University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

A Room in the Villa Agolanti.
Enter Giulio and Fiordilisa, meeting.
Fiordilisa.
Alas! my lady is very angry, Giulio!

Giulio.
Angry? At what?

Fiordilisa.
At Signor Antonio's letter.
Oh, she says dreadful things. She says you and I
Will kill her; that we make her, or would make her,
Tell falsehoods to her husband, or bring down
His justice on our heads; and she forbids me,
However innocent you may call, or think it,
Bring letters any more. She bade me give it you
Back again—see—unopened.

Giulio.
'Tis a pity
That, too.

Fiordilisa.
Why, Giulio?

Giulio.
Oh, Signor Antonio
Read it me;—ay, he did—he's such a gentleman.
He said,—“See, Giulio, I would not have you wrong
Your mistress in a thought; nor give you an office
Might do yourself the thought of wrong, or harm.”
You know I told you what he wrote outside—
You recollect it—there it is—“Most harmless,—
I dare to add, most virtuous;” and there's more
Besides here, underneath. Did she read that?

Fiordilisa.
I know not. She read very quickly, at any rate;
Then held it off, as tho' it frighten'd her,
And gave it back. And she look'd angry too;
At least, she did not look as she is used,
But turn'd right so, and waived me to be gone—
I cannot bear to do the thing she likes not.

Giulio.
Nor I.

Fiordilisa.
Well—so I think. But hush—hush—hush! a step!
[Runs to the window.
And coming quickly!—'Tis the Signor—'Tis!
So soon come back too!—Strike up the guitar—
Strike up that song of Hope, my lady loves—
Quickly now—There's a good little Giulio.

[Exit.
Giulio.
Little! well,—come, for such an immense young gentlewoman
That's pretty well! She has fallen in love, I fear,
With some tall elderly person.—But the song.
Giulio. (Sings.)

Enter Agolanti.
Agolanti.
What frivolous ante-chamber tinkling now
Attunes the pulse to levity? puts folly
In mind of vice, as tho' the hint were needed?
(Listening.)
The door shuts, now the song's done. What was it?
What sang'st thou, boy?

Giulio.
A song of Hope, sir.

Agolanti.
Hope!
What hope!

Giulio.
I will repeat it, sir, so please you?
The words, not music.
[He repeats the words.
'Tis a song my lady
Is fond of.

Agolanti.
When she's troubled most? with sickness?

Giulio.
No, sir, I think when she's most cheerful.

Agolanti.
That
Paper within thy vest—Is that the words?
Give it me.

Giulio.
Nay, sir, it is none of mine.

Agolanti.
Give it me, boy.

Giulio.
I may not, sir.—I will not.

Agolanti.
Play not the lion's cub with me. That letter
Was given thee by Antonio Rondinelli.
He, and the profane wit, Fulvio da Riva,
Were seen this morning by the Baptistery,
Talking with thee. Give it me; or myself
Will take the answer to Antonio's house
In bloody characters.

Giulio
(aside).
'Tis a most sacred letter,
And ought to fell him, like a cuff o'the conscience.
Farewell, my place! Farewell, my lady sweet!
Giulio is gone.—There is the letter, sir;
Take it, (aside)
and be a devil choked with scripture.

Agolanti.
Unopen'd! come—thou meanest me well, Giulio?
Ah!—but—why didst thou loiter in thy message?
How came it that this fair epistle kiss'd not
The lady's fairer hands? for that's the style.

Giulio.
It did, sir.

Agolanti.
Did!

Giulio.
Yes, sir. My lady had it.
(Aside)
How like you that? You have not read the whole
On the outside. (Aside)
His very joy torments him.

Agolanti.
She read it not, like the good lady she is;
But yet you gave it her.

Giulio.
He read it me;
He did,—the noble Antonio read it me,
To save my youth, every way, from harm.

Agolanti
(aside).
Some vile double signification, addressed
To riper brains, must have secured the words.
The foresight was too gross, if not a coward's!
There has been, after all, I needs must own it,
A strange forbearance, for so hot a lover,
In this Antonio. It is now five years
Since first he sought Ginevra; nearly four,
Since still he loved her, tho' another's wife;
And—saving that his face is to be noted
Looking at hers wherever it appears,
At church, or the evening walk, or tournament,—
And that I've mark'd him drooping hereabouts,
Yet rather as some witless, lonely man,
Than one that shunn'd me,—my sharp household eyes
Have fix'd on no confusion of his making;
No blush; no haste; no tactics of the chamber;
No pertness of loud servant—not till now—
Till now;—but then this now may show all this
To have been but a more deep and quiet mastery
Of crime and devilish knowledge—too secure
To move uneasily,—and too high scornful
Of me, to give me even the grace of trouble.
And yet this seal unbroken, and these words—
[Reading.

“Most harmless;—I dare to add, most virtuous?”
And here again below;—

“I have written what I have written on the outside of
this letter, hoping that it may move you to believe the
possibility of its not being unworthy to meet the purest of
mortal eyes.”

Filthiest hypocrite! caught in his own bird-lime.

(Opens and reads the letter.)

“As you have opened neither my first letter nor my
second, written at intervals of six months each, from the
moment when my name was first again mentioned to you
since your marriage, I hardly dare hope that the words I
am now writing shall have the blessedness of being looked
upon, although they truly deserve it.

“Truly, for most piteously they deserve it. I am going
to reward (may I utter such a word?) your kindness, by the
greatest and most dreadful return I can make it. I will
write to you no more.

“But this promise is a thing so terrible to me, and so
unsupportable, except in the hope of its doing you some
good, that I have one reward to beg for myself; not as a
condition, but as a last and enduring charity.

“I no longer ask you to love me, however innocently, or
on the plea of its being some shadow of relief to you (in the
sweet thought of loving) from an unhappiness, of which all
the world speaks.

[Agolanti pauses, greatly moved.
Is it so then? and the world speaks of me,
And basely speaks! He has been talking then,
And acting too. But let me know this all.
[Reading.

“Neither yet will I beg you not to hate me; for so
gentle a heart cannot hate anybody; and you never were
unjust, except to yourself.

[Pauses a little again.

“But this I do beg; first, that you will take care of a
health, which heaven has given you no right to neglect,
whatever be your unhappiness; and which, under heaven,
is the best support of it;—and secondly, that when you
think of the friends of whom death has deprived you, or
may deprive, and whom it will give you joy to meet again
beyond the grave, you may not be unwilling to behold
among them the face of

“Antonio Rondinelli.

“Written with prayers and tears before the sacred image
of the Virgin.”

[Agolanti crosses himself, and pauses; then holds the letter apart, as if in disgust; and then again resumes his self-possession.
Giulio, I think since first I took thee from
The orphan college, now some three years back,
I have been no unkind master to thee, nor poor one;
Have stinted thee in nought fitting thy station,
Nor hurt thy growth and blooming?

Giulio.
Sir, you hired me
For certain duties, which, with kindly allowance
For faults of youth, I hope I have performed.
My life has been most happy; and my lady
Most bountiful to her poor songster.

[Sheds tears.
Agolanti.
Thou
Hast haply saved some little treasure then,
Against thy day of freedom?

Giulio.
Not a doit, sir.
What freedom should I think of, being free
From thought itself, and blithe as the blue day?

Agolanti.
Antonio Rondinelli is not rich.
His mother and he hide in proud poverty
From all but a few friends.

Giulio
(aside).
Noble Antonio!
He gave me a jewel, ere I knew him poor,
Worth twenty golden florins; and his cap
Starved for it many a month.

Agolanti.
New employers
Produce new duties, Giulio; to the hurt,
Sometimes, of old ones; and 'tis wise betimes
To see they vex and tangle not. These mixtures
Of services,—these new pure confidences
With masters not thine own,—these go-betweens
'Twixt virtue and virtue,—loves desiring not
Their own desires,—and such like angel-adulteries
(Heaven pardon me the word!)—suit me not, Giulio,
Nor a wise house. Therefore, before thine innocent
Lady (for such, with mutual love, I own her,
And scorn of this poor fop) learns dangerous pity
Of thy fair-seeming messages,—dangerous,
Not to her virtue, but her virtue's fame,—
This house thou leavest! Thou wouldst taste the pride
Of poverty, and will, and kinless freedom—
Do so! And when thou learn'st how friendship ends,
In treachery, and in thanklessness begun,
And the cold crust turns bitter and quarrelsome,
Blame not thou me; nor think those tears are payment
For guilt on thy side, and for love on mine!

Giulio
(aside).
Love! what a word from him! and to poor me,
Thus thrust upon the world, he knows not whither;
(Aloud).
Sir, you mistake my tears; but 'tis no matter.
Guilty or not, I cannot quit this house
With thoughts less kind than sorrow.—Sir, farewell.

[Exit.
Agolanti.
'Twas virtuously done, if not most falsely,
This seemingly celestial aversion
Of the very eyesight from unlawful words.
Or was it part of the system?—of the show,—
Which frets me daily with malign excess
Of undemanded patience? cold at best,
Resentful as the worst! Antonio,
I do suspect, she loves not; me, I know,
She hates; me, whom she should love; whom was bound
And sworn to love; for which contempt and wrong,
Fools, that love half a story and whole blame,
Begin to babble against the person wrong'd!
Times are there, when I feel inclined to sweep
The world away from me, and lead my own
Life to myself, unlook'd into with eyes
That know me not; but use, and sympathy
Even with those that wrong me, and the right
Of comely reputation, keep me still
Wearing a show of good with a grieved heart.

Enter a Servant.
Servant.
My lady, sir, hearing of your return
Home suddenly, and having visiters,
Entreats the honour of your presence.

Agolanti
(aside).
Now
To test this hateful gossip. “Suddenly;”—
Was that her word, or the knave's? No matter. (Aloud)
Visiters,—
Who are they?

Servant.
Lady Olimpia, and her friend
Lady Diana, with two gentlemen;
Strangers, I think, sir; one a Roman gentleman,
Come from his Holiness's court.

Agolanti.
The same,
Doubtless, I saw this morning; by which token
The other is the sneering amorist,
Da Riva. He, I thought, respected me;
But see—he knows these women, they Antonio—
Have I been hasty? or is—The black plague choke
All meddlers with—
To the Servant.
I will come speedily.

[Exeunt severally.