University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

Fiammetta, Maria, Filippa, and Sancia, enter.
Maria.
The bridegroom is among the other grooms,
Asking odd questions: what man's horse broke loose,
Who was knockt down, what fruit-stall overturn'd,
Who quarrell'd, who cried out, struck, ran away.

Giovanna.
Maria! this is pleasantry.

Andrea
(returning hastily).
They say,
Caraffa and Caraccioli are dead.

Giovanna.
It can not be: they were both well this morning.

Filippa.
The west-wind blew this morning . . no air now.

Giovanna.
O but, Filippa! they both came together.
Did not queen Sancia tell you?

Filippa.
I have seen
Two barks together enter the port yonder,
And part together.

Giovanna.
But to die at once!

Filippa.
Happy the friends whom that one fate befalls!

Giovanna.
So soon!

Filippa.
Perhaps so soon.

Giovanna.
It may be happy.
It must be strange; awfully strange indeed!

[Fiammetta goes out.
Andrea.
My darling! how you pity those two youths!
I like you for it.

Giovanna.
Both have fathers living:
What must they suffer! Each . . I never heard,
But may well fancy . . loved some girl who loves him.
I could shed tears for her.

Maria.
My dear Giovanna!
Do queens shed tears? and on the wedding-day?

Sancia.
I see no reason why they should not.

Filippa
(aside).
I,
Alas! see far too many why they should.

Andrea.
What did Filippa say? that brides should cry?

Filippa
(to Giovanna and Maria).
Not idly has the genial breath of song
Turn'd into pearls the tears that women shed;
They are what they are call'd: some may be brighter
Among your gems, none purer, none become
The youthful and the beautiful so well.

Andrea
(as Fiammetta enters).
Here enters one you never will teach that,
She is too light for grief, too gay for love,
And neither salt nor mistleto can catch her,
Nor springe nor net: she laughs at all of them
Like any woodpecker, and wings away.
I know you women; I'm a married man:

Fiammetta.
They will not give the story up: they draw
All different ways, but death they all will have.

Andrea.
Ay, and one only will not satisfy them. [An Officer enters, and confers apart with him.

Certain?

Giovanna.
Some other accident less heavy,
Heaven! let us hope!

Andrea.
Strangled! O what a death!
One of them . . one (no matter now which of them)
Disliked me, shunn'd me; if we met, lookt at me
Straighter and taller and athwart the shoulder,
And dug his knuckles deep into his thigh.
I gave him no offence . . yet, he is gone . .
Without a word of hearing, he is gone!
To think of this! to think how he has fallen
Amid his pranks and joyances, amid
His wild heath myrtle-blossoms, one might say,
It quite unmans me.

Sancia.
Speak not so, my son!
Let others, when their nature has been changed
To such unwonted state, when they are call'd
To do what angels do and brutes do not,
Sob at their shame, and say they are unmann'd:
Unmann'd they can not be; they are not men.
At glorious deeds, at sufferings well endured,
Yea, at life's thread snapt with its gloss upon it,
Be it man's pride and privilege to weep.