The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.

The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship and built up, according to the antient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open work. One of the gates of the palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.

Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

image

   Nobles—Judges—Guards—Servants

LUCRETIA, Wife of Cenci, and step-mother of his children

BEATRICE, his daughter

The scene lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.

Time. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.

ACT I

SCENE I.—An apartment in the Cenci Palace. Enter COUNT CENCI, and CARDINAL CAMILLO.

   Camillo. That matter of the murder is hushed up

If you consent to yield his Holiness

Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—

It needed all my interest in the conclave

5To bend him to this point: he said that you

Bought perilous impunity with your gold;

That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded

Enriched the Church, and respited from hell

An erring soul which might repent and live:—

10But that the glory and the interest

Of the high throne he fills, little consist

With making it a daily mart of guilt

As manifold and hideous as the deeds

Which you scarce hide from men’s revolted eyes.

15   Cenci. The third of my possessions—let it go!

Aye, I once heard the nephew of the Pope

Had sent his architect to view the ground,

Meaning to build a villa on my vines

The next time I compounded with his uncle:

20I little thought he should outwit me so!

Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see

That which the vassal threatened to divulge

Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.

The deed he saw could not have rated higher

25Than his most worthless life:—it angers me!

Respited me from Hell!—So may the Devil

Respite their souls from Heaven. No doubt Pope Clement,

And his most charitable nephews, pray

That the Apostle Peter and the saints

30Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy

Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days

Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards

Of their revenue.—But much yet remains

To which they shew no title.

   Camillo.      Oh, Count Cenci!

35So much that thou mightst honourably live

And reconcile thyself with thine own heart

And with thy God, and with the offended world.

How hideously look deeds of lust and blood

Thro’ those snow white and venerable hairs!—

40Your children should be sitting round you now,

But that you fear to read upon their looks

The shame and misery you have written there.

Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?

Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else

45Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.

Why is she barred from all society

But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?

Talk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well.

I stood beside your dark and fiery youth

50Watching its bold and bad career, as men

Watch meteors, but it vanished not—I marked

Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now

Do I behold you in dishonoured age

Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.

55Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,

And in that hope have saved your life three times.

   Cenci. For which Aldobrandino owes you now

My fief beyond the Pincian.—Cardinal,

One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,

60And so we shall converse with less restraint.

A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter—

He was accustomed to frequent my house;

So the next day his wife and daughter came

And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:

65I think they never saw him any more.

   Camillo. Thou execrable man, beware!—

   Cenci.         Of thee?

Nay this is idle:—We should know each other.

As to my character for what men call crime

Seeing I please my senses as I list,

70And vindicate that right with force or guile,

It is a public matter, and I care not

If I discuss it with you. I may speak

Alike to you and my own conscious heart—

For you give out that you have half reformed me,

75Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent

If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.

All men delight in sensual luxury,

All men enjoy revenge; and most exult

Over the tortures they can never feel—

80Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain.

But I delight in nothing else. I love

The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,

When this shall be another’s, and that mine.

And I have no remorse and little fear,

85Which are, I think, the checks of other men.

This mood has grown upon me, until now

Any design my captious fancy makes

The picture of its wish, and it forms none

But such as men like you would start to know,

90Is as my natural food and rest debarred

Until it be accomplished.

   Camillo.      Art thou not

Most miserable?

   Cenci.      Why, miserable?—

No.—I am what your theologians call

Hardened;—which they must be in impudence,

95So to revile a man’s peculiar taste.

True, I was happier than I am, while yet

Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;

While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now

Invention palls:—Aye, we must all grow old—

100And but that there remains a deed to act

Whose horror might make sharp an appetite

Duller than mine—I’d do,—I know not what.

When I was young I thought of nothing else

But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:

105Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees

And I grew tired:—yet, till I killed a foe,

And heard his groans, and heard his children’s groans,

Knew I not what delight was else on earth,

Which now delights me little. I the rather

110Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals,

The dry fixed eyeball; the pale quivering lip,

Which tell me that the spirit weeps within

Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.

I rarely kill the body which preserves,

115Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,

Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear

For hourly pain.

   Camillo.      Hell’s most abandoned fiend

Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,

Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;

120I thank my God that I believe you not.

[Enter ANDREA.

      Andrea. My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca

Would speak with you.

   Cenci.      Bid him attend me in

The grand saloon.      [Exit ANDREA.

   Camillo.    Farewell; and I will pray

Almighty God that thy false, impious words

125Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee.   [Exit CAMILLO.

   Cenci. The third of my possessions! I must use

Close husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword,

Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday

There came an order from the Pope to make

130Fourfold provision for my cursed sons;

Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,

Hoping some accident might cut them off;

And meaning if I could to starve them there.

I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!

135Bernardo and my wife could not be worse

If dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice—

[looking around him suspiciously

I think they cannot hear me at that door;

What if they should? And yet I need not speak

Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.

140O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear

What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread

Towards her chamber,—let your echoes talk

Of my imperious step scorning surprise,

But not of my intent!—Andrea!

[Enter ANDREA.

   Andrea.     My Lord?

145   Cenci. Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber

This evening:—no, at midnight and alone.   [Exeunt.

SCENE II.—A garden of the Cenci Palace. Enter BEATRICE and ORSINO, as in conversation.

   Beatrice. Pervert not truth,

Orsino. You remember where we held

That conversation;—nay, we see the spot

Even from this cypress;—two long years are past

5Since, on an April midnight, underneath

The moon-light ruins of mount Palatine,

I did confess to you my secret mind.

   Orsino. You said you loved me then.

   Beatrice.   You are a Priest,

Speak to me not of love.

   Orsino.   I may obtain

10The dispensation of the Pope to marry.

Because I am a Priest do you believe

Your image, as the hunter some struck deer,

Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?

   Beatrice. As I have said, speak to me not of love;

15Had you a dispensation, I have not;

Nor will I leave this home of misery

Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady

To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,

Must suffer what I still have strength to share.

20Alas, Orsino! All the love that once

I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.

Ours was a youthful contract, which you first

Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.

And thus I love you still, but holily,

25Even as a sister or a spirit might;

And so I swear a cold fidelity.

And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.

You have a sly, equivocating vein

That suits me not.—Ah, wretched that I am!

30Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me

As you were not my friend, and as if you

Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles

Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.

Ah! No, forgive me; sorrow makes me seem

35Sterner than else my nature might have been;

I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,

And they forbode,—but what can they forbode

Worse than I now endure?

   Orsino.      All will be well.

Is the petition yet prepared? You know

40My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;

Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill

So that the Pope attend to your complaint.

   Beatrice. Your zeal for all I wish;—Ah me, you are cold!

Your utmost skill … speak but one word … (aside) Alas!

45Weak and deserted creature that I am,

Here I stand bickering with my only friend!  [To ORSINO.

This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,

Orsino; he has heard some happy news

From Salamanca, from my brothers there,

50And with this outward shew of love he mocks

His inward hate. ’Tis bold hypocrisy

For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,

Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:

Great God! that such a father should be mine!

55But there is mighty preparation made,

And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,

And all the chief nobility of Rome.

And he has bidden me and my pale Mother

Attire ourselves in festival array.

60Poor lady! She expects some happy change

In his dark spirit from this act; I none.

At supper I will give you the petition:

Till when—farewell.

   Orsino.   Farewell. (Exit BEATRICE.)

         I know the Pope

Will ne’er absolve me from my priestly vow

65But by absolving me from the revenue

Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,

I think to win thee at an easier rate.

Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:

He might bestow her on some poor relation

70Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,

And I should be debarred from all access.

Then as to what she suffers from her father,

In all this there is much exaggeration:—

Old men are testy and will have their way;

75A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,

And live a free life as to wine or women,

And with a peevish temper may return

To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;

Daughters and wives call this, foul tyranny.

80I shall be well content if on my conscience

There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer

From the devices of my love—A net

From which she shall escape not. Yet I fear

Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,

85Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve

And lay me bare, and make me blush to see

My hidden thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girl

Who clings to me, as to her only hope:—

I were a fool, not less than if a panther

90Were panic-stricken by the Antelope’s eye,

If she escape me.      [Exit.

SCENE III.—A magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet.