University of Virginia Library

ACT I La Mort

—Mon ironie dépasse toutes les autres!

Scene—The hall of the old palace on the Aventine. To the left a throne; at the back a loggia, beyond which the Emperor is seen addressing the Romans.
Stephania robed in white, with a censer in her hand, stands forth, and looks to right and left.
Stephania
The palace is prepared, but I alone
Am here as hostess to the foreign guests.
So it should be! To the invaders who
Can offer welcome save the courtesan?
It is her office to diffuse strange grace
About the vacant rooms, to breed the smiles
Men love on joyless faces, to provide
The strong incitements of the slave born free,
And above all to make vice sibylline.
Am I not fitted?
(She stretches herself langourously at the foot of the throne, and clasps her censer)
There are perfumes here
Full of the spices that grow old in tombs,
Soft, penetrative scents that shaken out
Spread poison, but are fatal being breathed
By one without suspicion as in sleep.
I shall keep close the secret: he will come,
And sit upon his throne, and write decrees,
Secure as he had many years to live,
Whom I shall yet within one narrow week
Watch dying of an infinite fatigue.
Swing forth the censer! Would that he were come!
(She goes toward the loggia and looks out)
O sorry sight! A Roman Emperor
Deigns to wax eloquent, and by persuasion
Has oped the city-gates: an army lies
Behind him, and the Romans listen awed,
Though they have been determined in revolt.
This time three years ago he came to quell
Another rising; then Crescentius ruled
As Consul—ay, Crescentius, my great spouse,
So fervid in his love of Italy,
So fixed in his ambition to restore
The ancient forms of freedom to the State.
Within the Castle of Saint Angelo
He made a stout resistance. Finally
The Emperor lured him by false promises
To yield the keys, and in an hour his corpse,
Swung high from his own battlement, became
The rebels' warning. And I faced the sign,
And, while men shrank away in terror, stood
Waiting some signal from the tardy heavens,
Some declaration of God's righteousness
And power to crush the tyrant. But the sun
Rose to his setting day by day, and made
The same sharp shadows on the roof, the same
Hand on the dial-plate: the single change
I witnessed was a wavering in the lines
Of the loved form before me, and this too
I knew was natural, and did not blench,
But tarried, waiting for the earthquake's shock
To rend the palace, for the pestilence
To creep among the foreigners, for death
To strike the German Otho unawares
While he was feasting on the Aventine.
I tarried, never praying, but with faith
Persistent in some miracle. One day
The Emperor rode past me with a troop
Of soldiers, and they pointed: ‘Yonder stands
Crescentius' wife.’—‘Ay, take her to the camp,’
He answered carelessly, then turned to speak
With Gerbert of Ravenna, his dear friend
And tutor, of the monkish discipline
Grown lax of late; and I was borne away
To degradation. Passive from the first
I yielded to my ravishers, and when
They left me fell to musing my revenge.
I was too weak at first to apprehend
The mysteries beyond the knowledge forced
Upon me, and I wandered 'mong the hills
For solitude: then slowly in my heart
There swelled the pressure of a secret joy
As in their magic fountains I beheld
My form still beautiful, and recognised
The power of retribution in myself.
Then sacred grew my agony, my shame,
Sacred my beauty, sacred the strange arts
I found myself endowed with, as the child
Of a great craftsman is endowed with skill
To handle unfamiliar instruments;
And I divined with gratitude and awe
That while the earth went her accustomed way,
And while the sun
Twisted sharp shadows on the roofs, and while
The same hand pointed on the dial-plate,
My heart was being fitted for a deed
That should bring honour back to Italy,
Great honour back to my Crescentius' name,
And glory to my womanhood. I dwelt
Apart, I nursed my beauty to its old,
Yea, more than olden lustre, for my body
Grew bright in exultation as a shield
Fresh-burnished, and my hardihood of youth
Returned. I have vitality to spread
Consuming langours and a callousness
To make those tremble who can suffer hurt.
(She watches the approach of Otho and Gerbert)
The Emperor scarce looks older than the day
He passed Crescentius' gibbet; by his side
Is Gerbert, the new pontiff, the audacious
Monk, who unfrocked himself to learn in Spain
The Moors' delicious wizardy, who plants
His hopes in politics, who seeks to rouse
Kings to the rescue of the Holy Tomb.
He has, men say, great eloquence, a rich,
Persuasive tongue. (With sudden fury)
Pope John had his cut out!
The man my husband lifted into power
I have seen hurried through the Roman streets
Blind, mutilated, set upon an ass.
It must not be forgotten! Though in art
The method may be imperceptible
That lays arresting touches on the lips,
Then locks them fast; although these bosom-friends,
As a young, married pair, make interchange
Of counsel and of fondness, one of them
Must watch the other mute in his decay.
The twain are doomed; and I behind this column
Shall see them take possession of their fates.

(She glides out of sight as Otho and Gerbert enter, with Roman nobles and a German guard about them. The Emperor throws down his shield by the column that hides Stephania; he takes off his crowned helmet, and

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6

stands before his subjects, his long, fair hair spreading out in ripples round his head)
Otho
(To the Romans)
Now Rome is truly Rome, she is herself
The world's wide providence. We will prevail
To turn her memories to reality,
Her hopes to consummation. O believe
The things that ye were born for from this hour
Shall find fulfilment. I embrace your past,
Breathe over it and pray: it will revive,
It must, if you are faithful, for I honour
All your traditions from the Sibyl's gift
Of counsel on her palm-leaves to the laws
Threaded by great Justinian. And the Church,
Christ's charge to His Apostle, I, His servant,
Freely and firmly in authority
Will stablish o'er men's souls. Think, Romans, think
Of all that I inherit and combine;
Think of the fiery heart in me, and bid
My crown of knighthood triumph.

Gerbert
Pass before
The Emperor, he is gracious to receive
Your forfeited allegiance, and retire!

(The Romans do homage sullenly, and pass out. At a sign from the Emperor his soldiers withdraw to the loggia)
Otho
The multitude is gone, the pageantry.

Gerbert
And you are lord of Rome.

Otho
Of Rome, of this
Reluctant, prostrate people. In my dream
I kindled and expressed them, I was theirs:
Gerbert, is this the end? I travelled far,
So far for this attainment, and it lies
Dwarfed, circumscribed about me. I recoil.
To think that there should be such emptiness
When one sits down to feast!

Stephania
(Apart, stretching forth her neck eagerly)
What is this mood?
The conqueror's satiety? How well
He knew his mind three years ago, and now
A wide-spread restlessness is on his face;
He is no longer curious. I must wait,
And learn what has befall'n him.

Otho
Presently,
They say, the fig-tree withered when the breath
Of holiness had cursed it.

Stephania
(Apart)
Marked, O doomed!
Who is it that hath put a brand on him,
While I was absent? To the sacrifice
The oxen should be brought full-feeding, smooth
Of skin, not sick'ning nor incapable.

Gerbert
My son, you are witholding from my love
Some intimate, sealed grief; for I have known
Strong melancholy sweep across your soul,
A singing whirlwind—not this weariness.
What ails you?

Otho
(Turning bitterly towards the throne)
(Turning fiercely to Gerbert)

Stephania
(Apart)
Crescentius!

Otho
I indeed have made amends
The petty way you counselled.

Gerbert
(Imperiously)
And the past
Is blotted out.

Otho
Not so—O agony!
It is supreme. This penitence you thought
Would put away the memory of my sin
Has magnified and made it monstrous, driven
My soul to pace as sentinel before—
As common sentinel,
By day and night before Saint Angelo.
Will nothing stir me from that moment, nothing
Cut off that vision?

Stephania
(Apart)
Nay, as on a gem
Memory can grave.

Otho
I have plunged deep in wars,
Have summoned councils, and at Pavia kept
The Holy Christmastide 'mid sound of bells
And chaunt of clergy, yet my guilt remains,
Increases day by day, and perfects me—
I feel it—for damnation. Oh unjust,
For one immense impatience to be damned!

(He covers his face, sobbing: Gerbert stands silent with wonder)
Stephania
(Apart)
This man is full of fears; he thinks he walks
Close to the brim of hell; but I shall rise
From its mid-gulfs of mire immaculate
Who am devoted to these crimes, can bear
To front and look on them as unappalled
As martyrs by the lions' moving dens.

Gerbert
You sinned in haste; God hath put by your sin.

Otho
(Looking up passionately)
While I am ruling in Crescentius' place?

Stephania
(Apart)
Watched by Crescentius' wife?

Otho
Wearing the power
Crescentius wore, and worse than all fulfilling
His rival dream? But I am disabused.
To Romuald of Saint-Emmeran I confessed
A month ago.

Gerbert
A hard, morose, old man,
Of narrow range and habit, solitary,
And bent on bringing those to solitude
The Church requires for action.

Otho
The great firs
About Ravenna—

Gerbert
Did you seek his grot
As any common pilgrim?

Otho
It was noon
Before I reached his cavern in the hill,
Before I came upon the rocky ledge
Where he had propped his parchments. All my blood
Seemed flowing from me, and I heard the twang
Of the cicalas till I only thought
How many sounded forth their noise of heat,
When suddenly he saw me: in his arms
I told him of my wickedness, I prayed
That he would give me penance, and a little
I must have lost myself, for when I woke
I recollected what a disc of light
His tonsure was, and lay in apathy
Although his voice, loud through the softening beard,
Commanded me to put away my crown,
My state and every hope, if I would live,
If I were honest. The whole sunny day
I sat and listened to his prayer or silence
As if I had been ill. When evening came
He bade me dip his pitcher in the fountain
Some distance off; I took it with a smile,
And smiles came to me from his countenance
That sped me happy. As I dipped the crock
Two eremites drew near to watch me fill,
Both curious, shrunk and hard, but one of them—
O Gerbert, one of them was young. I fled,
Nor spoke a word to Romuald as we supped,
Nor prayed as we lay down, but flung my mantle
For softness on the broken floor, and breathed
As though I had been sleeping till I slept.
All night he lay upon the stones. A touch
Woke me at last between my eyes that opened
To see the saint's mouth clingingly withdrawn,
And record of such love about his lids
I could not bear to think of: as we kissed
I knew my mother's love was further off
Than this old man's from God. Beneath his passion
Almost I yielded . . . but the breeze was strong;
In the cold brightness ere the sun was risen
I thought of how my army to the trumpet
Replied with life; an eagle on the sky
Went past; I snatched my toga from the floor,
And then there was no colour to be seen
Throughout the earthy dwelling-place. I broke
A crust, I tried to drink beneath those brows
Planted above me, till in fear I rose
As if to go: he asked me of my choice,
But in my face he found not what he sought.
I strove, I parried, I implored, I made
Wavering conditions:—did I enter Rome
I would return, put by the purple, take
The cowl; and Romuald bent his eyes on me,
Condemning and excluding while he yearned,
And told me I should never pass the gates
Of Rome, once entered, but should surely die
In a brief while.
And it is endless death!
How different the process that men dread,
The death that is a falling of the leaves
Earthward across the wind, a running out
Of shallow waters that have spent themselves,
A diminution and a change, whereby
Effacement is accomplished step by step,
From this most hideous destiny, so raw,
So sudden and offensive. . . .
God, O doom,
O endless years of fiery penalty!
I dare not think of what it were to live
Chained up from shaping forth my eager thoughts,
Cut from the future and my gifts to it—
Ah me, the world, the world!—condemned to go
Forth from my shining camp, and from the hopes,
The enterprise, and monuments of men,
To bare obscurity . . . that small, bleak cell,
The cenobite's restrictive lip—and yet
The sense that he is right! I left his door,
And spake no word of what had been, but swift
As in the rush of onslaught sped my army
Across the land to Rome. Tears dashed my eyes;
The night was just a time to give them vent,
A privacy for weeping. To resign
War, empire, politics, the subtle arts
Of learning, and fall back on ignorance. . . .

Gerbert
Would be unworthy. Cæsar, I am stern
To this forsaking of your higher self,
This superstition cast across the brightness
Of your divine intelligence. Your mother
Gave you her purest Grecian blood, you are
Emperor august of Rome, more than the rival
Of Greeks and Romans by your eloquence,
Your courage: you have learning, loftiness,
Great powers of meditation; and in you
The waiting nations of the north and south
Look for such restoration of their state
As Virgil sang when in the grave of Dis,
Filling the air with prophecy.

Otho
Ah, so,
Death always! From the kingdom of the Shades
He brake into prediction. From my lips
Start words and promises that in my heart
I know will tarry for fulfilment long,
Long after I have perished. Is it not
A sign that one is dying when one sees
The coming ages clear as in a glass?
I am already stricken.

Stephania
(Apart)
We must bind
The brows of death with roses: his distaste
Shall grow into a fatal servitude
And waiting on her pleasures with desire.

Otho
I will return, I will go back to him.

Gerbert
Back through the gates of Rome? Is he a Pope,
Can he give absolution? You forget
That our authority protects you even
From the remorse of conscience. But how much
There is you have forgotten! How events
Combine to sadden me, and—ah!—how wise
The wisdom of my enemies who said
My age would be embittered! You forget—
But that I pardon; my fidelity
Stretches for generations past your years—
How I have rescued you from greedy foes,
Guided by craft and menace your estate,
And in your childhood gathered for the rein
Of your young hand the stormy peoples pressed
Together by your grandsire's biting sword.
Your mind took then no impress; but the day
That you became my pupil. . . .

Otho
Must remain
Imperishably blest. Arithmetic!—
Gerbert, those first discourses on the order
Of numbers, on the primal covenant
God made with them, the symbols of His thought,
From which all wonders of geometry,
And music's magic, and the course of stars
Depend—so solemnly you lessoned me
In the quadrivium, I have made essay
Of every art and power in relevance
To a determined harmony. You came
To me a moody, dreaming child, presented
The abacus to handle, gave me knowledge,
Taught me no chronicle, but played about
The past, as summer lightning. You abhorred
At my wild prayer my Saxon rudeness, rescued
The Greek within me from rusticity,
From northern clouds.

Gerbert
Which hover and will fall,
Most glorious Otho, on your mind, once more
Dimming its fair distinction, if you give
Your German nature range—those qualities
You prayed me to abhor in you, which I
Abhor. With Gallic transport I perceived
The Grecian gifts you called me to confirm,
To part from promptings of romance, vague scruples,
Contrition, and disquiet. An hour ago
Your voice flowed on in oratory expressing
The light that had been with you in your wars,
That makes your empire prevalent, yourself
The wonder of the world. But you are lost,
Found as a fool incapable of faith,
Incapable of gratitude.

Otho
Beloved,
Is it so little to create one's friend
The head of Christendom, to find a man
Loving like you the past, loving the science
And mystery of things?

Gerbert
Who fled the cloister,
And at Cordova in the schools became
The pupil of the Saracens. O wondrous
The liberation! As the gift of fire
To men, the gift of science to the Church.
If you esteemed her, if the Papacy
Were veritable empire, what He judged
Who said I am a King, and gave the keys
Into S. Peter's charge, we could begin
So much together. Inexpressible
What glory, what divineness could be shown!
And you put by the opportunity,
And leave the world to ignorance and shame,
Whom I with so much pains taught to ascend
The shadowed realms of wisdom.

Otho
(Abstractedly)
I would give
My treasure, my blue-starred dalmatica
To show him that I am not covetous,
That I am willing to enrich the new,
Fair churches that they build who still have hope.
If he might be persuaded

Gerbert
(With rising, but controlled, passion)
Then your aim
In visiting the shrines, burdening the troops
With transport of rare chalices and bones
From distant crypts, hath been but to appease
That ancient pagan way by sacrifice
One who . . . but, stay, I will not question it,
I will not ask where you should put your trust.
You yield these offerings to the Church—tomorrow
I will receive them: we will bear together
Your coronation chlamys as a gift
To your great martyred friend—

Otho
My Adalbert,
Whose spirit clung about me night and day,
And with sweet words persuaded me to love
My fatherland. Through fasting and through prayers
What comfort we received, from heavenly shapes
What prompting! You remember afterward,
As he fared forth to bless unfriended men,
Thankless on foreign coasts, how in a dream
Gaudentius, his companion, saw a cup
Golden, half-full of wine, and stooped to drink,
But was forbidden, being told by one
About the altar that the cup was poured
For Adalbert, who pondered on the dream,
And in the green woods met his martyrdom
Next day with joy and singing.

Gerbert
Where he fell
The heathens are untaught; and there are youths
Ready in Samland to lay down their lives,
Whom I will consecrate. You must not sigh,
And give me this sick answer. I am old,
And of the past in body; but my soul
Goes forth to you, to the fresh cycles governed
By your desirous visions; if you fail,
For me it simply must remain to die,
Who in your blessèd empire found the sight
Sweetest to look on among human things.

(Otho bends over and softly caresses Gerbert, looking forth with a gaze of steadfast despair)
Otho
O agèd, holy eyes, give me your dew,
Weep over me, your tears are benison!
I could not leave the world, I did not give
The Saint the vows he sought for. I remain
Blind, indeterminate. I am grown old
In one short month; I see my life no more
Golden before me, but a length of days
Processional and ghastly: one by one
I mark them as they pass, they all are mine.
Weep over me and pray! I take this cross,
Charlemagne's own cross, so glorious in presage;
I kiss and press it to my breast, and yet
My eager prayer grows hollow. Pray, beloved!
I would be Emperor of the Universe.

(Unseen, Stephania comes forth at her full height from behind the column. She advances slowly till her form almost overshadows the Emperor)
Stephania
(Apart)
Ay, truly; but Death dominates the world!
The mountains burst in crevices of ice
Or flame, the quivering forests wail for her,
And the sea surges into wasteful wrath
Of ebb and flow because it cannot die:
All things dread death, or sigh for her, or sue;
None can be unconcerned. She brought this youth
Curious to Charlemagne's tomb; and of a sudden,
As that composed and perfect majesty
Fell back, and left the golden ornaments
Glittering across the dust, he shall fall back,
His power shall wane.
(Their eyes meet; she turns and looks out over Rome)
O Italy, infect
This man with every poisonous influence
From marsh and sun and burning atmosphere,
From subtle, treacherous beauty and from love!

Otho gently raises Gerbert and directs his gaze towards Stephania)
Otho
Who is this woman?

Gerbert
As the harlotry
She stands, we come to trample.

Otho
(Catching Gerbert's arm)
Oh, a muse!
Her foot is planted firm, she contemplates;
Methinks she has grown weary watching us
So blind in our debate, and turned aside
At last; her eyes bend dominant on Rome.

Gerbert
Some messenger, or one who hath a suit.

Otho
A figure from the Gods it had been said
By them of earliest time. Her head is crowned
With crest of dazzling feathers. Gerbert, how
The silky plumes mix with her brazen hair!
And do you note the deep curves of her chin
Pushed up against the propping knuckles? Speak!
She turns to us—to you.

Gerbert
(To Stephania)
Who may you be?

Stephania
Rome, and you are her conquerors; Rome that waits
Upon your pleasure.

(She bows herself)
Gerbert
Daughter, tremble not;
Our office is to save and purify,
To lift from degradation.

Stephania
You are changed,
And you may change again: as night and day
Are men in crime and virtue. I have seen
A Pope led bleeding through the streets of Rome,
Dumb, blinded, a wine-bladder on his head
In token of derision. This was done
By a great Emperor fervent for the Church;
Yet haply he may fall again as low
As in the sin for which his penitence
Has been accepted.

Gerbert
Our most gracious lord
Has made atonement in a pilgrimage
Of sore humiliation for his too
Excessive rigour to usurping John.

Stephania
Now he exalts the righteous, sets on high
Gerbert the true Archbishop; Rome may now
Count on a hearing of her wrongs, may even
Lift herself slowly from the miseries
In which she has been sunk, and claim the aid
Of those whose office, as you say, it is
To purify and succour. I have been
Wronged like my Italy, and she forgives.
(To Otho)
Have not her nobles kneeled and kissed your feet?
(Kneeling)
I too kneel down, I swear to be to you
Most faithful: I will never leave you—never!
You find your subjects slow? These Romans, sire,
Have many things to dream on, but their dreams
Can never come to pass. They are not young
Like the Barbarians; after long depression
They hear of liberty and nobleness
A little languidly. They are not young;
They marvel when they hear from lips the down
Has scarcely covered of a world renewed.
Forgive them! But to me your energy
Is beautiful, for some time in my youth
Great hopes possessed me.

(She rises from her knees, her long mantle falls, and she appears half uncovered before them)
Otho
(Apart)
Can there be such gold
In women's breasts? Is she a courtesan
Who stands intrepid as a prophetess,
And through her eyes' clear amber searches me?
(To Stephania)
Whose child are you?

Stephania
(To Gerbert)
Should he not ask whose wife?
(To Otho)
I have no parentage; all that I am
You see. When Rome last ope'd her gates, the hour
That her great Consul fell, I ceased to be
Myself; they bore me to the common hall
Of Teuton soldiers, and I issued thence
As altered as the Pythoness from fumes
Of Delphi's chasm . . . for I possessed the world.
A hush falls on you. In my womanhood
I was a poet. (To Gerbert)
Can you exorcise
And rid me of my perilous distraction
If I attend you daily in your cell?

Gerbert
O lady, haply after many prayers.

Stephania
(To Otho)
Although I have been wronged at your command
In years gone past, now, since the time is changed,
I crave protection from your soldiery
Of you who cast me to them.

Otho
God be witness
I have no least remembrance of such thing,
No spot of it, no token. You are lovely,
Are lovely, but unknown. What is your name?

Stephania
I was the consort of Crescentius when
Three years ago you beat against our gates,
And nothing has been happening to me since:
The soldiers took me from Saint Angelo
Where you had ordered they should hang his body
Over the battlement. It is a void
I pass through. You have had experience—yea,
Doubtless encountered much fresh enterprise,
Adventure, and misfortune, hoped and prayed,
Loved and been loved again. I know how full
And visionary is a young man's life!
And now you have attained all you desire;
You rule where once Crescentius ruled, you set
A Pope in place of him Crescentius chose,
You have Crescentius' wife within your power
To use at pleasure.

Otho
Had he then a wife?

Stephania
He had till she survived her purity,
And others had divorced her from her faith:
He has no widow.

Otho
Yet you can forgive?
Have you more mercy than the heavens vouchsafe?
Listen, if you have patience! When I sinned
Against my soldier's promise, and against
The clemency I love, I was but scarce
Eighteen, and in mere boyish ruthlessness
I never thought of pain, nor of the reach
Of what I ordered—of Crescentius' wife
Nor child; not even of God's beholding face,
Of my degraded knighthood, of the Church
Indignant at my cardinal offence:
All was forgotten that victorious day
When I beguiled your husband to his death.

Gerbert
Our lord has wept and fasted for his sin
As few so noble would. If you desire
Peace in your breast, do not provoke in his
The torment of the past, that self-contempt
That is so deadly when a man is young.

Otho
Gerbert, you shall not think of me, before
This beautiful, wronged woman.
(To Stephania)
You have asked
Protection; my imperial word I pledge . . .
God, there is no security for you
In my imperial word! . . . but by the vows
That one day I shall take in penitence,
I swear no harm shall touch you; in my court
You shall be treated as a princess, service
Of honourable splendour shall be yours;
My wealth is your possession.

Gerbert
Lady, this
Is youth's unripe repentance: you who know
The dignity of wrongs, upon whose cheek
Asperities of sorrow may be seen
By older eyes than his, can estimate
The value of such comfort.

Stephania
How you read
My bosom's deep conclusions!
(To Otho)
I accept
Your offer; to the palace I will come
As handmaid, not as princess: it may give
Cæsar a sense of mutability
In greatness to look on while I attend
In the old Roman manner, as some slave—
His prize in war, filling the wine cup, spreading
The coolness of soft perfume through the rooms,
If he remember whence I fell, and what
I am—no ghost, a creature of warm blood,
Banished all lovely offices of life,
Having no tears to shed, with no regrets,
Remaining merely as a monument
Contending hosts have clashed against, that stands
Erect amid the carnage of the plains.

Otho
Lady, is this your will?

Stephania
I have a name,
Stephania; there is none in all the camp
But knows it; I have nothing of my own.
And yet I would not have you think of me
Through any recollection: I am but
The death's head at your feast to sober you
In your distracting plenitude of power.

Otho
Stephania!

Stephania
No, my lord, you must not speak
In this low voice. All you can do for me
If my state touches you, is to reflect
My only ease is perfect lethargy.
You take me to your household, offer me
The shelter of your roof—it is enough.

(With a deep reverence she goes out)
Otho
(Laughing hollowly)
Crescentius—ha! We are well rid of him!
He will no more offend us. O befooled,
To dash a traitor from the battlements,
Then think the act had damned us! Ignorance
Alone can damn, some huge and floundering crime
That smacks of chaos. Did I know her name?
The little light behind, the little light
Before, we call the past and future, seem
No more a revelation. She illumed
Wide worlds and for a moment, as a flame
That dances on the ruin it destroys.
I could not look on death? It would have been
More simple, for this woman summoned up
Such fantasies, such horror, such detail
Of deeds that I have never done, of thoughts
Strange to me, summoned them as memories,
That all I have to do is now to reap
What I have never sown. Damnation is
No more a thing that can be brought to pass,
Shrunk from, escaped; time has no hold on it,
There is no access to it. I am damned,
Damned in my very destiny.

Gerbert
And therefore
Redemption was begun, not on the cross,
But deep in God's conception, deep in doom.
My son, we look back through creation's six
Most beauteous days to chaos, but before
The world was fashioned there was Providence:
In the most ancient realms of thought the word
Lay in God's bosom; therefore do the schools
Concern themselves with logic, to trace back
The love of Calvary to its source in One
Who had not yet dissevered night from day,
Nor gathered from the starry depth the stars.

Otho
Love there—across the dreary infinite,
Love in the lone beginning?—but for whom,
For me the spoiler, or for her the spoiled?
If anything can ease my agony
It is that by heaven's mercy I at last
Have knowledge of the compass of my crime,
And can at last atone—at last—to her,
Who lives and may be comforted, made soft
As other women. Could I see her smile,
Or droop her eyes, or flush a little round
The temples! Nothing in her countenance
Has the least change nor tremour; she is like
A spirit sealed fast in the second Death
In which is no corruption. Do you think
That there can be abatement of her grief?

Gerbert
Within the cloister, after many days
Of cleansing and of penance.

Otho
Did you say
The cloister, and for her? O horrible!
And I deserve its horrors. She has done
No wrong, and you design to shut her up,
A jewel, in the darkness? I can scarce
Conceive it possible how any woman
Consents to part with her strong, flashing hair,
To swathe her delicate and beautiful
Young limbs in sackcloth. But three months ago
Sophia, my sole sister, slipt away
From Gandersheim, and with a mutinous
Band of girl-novices made haste to court.
I met them to reprove, but when they raised
Their veils of white, and when I saw the clear,
Deep crimson of their shaded cheeks, I swore
That they should live in freedom; and that day
There was a music as of chaunting souls
About the palace, and the air was full
Of flowers.

Gerbert
Be not so wanton! You have sinned
Against Crescentius, and your sin hath been
Remitted; but the baffled devil lurks
About to tempt you in Crescentius' wife.

Otho
You misinterpret.

Gerbert
She is beautiful;
No apparition such as comes at night
To monks in fevered slumber—calm and strong,
Solid and queenly.

Otho
Oh, of further reach
Her mystical, marred beauty! She is sacred,
More terrible than in virginity;
My victim, yet—O God!—as Rome herself
Is deemed my victim, Rome that I shall raise
Into a Commonwealth.

Gerbert
(Drawing him toward the loggia)
Think not of her.
Stand forth and face the city! It was thus
We stood together, my belovèd, thus
Waiting the day of judgment, on the eve
Of the Millenium: the sun declined
How slowly on the verge; in a great host
The stars shone forth; there was no omen, nought
To terrify: and when the morning dawned
In simple white and rose we wept for joy,
And kissed the earth and still wept silently
When the hosannas of the multitude
Clashed up to us because the world was saved.

Otho
That was two years ago.

Gerbert
As yesterday
I think of it (Turning, he gazes over the city and sighs)
.

Otho
(Apart)
The marvel of her skin!
No cloud with gold in it and bosomed rain
E'er mixed so wonderful a dusk.

Gerbert
(Approaching suddenly)
Remember
To-morrow you must lay Justinian's Laws
Into the judges' hands. . . . I shall not sleep;
There is no wakefulness like that of night,
So penetrative and so keen, the mind
Has then her true creative right to part
The elements of thought, distributing
To each its term.

Otho
(Looking out)
What clarity of air
Above the roofs, what magic in the rims
Of the low purple hills! It is a land
To press against one's heart. O Gerbert, leave me;
The beauty is too much.
A sense of ruin
Comes over me at sight of such a sky,
So soon to close in darkness.
Search the stars,
Look deep into my destiny; so strange
A languor creeps upon me, I could say
Those powers that breed within a man's own breast
The very mood and temper of his fate
Move noiselessly within. More deeply search
My doom, and I will pray—O wonderful!—
Against the rhythmic heavens—

Gerbert
That I shall watch.