University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

EPISCOPAL PALACE. Bishop of Ancona and Father John.
Bishop.
I have been standing at my terrace-wall
And counting those who pass and cry with hunger.
Brother! the stoutest men are grown effeminate;
Nay, worse; they stamp and swear, even in my presence,
And looking up at me.

Father John.
Sad times indeed!

Bishop.
I calculate that giving each an ounce
Only one day, scarce would a sack remain
In my whole garner; I am so reduced.

Father John.
I come to beg your lordship for one ounce
Of your fine flour, to save a child; to save
A mother, who loathes ordinary food . .
Not ordinary, but most bitter lupin:
She has no other in the house.

Bishop.
No other?
Poor soul! This famine is a dreadful thing!
Pestilence always follows it! God help us!
I tremble; I start up in sleep.

Father John.
My lord!
An ounce of meal, a single ounce, might calm
These tremblings, well applied. The nurse that should be
Can be no nurse: the mother very soon
Will be no mother, and the child no child.

Bishop.
You know not how things stand, good brother John!
This very morning, as I hope for grace,
I paid three golden pieces for the head,
Think you, of what? an ass!

Father John
(aside).
The cannibal! [To the Bishop.]

Ah, my good lord! they bear high prices now.

Bishop.
Why, brother! you yourself are grown much thinner.
How can you do your duty?

Father John.
Were I not
Much thinner, I should think I had not done it.

Bishop.
My cook assures me that with wine and spice
Elicampane, cumin, angelica,
Garlic, and sundry savoury herbs, stored by
Most providentially, the Lord be praised!
He can make that strange head quite tolerable . .
The creature was a young one . . what think you?

Father John.
They are more tolerable than the old.

Bishop.
The sellers take advantage of bad times,
Quite without conscience, shame, respect for persons,
Or fear of God. What can such men expect?
You must have seen sad sights about our city:
I wonder you are what you are.

Father John.
Sad sights
Indeed!

Bishop.
But all will give their confessor
Part of their pittance; and the nearer death
The readier; knowing what the church can do.
Tell me now, for my entrails yearn to hear it,
Do they not take due care of you?

Father John.
No meals
Have now their stated hour. Unwillingly
I enter houses where the family
Sits round the table at the spare repast.
Sometimes they run and hide it.

Bishop.
Most unmannerly!
Inhuman, I would add unchristianlike.

Father John.
Sometimes they push toward me the untasted
And uninviting food, look wistfully,
Press me; yet dread acceptance. Yesterday
A little girl, the youngest of the five,
Was raising to her lips a mealy bean
(I saw no other on the unsoil'd plate)
And, looking at my eyes fixt hard on hers,
And thinking they were fixt upon the morsel,
Pusht it between my lips, and ran away.

Bishop.
Brother! I should have call'd her a good child;
I should myself have given the benediction
With my own hand, and placed it on her head:
I wonder you don't praise her. Brother John!
I have my nones to run thro'; so, good-by.

Father John.
Just God! does this house stand? Dark are thy ways,
Inscrutable! Be thy right hand our guide!