University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

Alonzo's Studio.
Alonzo
alone, seated gazing at Cecilia's portrait; then starting up.
Shame on my fevered heart; 't is almost jealous.
A blessing to my life she still may be,
If I keep worthy. Out, base jealousy:
There's no glass here to catch thy demon glare.
Oh! how the sordid meddling self will thrust
An opake pettiness betwixt our manhood
And its broad ends impersonal, keeping us
In dead eclipse toward beauty's cloudless sun.
But what is beauty, if not in the life?
Can I, who have made vows to beauty, keep then
By cunning practices of eye and hand?
The eye but guides, the hand but holds, the brush:
It is the soul that paints: and never can
The base in soul reach high in spotless Art.
To know great beauty, we must live it, be it.
[Seats himself again before the portrait.]
This face divine has baffled me, because
I've been too selfish, too unlike the soul
That makes its splendor.
[Enter Filippo behind him, unperceived.]
Now, I'll paint it, now
That my large self hath triumphed o'er the small.
I'll love her as another's with a love
More holy still. But this Fernando—were she
Filippo's, then the two I'd love as one.

[Filippo advances and touches him on the shoulder He starts up.
Fil.
Ay, start up, like the guilty thing thou art.

Alon.
My dear Filippo;—

Fil.
Call me friend and force me
Peer in thy heart from 'hind thy back, to learn—
What makes me, too, the happiest of men—
Thy secret noble love for sweet Cecilia.
But now, I was a rag of wretchedness.
To thee I'd come for counsel; for Ernesto—
Whose single thought was, foiling of the duke—
Thinking Cecilia's heart and mine mere wax,
For his warm will to melt into one lump,
Had made me swear to be her suitor, me
Whose wax was melting by another fire.
Thou lov'st Cecilia—I love Leonora:
Fernando, I've just learned, has been dismissed.

Alon.
Filippo, dear Filippo, can I dare
To grasp at so much blessedness, an orphan—
Less than an orphan—a lone foundling—

Fil.
Ha!
Signor Bordoni, was he not thy father!

Alon.
He called me son, and made me be as son.
I loved him like a father; but he knew
No more than I myself who were my parents.
On a cold day, in Mantua's streets he found me,
A boy of twelve years old.

Fil.
How cam'st thou there!

Alon.
As briefly as I can I'll tell thee all
A child's green memory can bring so far.
One summer evening, playing at the door,
I was upsnatched, and, with my face quick muffled,
Thrown in a boat upon a woman's lap,
Who idly strove to hush my frantic cries.
Terror kept me awake, it seemed for hours.
At last, soft Sleep—vexed childhood's pillowing mother—
Hugged me to her kind breast and stilled my sobs.
I woke within a hut, lying on straw.
Oh! the sick anguish of that frightful morning.
I had been stolen by gypsies, vagrant singers.
How life held out against the hourly siege
Of the long battering grief, I can not tell.
That time's hot agony still wrings my heart.
From town to town we journeyed, sleeping out,
Or in lone barns. Oh! how I longed to rush
Into the gaping crowds and tell my story.
But over on me were the cruel eyes
Of the dark husband. By degrees life's strength,
Fast swelling, sloughed my pinching sorrow off.
And then, the woman loved me; and at last
I loved her too. She had a mother's heart,
And laid me in it. Years rolled on. We wandered
To distant lands. One day Teresa sickened;
From day to day was worse; and as she sank,
Closer and closer pressed me to her side:
Poured aching tears upon my head; and as
I knelt, and mixed my prayers with hers, grew calm,
And died then on my breast. I'd lost my mother:
The only one I ever knew. Three days
Thereafter, in the night, I left the man,
And fled toward Italy; and there, weeping
In Mantua's streets, my second father found me.

Fil.
Alonzo, Alonzo, wast thou not from home,
On a far journey with thy father?

Alon.
Ay—
I think it was—I think it was:—

Fil.
And thou
Wast five years old?

Alon.
About, about: why ask'st thou?

Fil.
Wast not in Venice thou wast stolen?

Alon.
Venice—
Venice—Filippo, hast thou any clue?

Fil.
I have, I have: but keep thou calm.—Alonzo,
The night I came to Florence, as I rode
By Fiesole, half-dreaming on my horse,
There seemed to float before my path a wreath
Of faces, smiling and swaying with joy.
And as I shook myself awake, they vanished—
To come again; and so they came and vanished,
Until I reached the gate. And now I read
This happy vision. Oh! if through my coming
Thou shalt embrace thy father, and he thee,
Rather than not have come, I would forego
Embracing Leonora. Now to Roberto's.

[Exeunt.