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17
SCENE II.
King's Palace in Syracuse.Enter King, Orontio, his Prime Minister, and Bernardo, a Priest, Confessor to the King.
King.
Bernardo, you have searched my niece, to clutch
The very kernel of her disposition?
Bern.
I have, my liege; it is as sweet as sound.
A truer servant of the holy church
Lives not uncanonized.
King.
I mean, Bernardo,
Touching her marriage with my son.
Bern.
My liege.
Devout obedience turns all duties light;
Foreruns the will, subjecting it unfelt
To clerical predominance; whereby
Encounter 'twixt desire and duteous need
Loses its angry pith, and acts like this,
Where will and wisdom close in glad embrace,
Are calmly hailed as providential blessings.
King.
Though she has known some summers more than Tancred,
Still wears she green the glistening crown of youth.
Marriage becomes a Prince. His daily life
It sanctifies, and plants him in the respect
Of sober men. Orontio, have you tidings
Of Tancred?
Orontio.
Sire, my messenger, a quick one,
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News of him there.
King.
These wayward voyagings
Beseem him not, and have for the throne's heir
A peril disproportioned to their aim.
Bern.
'Gainst the remitting perils of the sea
He's armed by provident contrivances
Of Art, and the picked skill that waits on princes.
But hourly near him, and as subtly poisonous
As speechless exhalations from a fen—
For which there is no antidote but distance—
Are hotter dangers that assail his soul.
King.
You have before frighted my ear, Bernardo,
With stormy mutterings against Count Roger;
And I, with all a father's watchfulness,
Have hearkened, questioned, probed, and nothing found
Worse in the count than the irreverence
Native to youth, which riper years will physic.
Bern.
Pardon, my liege; you much misprize this man.
He's old in thought, and never has been young.
'Tis his great fault that in youth's levity
He's wanting. He bemocks our sacred calling,
Gores custom and time's steadfast usages;
And with licentious hand seeks to unrobe
Nature's chaste mysteries. Harmless alone,
He is, as princely parasite, a sore
Sickening the healthy heart of Sicily.
King.
Marriage will heal this sore. Two warmer fires
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Love is a whetted knife 'twixt youthful friendships.—
I hear, Orontio, that you have a purpose
To let your daughter first behold the world
In mask.
Oron.
'Tis true, my liege. To-morrow I
Present my niece and daughter to my friends.
My brother's orphaned child and my own girl,
Have grown together in my heart as one.
Our festal entertainment will lack naught
But that my King should grace it with his looks.
King.
Count me, my friend, among your grateful guests.—
Bernardo, be your cleric task, to season
The good Matilda for her budding duties.
[Exeunt King and Orontio
Bernardo,
alone.
The sovereign church hath duties paramount.
The single fountain of true piety,
Self-love in her is one with generous virtue,
And self-replenishment religious goodness;
And thence, her heaviest sin were self-neglect,
Now, through conjunction of our separate loves,—
Made one by interchange of opposites,—
Princess Matilda is betrothed to us.
As rich is she in reverence as gold.
Marriage with Tancred would imperil both.
For he, not having an obedient bent,
Already loves us not; and this his lukeness,—
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Might turn to hate through dastard jealousy.
Men are not wrought to piety by women
So oft as wives are thence distraught by husbands.
One of our harvest-fields is maidenhood,
Which sheds its buds in autumn fruit on us.
Exit.
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