University of Virginia Library

ACT I.

SCENE I.

A Public Walk in Naples.
Cimbelli and Castro.
CIMBELLI.
Where did you rest last night?

CASTRO.
I slept at Capua.

CIMBELLI.
Fortune is kind in this, at least my fortune,
Who makes us meet so early.

CASTRO.
I have heard
That she has shewn her kindness of late,
By happier signs than this.

CIMBELLI.
Not so, believe me,
And yet I am content: I treat her Grace
Much as I treat my Cynthia, when she smiles,
Kiss her for smiling; when she frowns I kiss her
To make her smile again.

CASTRO.
Why this is wisdom—
If we had left the drum to study greek,
We could have learnt no more.

CIMBELLI.
A plague on learning!
Wise men are wise by nature; for myself,
I did not follow Wisdom, Wisdom liked
And followed me. She found me on my legs,
A Peripatetic to the chin. But tell me,
Why come to Naples now? to see the Bay
And visit Churches; look upon a Statue
And yawn? Lent lasts till Midsummer this year.
The king is gone, the duke, the fleet, the courtiers—
Our catguts are unscrewed—no plays, nor music,
Processions all put off—and worst of all,
The ladies grown litigious.

CASTRO.
Sad indeed!
The king hath sailed for Spain?

CIMBELLI.
Our geese were sure
That he loved Naples best; but lo! his kingship
Wisely prefers their acre to our rood,
Slips on his brother's stool as soon as empty,
And leaves us wondering here.

CASTRO.
His son gone too?

CIMBELLI.
Not far—he will come back again. The duke,
And bearer to his Grace of brains and beard,
The prince of Andria—viscounts, counts and barons,
The noblest of our nobles, Naples' giants,
Most loyally run the risk of catching cold,
And wait upon the king toward Spain. The fleet
Divides at sea, one half attends his person,
And one returns.

CASTRO.
What—is the duke your viceroy?

CIMBELLI.
Some say, our king.

CASTRO.
Duke Ferdinand?—so young?
He seem'd a boy last year.

CIMBELLI.
He is one still,
And kind enough withal: but kind or crabbed,
Or young, or old, the viceroy, or the king,
It matters not to us: the tail of Spain
Must go where goes the head.

CASTRO.
What think the people?

CIMBELLI.
That bread is cheap enough, and grapes too dear.
The people think! there are, indeed—but hush!
Who lov'd not Spain before, abjure her now,
Would, if they could, be free; and therefore rather
That children ruled than men.

CASTRO.
And one of these
Is good Cimbelli?

CIMBELLI.
You must know my friends,
But first and best Arezzi.

CASTRO.
What Arezzi?

CIMBELLI.
Prince Andria's ward.

CASTRO.
The Count you wrote about?

CIMBELLI.
The same—no, not the same, but changed; he then
Was merry like myself; now flat or froward,
Much given to splenetic thoughts, chin-deep in love,
Warped all awry, soon vexed, and prone to squabble,
Too hasty with his sword.

CASTRO.
My dear Cimbelli,
Is this the first and best?

CIMBELLI.
Yet generous, noble,
Unspotted, artless—What is ill came late,
And will away again.

CASTRO.
But when! who brought it?

CIMBELLI.
Love and his guardian Andria. It were hard
To tell his history. His parents died,
He scarcely two spans long. They loved—were married;
Fled secretly, and perished in their flight
At sea. Andria was next of kin; he found
And nursed the child as his—he has no other;
Arezzi lived at court. The duchess, there
Made him companion to her niece—one dish,
One cradle served them both, and now who wonders
If they should choose one bed! The duchess frowns,
Prince Andria frowns; the duke affects his cousin—
Your boy last year is old enough for that—
Arezzi pines at heart; but strangest yet,
This guardian Andria, who was kind till late,
Now deals perversely, stints his kinsman's purse,
And grows unjust throughout. Come, let us find him.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The Royal Palace in Naples.
Arezzi and Cicilia.
AREZZI.
Prince Andria and the duchess both forbid it?
And now we may not speak, nor see each other,
This they call just!

CICILIA.
Yes, we may see and speak,
But not as lovers.

AREZZI.
How then else—as friends?
You say so too, Cicilia? Well, henceforth, friends!
And thus we fall more easily. It is
The temperate grade upon a sinking scale,
Where honor sticks awhile as love is changing;
Tired Fancy's bating place; a comma mark'd
'Twixt faith and fraud—the shower before a thaw—
Consumption's hectic—or a breath to cool
The blistering scalds of perjury and shame!—
Love's short and dreary twilight ends in storms!
The incense on his altar once put out,
Will burn no more. Those fires, like Vesta's, last
Pure and immutable while faith preserves them
But lost, they leave a portent in their place;
The censor cool'd they never light again.
We, that have lov'd so long, must talk of friendship!
Garnish our goodly thoughts in gracious words,
And end with trash like this!

CICILIA.
But why blame me?

AREZZI.
Can love, through choice recede, and step by step
Descend as he ascended? O! but softly;
You may remind me that my folly runs
Too fast before your wisdom. You are wise,
Those lips have never promised love! their smiles
Were happy things to dream of, and my pride,
Gave mute looks, words.

CICILIA.
Then faith stands clear; you say
I never promised love?

AREZZI.
I do.

CICILIA.
If so—
Shame, which has kept me silent, dies with hope:
I promise now. But this seems hard, Arezzi,
Thus ever when we meet, distrust and blame!
Is only one unhappy?—both are bound
With fetters which we must not hope to break,
And if we might, say, would we?

AREZZI.
I will doubt
No more—suspect thee! wretched as I was,
Unjust, ungrateful, undeserving ever,
To be thus happy now!

CICILIA.
Ah! wherefore happy?
Love must be silent here: his wings themselves,
Which flutter lightly o'er the fond and blessed,
Might waken who would part us.

AREZZI.
Let them wake, then;
Shall we, whose servitude has easier names,
With blood as noble as their own, and hearts
As high as theirs, still eat the bread they give
In fear, forsooth, and thankfulness? endure
Rebuke with reverence—curtesy when they smile—
Do, or do not; nay love and hate by rule—
Go as their horses go, now checked or urged,
Approved and patted, threatened and chastised,—
And this because they feed us?

CICILIA.
It were just
To say—because they love us: they have earned
Their right, by doing good, to do their will—
At least be just, Arezzi.

AREZZI.
For myself
I would that they had left me where they found,
To thrive or perish as high Heaven saw best,
So I might thank none else.

CICILIA.
We may miscal
A thankless spirit, a great one. Who besides
Would talk of tyranny here? The laws consign
The orphan to its kindred—me they placed
Safe in a two-fold wardship; first, of blood,
And, next, of sovereignty. The king transferred
His office to his sister, and I live
Where bounty shows its attributes, but hides
Its face and name—a daughter of their house,
A child, and not a subject.

AREZZI.
I alas!
I but a sort of pigmy too, must bear
A burden huge as Etna, and my loins
Raw with the torment of this burning debt,
Be scorched as well as wearied. Well, well, well,
I will repent, confess myself unjust—
Ungrateful! say not so—you shall not think so,
Nor henceforth find it so. From my soul, Cicilia,
I reverence both.

CICILIA.
Prove that by what you do;
It is the mock of service to profess
All other duties but the one thing bidden,
And start from that.

AREZZI.
Ah! that is all, or more
Than all beside—the excepted fruit withheld,
Has marred their Paradise!

CICILIA.
Nay, then, farewell.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Cloisters in the Monastery of St. Ignazio.—A bell tolling.
Enter Savelli meeting Gerardo and Ludovico.
GERARDO.
The abbey lacks an abbot—we a father.

SAVELLI.
I learnt it from the bell.

LUDOVICO.
Alas! but now,
The good old man is taken to his rest!

SAVELLI.
How did his spirit pass?

LUDOVICO.
As we should pray
That yours may do and mine; it left behind
A smile to grace its dust.

GERARDO.
Yet one stood near
Who thought he called for help; but I did not,
Nor heard him speak.

LUDOVICO.
They held the rood before,
And there his eyes were steady till their sight
Was scaled and dimm'd by death.

SAVELLI.
So, peace be with him!
His end was happy.

LUDOVICO.
Such, as such a life
The best deserves.

GERARDO.
Yet good men die in fear
Sometimes, and ill ones calmly.

LUDOVICO.
While the flesh
Holds, yea though loosely, on the fluttering spirit,
It still hath power.

SAVELLI.
Well, may his sleep be bless'd;
We live to suffer here.

GERARDO.
It has been thought—
And men think what they wish—that one of you
Shall keep his chair from vacancy, and hold
The staff he leaves.

SAVELLI.
All look toward Ludovico.

LUDOVICO.
I think not so, nor wish it so: the duke
Will choose more wisely.
[Enter a Monk, who says to Ludovico—
One would speak without.

LUDOVICO.
To meet again. Adieu!

[Exeunt.
GERARDO.
He thinks not so,
Nor wishes that it should be so: good now,
This man of truth tells lies! there is not one
Amongst so many, from himself and thee,
To him that lights the lamps and swings the censor,
Cook, porter, verger, sacristan, or dean,
But would be abbot if he could. Men look,
Even as thou saidst, toward him. the duke, the while,
Our seedling Agamemnon out at sea,
The king of men, may look a different way
Toward good Savelli. From my soul I think
That none tell truth; that not a man who lives
But lies; that Ludovico lies—that he
For whom they ring those bells, did much the same,
And dying smiled to think how many fools
He left behind him. Thou and I, Savelli,
Do wrong to one another; thou dost hold
Thy friend a knave, an eminent knave; and I
Think worse, the while, of mine. Yet prithee, why?
Each knows his partner best, what cards he plays,
And when he cheats, how shuffles—if he knew
The others in the game as well—

SAVELLI.
Peace, peace!
It is not so Gerardo. Men like us
Are prone to err in this. There is a fault
Most dangerous in contempt, and some have fallen,
Who judged as thou. We should know well our brethren:
There are both bad and good, some wise, some foolish.

GERARDO.
So be it—the wise man's wisdom does but this,
It hides his follies; and the good man's goodness
Is fraud in luck. Should two as old as we are,
Whose puppets dance all day before the sun,
Doubt if some Punch abroad be not a god,
And call his candles stars? Name one man honest.

SAVELLI.
This Ludovico stands within his cell
The same as in the face of men and Heaven;
And so did he just dead.

GERARDO.
Now who knows that?
Why think not so of me? my gown is worn
As bare as theirs—a frail and mortified man,
Once frail, now mortified! and for thyself,
Thou hast a fasting face: fair Nature saves
Thee, her foul child, one lie, and kindly takes
That sin upon herself—makes thee look pale,
Grave, temperate, chaste, and pious. Some have said,
“What reverend man goes there?”—they might have stared
Indeed, if they had seen thee where thou wentest,
And striven with their own eyes. Then for thy words,
They drop upon men's hearts like showers in June,
When blows the south wind grossly. Who that hears
Thinks of the blight and worm!—

SAVELLI.
More than thou knowest,
If Heaven have made me what thou sayest, and art;
A sort of atmosphere surrounds the good—
Some subtile exhalation from within,
Not seen, but felt; another too the wicked,
Each as its kind in nature. Know thee not!
I hail'd thee at a league. In twenty years
This Ludovico wears unfray'd throughout,
And will do twenty more.

GERARDO.
If I were found,
It was by instinct, then: but other men
Lack something of that sympathy; and few
Can feel the wind, as thou canst, fair or foul,
And damp or dry, an hour before it blow.
A moral weathergage, a magnet primed
And pointing blank toward sin; a crow-beaked spirit
Which scents the carrion ere the man be dead,
Follows the marching carcase.

SAVELLI.
Prithee be quiet.
At present we have much to think and do.
The fleet comes homeward; it is seen, they say,
From Procita, far off. Let gales like these
Blow all night long, the duke will land to-morrow.

GERARDO.
We must not loiter then.

SAVELLI.
Brother be wary:
Greatness lies broad before us, ruin and shame
On either side.

GERARDO.
We shall go safely through.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

The Castle of St. Elmo, commanding a view of Naples and the Bay.
Arezzi and Cimbelli.
CIMBELLI.
But why so fast Arezzi? hills like this
Need cooler time of day; or one whose veins
Are shrunken conduits to diluted wine
At last let dry; whose flesh was fed on salads;
A thing of kid-skin bleach'd; a moon adorer—
Endymion's proxy—lord of dreams and visions—
A loving Lent-observing priest of Cupid—
A natural ghost—a sigh-embodied spectre—
Anacreon's cricket—

AREZZI.
Rest that tongue a little,
Thy legs do well enough, but who can prate,
Or hear thee prate untir'd? It is as hard
To drag thee chattering on a hill like this,
As to Vesuvius' top if trudg'd in silence.

CIMBELLI.
Well then, go mount alone: I seat me here,
And so adieu! Wouldst drive me like an ass?
Whip me because I tarry?

AREZZI.
Thou didst stop
To bray, not rest. Come rouse thee—one step more,
And we are there.

CIMBELLI.
They cannot land so soon,
The fleet lies two miles off. And why the summit?
Why to the top of all? That we may stand
So much the nearer to the sun, and melt
So much the faster?

AREZZI.
Good goose, that we may see
So much the farther.

CIMBELLI.
Good or not, the goose
Is bilious liver'd, and hates roasting there.
What hinders that we see as clearly hence?
Is there a boat upon the bay, a sail,
I might have said a sea-bird—on the beach,
A net hung up, a mast, a rope, an oar,
But we may see it here?

AREZZI.
Well, then, sit still.

CIMBELLI.
Behold the end of fasting! surfeits choke
Such thriftless abstinence! They say it clears
The visual organ, strengthens and extends
All sorts of seeing, both of mind and body,
Within us and without us: but alas!
This lover grows stone blind. Cupid transforms
His servant to his likeness—as the god,
So blinks the worshipper. Farewell then tears,
And sighs, and empty bellies! I would see,
As I see now, Vesuvius lift unbent
His feathery column whitening toward the skies,
And that pure Heaven behind him—see the isles
Rest on the smooth blue waves—the mountain sides
Look dark and high—the populous shores beneath
Black with their swarming multitudes—mast heads
And city roofs all thronged.

AREZZI.
A race, a race—
Now eyes, now tongue! If the new king should need
In his new realm a poet—one who sees
A shrimp a mile, the nails in Pegasus' shoes,
Castalia's minnows, and on Pindus' side
How green the grasshoppers—

[Cannons are fired.
CIMBELLI.
I pray be still!

AREZZI.
The ears start last: what dost thou hear, Cimbelli?

CIMBELLI.
How long the flash and smoke foreran the sound!
It is the duke—he leaves his ship for land,
That inmost barge is his.

AREZZI.
A hundred more
Attend him home, or meet him.

CIMBELLI.
They which bear
Their double banners gaily in the stern,
Have with them sweetest music.

AREZZI.
Thou canst hear
The flutes, but I cannot.

CIMBELLI.
What hear them here!
Said I, I heard them?

AREZZI.
Didst thou not, even now,
Commend the music, call it sweet, Cimbelli?

CIMBELLI.
And so it is, no doubt. Marry, these pipers
Shall learn the Duke's good-morrow to his Bride,
And play your Farewell Elegy—they are
The best in Naples.

AREZZI.
O! my soul is sick,
And this is murder to it.—

[Cannons are heard again.
CIMBELLI.
The guns again!
This shot is from the castle; when he lands,
The mole will give the third.

AREZZI.
Nay, hark! even still
The echo rolls around us—Ischia answers—
And now the mountains!—It was here that once
I watched, by night, the tempest, till this rock
Shook from its roots; and in the light'nings blaze—
Though all was fourfold darkness when they ceased—
I saw Vesuvius and the waves between,
As plain as I do now.

CIMBELLI.
What thing on earth,
Or what beneath it, could tempt wise men here
In such a night as this?

AREZZI.
Ill spirits, of whom
The worst was Jealousy.

CIMBELLI.
Sweet Count, good bye—
Nay, do not move: I would not knowingly make
This devil's best friends mine own. He is a coxcomb,
Apt to take things awry, turn blue to black,
And white to yellow—he might grow scrupulous of myself,
And so I leave you— (going out he meets Savelli.)

Bless us! who comes next?
The same we spoke about!

AREZZI.
Good day, good father.

SAVELLI.
It is the better that I find you here;
And yet not good, Arezzi.

CIMBELLI.
World! O! world!
All sort of men are moonstruck or possessed,
Priests, elders, bachelors, and those with wives—
All wretched, all forlorn, all prone to darkness,
All tempted, vexed, tormented! I would find
Some wizard, with his almanack, to learn
The worst at once.

SAVELLI.
Young man this mirth is folly.
There wants no almanack to tell the wise
Ill jests are jests ill-timed.

CIMBELLI.
But hear me, father—
There is a reason for my mirth.

SAVELLI.
What is it?

CIMBELLI.
One little spark remains to light mankind,
And that grows dim. Wouldst take my bellows from me,
Leave us in utter darkness, shake thine ears
Because, forsooth, I puff to keep thee warm?—
Buffet thy friend?—

SAVELLI.
I do repent Cimbelli,
My heart was sore, and thou didst touch it roughly.

CIMBELLI.
Poor hearts! one bruised, one broken! Love like Death,
Smites all alike—the teacher and the taught!
Nor heeds he now the old man's length of beard,
The wise man's depth of knowledge, or with both
The churchman's height of grace!—

SAVELLI.
Be merry ever,
We will not chide again—'twere just to bear
Our griefs ourselves—

CIMBELLI.
What griefs?—

SAVELLI.
Go, go—no matter.

AREZZI.
Say what they are.—

SAVELLI.
The father of our house
Is taken from us!—

CIMBELLI.
Who?

SAVELLI.
Our abbot.

CIMBELLI.
Gone?

SAVELLI.
Departed yesterday.

CIMBELLI.
What dead—deceased!
The abbot dead?

SAVELLI.
He left us here at noon.

CIMBELLI.
S'blood let him go then! by that beard, I thought
To hear of some worse mischief—flames, volcanos;
A battle lost—another nunnery building—
An earthquake, deluge, famine—that the vines
Were withered to the roots—that men must drink
Henceforth from brooks like sheep! and while this dread
Made my teeth chatter—lo! it ends—“the abbot
“Deceased, departed, taken from us, gone—
“The father of our house!”—He might have had
My leave to go, and all his children with him.
Frightened to death for this!—What, did he keep
The cellar key, and take it in his pocket?
Will no one wear his mitre—no kind pate
Through love or charity?

AVELLI.
The task were easy
To find a head, but hard to chuse one fit.
The covering seems too costly for a block,
Too weighty for a shell so cracked and empty
As this of thine.

CIMBELLI.
Among so many shorn,
There are your sheep's-heads, lamb's-heads, ram's-heads, goat's-heads;
The last have beards to wear, but truck their horns
In change for fleeces with the flock. Come, prithee
Why shouldst not thou be abbot?

SAVELLI.
Count, farewell!
I have not strength to-day for wars like these:
The daw pursues the raven.—I will keep
A graver word or two for you.

CIMBELLI.
The Count—
Who stands regardless there, like some church cock,
Too high in air to hear the preacher's doctrine—
Hath present need of wisdom: as for me,
I have enough. Stand fast, and take my place—
Exhort, admonish. I must hence to court,
Where grave words gender spleen, and true ones, sport.

[Exit.
SAVELLI.
You should go too, Arezzi.

AREZZI.
I should, but cannot.

SAVELLI.
You will be asked for, and this splenetic court
May read your could not—would not.

AREZZI.
Let it do so:
Both versions are the true.

SAVELLI
Come, come—the wise
Will learn to fondle what they do not love.
This harlot Naples, paints her cheeks to day
And feasts a younger lover. He went out
A duke, and if men's certainties prove true,
Returns a king. Prince Andria rules the state
As vizier to our sultan. You should haste
To welcome both—their subject, ward, and cousin.

AREZZI.
Heaven keeps me of a humble mind, and so
Their ward and subject—for the cousin, it makes me
Thankful enough. A twofold service needs
A threefold patience: this word kinsman seems
Like gilded collar on some great man's dog,
His master's wealth, not his.

SAVELLI.
Mark me, my son,
Who cannot stand, may kneel. Such collars bind
The neck of almost all: the days are gone
When Naples was without them, and might call
Her nobles, men. Dogs' natures need dogs' chains;
Spain holds the whip and whistles to her whelps—
Ware contumacy, Count!

AREZZI.
Patience, just Heaven!
Who is it that provokes our shame and mocks
Our fetters, but yourself?

SAVELLI.
Well, so I do,
And ought to do, and will do—till I find
The lash too heavy for the back. Be humble—
The patience that you pray for comes at last
To render baseness easier. What I hate
Is this ambiguous and unnatural thing
Which wags its idiot head about the streets,
And must be worshipped—honor, in good sooth!
Nobility, what not! pure blood! high lineage!
Patrician pride!—why, prithee, gentle Count—
And gentle seems the Count's addition here—
Is pride for you or me? should slaves look greatly?
And those, whose masters are a subject's servants,
Boast of their ancestry?—We! these rocks beneath us
Seem to upbraid the coward for his boasts,
And teach us shame! the feet of heroes trod
Even where we stand, while Pleasure and Repose
Prepared their myrtles in the cool alcove,
Or spread the purple couch for glorious toil.
These are the mountains where they gazed—we see
Their tombs and temples round us—we usurp
The labor of their hands, and build our homes
With fragments left from their's—we know their shapes,
Boast of their lineage, read their wills as heirs,
And fix their statues in our groves and halls!
We slaves do this! Spain sends barbarian kings
To rule in Naples:—Scipio's bondmen now
May scourge his children!

AREZZI.
Wherefore this to me?

SAVELLI.
That shame may teach thee meekness, my proud son.
Go, show thy duty toward the duke—he is
Too mighty for a rival, now; so smile
And kiss his princely hand, and he will be
Thy gracious master. Thou shalt have, in time,
Some other wife.

AREZZI.
If not, I hope to find
Some better comforter. Bless thee, Savelli!
Thou shalt preach patience to the fiends, and stir
Their fires around them while they hear. Look down,
And out of all those thousands, chuse one man
So manacled in spirit as I, or fenced
So close by circumstance from what he would;
And see which stirs the first.

SAVELLI.
Ah! thus it is—
Life swarms with hindrances: its pebbles grow
To rocks and stumbling blocks. Our gnats and flies
Are vulture-winged. The cobwebs of the world
Catch and enchain its giants. One dares much,
But cannot—why? he fills a place at court.
A second is in love. A third sits patient
As kinsman to a kinsman of the Duke.
This has a guardian near the throne—the other
Was once his highness' playmate. While we hang,
Entangled by our feathers half life through,
From twigs like these, that merciless hand draws near—
Gently indeed at first, yet hard as Death's—
To grasp the courtier's wand, the kinsman's honors,
The ward's whole patrimony—it thrusts apart
The lover and his mistress—but it leaves
The patriot's doubts! If all men felt as we do,
Rome had found kinder matrons for her kings,
And Brutus gloried in his son!—but come.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.

An apartment in the Palace.
Duchess, Cicilia, and Prince of Andria.
DUCHESS.
We talk, and wisely—politic both—nay one
Can mingle with his speech a traveller's tales
Of winds and seas; while tired and idly by,
Cicilia muses till these grave words end—
Say something of the duke.

CICILIA.
Prince Andria brings
His earliest offerings to your Grace, the last
He keeps for me.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
His highness, when he comes,
Shall make soft vows for both.

DUCHESS.
O! use does much;
Cicilia, tell him he hath practised long:
Prince Andria whispered in thy mother's ear
Vows, ere the duke was born—his lips were there
As constant as her ear-rings.

CICILIA.
They appear
A kind of heir-loom, common to the house,
Hereditary things which once were precious:
Their fashion suits the setting of the times,
And shall become your Grace.

DUCHESS.
Well, now my brother,
How were his looks at last?

PRINCE ANDRIA.
Even such they were
As suited better with his mind than fortune—
Kind, gracious, but not happy.

DUCHESS.
He has left
His happier thoughts with us, but Heaven, which gave him
So much of honor here, will bless his days
With larger glory on a loftier throne,
And raise him friends in Spain.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
He loved us well;
Naples was what he made it: but in Spain
Things rest on custom, and he will be there
Greater, indeed, not happier.

DUCHESS.
Tell me next,
What day it was you left him?

PRINCE ANDRIA.
Our Lady's Eve;
Till then the winds, which bore him forth toward Spain,
Seemed loth to speed his passage, yet ashamed
To leave his fluttering sails unfilled—by fits
They lingered and returned, pursued, then tarried,
And did their office sorrowing. Here, at length,
Sardinia lay before us, with her hills
Higher than the sun declined. O'er the glazed sea
Some long blue streaks stretched darkening in the breeze,
All else was motionless. The fleet lay close—
Shadowing its burnished image in the deep—
So that we saw the pomp, and heard the sounds—
Mistress of many nations. Each thronged ship—
As well as that we sailed in with the king—
Had lowered its standard till the mass was said,
And while they sang the vespers. Never yet
Has music seemed so holy! We were there,
Who jointly in this world should hear no more
What we had heard so oft. At last the king
Said something good to each; embraced his son;
And bade us, if indeed we were his friends,
To honor whom he left us. For myself—
He placed me next the duke, and spoke at large
Of faith long tried, and services approved,
Which, though they pleased me, shamed me. While we knelt,
The tear was in his eye, and when the barge
Bore us in sorrow from his side, he said
“Commend me to my sister.”

DUCHESS.
Ah! I feared
That he might hold him doubtful if I loved,
And so himself love less. It seemed unkind
To let him part without me, and to chuse—
Though suffered freely as I was—my home,
Here from his own thus far.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
Not so, believe me;
He did not think it so, but twice he said,
“Now that the pang is past, the choice ends well;
“I leave my son, my friends.”

DUCHESS.
Generous still!
The same Don Carlos ever. And the duke
Returns a sovereign to his father's throne,
In all but name, a king?

PRINCE ANDRIA.
He is, toward Spain,
A son, and not a subject. We but wait
Awhile in policy, he then will bear
The name and sceptre of a king.

DUCHESS.
It is
As I have wished indeed. The good shall see
Dominion well conferred, and well divided:
Spain has outgrown her strength; the trunk, though large,
Hath stretched its giant arms too far, and now
It sickens with their weight.

[Enter the Duke.
PRINCE ANDRIA.
Behold! the Duke.

DUKE.
Health to my gracious Aunt, and what beside
Is fairest, holiest.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
Hath she not beside her,
That which is fair and holy?

DUKE.
Both indeed
Forgive me, dear Cicilia—I mistook,
Forget, I never could.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
Mistaken twice—
Your highness' rights are twofold now—as prince,
And kinsman too—so why not twofold kisses?
In this the king was wiser.

DUCHESS.
It bodes ill
To stumble at the threshold of a reign—
Prince Andria counsels prudently, for kings
Should show their power at first.

CICILIA.
Then let his Grace
Begin with some hard enterprise, and close
Prince Andria's mouth.

PRINCE ANDRIA.
This counsel is the same
I gave myself, save that the mouth is not.—
His highness made long prayers.

DUKE.
My aunt will pardon.
It was as she has taught me: I should gain
Rebukes, not smiles, if what I owed to her
Were paid the first, while slowly, out of place,
My debts to Heaven came next.

DUCHESS.
Even from the shore
The younger hastened to his prayers, and blessed
Good guidance hence and home—the elder ran
To gossip here with women! now pass on.

[Exeunt.