SCENE III.
Sancia and Filippa.
Sancia
(smiling).
Step-mothers are not always quite at home
With their queen-daughters.
Giovanna.
Yet queen-mothers are.
Step-mother you have never been to me,
But kindest, fondest, tenderest, truest mother.
Maria.
Are we not all your children?
Sancia.
All. Where then
Is fled our lively Sicily?
Giovanna.
She is gone
To her own chamber.
Maria.
To read poetry.
Sancia.
Where poetry is only light or flattering
She might read some things worse, and many better.
I never loved the heroes of Romance,
And hope they glide not in among the leaves.
Maria.
And love you then their contraries?
Sancia.
Those better.
What clever speech, Maria, dost thou ponder?
I see we differ.
Maria.
Rather.
Sancia.
Why so grave?
Surely no spur is tangled in thy hem!
Maria.
No, my regrets were all for you. What pity
Andrea dropt upon our globe too late;
A puissant antipode to all such heroes!
Giovanna
(smiling).
Intolerable girl! sad jealous creature!
Sancia.
Where is he? I was seeking him.
Maria.
There now!
Sancia.
Or else I should not have return'd so soon
After our parting at the Benediction.
[Goes.
Maria.
Sister! I fear my little flippancy
Hurried Queen Sancia: why just now want sposo?
Giovanna.
She did not smile, as you do, when she went.
Fond as she is, her smiles are faint this morning.
A sorrowing thought, pure of all gloom, o'erspread
That saintly face.
Maria.
It did indeed.
Giovanna.
She loves
Us all, she loves our people too, most kindly.
Maria.
Seeing none other than Hungarian troops
At church about us, deeply did she sigh
And say “Ah! where are ours?”
Giovanna.
You pain me sadly.
Queens, O Maria! have two hearts for sorrow;
One sinks upon our Naples. Whensoever
I gaze ('tis often) on her bay, so bright
With sun-wove meshes, idle multitudes
Of little plashing waves; when air breathes o'er it
Mellow with sound and fragrance, of such purity
That the blue hills seem coming nearer, nearer,
As I look forth at them, and tossing down
Joyance for joyance to the plains below . .
To think what mannerless, unshorn, harsh-tongued
Barbarians from the Danube and the Drave
Infest them, I cast up my eyes to Heaven
Impatiently, despondently, and ask
Are such the guests for such festivities?
But shall they dare enthral my poor Andrea?
Send, send for him: I would not he were harm'd,
Much less degraded. O for ministers
To guide my counsels and protect my people!
I would call round me all the good and wise.
Sancia
(returning).
Daughter! no palace is too small to hold them.
The good love other places, love the fields,
And ripen the pale harvest with their prayers.
Solitude, solitude, so dread a curse
To princes, such a blight to sycophants,
Is their own home, their healthy thoughts grow in it.
The wise avoid all our anxieties:
The cunning, with the tickets of the wise,
Push for the banquet, seize each vacant chair,
Gorge, pat their spaniel, and fall fast asleep.
Giovanna.
Ah then what vigils are reserved for me!
Maria.
Hark! spears are grounded.
Giovanna.
Officer! who comes?
Officer.
Lady! the friar mounts the stairs; behind him
Those potent lords, Caraffa and Caraccioli.
Giovanna.
Your chair, Queen Sancia, stands unoccupied:
We must be seated to receive the lords.
Is it not so?
Sancia.
The queen must.
Giovanna.
One queen only?
The younger first? we can not thus reverse
The laws of nature for the whims of court.
[Sancia is seated.
There's our kind mother! Just in time! They come.
