University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—A Prison.
Fazio and Bianca.
Fazio.
Let's talk of joy, Bianca: we'll deceive
This present and this future, whose grim faces
Stare at us with such deep and hideous blackness:
We'll fly to the past. Dost thou remember, love,
Those gentle moonlights, when my fond guitar
Was regular, as convent vesper hymn,
Beneath thy lattice, sometimes the light dawn
Came stealing on our voiceless intercourse,
Soft in its grey and filmy atmosphere?

Bianca.
Oh yes, oh yes!—There'll be a dawn to-morrow
Will steal upon us.—Then, oh then—

Fazio.
Oh, think not on't!—
And thou remember'st too that beauteous evening
Upon the Arno; how we sail'd along,
And laugh'd to see the stately towers of Florence
Waver and dance in the blue depth beneath us.
How carelessly thy loose and swelling hand
Abandon'd its soft whiteness to my pressure?

Bianca.
Oh yes!—To-morrow evening, if thou close
Thy clasping hand, mine will not meet it then—
Thou'lt only grasp the chill and senseless earth.

Fazio.
Thou busy, sad remembrancer of evil!—
How exquisitely happy have we two
Sate in the dusky and discolour'd light,
That flicker'd through our shaking lattice bars!
Our children at our feet, or on our laps,
Warm in their breathing slumbers, or at play
With rosy laughter on their cheeks!—Oh God!—
Bianca, such a flash of thought crost o'er me,
I dare not speak it.

Bianca.
Quick, my Fazio!
Quick, let me have't!—to-morrow thou'lt not speak it.

Fazio.
Oh, what a life must theirs be, those poor innocents!
When they have grown up to a sense of sorrow—
Oh, what a feast will they be for rude misery!
Honest men's boys and girls, whene'er they mingle,
Will spurn them with the black and branded title,
“The murderer's children.” Infamy will pin
That pestilent label on their backs; the plague spot
Will bloat and blister on them till their death-beds;
And if they beg—for beggars they must be—
They'll drive them from their doors with cruel jeers
Upon my riches, villainously style them
“The children of Lord Fazio, the philosopher.”

Bianca.
To-morrow will the cry begin, to-morrow.—
It must not be, and I sit idle here.
Fazio, there must be in this wide wide city
Piercing and penetrating eyes for truth,
Souls not too proud, too cold, too stern for mercy.
I'll hunt them out, and swear them to our service.
I'll raise up something—oh, I know not what—
Shall boldly startle the rank air of Florence
With proclamation of thy innocence.
I'll raise the dead! I'll conjure up the ghost
Of that old rotten thing, Bartolo; make it
Cry out i' the market-place, “Thou didst not slay him!”
Farewell, farewell! If in the walls of Florence
Be anything like hope or comfort, Fazio,
I'll clasp it with such strong and stedfast arms,
I'll drag it to thy dungeon, and make laugh
This silence with strange uncouth sounds of joy.