earth,
Where no successor of your Holiness
Could raise them my opponents: half my train
Is filled with high-born nobles, once the servants
Of Colonnesi and Orsini, now
My gentlemen and hung upon my fortune
As it were hope itself: the Sacred College,
You know, is more than half subservient to me....
But—are you ailing?

No, no—hot and dull,
Not ailing.

There are dancers, courtesans,
Who will in movements of the long-lost breeze
Fan the dead air—if you will visit me
To-night: to-morrow in the vineyard-garden
We sup.... ’Tis hard to get the dancers now:
The women shut their doors and strike their bodies
In terror at the fever that can kill.
They need await no other—lust is dead.
... You will announce at the next Consistory
I join the French?
{144}

Ay—with the treaties
Between us and the Spaniards and Gonsalvo
Safe in my coffers: for the French will fail;
And, though they raised you up, they hold you back
From Florence and your clutch on Tuscany.
You have Romagna firm.

O father,
Live a few years and I shall be your king!
As you love me, live till Tuscany is mine.
Live, live!

For you
I have done harder things than conquer death.

[They are silent.

What are the great eyes dreaming of?

The heat,
And something dreadful in it—of the places,
Corneto, Piombino, yet ungirdled
By one domain.
[Rising impetuously.] Oh, to desert the French!
Although I march
As of their army, at their first reverse
We close the northern passages.

Ha, ha, ha! ha!
A trap for Louis....
—Cardinal Michele
Was suddenly distempered by this ill,
Dying as swiftly as if venom wrought:
So fatal is the weather to stout frames!
Son, I incline to fat.... I would I owned
Your thin and agile limbs.

I would that half the years
Of my short life—for, like Achilles’, short
My life will be, if glorious—I might give
To build yours over four score years and ten!
{145}

Ah, God! Such wishes weigh on me unkindly,
... Nay, not unkindly! But your eyes are swept
So wide across the breadths of Italy,
You call up years for me as if you were
A necromancer, not my very son
Whose proud, hot Spanish blood, whose fire and courage
Have given my flesh its youth again so often.
Your mother’s land is changing you, beloved—
All schemes, all plots ... and where now is the smile
That flashed along your lips and made me sing
Ave Maria plena gratia—where?

[Cesare moves impatiently.

I am grown anxious, as my foemen’s watch
When one of my huge pieces takes its station
For ruin’s work.... This pestilential heat!...
Well, Roble, what an orange you have snatched,
Round as your eyes!
[To Alexander.] Lucrece!—Oh, have you seen her
Look at you from the child?
[With a bitter laugh.] I shall begin
To talk of years ago, like an old man.
Farewell!
They need me at the Mola.
[With a smile.] Then to night
The dance! To-morrow the al fresco feast! [Exit.

I’m envious of Lucrezia, and weary,
More weary than with August—all my passion
Hard on my heart at last! My Cesare,
—Beautiful and cold as steel, his mind
Shining and shallow as the moon—for certain,
If he had been Medea, he had simmered
My ageing body in the cauldron’s flood,
Like Æson’s, for his purpose.... Solitary!
Age, age! And when the young are still,
The young who should be noisy, it is vacant.
I shall see Lucrezia in the spring: and yet
I know I shall not see her.
There, I am glad{146}
The children have been captured by their nurse.
Buona notte, little ones! [The Children are taken away.
Ah, but I would
I were as other fathers, and could make him
My heritor, and aid him by my death.
It is so good the old should die;
It is very good to die, but I must live;
I must subserve, must give my hand
In signature to any of his dreams,
Taking, in caritate,
A lovely eye-glance from him.... And Lucrece
Gone too, her husband’s prisoner! Where my Pearl
And my great royal Diamond have been set
Here in my bosom—hollows!
And this twilight
Is filling them....
[With a sudden, terrified cry.] Lucrezia, Cesare!
Lucrece!

Does he see?
Does he attend?

He sees; but if the dying
Attend, or how to construe their attention,
Whether their eyes are purged, or focus fresh
We scarce may reckon. These illumined eyes
Are abstract, steady in their fever-light:{147}
My lords, ere morning we shall see them fade,
Or soften into life. A child-like nature,
That may just slip away, or, fronting death,
As at a play, leave the grim stage behind,
And join us unsuspicious in the street.

Physician!

Ay, lord Bonafede—you
Come from a bed of even graver sickness,
More tragic, youth contending.

Hush! Duke Cesare
Has but one thought—His Holiness.

[Taking the Bishop by the shoulders to the bed.] That message,
Repeat it.... Then the trance
May lighten or remove.

[To the Pope.] Most well-beloved,
Duke Cesare asks from his bed of sickness
For tidings of you. Every hour he sends,
And every hour
I droop him with despair. Speak of him, bless him;
Assure him of your energy to live.

[Smiling from his dark eyes.] Lord Bonafede, you are temporal.
Look there.... I watch the game.
I do not care
Now who is playing or who wins: I watch.

The Duke is very sick.
{148}

Look there! The Chance,
And how it tosses to and fro!

My lord
Takes interest in the fortunes of the game?

[The Pope nods.

I rally—
Ay, honest Burchard, set it down—I rally.

Then speak your last requests.
—How can we serve you?
—What of Duke Cesare? Your benediction!
—What of your soul?

I am too busy dying. Bonafede—
This dying is itself a little house,
And one within
That cherishes soft as a nurse, indulgent,
And lets one wake or sleep.
[To one of the Card-Players.] How foolish of you!
You have lost your chances, listening to my talk.
You have no meaning
Unless you are intent upon the game.
Kiss me, good Bonafede, and your prayers.

[Exit Bonafede weeping.

Now leave me to the air.

He will fall asleep.

I promise you
That I will make no noise.... I ever
Slept as a child, and wallowed in the feathers
Seven times at waking ... ha! And do you sleep
Till time for the next Office. Burchard dozes;
Put by the cards, and I will watch his face.
{149}

How wanton of his end!
—What of his soul?
—The noontide
To me is full of strange attentiveness.
Angels, or fiends?

Has he not made confession?

Ay, of concupiscence and simony,
If one may dare surmise—his open sins.
But of his secret sins! Think how they hide
And loom where fear is with them in men’s thoughts!
—They say he sold his soul to Lucifer
For full eleven years; and all are told.

[A wind stirs the curtains.

—He comes, he comes!
—An apparition like a monkey! Horror!
A straggling darkness....
—Are you sure? A monkey?
—And sounds!
Far more than seven devils are watching us.

He has received Viaticum, Last Unction.

Ah, but he cannot die until his Master
Rise from below to take him, cannot die
As sinners do accepted by their God.
—He sleeps when he should die.
—Closed up in sin,
A sullen Viper of the woods!
—Remember....
Think of the death of Cardinal Michele,
Think of the Cardinal Orsini, think
Of Don Alfonso, Duke Astorre!
—Ay,
Think of the Lady Daughter.
{150}

Tales and bibble-babble!
Go, chatter with your monkey, fraternise!
He will not tickle this last sleep, my lords;
Give him your company.

But tell us, Doctor,
Low in the ear, have not this son and father
Drunk of the cup Orsini and Michele
Drank at their hands? Have they not been envenomed?

Yea, by the hand of God, but not of man—
The venom of His secret pestilence,
The fever walking in this August air.

Both struck together—is not that the singing
Of cantarella?

By my faith, lords—no.
The hand of God hath struck, and who shall tell
How far His mercy or His wrath is set?
Physicians cure by hope.

The lord Duke Cesare
Is worse. Physician!

[To the Bishop of Venosa.] Can you leave this bedside?
You cannot!

[Rising.] Youth!
Youth and desire of life!
[To attendants.] Fetch me a mule,{151}
And from its hollowed entrails we will tear
Our Cesar reconceived, regenerate:
Or, should the live heat fail, fetch me an oil-jar,
Brimming with vault-drawn water. Haste for life!
The Duke is worse. He shall survive.

[The Pope has opened his eyes.

Dear Father,
I will bring you in an hour word that your Duke
Makes speed to visit you.

[To himself.] But Burchard
Alters no muscle: nothing of importance
Therefore has passed....
My Chronicler,
And I have never looked into your books!

[Glancing round, pleased.

Ah, they have left me lonely! How delicious
It is to be neglected when one dies.

Burchard, good-night!

[Yawning.] O Holiness!

You are napping at your post!
It does not matter.
You looked so ugly when you lay asleep,
I waked you: comely
You are when stiff and handsome in your clothes.

Bright eyes,
Take no more record of me: do not publish
These stains, these swollen limbs.
Give me the mirror
That my last breath shall soil—that is its use!
But I will snatch it as in youth.... Vanozza,{152}
Giulia, and a little earlier one—
Well, well, I gave them happiness.

[Burchard, scandalised, seeks a crucifix.

Good Master
Of the Ceremonies, did you take account
Of my beauty when you chronicled my dress?
I have been very handsome ...
He is gone,
Stolen off in horror at my vanity.
And yet this beauty is not vanity;
The vanity is when it falls away,
And crumbles into nothingness.
Even our Lady
Keeps power of intercession for us all
By loveliness that in simplicity
Draws God to will its pleasure as His will
And perfect pleasure. [Folding his hands.
Rosa Mystica,
O Flower of God, O Rose, O Spotless one,
Thou dost unfold to us thy sweet—in showers
Thy fragrancy, thy dews are shed on me;
Thou droppest on my darkness as soft leaves.

[He lies back, his eyelids softly stirring.

And there are scents—delicious—violets
And roses—unexpected—dropping down,
And running through the air. So unexpected,
So secret to me ... Violets, a gift,
As women give fresh from the hand ...
The flowers!

[He lifts himself, rounding his arms to garner the vision.

The Lord Duke is revived.

No matter now;
I am dying, I am safe. [Rolling on his side away from them.
There, do not crowd me—
My heart is offered. Ite, missa est.
{153}

My doves,
My little, gladsome ones.... Rodrigo!...
My little Roman dove, my young, a softness
Still to my bosom....
And this father—
His love to me, and all the streams of pearls!
They have not honourably buried him;
They are not sorry. [She weeps.
I have prayed so long:
I have been angry. In my dreams I prayed;
And then he broke it, for he came to me,
His lips bulged out for kisses: “Dance, Lucrece,
Dance to me, child; it is that grace prevails!”

[After a pause—to the doves.

There, there! Fly out! There! Flutter on my shoulder,
And let me catch you.
Father, do you mark,
I am not weeping?—See, how they all settle
About me, on my head, and on my bosom—
See, how I rise and flutter them!

[She rises and the doves disperse from her in troops.

How lightsome
They come back to their roost! Dear Blessèdness,
And this will give you peace....

Banished from all the passion of events,
While, like a sisterhood of Fates, at Rome,
The Conclave sits—
While hot night compasses these empty hills
That once had fire and action! [To the girl at his feet.
O my Silence,
What health in you, what pleasantness! A refuge,
A sepulchre, yet not of death!
They call Love blind: the finer love is dumb—
Our horses’ love, our dogs’, our falcons’, thine.

It is the hour: forgive me, I have brought you
The draught, my Duke.... But let me take your hand,
And guide it to your lips.

[He drinks: suddenly she kisses the blond hair over his forehead.

You have been very near
To death!

Its grey sea-bank that almost beached me
Were bliss to this denuded country.
Mother,
You loved my father fierily?

God knows I mourn him;
But as my very god I worshipped him.
{155}

I am no Prince.... My lands
Are almost gone; only the citadels
Keep pledge of my old force. You and your Pope
Gave me no tenure on the earth. I curse you,
I curse you both. What was there left but ashes
For me, he being extinguished?

Excellence, you brought me
Along with you, and from our enemies,
For safety.

—It is blood,
The fascination of deep heritage,
Compels the old race back to every city
I vaunted mine....
I do not want you near,
I brought you out of danger. Openly
You are my mother, openly I drew you
Behind my litter to a refuge: always,
Till I am powerless, you will feel my power,
Protecting you....

And is Giovanni Sforza
Restored to Pesaro?

My lord, he is.

[Cesare makes a hissing groan.

Is Guidobaldo in Urbino yet?

My lord, he is.

And all the Duchy lost?
{156}

All the fair Umbrian Duchy has relapsed
From your control. [A silence.

Pandolfo Malatesta
Has entered Rimini?

Oh, cease to question
More of your fortune, with the purple
Of pestilence across your lips, the trembling
Of fever in your hands of war, beloved.

Giacomo d’Appiano has returned
To Piombino?

Yes.

Ah, to my Piombino,
Messer da Vinci
Has re-erected for defence, a jewel
Wrought by a cunning jeweller, a threat
To Florence, a towered joy! So d’Appiano
Calls it his own again?

Yes, and it called him back.

Agapito, there still is worse behind.
Something not said is in you—publish it!

Don Michelotto by the Florentines
With his whole troop is captured.

Michelotto!
My curse on Florence! Messer Macchiavelli
{157}Promised safe-conduct to him ... and delayed,
Playing me false.... What, Michelotto lost!
All of my army, but these failing troops
Camped on this sultry marl. Revolted dogs,
That fawned about my chase!
... Agapito,
Faithful, my pen, my representative
As signature is of oneself, go yonder,
Beside the cypress, gaze along the verge,
Where the great plateaux bow down to its base
From the Tiber valley: see if the Lord Vera
Is riding hither
With news of our new Pontiff.
My suspense—
Forced by the Sacred College to withdraw,
When ill almost to death, my troops and cannon
Ten miles away from Rome!
Agapito!

[He lays his hand on his Secretary’s.

—Hot?

[Kissing his hand.] Still the cruel sickness, empire’s canker?
[Turning to the cypress-mound] I will look out.

[To Vanozza.] You gave me
No rights: then why not happy chance? Of chance
Has been my life, fortune my reeling glory.
Why did you bear me under stars conspired
Against the hour when fortune was supreme
For gain or loss? I am a thing of hazard....
You could not breed even luck in me, or give me
The moment that is power.

But I affirm
You are more wonderful than all the stars;
You are immortal for great fame, for greater{158}
Than I can give the wording of. I bore you—
You are sacred, sacred. All the saints of heaven
Hold you in virtue! I had many dreams
When you were born. My Prince, though I could give you
No rights, and fortune is not in our hands
To give it where we love, I give you faith,
A mother’s, simple as the faith I give
To the High God—though He were poor, and nowhere
Had place to lay His head.

No marvel
My father, God’s own Sovereign-Vicar, loved you
For over twenty years and with deep fire,
As Jove loved mortals, as he took Europa
On broad bull-shoulders, over many seas,
To the quiet cave where she should bear a king.
No marvel that this beauty,
Proud even to rudeness in its provocation,
Was as his hearth! Rodrigo Borgia’s son
Asks your forgiveness.

Excellence!... But loose me!
Are you so strong?
Your breath beats at the nostrils as his beat.
Loose!... Let me meet Messer Agapito....

News, news, Signore!
I did not tell you till these travellers
Were at our very gates.

[Shivering.] The dew comes down.
Mother, the cloak with ermine! [She goes out.

Della Rovere,
Since you packed cards with him to save your Duchy,
Vicariate and Gonfaloniership,
Selling him all your Spanish votes, has triumphed,
Yea, of your making, is Pope Julius now,
Julius the Second.

Julius—Cesar
Must be allies.

I knelt down at his feet,
I told his Holiness you lay in peril,
Close on your death, and longed to die in Rome.

[With a laugh.] Well, he was touched?

He welcomes you,
Gives you your old apartments in the Palace,
And only dwarfs your escort to a hundred
And fifty men.

[Touching Vera’s wrist.] Lord Vera,
He told me, in hot pleading of his cause,
Perchance I was his son. Conceive it, Vera—
Twice of St. Peter’s line! We are complaisant,
For we can take all glory at its worth.

O mother, hear! [Breaking into merry laughter.
The Vatican receives us as before;
The Vatican! [Vanozza brushes tears from her eyes.
And shortly{160}
We shall recover all our own again,
Rimini, Piombino, Imola,
The duchies and the principalities.
Even now each fortress in Romagna keeps
As a locked coffer proof against our foes.
The Vatican! The Stanze!
The Gonfalon! We hold our very course.

No, Don Garcilaso, I am resolved.
Here you will be received no more. Look round,
And bid farewell;
For in these tainted rooms I will not live:
The reek of blood, the breath of heathendom
Hang on them, and old perfumes of old orgies
Float, if one wrings the velvets. Antichrist!
Marranô! Devil!
His whelp, this Valentino—sorry schemer—
Is caged, but only
By promises of freedom can we wrench
The castles of the Holy Church away
From the hooked talons. Mark me!
Never must Valentino slip us, never
Must he have range.... Jove placed all Ætna over
The lawless powers of Earth ... I pass him on
To Naples, to Gonsalvo, when he yields
His castles up, as hostage that they yield:
But, since your lord King Ferdinand, nor I,
Nor true Gonsalvo can break word of faith,
Not even to Perfidy’s own Sovereign Prince,
Persuade your lord the king, and from my lips,
To have this murderer of his brother seized
At instance of the Duke of Gandia’s widow,
Then shipped to Spain, to the Hesperides,
And to his last accompt.
{161}

Laudabilis
Perfidia! ... On my faith!
The Carthaginian faith—yet I applaud.
[Meditating.] Arrested for the murder of his brother,
So old a sin, and blotted out so clear
By fresher stains....

[Pointing to a picture by Pintoricchio on an easel.

Behold the family—
I will erase these images, these vile,
Contaminating forms: posterity
Shall have no pleasure of these mingled snakes;
For one by one these chambers shall be sealed
In their pollution, as a sepulchre.

Good, good! You will erase their pictures—good!
But the arch-hypocrite himself, this flower
Of the fiend-brood, can you erase him?

Wait!

Your Castellan has hanged my messenger.

Faithful!
{162}

You promised
Cesena should surrender.

Ha, it knows
The false word of command; it will not answer
Its lord in treason to himself, controlled
By force and the malignity of Fate.

Spawn of a harlot, if you brave the Church,
Reserving her possessions, you descend
Into the Mola’s deepest cells to perish
Of darkness and the phantoms through the dark
Your serpent eyes will follow. This same hour
You will descend in night unless you render
The watchword of your castles. Render it!

[Retreating as if from a blow.

Your promise! You instated me; I gave you
My Spanish votes for the Vicariate
Of my Romagnole cities. I am still
Your Gonfalonier; and you press me thus ...
Fool, I believed your pledge!

—To hand
Our Papal fiefs and lordships to the Wolf?
We gave you but your own and your own life.
Cur of the Devil!
And you can speak of oath or pledge! How simple
Such plea from you! Could Sinigaglia hear!
I’ll not be tricked. Dog in a doublet, villain!
Unbosom!

[Suddenly slipping down to Julius’ feet.

Holiness,
Secure your castles from the grasp of Venice!
While they are ruled by me, impregnable
They stand about the country; they remain
The castles of the Church. But publish me
A traitor to these walls my sword has won,
The strongholds lapse to Venice. For a Pope
I won them, let me hold them for a Pope—

[With a faint smile.

Under the shadow of your wings.

The watchword!

Let me hold them in their strength
For Rome, the Church!

Your watchword!

[Rising with flame in his eyes.

It will storm my heart ... I cannot.

Then you have chosen
A lifetime in the dens your victims haunt.
Mule! And the Guard is waiting ...
Son of Hell!

[He makes a sign to summon the Papal Guard.

[With a wide gesture.] Freedom!

... Speak out,
Or write your watchword, and Lord Santa Croce
Shall wait with you at Naples, till I hear
Cesena makes submission: then you pass
Free, where you will.
{164}

My freedom!

Excellence, dear lord,
As you have pity on our love, unbury
The word that makes you free.

Agapito!
You are as I....
[In a whisper.] Write it. [Agapito turns to the desk.
O my Cesena,
A word to soil you!—Overthrown,
Forli, Cesena, and my guardian Rocca,
Proof against every hazard, save your lord’s
Betrayal of your honour! Fallen—O fallen!
The walls—the walls before me!

Holiness,
Messer Buonarotti, waits command.
He brings a drawing of ten Victories
Niched in your monument.

Ah, the winged Victories,
Each triumphing above a subject province,
Disarmed beneath her feet. How terribly
This chafing Florentine achieves my future!
Ten times a victor, yet no war declared:
The Church triumphant—ay, since militant!
{165}

All that my lord can do
Is done: if still the fortresses maintain
Their loyalty to their effective Duke,
He takes no fault and he demands his freedom.

[With a burst of laughter, as he reads the watchword.

The forts must yield:
If they resist our sovereign voice they ruin
Themselves and their usurper. [Pointing to Cesare.
He is lost.

Then let me further write.

[Turning to the others with the paper Julius has returned.

Be witnesses, you, you....
Now countersign my words! His liberty
Derives but from his castellans—that conquers!
They will ride forth beneath his banneroles,
Crying their Duca, Duca!

They shall dislodge, cast down
His scutcheon on the ground and hoist the Keys.

[Exit with the Papal Guard.

It is too sore! When he was but my scholar,
As if the son of a great potentate
He breathed to rule, his glance made heritage.

This pestilential fever
Has worked down to the scath, the sunken rock,
His taint of blood: he is involved, uncertain;{166}
The level brain has sprung at accident,
And scattered loose the logic of his dreams—
Broken and lost.

Had he but drawn his army
Clear of this Rome and leapt on Pisa, had he
Refused to sell his votes he had been saved.

[Suddenly lifting his head.]
You were throwing dice.... Continue! Play the game.

[In a murmur to Torella.

For hours, long hours, impassible he fixes
His eyes upon the board, as if the secret
Of Destiny were secret of a Sphinx
He could divine by watching.

[Still fixed on the game, but speaking to all.] Without doubt
Our fortune is unchained against us, friends:
But there are chances—let us reckon them!
My captain Scipione is of ours
Till death; he joins me in my liberty.
The bankers guard three hundred thousand ducats
At Genoa and at Florence: from such nurture
Springs a live army. Volpe and Michelotto
Refuse for any bribe to quit my service.
I do not even accuse my fate, still less
The ingratitude of men, for I have found
In all, save one I trusted, loyalty.
Bring me my poignard with the little mirror—
That peasant’s hand ruffled my chemisette....

What ruin! Damage!
... And yet my enemies are frightened, Vera.
These giants of power still fear a fettered man,{167}
Ill, shaking in a tertian, and with life
Itself unwarranted from hour to hour.
Stir up the hearth and spread the juniper’s
Cloud of ripe resin....

Messer Niccolo!

[He gives his hand.

Why are you come? You scarcely fear me now.
Welcome!

Your Excellence, to bid farewell.
To-morrow I depart.

Why are you come?...
Ah, I am cheap! All use me as the poor
Burn forest—ecco!
No diplomacy!
Why should you bid farewell to me you ruined,
Delaying your safe-conduct to my troops?
You triumph?

I am curious, Excellence!
And I must watch you, if I will or not.

A prodigy, a monster!

[With vibrating voice.] No, but a Prince
Unequalled.

[Springing up.] You behold? Have you the eyes—
Keen, cutting crystals that have shot out joy
To see me totter?
Messer Niccolo,
If we are comprehended, we are greater
Than Fate or any chance. I am a prince.
Set down my kingdom that shall ever be{168}
While dreams are portents. Oh, set down
The perfect scheming of the miracle!
Each part of action in my brain was solved,
And flowed on to its end. You recognised,
When, in the greatness of effective truth,
Last year I awed Romagna, and exacted
Sharp vengeance on my injurers, my kingdom
Was as the genesis of stars? With fire
Of primal force I founded it, secure
Against all future shocks, save this assault
Of sickness unto death at the steep moment
When death struck down my father.
... Yet it crumbles
It grows a shadow round me. Macchiavelli,
Restore it, by the word embody it;
Let it not perish! I shall ever wonder
That such perfection fell to nothingness
In its astute, swift likelihood. O Fortune!
The gulf.... [Breaking off with a gesture of menace.
You start for Florence?

Ay, for Florence,
To-morrow morning, close upon the dawn.

Take back to Florence this: if I but capture
Occasion once again, I sign a treaty,
Even if I needs must sign it with the Devil,
Gather my treasure, play my last resources,
Assemble all my friends, and, once at Pisa,
Use every power of my extremity
To render Florence evil, hour for hour
Of her despite....
[With a low laugh.] You think me slipping down
Into my tomb.... Ah, Messer Niccolo,
If I were you, this Cesar who is nothing
Would be contemptible. You ought to crush me,
You ought to make your mirth that I am flat:
It is my law that you fulfil; and justice
Is linked so with my judgment, even my passion
Conceives cold rage alone, or utter scorn
Of those who cannot end me. I look often
With still eyes on my end.{169}

Farewell, farewell! You listen,
And all your face is speaking to my words.
We love each other, my best enemy.
Farewell.
All I have been is with you. Fortune
Out of her giddy air will arbitrate
Between my past and future.

Prince!
{170}

She rows the air, she towers ... now makes her point,
Now waits—she waits up the free air.
Magnificent!... A kite that she would vanquish....
Quarry—and she upon her tower ... free to drink blood.

[He looks back and laughs.

Ha! Like a loosened thunderbolt she stoops!...
Could you but see! Amazing!
Who-whoop! She flies too hard ... who-whoop!—and cannot hold:
’Tis death, but so impetuous in the dealing
Her quarry is struck down. [Turning again.
Señor Don Pedro,
My vehement gyr-falcon loses me
Her quarry in your ditch....

It shall be sought.
{171}

No, leave it—that were tame!

Is the sun setting?—Vespers from the Church
Of San Lorenzo!
[To Don Pedro.] We are gratified
By this long visit, for the course of things
Is brought by you in current to our eyrie,
Clear up from life upon your voice.
We may not
Detain you longer.

But I exult, Don Cesar
De Borjà, in the converse of a man
Who held the crown of Mars in Italy.
There is lifting of the heart and joy of blood
When you recount....

Don Pedro,
My chaplain will confess me presently;
The soul must reach that vein.

Forgive! No further moment!
Adieu. [Exit.

[With a snarling yawn, like a caged animal’s.

Begone!—He wearied me a year.
When will his servant, black Magona, bring us
The coil of rope?

At sunset, Excellence.

Now the king-star
Is falling down below the rocks—and blue
As a sea-deep is the hollow we must tempt;
It is blue: one venturing bird{172}
Makes it gigantic with a little shake,
An arietta.... We must drop down lower
Than the bird’s song—it is not from the ground.
Look, my Juanito!
Aside I hitch my shoulders through this narrow
And windy crevice of the barbican.
I am as agile and as thin as you,
I feel as young—
Case-hardened from that pestilence, a tower
Among my race; strong as La Mota;
A creature that but needs to touch the earth
To be Antaeus and invincible.
You shall descend first—death for you or freedom.
Then welcome death or freedom! Could I, Juan,
Leave you behind—
We who sailed out together, desolate,
And for three years have tasted unenjoyed
Sleep, and the vigil that has been our lives?
We do not on a peradventure part:
You have the lighter bones, the cord will bear you
Down to the grass so featly, it will signal
Its eagerness to me.... Juanito,
How full a man you come from these three years!
Will everything be changed as you?

Oh, no!
Those who have loved you cannot love you more;
They cannot grow in that. Her Excellence
Your sister will be happy
Beyond the last hope of her weariness
At the free news.

Lucrezia! I can watch her—
How at Ferrara all her life goes by;
How, from her sun-red towers, across the plain
She is looking out, and cannot see the prison
That stifles me: her eyes as they look out
Turn Amor into stone.
When will the rope be brought?
How soon? This Garcia de Magona will not
Betray me as Gonsalvo at the last?
{173}

Garcia is safe; he burns to furnish you.

How wider
The steepness stretches, the tranquillity!
What does it promise? It is Fortune’s Pit,
That gapes in Spain, that swallowed me awhile
In Rome and Naples, and then cast me out
Alive upon this pinnacle. And now....
The world will be my chess-board, I survey
Until occasion hail me. There is Louis
Of France would set his horse to tread with mine;
The Emperor hates as Pope the Rovere;
Gonzaga lord of Mantua will espouse
My fellowship, Ferrara is fraternal;
My brother of Navarre; to whom I fly,
Strangely accordant....

[In a whisper to himself.] But my lord is rapt!
How still the Spanish boy,
His black hair shining and his ears with edges
Of the clear ruddiness of pomegranates,
The light of sunset is so shed on him.

Be swift!
Hush, lay them in the chest beneath your clothes.
They are good—they will be faithful to the Duke....
Christ grant his other means be safe as these!
Will he not turn?
Though of a different race,
This lord, who is so reverend and so dreadful,
Is homely and most courteous to the poor.
I would not have you trouble him.
{174}

Garcia, I dare not
Utter your coming since he misses it.
With widely-open nostrils and great eyes,
He hangs above the gulf.

Tell him, Juanito,
One night when he is out of Spain in safety,
I went to San Lorenzo, for his sake,
To pray the Saints would bear him in their hands.
Cover the rope!
A trumpet will be blown
Down in the fosse, when Don Rodrigo’s men
Are ready with the horses. All my life
Is in to-night if he is saved. Farewell! [Exit.

“Gentil Signore,
Cesare Borgia, figlio del Pastore.”

[As if waking.] Why, that is what they sing at my Cesena,
’Mid the snow-marbled Apennine. My shepherds
Hailed me the Shepherd’s son—their simpleness
Could so attune the distant Vatican
With their cool valleys ... and I cannot laugh.

I have the rope: soon you will hear a call
Hummed up upon a trumpet.

O royal Italy!
O my Romagna ... but I cannot breathe!
The sun is fallen, the air of the abyss
Blows like blue fields of waving flax. Look down!
The little stream Zapadiel disappears,
And the wild brushwood and the flock of goats;
Even the East has faded....{175}
Did you tell me
They play up from the fosse a trumpet-note
When the horses wait? Once more to touch a bridle,
Once more astride to feel the rocking flanks!
Ha, ha! And then my sudden apparition,
As if I were the devil. Hark, a sound!
Listen! [He trembles all over.
A snake-note darting up ... a bugle!

No, no, no!
The bleating of a goat.

How closely darkening
The shadows favour us ... and there are rumours
The wind takes from the ground of horses’ hoofs....

[A trumpet is lightly blown.

Fortune, my war-cry once again!
[Juanito rushes for the rope.] Aut Cesar,
Aut nihil! But to-day I take the plunge,
I dare the pit, the downfall.
[To Juanito.] Knot it here more firmly,
Round this crenelle—steady! It must not jag....
Now my light ball, I throw you to the breezes,
Ding-dangle—thus!
[He lets Juanito down.] Your odds, Juanito,
Against the wheel of Fortune!
... He keeps hold—
O boy! the rope is taut. It holds....
This cumbers me. [Throwing off his cloak.
Our Lord God, in His infinite clemency,
And for His greater glory against Fate’s
Vicissitudes....
A jerk!—the final die is cast!
Cesar—or nothing!

What horn-call was that?
Gone, gone! Our peril,{176}
Our loss! I reel ... He shall not so escape.
Death, or our re-possession of him!
Down,
Traitor, blasphemer, down! Down!

[After awhile.

Guards, are you there?

[Just heard from below.

They dragged him to their horses—all are fled.

Juanito, have they drawn in the posts?

All are retired to shelter, Secretary.
These Navarrais received my lord’s command
With manifest bewilderment.

Our Captain
Has ever saved his troops fatigue and tempest:
These men are rude in habit, and the lashing
Of mountain-storms familiar. O my lad,
We are not now in Italy.

Ah, would we were!
Señor Agapito, we have one breath:
Our lives are for his use. What are your tidings?
{177}

His every hope miscarries—everywhere
Hostility, abandon or suspicion:
The Pope has drawn his treasure from the banks,
Dried up the fountain of his polity,
The means of gathering troops, the hope of calling
His ancient captains to his side.

O Señor,
That letter from the King of France, withdrawing
All revenues and honour from our lord,
Joining his Dukedom and his French domains
To Dauphiné and Berry, as they were
Before the royal gift—did you consider ...
Yes, but I see you did ... his look that day?
It was a face of hell; and ever since
His eyes throw flame out.

Think! He has engrossed
The world’s resources from his earliest years,
Marshal, as San Michele, of God’s hosts,
And born Vicegerent.... Think! He now has nothing
But his invincible, rejected sword.
A pauper, and a hireling to his brother—
This Navarrais, this kinglet—yet with sweep,
A great glance on a little verge, he conquers
These rebels of Viana and their chief
Louis de Beaumont, that the petty realm
Being consolidate and set between
His foes of France and Spain, he may have option
To hold o’er each the sword of Damocles.
The brain that wrought at Sinigaglia once
Works still among barbarians. But his lips,
Like famished wolf-fangs, and his thwarted youth,
His darkened joy in freedom!—I have wept ...
Go in, go in!

Such clouds of wind discharge,
I do not feel the rain.
{178}

Our confidence
Is strict in your direction—not a word
From us to the great Captain, to the Son
Of War: our trust is blind.
You show distress
At this rude blowing, and your velvet cloak
Might well have been afloat upon a river.
Good night; good sleep, my brother César. Scarcely
In Italy the air rolls thus.

Good-night,
Don Juan. Such a fan exasperates,
Entering all senses.

Come, Juanito;
Unarm me. To your tent, Agapito;
You will have rheum to-morrow. [Exit Agapito.
God!—the stroke
Of wing this tempest has: there is no shield.
Lift up the tent-skirt, Juan.

[Within.] Take a cloak,
A dry one from the press, and bear this message
Back to Don Juan; I forgot.
Look round!
See that my stallion
Is dry, and, fresh-caparisoned, waits ready
In the next tent.

[Juanito comes from the tent and passes into the night.

The tramp, the cavalcade
Of these cursed whirlwinds, of the secret legions—
The hauntings of an army I shall never
Command—
[His voice rises.] shall never summon. I am void;
I cannot buy the forces that I love;{179}
I cannot as a Suzerain compel ...
I have no place, no rank, no furniture.
This march, this freight of cannon—all were mine;
I struck them on the air, cried Halt or On ...
My patrimony! Deep where dreams outspread,
A phantom army, Cesar’s army, rambles
Ungeneralled.
O fury of the night!
This France that has rejected me, this Spain
That bound me hand and foot, this Papacy
That locks me from Romagna with its keys,
From all my captains and my army calling
Across the Alps—I have one lust, one cry
For blood within me....
Ha, to plunge my sword
In vengeance to the heart of France, the throat
Of Spain, the entrails of the Vatican!
To murder countries—not the flesh and blood
Of just a man here, there, but states and kingdoms—
Draw out their life! Has not all checking life
Flowed forth in darkness to my sovereignty?
If I have lost the land that I could rule,
And if my army is a host of winds,
I still can thirst for blood.... I have my sword,
And, sword in hand, the last breath that I breathe
Will be a breath of appetite and hate.
I have my sword—

O shifting elements,
Chaos is on me—I am not of Chaos!
I could ride forth
A single horseman riding forth to conquer
The day, the night; I could confine these winds
Had I the watchword.... Beaten back, destroyed!
—Close in!

Who passes? Pampeluna! Do you hear?
I give you Pampeluna!...
[In a whisper.] No, Saint Jaques!
Then it must be the wind.
{180}

Beaumont, a Beaumont!

The enemy! Ho, ho! The enemy!
Awake, wake!

Beaumont!

[Within.] Duca! Blood of God!
What is their war-cry? Beaumont?

Ambushed by Fate! Juanito, the torch
Is falling: light another. Do you see,
I cannot find the buckles.... I must ride....
Fetch out my horse.... The corselet—that will serve.

[Juanito goes for the horse.

Beaumont, a Beaumont!

[Snatching up his sword.] Curse the renegades!
What is my war-cry? [He comes out of the tent bareheaded.
It confuses me....
The tramp, the tramp! Ah, if I led an army!
Ah, I could lead—on, on!

[The horse is brought.

With one look at his master, as he mounts.

Unarmed!

[He runs into the tent.
{181}

[Laughing.] Unarmed!... The sweep, the rush, the hungry onset
Sweep me along, cry round ... the engines crash!
Banners of Hell, my banners on the wind!

[Running out of the tent.] Stay—your celada!

Fling it! Duca! On!

He gave us no command. His horse has stumbled.
Curses across the wind—

[Suddenly distinct, though far away.] On, Duca, on!

He flies down the Solana in the wind.
Mount, mount! God’s Love! But we must follow him.

It will not be her death; she has such safety
As quiet pinions give to birds in storm.
{182}

I dared not tell her till her husband wrote:
His letter trembles in my hand....

For days
She has been pacing, fasting, full of terrors
Worse far than any term! The air has quickened
To prophet’s divination—noise and silence
Was in it of great woe.
She comes.... God’s mercy!

He is dead, Ippolito!

Read—from your husband.

Tell me ... the parchment rocks.... You see
My hands, my eyes are helpless; but my soul
Is firmer. Tell me....

He is dead, Madonna!

God told me—and I only hear it now!
Cesare!—and so far, so far....
Oh, tell me,
Save me in nothing: I shall lose all refuge
Of credence if you do not make me sure
As death that he is dead.

The letter——
{183}

Some voice to tell me!

[To Cristofero.] Call Juanito. [Exit Cristofero.
Sister, if you would learn, the King Don Juan
Has sent the faithful squire whose feet have followed
Your soldier to his grave.

Whose feet have followed,
Among the foreigners....

O Light of Arms!
His wife, his sister will lament for him,
As round the dead Achilles wept Cassandra,
And wept Polyxena,
That in the world none lived redoubtable
As he who everywhere brought peace or war.
He drew his doom as lightnings ever strike
The mountain-heights Acroceraunian,
While lesser mountains stretch along, unflamed.
We leave him to God’s judgment, in the glory
And terror of those strokes.

By your own eyes,
By your own lips, vow you will tell me truth.

[Juanito lays his forehead on her hand.

Where?

At Viana in Navarre.

Viana!...
It is as distant as the grave.
{184}

He challenged
The outposts of the Count of Lérin....

That
Is nothing now—foregone! Speak but of him;
The moment, my extremity.

We lost him;
His horse affrighted galloped on the blast;
He disappeared beneath us where the lea
Broke to ravine: we heard the hoofs beneath us,
And cries of fierce pursuit ... but all was darkness.

[He weeps bitterly.

Yes, weep, weep—it is well!
Now speak of him.

Dawn found me tangled by the night, and crying
In the alien, stone wilderness, a captive.
They brought his arms,
His sparkling arms; they questioned of the Prince
Who wore them.

But the moment....

Of a sudden
The foe retreated, leaving me: I reached
The rough-hewn gorge....

[Near to her and in a changed voice.

He lay there, naked
He lay....

—his face under the sky: his wounds
A hero’s—twenty-three; across his loins{185}
A bloodied stone, his life-blood round the rocks,
His hair a weft of red. How beautiful,
And wild and out of memory was his face!
The great wind swept him and the sun rose up ...

They buried him?

Beside the lectern of St. Mary’s church
Within Viana, and the pomp was great,
For he had thought to bind a crown on once:
They gave him kingly honours.

Oh, pray for him,
That he may rest in peace! There must be peace.
Great, agitated Spirit! Oh, let prayers,
Reverend Ippolito, let prayers be said
In every church, at every altar-stone,
By all the quiet lips that wait on God.
Leave me.... The prayers, the prayers, dear Cardinal,
That he may rest in everlasting peace!
Cristofero and the poor Squire—all go.
All pray for us.

Cesare, O my eagle!...
The stony tract!...
I am but for thy use
To pray thee into peace, to win a crown
Even now for thee, where the vast Majesty
Gives each his destined aim made bright by prayers.
Maria, aid! It is his heritage.
Spare him and aid me! Every day, at night,
On through the years while I must see the sun
Who have lost my sun fallen in that dire west—
On to the silence of the hour of death,
Let me not cease my voice! It is my love
Sole to him, as I am. O Cesare,
My body evermore, till sepulture,
Shall bind the hair-shirt to its flesh as barbs,
Never forgetful how thou wert cast forth{186}
Stripped to the sky, with nothing in the world
To plead to God with but thy valiant blood,
Thy regal front below Him.
I could almost
Swoon into prayer, but for the intercession
Of the great, peaceful companies on earth,
And bowing through the heavens and round God’s Throne.

My sables
Hang heavy on the spring; and I myself
Have known a bliss struck cold, a pleasure
So terrible ... he, who attracts such joy
And overcomes such hate,
Is puissant as an infinite lost god....
The leaves
Are very soft and green and masterful....
The peasant-folk approach, the humble poor
They say he gave his voice in softness to
Who brought old kings to murmur round his urn,
Rebellious that it held him.

[Some Peasants come through the trees.

O good people,
Pray for Lord César—for his soul!

[She gives alms from the purple purse and they pass out.

They pray,
They will go home and pray:
I love to watch them homeward, simple folk,
With hunger I can feed.{187}

[She leans forward, supporting her arms on the balcony.

I cannot pray: my Aves
And all the beads of all my rosary,
Would be for access to him, for his favour.
They will pray,
And bring him peace far from me. But to me
It is the many leaves bring peace, the forest,
The wrapping and the murmur of the wind;
For when I wake at night, wake in my forest,
I am glad to wake: I hear the accusation
Of the great Kings they carved about his tomb,
Who pass around it, weeping—Saul and David
And Solomon, the Scripture Kings, all lost
And wandering as ghosts and desolate,
With cry to the four royal winds, to Heaven,
And to the swerving roll of the great forest,
That César has no crown....

[A Nurse passes under the balcony leading a young child.

... No crown, no race—I have not borne a son.

[She bows her face over her arms.
{191}{190}{189}{188}

There is not any
Among the Kings gold-browed as this. Oh, peace!
But lift it in your hands—’tis Gideon’s fleece
This forthright weft of silky blond. And many
Dumb animals lurk at the eyelids’ crease,
Under the eyes—a serpent that from fenny
Marish finds sluice; a lion when in den he
Deviseth rage; an ox beneath the trees:
Yea, and an eagle droopeth for its prey,
A malign eagle, in the slack, dull gaze.
But on the lips what panting savagery,
The fang of the wolf on winter forest-ways!
Yet is the face soft, lonely, over all
A honied mystery that must appal.

Pope Alexander VI	formerly Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia
Cardinal Cesare Borgia	afterwards Duc de Valentinois and Duke of Romagna, the Pope’s son
Don Joffré	Duke of Squillace, the Pope’s younger son
Louis XII	King of France
Don Juan	King of Navarre
Cardinal Francesco Borgia	cousin to the Pope
Cardinal Ippolito d’Este	son of the Duke of Ferrara
Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere	afterwards Pope Julius II and other Cardinals.
Prince Don Alfonso	Duke of Bisceglia, a natural son of the King of Naples, husband to Lucrezia Borgia, after her divorce from Giovanni Sforza
Prince Djem	the Sultan’s brother and the Pope’s hostage
The Bishop of Venosa	the Pope’s Private Physician
Monsignore Bonafede	Bishop of Chiusi
Monsignore Burchard	Master of the Ceremonies
Monsignore Gaspare Poto	the Pope’s Private Chamberlain
Monsignore Gaspare Torella	Cesare Borgia’s Physician
Cavaliere Vincenzo Calmeta	a poet
Don Pedro de Torpia	Cesare Borgia’s Spanish jailer
Don Michelotto Corella	one of Cesare Borgia’s captains
Don Federico Altieri	a young Roman gentleman
Don Garcilaso de la Vega	Spanish Ambassador
Messer Niccolo Macchiavelli	Florentine Envoy
Messer Bernardino Betti (Pintoricchio)	a painter
Messer Ercole	a goldsmith and metal-worker
Messer Cristofero	Lucrezia Borgia’s Secretary
Messer Agapito da Amalia	Cesare Borgia’s Secretary
Messer Pincione	an apothecary
Juanito Grasica	Cesare Borgia’s page
Garcia de Magona	a Spanish boy
Giorgio	a waterman
Donna Lucrezia Borgia	the Pope’s daughter
Donna Adriana Borgia	the Pope’s cousin
Donna Angela Borgia	Maids of Honour to Lucrezia
Donna Hieronyma Borgia	Maids of Honour to Lucrezia
Donna Sancia d’Aragon	sister to Don Alfonzo and wife to Don Joffré Borgia
Mademoiselle Charlotte d’Albret	afterwards wife to Cesare Borgia
Donna Vanozza de’ Catanei	once the Pope’s mistress, and the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia
Donna Giulia Farnese (La Bella)	the Pope’s young mistress
Donna Fiammetta	A Roman woman, Cesare Borgia’s mistress
Donna Catilena de Valence	Maid of Honour to Lucrezia
Suor Lucia	an Anchoress
Clarice	Maid to Lucrezia
A Mute, Shepherds, Citizens of Rome, Attendants, Bargemen, Girls and Women

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Borgia: A Period Play

PERSONS

B O R G I A

BORGIA

ACT I

SCENE I

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

POTO.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

GIULIA.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

ENVOY.

ALEXANDER.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

POTO.

ALEXANDER.

GIULIA.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

SCENE II

BONAFEDE.

PINTORICCHIO.

BONAFEDE.

CESARE.

PINTORICCHIO.

ERCOLE.

CESARE.

POTO.

CESARE.

POTO.

CESARE.

POTO.

CESARE.

SCENE III

ALEXANDER.

CARDINAL BORGIA.

ALEXANDER.

CARDINAL SEGOVIA.

ALEXANDER.

CARDINAL BORGIA.

ALEXANDER.

LUCREZIA.

ALEXANDER.

VANOZZA.

ALEXANDER.

VANOZZA.

ALEXANDER.

POTO.

ALEXANDER.

POTO.

LUCREZIA.

VANOZZA.

LUCREZIA.

VANOZZA.

LUCREZIA.

VANOZZA.

ALEXANDER.

ADRIANA.

ALEXANDER.

CARDINAL SEGOVIA.

GIORGIO.