VI


About ten minutes later, the bell rang for tea, and, as Virginia did not
come down, Mrs. Otis sent up one of the footmen to tell her. After a
little time he returned and said that he could not find Miss Virginia
anywhere. As she was in the habit of going out to the garden every
evening to get flowers for the dinner-table, Mrs. Otis was not at all
alarmed at first, but when six o'clock struck, and Virginia did not
appear, she became really agitated, and sent the boys out to look for
her, while she herself and Mr. Otis searched every room in the house. At
half-past six the boys came back and said that they could find no trace
of their sister anywhere. They were all now in the greatest state of
excitement, and did not know what to do, when Mr. Otis suddenly
remembered that, some few days before, he had given a band of gipsies
permission to camp in the park. He accordingly at once set off for
Blackfell Hollow, where he knew they were, accompanied by his eldest son
and two of the farm-servants. The little Duke of Cheshire, who was
perfectly frantic with anxiety, begged hard to be allowed to go too,
but Mr. Otis would not allow him, as he was afraid there might be a
scuffle. On arriving at the spot, however, he found that the gipsies had
gone, and it was evident that their departure had been rather sudden, as
the fire was still burning, and some plates were lying on the grass.
Having sent off Washington and the two men to scour the district, he ran
home, and despatched telegrams to all the police inspectors in the
county, telling them to look out for a little girl who had been
kidnapped by tramps or gipsies. He then ordered his horse to be brought
round, and, after insisting on his wife and the three boys sitting down
to dinner, rode off down the Ascot road with a groom. He had hardly,
however, gone a couple of miles, when he heard somebody galloping after
him, and, looking round, saw the little Duke coming up on his pony, with
his face very flushed, and no hat. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Otis," gasped
out the boy, "but I can't eat any dinner as long as Virginia is lost.
Please don't be angry with me; if you had let us be engaged last year,
there would never have been all this trouble. You won't send me back,
will you? I can't go! I won't go!"

The Minister could not help smiling at the handsome young scapegrace,
and was a good deal touched at his devotion to Virginia, so leaning down
from his horse, he patted him kindly on the shoulders, and said, "Well,
Cecil, if you won't go back, I suppose you must come with me, but I must
get you a hat at Ascot."

"Oh, bother my hat! I want Virginia!" cried the little Duke, laughing,
and they galloped on to the railway station. There Mr. Otis inquired of
the station-master if any one answering to the description of Virginia
had been seen on the platform, but could get no news of her. The
station-master, however, wired up and down the line, and assured him
that a strict watch would be kept for her, and, after having bought a
hat for the little Duke from a linen-draper, who was just putting up his
shutters, Mr. Otis rode off to Bexley, a village about four miles away,
which he was told was a well-known haunt of the gipsies, as there was a
large common next to it. Here they roused up the rural policeman, but
could get no information from him, and, after riding all over the
common, they turned their horses' heads homewards, and reached the Chase
about eleven o'clock, dead-tired and almost heart-broken. They found
Washington and the twins waiting for them at the gate-house with
lanterns, as the avenue was very dark. Not the slightest trace of
Virginia had been discovered. The gipsies had been caught on Brockley
meadows, but she was not with them, and they had explained their sudden
departure by saying that they had mistaken the date of Chorton Fair, and
had gone off in a hurry for fear they should be late. Indeed, they had
been quite distressed at hearing of Virginia's disappearance, as they
were very grateful to Mr. Otis for having allowed them to camp in his
park, and four of their number had stayed behind to help in the search.
The carp-pond had been dragged, and the whole Chase thoroughly gone
over, but without any result. It was evident that, for that night at any
rate, Virginia was lost to them; and it was in a state of the deepest
depression that Mr. Otis and the boys walked up to the house, the groom
following behind with the two horses and the pony. In the hall they
found a group of frightened servants, and lying on a sofa in the library
was poor Mrs. Otis, almost out of her mind with terror and anxiety, and
having her forehead bathed with eau de cologne by the old housekeeper.
Mr. Otis at once insisted on her having something to eat, and ordered up
supper for the whole party. It was a melancholy meal, as hardly any one
spoke, and even the twins were awestruck and subdued, as they were very
fond of their sister. When they had finished, Mr. Otis, in spite of the
entreaties of the little Duke, ordered them all to bed, saying that
nothing more could be done that night, and that he would telegraph in
the morning to Scotland Yard for some detectives to be sent down
immediately. Just as they were passing out of the dining-room, midnight
began to boom from the clock tower, and when the last stroke sounded
they heard a crash and a sudden shrill cry; a dreadful peal of thunder
shook the house, a strain of unearthly music floated through the air, a
panel at the top of the staircase flew back with a loud noise, and out
on the landing, looking very pale and white, with a little casket in her
hand, stepped Virginia. In a moment they had all rushed up to her. Mrs.
Otis clasped her passionately in her arms, the Duke smothered her with
violent kisses, and the twins executed a wild war-dance round the group.

"Good heavens! child, where have you been?" said Mr. Otis, rather
angrily, thinking that she had been playing some foolish trick on them.
"Cecil and I have been riding all over the country looking for you, and
your mother has been frightened to death. You must never play these
practical jokes any more."

"Except on the Ghost! except on the Ghost!" shrieked the twins, as they
capered about.

"My own darling, thank God you are found; you must never leave my side
again," murmured Mrs. Otis, as she kissed the trembling child, and
smoothed the tangled gold of her hair.

"Papa," said Virginia, quietly, "I have been with the Ghost. He is dead,
and you must come and see him. He had been very wicked, but he was
really sorry for all that he had done, and he gave me this box of
beautiful jewels before he died."

The whole family gazed at her in mute amazement, but she was quite grave
and serious; and, turning round, she led them through the opening in the
wainscoting down a narrow secret corridor, Washington following with a
lighted candle, which he had caught up from the table. Finally, they
came to a great oak door, studded with rusty nails. When Virginia
touched it, it swung back on its heavy hinges, and they found themselves
in a little low room, with a vaulted ceiling, and one tiny grated
window. Imbedded in the wall was a huge iron ring, and chained to it was
a gaunt skeleton, that was stretched out at full length on the stone
floor, and seemed to be trying to grasp with its long fleshless fingers
an old-fashioned trencher and ewer, that were placed just out of its
reach. The jug had evidently been once filled with water, as it was
covered inside with green mould. There was nothing on the trencher but
a pile of dust. Virginia knelt down beside the skeleton, and, folding
her little hands together, began to pray silently, while the rest of the
party looked on in wonder at the terrible tragedy whose secret was now
disclosed to them.

"Hallo!" suddenly exclaimed one of the twins, who had been looking out
of the window to try and discover in what wing of the house the room was
situated. "Hallo! the old withered almond-tree has blossomed. I can see
the flowers quite plainly in the moonlight."

"God has forgiven him," said Virginia, gravely, as she rose to her feet,
and a beautiful light seemed to illumine her face.

"What an angel you are!" cried the young Duke, and he put his arm round
her neck, and kissed her.

VII


Four days after these curious incidents, a funeral started from
Canterville Chase at about eleven o'clock at night. The hearse was drawn
by eight black horses, each of which carried on its head a great tuft of
nodding ostrich-plumes, and the leaden coffin was covered by a rich
purple pall, on which was embroidered in gold the Canterville
coat-of-arms. By the side of the hearse and the coaches walked the
servants with lighted torches, and the whole procession was wonderfully
impressive. Lord Canterville was the chief mourner, having come up
specially from Wales to attend the funeral, and sat in the first
carriage along with little Virginia. Then came the United States
Minister and his wife, then Washington and the three boys, and in the
last carriage was Mrs. Umney. It was generally felt that, as she had
been frightened by the ghost for more than fifty years of her life, she
had a right to see the last of him. A deep grave had been dug in the
corner of the churchyard, just under the old yew-tree, and the service
was read in the most impressive manner by the Rev. Augustus Dampier.
When the ceremony was over, the servants, according to an old custom
observed in the Canterville family, extinguished their torches, and, as
the coffin was being lowered into the grave, Virginia stepped forward,
and laid on it a large cross made of white and pink almond-blossoms. As
she did so, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and flooded with its
silent silver the little churchyard, and from a distant copse a
nightingale began to sing. She thought of the ghost's description of the
Garden of Death, her eyes became dim with tears, and she hardly spoke a
word during the drive home.

The next morning, before Lord Canterville went up to town, Mr. Otis had
an interview with him on the subject of the jewels the ghost had given
to Virginia. They were perfectly magnificent, especially a certain ruby
necklace with old Venetian setting, which was really a superb specimen
of sixteenth-century work, and their value was so great that Mr. Otis
felt considerable scruples about allowing his daughter to accept them.

"My lord," he said, "I know that in this country mortmain is held to
apply to trinkets as well as to land, and it is quite clear to me that
these jewels are, or should be, heirlooms in your family. I must beg
you, accordingly, to take them to London with you, and to regard them
simply as a portion of your property which has been restored to you
under certain strange conditions. As for my daughter, she is merely a
child, and has as yet, I am glad to say, but little interest in such
appurtenances of idle luxury. I am also informed by Mrs. Otis, who, I
may say, is no mean authority upon Art,--having had the privilege of
spending several winters in Boston when she was a girl,--that these gems
are of great monetary worth, and if offered for sale would fetch a tall
price. Under these circumstances, Lord Canterville, I feel sure that you
will recognize how impossible it would be for me to allow them to remain
in the possession of any member of my family; and, indeed, all such
vain gauds and toys, however suitable or necessary to the dignity of the
British aristocracy, would be completely out of place among those who
have been brought up on the severe, and I believe immortal, principles
of Republican simplicity. Perhaps I should mention that Virginia is very
anxious that you should allow her to retain the box, as a memento of
your unfortunate but misguided ancestor. As it is extremely old, and
consequently a good deal out of repair, you may perhaps think fit to
comply with her request. For my own part, I confess I am a good deal
surprised to find a child of mine expressing sympathy with mediævalism
in any form, and can only account for it by the fact that Virginia was
born in one of your London suburbs shortly after Mrs. Otis had returned
from a trip to Athens."

Lord Canterville listened very gravely to the worthy Minister's speech,
pulling his grey moustache now and then to hide an involuntary smile,
and when Mr. Otis had ended, he shook him cordially by the hand, and
said: "My dear sir, your charming little daughter rendered my unlucky
ancestor, Sir Simon, a very important service, and I and my family are
much indebted to her for her marvellous courage and pluck. The jewels
are clearly hers, and, egad, I believe that if I were heartless enough
to take them from her, the wicked old fellow would be out of his grave
in a fortnight, leading me the devil of a life. As for their being
heirlooms, nothing is an heirloom that is not so mentioned in a will or
legal document, and the existence of these jewels has been quite
unknown. I assure you I have no more claim on them than your butler, and
when Miss Virginia grows up, I dare say she will be pleased to have
pretty things to wear. Besides, you forget, Mr. Otis, that you took the
furniture and the ghost at a valuation, and anything that belonged to
the ghost passed at once into your possession, as, whatever activity
Sir Simon may have shown in the corridor at night, in point of law he
was really dead, and you acquired his property by purchase."

Mr. Otis was a good deal distressed at Lord Canterville's refusal, and
begged him to reconsider his decision, but the good-natured peer was
quite firm, and finally induced the Minister to allow his daughter to
retain the present the ghost had given her, and when, in the spring of
1890, the young Duchess of Cheshire was presented at the Queen's first
drawing-room on the occasion of her marriage, her jewels were the
universal theme of admiration. For Virginia received the coronet, which
is the reward of all good little American girls, and was married to her
boy-lover as soon as he came of age. They were both so charming, and
they loved each other so much, that every one was delighted at the
match, except the old Marchioness of Dumbleton, who had tried to catch
the Duke for one of her seven unmarried daughters, and had given no less
than three expensive dinner-parties for that purpose, and, strange to
say, Mr. Otis himself. Mr. Otis was extremely fond of the young Duke
personally, but, theoretically, he objected to titles, and, to use his
own words, "was not without apprehension lest, amid the enervating
influences of a pleasure-loving aristocracy, the true principles of
Republican simplicity should be forgotten." His objections, however,
were completely overruled, and I believe that when he walked up the
aisle of St. George's, Hanover Square, with his daughter leaning on his
arm, there was not a prouder man in the whole length and breadth of
England.

The Duke and Duchess, after the honeymoon was over, went down to
Canterville Chase, and on the day after their arrival they walked over
in the afternoon to the lonely churchyard by the pine-woods. There had
been a great deal of difficulty at first about the inscription on Sir
Simon's tombstone, but finally it had been decided to engrave on it
simply the initials of the old gentleman's name, and the verse from the
library window. The Duchess had brought with her some lovely roses,
which she strewed upon the grave, and after they had stood by it for
some time they strolled into the ruined chancel of the old abbey. There
the Duchess sat down on a fallen pillar, while her husband lay at her
feet smoking a cigarette and looking up at her beautiful eyes. Suddenly
he threw his cigarette away, took hold of her hand, and said to her,
"Virginia, a wife should have no secrets from her husband."

"Dear Cecil! I have no secrets from you."

"Yes, you have," he answered, smiling, "you have never told me what
happened to you when you were locked up with the ghost."

"I have never told any one, Cecil," said Virginia, gravely.

"I know that, but you might tell me."

"Please don't ask me, Cecil, I cannot tell you. Poor Sir Simon! I owe
him a great deal. Yes, don't laugh, Cecil, I really do. He made me see
what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than
both."

The Duke rose and kissed his wife lovingly.

"You can have your secret as long as I have your heart," he murmured.

"You have always had that, Cecil."

"And you will tell our children some day, won't you?"

Virginia blushed.

. . . Suffering is one very long moment.  We cannot divide it by
seasons.  We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. 
With us time itself does not progress.  It revolves.  It seems to
circle round one centre of pain.  The paralysing immobility of a
life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable
pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel
at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron
formula:  this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in
the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate
itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence
is ceaseless change.  Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers
bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the
vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms
or strewn with fallen fruit:  of these we know nothing and can know
nothing.

For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.  The very
sun and moon seem taken from us.  Outside, the day may be blue and
gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled
glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is
grey and niggard.  It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is
always twilight in one's heart.  And in the sphere of thought, no
less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.  The thing that
you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is
happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. 
Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I
am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .

A week later, I am transferred here.  Three more months go over and
my mother dies.  No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. 
Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have
no words in which to express my anguish and my shame.  She and my
father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured,
not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the
public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation.  I
had disgraced that name eternally.  I had made it a low by-word
among low people.  I had dragged it through the very mire.  I had
given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools
that they might turn it into a synonym for folly.  What I suffered
then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record. 
My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should
hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all
the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of
so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss.  Messages of sympathy
reached me from all who had still affection for me.  Even people
who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had
broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their
condolence should be conveyed to me. . . .

Three months go over.  The calendar of my daily conduct and labour
that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and
sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. . . .

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common
in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. 
There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which
sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.  The
thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the
direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse.  It
is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it,
and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.

Where there is sorrow there in holy ground.  Some day people will
realise what that means.  They will know nothing of life till they
do, - and natures like his can realise it.  When I was brought down
from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen, -
waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd,
whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might
gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I
passed him by.  Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than
that.  It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the
saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss
the leper on the cheek.  I have never said one single word to him
about what he did.  I do not know to the present moment whether he
is aware that I was even conscious of his action.  It is not a
thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words.  I
store it in the treasure-house of my heart.  I keep it there as a
secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay.  It
is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. 
When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the
proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me
consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that
little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the
wells of pity:  made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me
out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the
wounded, broken, and great heart of the world.  When people are
able to understand, not merely how beautiful -'s action was, but
why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then,
perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they should
approach me. . . .

The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than
we are.  In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a
misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in
others.  They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in
trouble' simply.  It is the phrase they always use, and the
expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it.  With people of
our own rank it is different.  With us, prison makes a man a
pariah.  I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. 
Our presence taints the pleasures of others.  We are unwelcome when
we reappear.  To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. 
Our very children are taken away.  Those lovely links with humanity
are broken.  We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still
live.  We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us,
that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul
in pain. . . .

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or
small can be ruined except by his own hand.  I am quite ready to
say so.  I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the
present moment.  This pitiless indictment I bring without pity
against myself.  Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I
did to myself was far more terrible still.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture
of my age.  I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my
manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards.  Few men
hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so
acknowledged.  It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the
historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have
passed away.  With me it was different.  I felt it myself, and made
others feel it.  Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations
were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion.  Mine
were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue,
of larger scope.

The gods had given me almost everything.  But I let myself be lured
into long spells of senseless and sensual ease.  I amused myself
with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion.  I surrounded
myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds.  I became the
spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me
a curious joy.  Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went
to the depths in the search for new sensation.  What the paradox
was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the
sphere of passion.  Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness,
or both.  I grew careless of the lives of others.  I took pleasure
where it pleased me, and passed on.  I forgot that every little
action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that
therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day
to cry aloud on the housetop.  I ceased to be lord over myself.  I
was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it.  I
allowed pleasure to dominate me.  I ended in horrible disgrace. 
There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.

I have lain in prison for nearly two years.  Out of my nature has
come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to
look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish
that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was
dumb.  I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. 
Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he
said -


'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
And has the nature of infinity.'

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my
sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without
meaning.  Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something
that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and
suffering least of all.  That something hidden away in my nature,
like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

It is the last thing left in me, and the best:  the ultimate
discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh
development.  It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that
it has come at the proper time.  It could not have come before, nor
later.  Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it.  Had
it been brought to me, I would have refused it.  As I found it, I
want to keep it.  I must do so.  It is the one thing that has in it
the elements of life, of a new life, VITA NUOVA for me.  Of all
things it is the strangest.  One cannot acquire it, except by
surrendering everything that one has.  It is only when one has lost
all things, that one knows that one possesses it.

Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I
ought to do; in fact, must do.  And when I use such a phrase as
that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external
sanction or command.  I admit none.  I am far more of an
individualist than I ever was.  Nothing seems to me of the smallest
value except what one gets out of oneself.  My nature is seeking a
fresh mode of self-realisation.  That is all I am concerned with. 
And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from
any possible bitterness of feeling against the world.

I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless.  Yet there are
worse things in the world than that.  I am quite candid when I say
that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my
heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread
from door to door.  If I got nothing from the house of the rich I
would get something at the house of the poor.  Those who have much
are often greedy; those who have little always share.  I would not
a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter
came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under
the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. 
The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. 
You can see to what intensity of individualism I have arrived - or
am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and 'where I walk
there are thorns.'

Of course I know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be my
lot, and that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it will
be to write sonnets to the moon.  When I go out of prison, R- will
be waiting for me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate,
and he is the symbol, not merely of his own affection, but of the
affection of many others besides.  I believe I am to have enough to
live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may not
write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books; and
what joy can be greater?  After that, I hope to be able to recreate
my creative faculty.

But were things different:  had I not a friend left in the world;
were there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept
the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury:  as long as I am free
from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face
the life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my
body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with
hate.

And I really shall have no difficulty.  When you really want love
you will find it waiting for you.

I need not say that my task does not end there.  It would be
comparatively easy if it did.  There is much more before me.  I
have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass
through.  And I have to get it all out of myself.  Neither
religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.

Morality does not help me.  I am a born antinomian.  I am one of
those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.  But while I see
that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is
something wrong in what one becomes.  It is well to have learned
that.

Religion does not help me.  The faith that others give to what is
unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at.  My gods dwell
in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual
experience is my creed made perfect and complete:  too complete, it
may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven
in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven,
but the horror of hell also.  When I think about religion at all, I
feel as if I would like to found an order for those who CANNOT
believe:  the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it,
where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose
heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread
and a chalice empty of wine.  Every thing to be true must become a
religion.  And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than
faith.  It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and
praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man.  But whether
it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me.  Its
symbols must be of my own creating.  Only that is spiritual which
makes its own form.  If I may not find its secret within myself, I
shall never find it:  if I have not got it already, it will never
come to me.

Reason does not help me.  It tells me that the laws under which I
am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which
I have suffered a wrong and unjust system.  But, somehow, I have
got to make both of these things just and right to me.  And exactly
as in Art one is only concerned with what a particular thing is at
a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical
evolution of one's character.  I have got to make everything that
has happened to me good for me.  The plank bed, the loathsome food,
the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull
with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and
finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the
dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence,
the solitude, the shame - each and all of these things I have to
transform into a spiritual experience.  There is not a single
degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a
spiritualising of the soul.

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite
simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points
in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society
sent me to prison.  I will not say that prison is the best thing
that could have happened to me:  for that phrase would savour of
too great bitterness towards myself.  I would sooner say, or hear
it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my
perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good
things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.

What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little.  The
important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I
have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed,
marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has
been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without
complaint, fear, or reluctance.  The supreme vice is shallowness. 
Whatever is realised is right.

When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and
forget who I was.  It was ruinous advice.  It is only by realising
what I am that I have found comfort of any kind.  Now I am advised
by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a
prison at all.  I know that would be equally fatal.  It would mean
that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace,
and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody
else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons,
the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain
falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and
making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their
healing power, and their power of communicating joy.  To regret
one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development.  To deny
one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own
life.  It is no less than a denial of the soul.

For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and
unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has
cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the
play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the
curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in
its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into
noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself
is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most
august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most
perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I
must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things
I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it.  I must
accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been
punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all. 
Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had
not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted
that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life
for which I was never indicted at all.  And as the gods are
strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as
for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one is
punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does.  I
have no doubt that it is quite right one should be.  It helps one,
or should help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited
about either.  And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I
hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with
freedom.

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into
the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at
length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. 
It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong,
terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so. 
Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment
on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness,
and fails to realise what it has done.  When the man's punishment
is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him
at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins.  It is
really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has
punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or
one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable
wrong.  I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have
suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and
that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.

Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made
different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature
of the case, be made so.  The poor thieves and outcasts who are
imprisoned here with me are in many respects more fortunate than I
am.  The little way in grey city or green field that saw their sin
is small; to find those who know nothing of what they have done
they need go no further than a bird might fly between the twilight
and the dawn; but for me the world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth,
and everywhere I turn my name is written on the rocks in lead.  For
I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of
crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of
infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it
required showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is
but one step, if as much as one.

Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I
go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can
discern something good for me.  It will force on me the necessity
of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as I possibly
can.  If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be
able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to
pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots.

And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a
problem to life.  People must adopt some attitude towards me, and
so pass judgment, both on themselves and me.  I need not say I am
not talking of particular individuals.  The only people I would
care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: 
those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: 
nobody else interests me.  Nor am I making any demands on life.  In
all that I have said I am simply concerned with my own mental
attitude towards life as a whole; and I feel that not to be ashamed
of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain
to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so
imperfect.

Then I must learn how to be happy.  Once I knew it, or thought I
knew it, by instinct.  It was always springtime once in my heart. 
My temperament was akin to joy.  I filled my life to the very brim
with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. 
Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and
even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me.  I
remember during my first term at Oxford reading in Pater's
RENAISSANCE - that book which has had such strange influence over
my life - how Dante places low in the Inferno those who wilfully
live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to
the passage in the DIVINE COMEDY where beneath the dreary marsh lie
those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever
through their sighs -


'Tristi fummo
Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.'

I knew the church condemned ACCIDIA, but the whole idea seemed to
me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who
knew nothing about real life would invent.  Nor could I understand
how Dante, who says that 'sorrow remarries us to God,' could have
been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any
such there really were.  I had no idea that some day this would
become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life.

While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die.  It was my one
desire.  When after two months in the infirmary I was transferred
here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health,
I was filled with rage.  I determined to commit suicide on the very
day on which I left prison.  After a time that evil mood passed
away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a king
wears purple:  never to smile again:  to turn whatever house I
entered into a house of mourning:  to make my friends walk slowly
in sadness with me:  to teach them that melancholy is the true
secret of life:  to maim them with an alien sorrow:  to mar them
with my own pain.  Now I feel quite differently.  I see it would be
both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when
my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still
longer in order to show their sympathy; or, if I desired to
entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs
and funeral baked meats.  I must learn how to be cheerful and
happy.

The last two occasions on which I was allowed to see my friends
here, I tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my
cheerfulness, in order to make them some slight return for their
trouble in coming all the way from town to see me.  It is only a
slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel certain, that
pleases them most.  I saw R- for an hour on Saturday week, and I
tried to give the fullest possible expression of the delight I
really felt at our meeting.  And that, in the views and ideas I am
here shaping for myself, I am quite right is shown to me by the
fact that now for the first time since my imprisonment I have a
real desire for life.

There is before me so much to do, that I would regard it as a
terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any
rate a little of it.  I see new developments in art and life, each
one of which is a fresh mode of perfection.  I long to live so that
I can explore what is no less than a new world to me.  Do you want
to know what this new world is?  I think you can guess what it is. 
It is the world in which I have been living.  Sorrow, then, and all
that it teaches one, is my new world.

I used to live entirely for pleasure.  I shunned suffering and
sorrow of every kind.  I hated both.  I resolved to ignore them as
far as possible:  to treat them, that is to say, as modes of
imperfection.  They were not part of my scheme of life.  They had
no place in my philosophy.  My mother, who knew life as a whole,
used often to quote to me Goethe's lines - written by Carlyle in a
book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, I fancy,
also:-


'Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow, -
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.'


They were the lines which that noble Queen of Prussia, whom
Napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her
humiliation and exile; they were the lines my mother often quoted
in the troubles of her later life.  I absolutely declined to accept
or admit the enormous truth hidden in them.  I could not understand
it.  I remember quite well how I used to tell her that I did not
want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and
watching for a more bitter dawn.

I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates
had in store for me:  that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I
was to do little else.  But so has my portion been meted out to me;
and during the last few months I have, after terrible difficulties
and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden
in the heart of pain.  Clergymen and people who use phrases without
wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery.  It is really a
revelation.  One discerns things one never discerned before.  One
approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint.  What
one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually
and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and
absolute intensity of apprehension.

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is
capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.  What the
artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul
and body are one and indivisible:  in which the outward is
expressive of the inward:  in which form reveals.  Of such modes of
existence there are not a few:  youth and the arts preoccupied with
youth may serve as a model for us at one moment:  at another we may
like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of
impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things
and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike,
and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours,
modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was
realised in such plastic perfection by the Greeks.  Music, in which
all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from
it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example,
of what I mean; but sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and
art.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard
and callous.  But behind sorrow there is always sorrow.  Pain,
unlike pleasure, wears no mask.  Truth in art is not any
correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental
existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the
form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself; it is no echo
coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is a silver well of
water in the valley that shows the moon to the moon and Narcissus
to Narcissus.  Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: 
the outward rendered expressive of the inward:  the soul made
incarnate:  the body instinct with spirit.  For this reason there
is no truth comparable to sorrow.  There are times when sorrow
seems to me to be the only truth.  Other things may be illusions of
the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other,
but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a
child or a star there is pain.

More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary
reality.  I have said of myself that I was one who stood in
symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age.  There is not
a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does
not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life.  For the
secret of life is suffering.  It is what is hidden behind
everything.  When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to
us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our
desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a 'month or
twain to feed on honeycomb,' but for all our years to taste no
other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving
the soul.

I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most
beautiful personalities I have ever known:  a woman, whose sympathy
and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my
imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has
really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden
of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and
all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what
she is - partly an ideal and partly an influence:  a suggestion of
what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a
soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual
seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea:  one for whom
beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message.  On
the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said
to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to
show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any
sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping
over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of
creation was completely marred.  I was entirely wrong.  She told me
so, but I could not believe her.  I was not in the sphere in which
such belief was to be attained to.  Now it seems to me that love of
some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary
amount of suffering that there is in the world.  I cannot conceive
of any other explanation.  I am convinced that there is no other,
and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of
sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other
way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the
full stature of its perfection.  Pleasure for the beautiful body,
but pain for the beautiful soul.

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too
much pride.  Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of
God.  It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it
in a summer's day.  And so a child could.  But with me and such as
me it is different.  One can realise a thing in a single moment,
but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. 
It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to
gain.'  We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and
how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell
again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's
cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange
insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's
house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter
master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.

And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to
believe, it is true none the less, that for them living in freedom
and idleness and comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of
humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going down on my
knees and washing the floor of my cell.  For prison life with its
endless privations and restrictions makes one rebellious.  The most
terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart - hearts
are made to be broken - but that it turns one's heart to stone. 
One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip
of scorn that one can get through the day at all.  And he who is in
a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of
which the Church is so fond - so rightly fond, I dare say - for in
life as in art the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the
soul, and shuts out the airs of heaven.  Yet I must learn these
lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled
with joy if my feet are on the right road and my face set towards
'the gate which is called beautiful,' though I may fall many times
in the mire and often in the mist go astray.

This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call
it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by
means of development, and evolution, of my former life.  I remember
when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were
strolling round Magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in
the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit
of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going
out into the world with that passion in my soul.  And so, indeed, I
went out, and so I lived.  My only mistake was that I confined
myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit
side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and
its gloom.  Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering,
tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse
that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-
abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head,
the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its
own drink puts gall:- all these were things of which I was afraid. 
And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to
taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season,
indeed, no other food at all.

I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure.  I
did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. 
There was no pleasure I did not experience.  I threw the pearl of
my soul into a cup of wine.  I went down the primrose path to the
sound of flutes.  I lived on honeycomb.  But to have continued the
same life would have been wrong because it would have been
limiting.  I had to pass on.  The other half of the garden had its
secrets for me also.  Of course all this is foreshadowed and
prefigured in my books.  Some of it is in THE HAPPY PRINCE, some of
it in THE YOUNG KING, notably in the passage where the bishop says
to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than thou
art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than
a phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom
that like a purple thread runs through the texture of DORIAN GRAY;
in THE CRITIC AS ARTIST it is set forth in many colours; in THE
SOUL OF MAN it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it
is one of the refrains whose recurring MOTIFS make SALOME so like a
piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem
of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that
liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that
abideth for ever' it is incarnate.  It could not have been
otherwise.  At every single moment of one's life one is what one is
going to be no less than what one has been.  Art is a symbol,
because man is a symbol.

It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the
artistic life.  For the artistic life is simply self-development. 
Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences,
just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that
reveals to the world its body and its soul.  In MARIUS THE
EPICUREAN Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life
of religion, in the deep, sweet, and austere sense of the word. 
But Marius is little more than a spectator:  an ideal spectator
indeed, and one to whom it is given 'to contemplate the spectacle
of life with appropriate emotions,' which Wordsworth defines as the
poet's true aim; yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too
much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of the sanctuary
to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that he is gazing at.

I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true
life of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a keen
pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days
her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in THE SOUL OF MAN
that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and
absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the
shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, but also the
painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the
world is a song.  I remember saying once to Andre Gide, as we sat
together in some Paris CAFE, that while meta-physics had but little
real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was
nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be
transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its
complete fulfilment.

Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of
personality with perfection which forms the real distinction
between the classical and romantic movement in life, but the very
basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the
artist - an intense and flamelike imagination.  He realised in the
entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in
the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation.  He understood
the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce
misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the
rich.  Some one wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your
pedestal you are not interesting.'  How remote was the writer from
what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.'  Either would have
taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and
if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and
for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in
letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever
happens to oneself happens to another.'

Christ's place indeed is with the poets.  His whole conception of
Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be
realised by it.  What God was to the pantheist, man was to Him.  He
was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity.  Before his
time there had been gods and men, and, feeling through the
mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate,
he calls himself the Son of the one or the Son of the other,
according to his mood.  More than any one else in history he wakes
in us that temper of wonder to which romance always appeals.  There
is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young
Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders
the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and
suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered:  the sins
of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was
Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun:  the sufferings of those
whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: 
oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in
prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose
silence is heard only of God; and not merely imagining this but
actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come
in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow
to his altar nor kneel before his priest, in some way find that the
ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow
revealed to them.

I had said of Christ that he ranks with the poets.  That is true. 
Shelley and Sophocles are of his company.  But his entire life also
is the most wonderful of poems.  For 'pity and terror' there is
nothing in the entire cycle of Greek tragedy to touch it.  The
absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a
height of romantic art from which the sufferings of Thebes and
Pelops' line are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong
Aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the drama that it
would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain. 
Nor in AEschylus nor Dante, those stern masters of tenderness, in
Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great artists, in the
whole of Celtic myth and legend, where the loveliness of the world
is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no more
than the life of a flower, is there anything that, for sheer
simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic
effect, can be said to equal or even approach the last act of
Christ's passion.  The little supper with his companions, one of
whom has already sold him for a price; the anguish in the quiet
moon-lit garden; the false friend coming close to him so as to
betray him with a kiss; the friend who still believed in him, and
on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge for
Man, denying him as the bird cried to the dawn; his own utter
loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything; and along
with it all such scenes as the high priest of orthodoxy rending his
raiment in wrath, and the magistrate of civil justice calling for
water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of
innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of history; the
coronation ceremony of sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in
the whole of recorded time; the crucifixion of the Innocent One
before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved;
the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes; the
terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol;
and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed
in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had
been a king's son.  When one contemplates all this from the point
of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme
office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without
the shedding of blood:  the mystical presentation, by means of
dialogue and costume and gesture even, of the Passion of her Lord;
and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember
that the ultimate survival of the Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to
art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass.

Yet the whole life of Christ - so entirely may sorrow and beauty be
made one in their meaning and manifestation - is really an idyll,
though it ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the
darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to
the door of the sepulchre.  One always thinks of him as a young
bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes
himself; as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in
search of green meadow or cool stream; as a singer trying to build
out of the music the walls of the City of God; or as a lover for
whose love the whole world was too small.  His miracles seem to me
to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as natural. 
I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of
his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls
in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands
forgot their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life
people who had seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and
others who had been deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard
for the first time the voice of love and found it as 'musical as
Apollo's lute'; or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men
whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as
it were from the grave when he called them; or that when he taught
on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and
the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to
him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the
water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full
of the odour and sweetness of nard.

Renan in his VIE DE JESUS - that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel
according to St. Thomas, one might call it - says somewhere that
Christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved
after his death as he had been during his lifetime.  And certainly,
if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the
lovers.  He saw that love was the first secret of the world for
which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through
love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the
feet of God.

And above all, Christ is the most supreme of individualists. 
Humility, like the artistic, acceptance of all experiences, is
merely a mode of manifestation.  It is man's soul that Christ is
always looking for.  He calls it 'God's Kingdom,' and finds it in
every one.  He compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a
handful of leaven, to a pearl.  That is because one realises one's
soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired
culture, and all external possessions, be they good or evil.

I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and
much rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left in the
world but one thing.  I had lost my name, my position, my
happiness, my freedom, my wealth.  I was a prisoner and a pauper. 
But I still had my children left.  Suddenly they were taken away
from me by the law.  It was a blow so appalling that I did not know
what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and
wept, and said, 'The body of a child is as the body of the Lord:  I
am not worthy of either.'  That moment seemed to save me.  I saw
then that the only thing for me was to accept everything.  Since
then - curious as it will no doubt sound - I have been happier.  It
was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. 
In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as
a friend.  When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one
simple as a child, as Christ said one should be.

It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they
die.  'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act
of his own.'  It is quite true.  Most people are other people. 
Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.  Christ was not merely the supreme
individualist, but he was the first individualist in history. 
People have tried to make him out an ordinary philanthropist, or
ranked him as an altruist with the scientific and sentimental.  But
he was really neither one nor the other.  Pity he has, of course,
for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly,
for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the
hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming
slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in
kings' houses.  Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really
greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow.  And as for altruism, who
knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that
determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs
from thistles?

To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his
creed.  It was not the basis of his creed.  When he says, 'Forgive
your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's
own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than
hate.  In his own entreaty to the young man, 'Sell all that thou
hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that
he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that
wealth was marring.  In his view of life he is one with the artist
who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet
must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make
the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the
hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at
harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from
shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield.

But while Christ did not say to men, 'Live for others,' he pointed
out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others
and one's own life.  By this means he gave to man an extended, a
Titan personality.  Since his coming the history of each separate
individual is, or can be made, the history of the world.  Of
course, culture has intensified the personality of man.  Art has
made us myriad-minded.  Those who have the artistic temperament go
into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the bread of others,
and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the serenity
and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire cried
to God -


'O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout.'

Out of Shakespeare's sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may
be, the secret of his love and make it their own; they look with
new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of
Chopin's nocturnes, or handled Greek things, or read the story of
the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was
like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate. 
But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with
what has found expression.  In words or in colours, in music or in
marble, behind the painted masks of an AEschylean play, or through
some Sicilian shepherds' pierced and jointed reeds, the man and his
message must have been revealed.

To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can
conceive life at all.  To him what is dumb is dead.  But to Christ
it was not so.  With a width and wonder of imagination that fills
one almost with awe, he took the entire world of the inarticulate,
the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself
its eternal mouthpiece.  Those of whom I have spoken, who are dumb
under oppression, and 'whose silence is heard only of God,' he
chose as his brothers.  He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears
to the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose tongues had been
tied.  His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no
utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to heaven. 
And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom suffering and
sorrow were modes through which he could realise his conception of
the beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes
incarnate and is made an image, he made of himself the image of the
Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated art as no
Greek god ever succeeded in doing.

For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair
fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be.  The curved
brow of Apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at
dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself
had been cruel to Marsyas and had made Niobe childless.  In the
steel shields of Athena's eyes there had been no pity for Arachne;
the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about
her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the
daughters of men.  The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek
Mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of
the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to
whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her
death.

But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced
one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of
Semele.  Out of the Carpenter's shop at Nazareth had come a
personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend,
and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the
mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the
field as none, either on Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done.

The song of Isaiah, 'He is despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief:  and we hid as it were our faces
from him,' had seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the
prophecy was fulfilled.  We must not be afraid of such a phrase. 
Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy:  for
every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. 
Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: 
for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal,
either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.  Christ found the
type and fixed it, and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at
Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the
centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting.

To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that
the Christ's own renaissance, which has produced the Cathedral at
Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis
of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, was not
allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and
spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch,
and Raphael's frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal
French tragedy, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and Pope's poetry, and
everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does
not spring from within through some spirit informing it.  But
wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and
under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ.  He is in ROMEO
AND JULIET, in the WINTER'S TALE, in Provencal poetry, in the
ANCIENT MARINER, in LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, and in Chatterton's
BALLAD OF CHARITY.

We owe to him the most diverse things and people.  Hugo's LES
MISERABLES, Baudelaire's FLEURS DU MAL, the note of pity in Russian
novels, Verlaine and Verlaine's poems, the stained glass and
tapestries and the quattro-cento work of Burne-Jones and Morris,
belong to him no less than the tower of Giotto, Lancelot and
Guinevere, Tannhauser, the troubled romantic marbles of Michael
Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers
- for both of which, indeed, in classical art there was but little
place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but which, from
the twelfth century down to our own day, have been continually
making their appearances in art, under various modes and at various
times, coming fitfully and wilfully, as children, as flowers, are
apt to do:  spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been
in hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid
that grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give
up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an April
day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus.

It is the imaginative quality of Christ's own nature that makes him
this palpitating centre of romance.  The strange figures of poetic
drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of
his own imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself. 
The cry of Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the
song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon - no
more, though perhaps no less.  He was the denial as well as the
affirmation of prophecy.  For every expectation that he fulfilled
there was another that he destroyed.  'In all beauty,' says Bacon,
'there is some strangeness of proportion,' and of those who are
born of the spirit - of those, that is to say, who like himself are
dynamic forces - Christ says that they are like the wind that
'bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it cometh and
whither it goeth.'  That is why he is so fascinating to artists. 
He has all the colour elements of life:  mystery, strangeness,
pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love.  He appeals to the temper of
wonder, and creates that mood in which alone he can be understood.

And to me it is a joy to remember that if he is 'of imagination all
compact,' the world itself is of the same substance.  I said in
DORIAN GRAY that the great sins of the world take place in the
brain:  but it is in the brain that everything takes place.  We
know now that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears. 
They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or
inadequate, of sense impressions.  It is in the brain that the
poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose poems
about Christ.  At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek
Testament, and every morning, after I had cleaned my cell and
polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses
taken by chance anywhere.  It is a delightful way of opening the
day.  Every one, even in a turbulent, ill-disciplined life, should
do the same.  Endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled
for us the freshness, the naivete, the simple romantic charm of the
Gospels.  We hear them read far too often and far too badly, and
all repetition is anti-spiritual.  When one returns to the Greek;
it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some, narrow and
dark house.

And to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is
extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the IPSISSIMA
VERBA, used by Christ.  It was always supposed that Christ talked
in Aramaic.  Even Renan thought so.  But now we know that the
Galilean peasants, like the Irish peasants of our own day, were
bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary language of intercourse
all over Palestine, as indeed all over the Eastern world.  I never
liked the idea that we knew of Christ's own words only through a
translation of a translation.  It is a delight to me to think that
as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have
listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato
understood him:  that he really said [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], that when he thought of the lilies of the field and
how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced], and that his last word when he
cried out 'my life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment,
has been perfected,' was exactly as St. John tells us it was: 
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] - no more.

While in reading the Gospels - particularly that of St. John
himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle - I see
the continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all
spiritual and material life, I see also that to Christ imagination
was simply a form of love, and that to him love was lord in the
fullest meaning of the phrase.  Some six weeks ago I was allowed by
the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black
or brown bread of ordinary prison fare.  It is a great delicacy. 
It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy
to any one.  To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal
I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or
have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not
to soil one's table; and I do so not from hunger - I get now quite
sufficient food - but simply in order that nothing should be wasted
of what is given to me.  So one should look on love.

Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of not
merely saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people
say beautiful things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us
about the Greek woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to
her that he could not give her the bread of the children of Israel,
answered him that the little dogs - ([Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], 'little dogs' it should be rendered) - who are under
the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall.  Most
people live for love and admiration.  But it is by love and
admiration that we should live.  If any love is shown us we should
recognise that we are quite unworthy of it.  Nobody is worthy to be
loved.  The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine
order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be
given to what is eternally unworthy.  Or if that phrase seems to be
a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love,
except him who thinks that he is.  Love is a sacrament that should
be taken kneeling, and DOMINE, NON SUM DIGNUS should be on the lips
and in the hearts of those who receive it.

If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work,
there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to
express myself:  one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic
movement in life':  the other is 'The artistic life considered in
its relation to conduct.'  The first is, of course, intensely
fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the
supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses
even, of the romantic temperament also.  He was the first person
who ever said to people that they should live 'flower-like lives.' 
He fixed the phrase.  He took children as the type of what people
should try to become.  He held them up as examples to their elders,
which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if
what is perfect should have a use.  Dante describes the soul of a
man as coming from the hand of God 'weeping and laughing like a
little child,' and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should
be A GUISA DI FANCIULLA CHE PIANGENDO E RIDENDO PARGOLEGGIA.  He
felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it
to be stereotyped into any form was death.  He saw that people
should not be too serious over material, common interests:  that to
be unpractical was to be a great thing:  that one should not bother
too much over affairs.  The birds didn't, why should man?  He is
charming when he says, 'Take no thought for the morrow; is not the
soul more than meat? is not the body more than raiment?'  A Greek
might have used the latter phrase.  It is full of Greek feeling. 
But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up life
perfectly for us.

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be.  If the
only thing that he ever said had been, 'Her sins are forgiven her
because she loved much,' it would have been worth while dying to
have said it.  His justice is all poetical justice, exactly what
justice should be.  The beggar goes to heaven because he has been
unhappy.  I cannot conceive a better reason for his being sent
there.  The people who work for an hour in the vineyard in the cool
of the evening receive just as much reward as those who have toiled
there all day long in the hot sun.  Why shouldn't they?  Probably
no one deserved anything.  Or perhaps they were a different kind of
people.  Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical
systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat
everybody alike:  for him there were no laws:  there were
exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was
like aught else in the world!

That which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the
proper basis of natural life.  He saw no other basis.  And when
they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him
her sentence written in the law, and asked him what was to be done,
he wrote with his finger on the ground as though he did not hear
them, and finally, when they pressed him again, looked up and said,
'Let him of you who has never sinned be the first to throw the
stone at her.'  It was worth while living to have said that.

Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people.  He knew that
in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great
idea.  But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who
are made stupid by education:  people who are full of opinions not
one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed
up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the
key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other
people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God's
Kingdom.  His chief war was against the Philistines.  That is the
war every child of light has to wage.  Philistinism was the note of
the age and community in which he lived.  In their heavy
inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious
orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire
preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their
ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of
Jerusalem in Christ's day were the exact counterpart of the British
Philistine of our own.  Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of
respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever.  He treated worldly
success as a thing absolutely to be despised.  He saw nothing in it
at all.  He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man.  He would
not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or
morals.  He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for
man, not man for forms and ceremonies.  He took sabbatarianism as a
type of the things that should be set at nought.  The cold
philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious
formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter
and relentless scorn.  To us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a
facile unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their hands,
it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny.  Christ swept it aside. 
He showed that the spirit alone was of value.  He took a keen
pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always
reading the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest
idea of what either of them meant.  In opposition to their tithing
of each separate day into the fixed routine of prescribed duties,
as they tithe mint and rue, he preached the enormous importance of
living completely for the moment.

Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful
moments in their lives.  Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ,
breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had
given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet,
and for that one moment's sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice
in the tresses of the snow-white rose of Paradise.  All that Christ
says to us by the way of a little warning is that every moment
should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the
coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the
lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man's nature that is
not illumined by the imagination.  He sees all the lovely
influences of life as modes of light:  the imagination itself is
the world of light.  The world is made by it, and yet the world
cannot understand it:  that is because the imagination is simply a
manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that
distinguishes one human being from another.

But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic,
in the sense of most real.  The world had always loved the saint as
being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. 
Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always
loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the
perfection of man.  His primary desire was not to reform people,
any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering.  To
turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his
aim.  He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society
and other modern movements of the kind.  The conversion of a
publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great
achievement.  But in a manner not yet understood of the world he
regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy
things and modes of perfection.

It seems a very dangerous idea.  It is - all great ideas are

dangerous.  That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt.  That it
is the true creed I don't doubt myself.

Of course the sinner must repent.  But why?  Simply because
otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done.  The
moment of repentance is the moment of initiation.  More than that: 
it is the means by which one alters one's past.  The Greeks thought
that impossible.  They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even
the Gods cannot alter the past.'  Christ showed that the commonest
sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do.  Christ,
had he been asked, would have said - I feel quite certain about it
- that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he
made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine-
herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy
moments in his life.  It is difficult for most people to grasp the
idea.  I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it.  If so,
it may be worth while going to prison.

There is something so unique about Christ.  Of course just as there
are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of
sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into
squandering its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird
call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there were
Christians before Christ.  For that we should be grateful.  The
unfortunate thing is that there have been none since.  I make one
exception, St. Francis of Assisi.  But then God had given him at
his birth the soul of a poet, as he himself when quite young had in
mystical marriage taken poverty as his bride:  and with the soul of
a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not
difficult.  He understood Christ, and so he became like him.  We do
not require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us that the life of
St. Francis was the true IMITATIO CHRISTI, a poem compared to which
the book of that name is merely prose.

Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said:  he is
just like a work of art.  He does not really teach one anything,
but by being brought into his presence one becomes something.  And
everybody is predestined to his presence.  Once at least in his
life each man walks with Christ to Emmaus.

As regards the other subject, the Relation of the Artistic Life to
Conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I should select
it.  People point to Reading Gaol and say, 'That is where the
artistic life leads a man.'  Well, it might lead to worse places. 
The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation
depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know
where they are going, and go there.  They start with the ideal
desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are
placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more.  A man
whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a
member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent
solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably
succeeds in being what he wants to be.  That is his punishment. 
Those who want a mask have to wear it.

But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those
dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different.  People whose
desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are
going.  They can't know.  In one sense of the word it is of course
necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself:  that is the
first achievement of knowledge.  But to recognise that the soul of
a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom.  The
final mystery is oneself.  When one has weighed the sun in the
balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the
seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself.  Who can
calculate the orbit of his own soul?  When the son went out to look
for his father's asses, he did not know that a man of God was
waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his
own soul was already the soul of a king.

I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character
that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, 'Yes! this is
just where the artistic life leads a man!'  Two of the most perfect
lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of
Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin:  both of them men who have passed
years in prison:  the first, the one Christian poet since Dante;
the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which
seems coming out of Russia.  And for the last seven or eight
months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from
the outside world almost without intermission, I have been placed
in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison through
man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility of
expression in words:  so that while for the first year of my
imprisonment I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing
else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say, 'What an
ending, what an appalling ending!' now I try to say to myself, and
sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely
say, 'What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!'  It may really
be so.  It may become so.  If it does I shall owe much to this new
personality that has altered every man's life in this place.

You may realise it when I say that had I been released last May, as
I tried to be, I would have left this place loathing it and every
official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned
my life.  I have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity
has been in the prison along with us all, and now when I go out I
shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here
from almost everybody, and on the day of my release I shall give
many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in
turn.

The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong.  I would give
anything to be able to alter it when I go out.  I intend to try. 
But there is nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of
humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ who
is not in churches, may make it, if not right, at least possible to
be borne without too much bitterness of heart.

I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very
delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the
wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to
the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities.  If I made a list of
all that still remains to me, I don't know where I should stop: 
for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one
else.  Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got
before.  I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are
as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology.  But while
to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to
have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have
suffered.  And such I think I have become.

If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not
invite me to it, I should not mind a bit.  I can be perfectly happy
by myself.  With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could
not be perfectly happy?  Besides, feasts are not for me any more. 
I have given too many to care about them.  That side of life is
over for me, very fortunately, I dare say.  But if after I am free
a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it,
I should feel it most bitterly.  If he shut the doors of the house
of mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg
to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to
share in.  If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I
should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most
terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me.  But that
could not be.  I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can
look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and
realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact
with divine things, and has got as near to God's secret as any one
can get.

Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life,
a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and
directness of impulse.  Not width but intensity is the true aim of
modern art.  We are no longer in art concerned with the type.  It
is with the exception that we have to do.  I cannot put my
sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say.  Art only
begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work,
of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more
curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic
quality at any rate.

When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs' - DELLA
VAGINA DELLA MEMBRE SUE, to use one of Dante's most terrible
Tacitean phrases - he had no more song, the Greek said.  Apollo had
been victor.  The lyre had vanquished the reed.  But perhaps the
Greeks were mistaken.  I hear in much modern Art the cry of
Marsyas.  It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in
Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine.  It is in the deferred resolutions
of Chopin's music.  It is in the discontent that haunts Burne-
Jones's women.  Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells
of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the 'famous
final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a
little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that
haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him,
though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for
THYRSIS or to sing of the SCHOLAR GIPSY, it is the reed that he has
to take for the rendering of his strain.  But whether or not the
Phrygian Faun was silent, I cannot be.  Expression is as necessary
to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees
that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in
the wind.  Between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf,
but between art and myself there is none.  I hope at least that
there is none.

To each of us different fates are meted out.  My lot has been one
of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of ruin, of
disgrace, but I am not worthy of it - not yet, at any rate.  I
remember that I used to say that I thought I could bear a real
tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a mask of noble
sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it put
tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities
seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style.  It is quite
true about modernity.  It has probably always been true about
actual life.  It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the
looker on.  The nineteenth century is no exception to the rule.

Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent,
lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque.  We are the
zanies of sorrow.  We are clowns whose hearts are broken.  We are
specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.  On November
13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London.  From two o'clock
till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre
platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for
the world to look at.  I had been taken out of the hospital ward
without a moment's notice being given to me.  Of all possible
objects I was the most grotesque.  When people saw me they laughed. 
Each train as it came up swelled the audience.  Nothing could
exceed their amusement.  That was, of course, before they knew who
I was.  As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. 
For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded
by a jeering mob.

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same
hour and for the same space of time.  That is not such a tragic
thing as possibly it sounds to you.  To those who are in prison
tears are a part of every day's experience.  A day in prison on
which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not
a day on which one's heart is happy.

Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people
who laughed than for myself.  Of course when they saw me I was not
on my pedestal, I was in the pillory.  But it is a very
unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. 
A pedestal may be a very unreal thing.  A pillory is a terrific
reality.  They should have known also how to interpret sorrow
better.  I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow.  It
were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. 
And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing.  In the
strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they
give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the
mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save
that of scorn?

I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here
simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to
get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair.  I
have, however, to do it, and now and then I have moments of
submission and acceptance.  All the spring may be hidden in the
single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy
that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns.  So perhaps
whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some
moment of surrender, abasement, and humiliation.  I can, at any
rate, merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and,
accepting all that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it.

People used to say of me that I was too individualistic.  I must be
far more of an individualist than ever I was.  I must get far more
out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than
ever I asked.  Indeed, my ruin came not from too great
individualism of life, but from too little.  The one disgraceful,
unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to
allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection.  To have
made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of
view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for
having made it?  Of course once I had put into motion the forces of
society, society turned on me and said, 'Have you been living all
this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those
laws for protection?  You shall have those laws exercised to the
full.  You shall abide by what you have appealed to.'  The result
is I am in gaol.  Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by
such ignoble instruments, as I did.

The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand
art.  Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys,
peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very
salt of the earth.  He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the
heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does
not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a
movement.

People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the
evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. 
But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in
life, approach them they were delightfully suggestive and
stimulating.  The danger was half the excitement. . . . My business
as an artist was with Ariel.  I set myself to wrestle with Caliban.
. . .

A great friend of mine - a friend of ten years' standing - came to
see me some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single
word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he
considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot.  I
burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was
much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and
transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been
full of perverse pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a
fact about me and realised it to the full I could not possibly be
friends with him any more, or ever be in his company.  It was a
terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his
friendship on false pretences.

Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in INTENTIONS, are as limited
in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy.  The
little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no
more, though all the purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to
the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes
of the stony vineyards of Spain.  There is no error more common
than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of
great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: 
no error more fatal than expecting it of them.  The martyr in his
'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to him who
is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole
scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or
the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the
fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. 
Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be
seen only by those who are on a level with them.

* * * * *

I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of
view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of
observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern.  They are Hamlet's college friends.  They have been
his companions.  They bring with them memories of pleasant days
together.  At the moment when they come across him in the play he
is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of
his temperament.  The dead have come armed out of the grave to
impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him.  He
is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act.  He has the nature of
the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of
cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which
he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he
knows so much.  He has no conception of what to do, and his folly
is to feign folly.  Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the
sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the Hamlet
madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness.  In the making
of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay.  He keeps playing
with action as an artist plays with a theory.  He makes himself the
spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows
them to be but 'words, words, words.'  Instead of trying to be the
hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own
tragedy.  He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet
his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a
divided will.

Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing.  They bow
and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with
sickliest intonation.  When, at last, by means of the play within
the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the
conscience' of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from
his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct
than a rather painful breach of Court etiquette.  That is as far as
they can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of life
with appropriate emotions.'  They are close to his very secret and
know nothing of it.  Nor would there be any use in telling them. 
They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more. 
Towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning spring
set for another, they have met, or may meet, with a violent and
sudden death.  But a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by
Hamlet's humour with something of the surprise and justice of
comedy, is really not for such as they.  They never die.  Horatio,
who in order to 'report Hamlet and his cause aright to the
unsatisfied,'


'Absents him from felicity a while,
And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,'

dies, but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal as Angelo
and Tartuffe, and should rank with them.  They are what modern life
has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship.  He who writes
a new DE AMICITIA must find a niche for them, and praise them in
Tusculan prose.  They are types fixed for all time.  To censure
them would show 'a lack of appreciation.'  They are merely out of
their sphere:  that is all.  In sublimity of soul there is no
contagion.  High thoughts and high emotions are by their very
existence isolated.


I am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end of
May, and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village abroad
with R- and M-.

The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigeneia,
washes away the stains and wounds of the world.

I hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain peace
and balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter mood.  I have
a strange longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the
sea, to me no less of a mother than the Earth.  It seems to me that
we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.  I
discern great sanity in the Greek attitude.  They never chattered
about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were
really mauve or not.  But they saw that the sea was for the
swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner.  They loved the
trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence
at noon.  The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he
might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young
shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that
Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter
laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service
to men.

We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any
single thing.  We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire
purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all.  As a consequence
our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is
of the sun and deals directly with things.  I feel sure that in
elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to
them and live in their presence.

Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely
to look at the world will be always lovely.  I tremble with
pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison
both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens,
and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying
gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its
plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.  Linnaeus fell
on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the
long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny
aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to
whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the
petals of some rose.  It has always been so with me from my
boyhood.  There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice
of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle
sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. 
Like Gautier, I have always been one of those 'pour qui le monde
visible existe.'

Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying
though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted
forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with
this spirit that I desire to become in harmony.  I have grown tired
of the articulate utterances of men and things.  The Mystical in
Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am
looking for.  It is absolutely necessary for me to find it
somewhere.

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are
sentences of death; and three times have I been tried.  The first
time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back
to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for
two years.  Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place
for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on
unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may
hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. 
She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the
darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so
that none may track me to my hurt:  she will cleanse me in great
waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

The Persons of the Play

Simone Gesso, Duke of Padua
Beatrice, his Wife
Andreas Pollajuolo, Cardinal of Padua
Maffio Petrucci,  }
Jeppo Vitellozzo, } Gentlemen of the Duke's Household
Taddeo Bardi,     }
Guido Ferranti, a Young Man
Ascanio Cristofano, his Friend
Count Moranzone, an Old Man
Bernardo Cavalcanti, Lord Justice of Padua
Hugo, the Headsman
Lucy, a Tire woman

Servants, Citizens, Soldiers, Monks, Falconers with their hawks and
dogs, etc.

Place:  Padua
Time:  The latter half of the Sixteenth Century
Style of Architecture:   Italian, Gothic and Romanesque.



The Scenes of the Play

ACT I.  The Market Place of Padua (25 minutes).
ACT II.  Room in the Duke's Palace (36 minutes).
ACT III.  Corridor in the Duke's Palace (29 minutes).
ACT IV.  The Hall of Justice (31 minutes).
ACT V.  The Dungeon (25 minutes).




Act I


Scene

The Market Place of Padua at noon; in the background is the great
Cathedral of Padua; the architecture is Romanesque, and wrought in
black and white marbles; a flight of marble steps leads up to the
Cathedral door; at the foot of the steps are two large stone lions;
the houses on each aide of the stage have coloured awnings from
their windows, and are flanked by stone arcades; on the right of
the stage is the public fountain, with a triton in green bronze
blowing from a conch; around the fountain is a stone seat; the bell
of the Cathedral is ringing, and the citizens, men, women and
children, are passing into the Cathedral.

[Enter GUIDO FERRANTI and ASCANIO CRISTOFANO.]

ASCANIO

Now by my life, Guido, I will go no farther; for if I walk another
step I will have no life left to swear by; this wild-goose errand
of yours!

[Sits down on the step of the fountain.]

GUIDO

I think it must be here.  [Goes up to passer-by and doffs his cap.]
Pray, sir, is this the market place, and that the church of Santa
Croce?  [Citizen bows.]  I thank you, sir.

ASCANIO

Well?

GUIDO

Ay! it is here.

ASCANIO

I would it were somewhere else, for I see no wine-shop.

GUIDO

[Taking a letter from his pocket and reading it.]  'The hour noon;
the city, Padua; the place, the market; and the day, Saint Philip's
Day.'

ASCANIO

And what of the man, how shall we know him?

GUIDO

[reading still]  'I will wear a violet cloak with a silver falcon
broidered on the shoulder.'  A brave attire, Ascanio.

ASCANIO

I'd sooner have my leathern jerkin.  And you think he will tell you
of your father?

GUIDO

Why, yes!  It is a month ago now, you remember; I was in the
vineyard, just at the corner nearest the road, where the goats used
to get in, a man rode up and asked me was my name Guido, and gave
me this letter, signed 'Your Father's Friend,' bidding me be here
to-day if I would know the secret of my birth, and telling me how
to recognise the writer!  I had always thought old Pedro was my
uncle, but he told me that he was not, but that I had been left a
child in his charge by some one he had never since seen.

ASCANIO

And you don't know who your father is?

GUIDO

No.

ASCANIO

No recollection of him even?

GUIDO

None, Ascanio, none.

ASCANIO

[laughing]  Then he could never have boxed your ears so often as my
father did mine.

GUIDO

[smiling]  I am sure you never deserved it.

ASCANIO

Never; and that made it worse.  I hadn't the consciousness of guilt
to buoy me up.  What hour did you say he fixed?

GUIDO

Noon.  [Clock in the Cathedral strikes.]

ASCANIO

It is that now, and your man has not come.  I don't believe in him,
Guido.  I think it is some wench who has set her eye at you; and,
as I have followed you from Perugia to Padua, I swear you shall
follow me to the nearest tavern.  [Rises.]  By the great gods of
eating, Guido, I am as hungry as a widow is for a husband, as tired
as a young maid is of good advice, and as dry as a monk's sermon.
Come, Guido, you stand there looking at nothing, like the fool who
tried to look into his own mind; your man will not come.

GUIDO

Well, I suppose you are right.  Ah!  [Just as he is leaving the
stage with ASCANIO, enter LORD MORANZONE in a violet cloak, with a
silver falcon broidered on the shoulder; he passes across to the
Cathedral, and just as he is going in GUIDO runs up and touches
him.]

MORANZONE

Guido Ferranti, thou hast come in time.

GUIDO

What!  Does my father live?

MORANZONE

Ay! lives in thee.
Thou art the same in mould and lineament,
Carriage and form, and outward semblances;
I trust thou art in noble mind the same.

GUIDO

Oh, tell me of my father; I have lived
But for this moment.

MORANZONE

We must be alone.

GUIDO

This is my dearest friend, who out of love
Has followed me to Padua; as two brothers,
There is no secret which we do not share.

MORANZONE

There is one secret which ye shall not share;
Bid him go hence.

GUIDO

[to ASCANIO]  Come back within the hour.
He does not know that nothing in this world
Can dim the perfect mirror of our love.
Within the hour come.

ASCANIO

Speak not to him,
There is a dreadful terror in his look.

GUIDO

[laughing]
Nay, nay, I doubt not that he has come to tell
That I am some great Lord of Italy,
And we will have long days of joy together.
Within the hour, dear Ascanio.
[Exit ASCANIO.]
Now tell me of my father?
[Sits down on a stone seat.]
Stood he tall?
I warrant he looked tall upon his horse.
His hair was black? or perhaps a reddish gold,
Like a red fire of gold?  Was his voice low?
The very bravest men have voices sometimes
Full of low music; or a clarion was it
That brake with terror all his enemies?
Did he ride singly? or with many squires
And valiant gentlemen to serve his state?
For oftentimes methinks I feel my veins
Beat with the blood of kings.  Was he a king?

MORANZONE

Ay, of all men he was the kingliest.

GUIDO

[proudly]  Then when you saw my noble father last
He was set high above the heads of men?

MORANZONE

Ay, he was high above the heads of men,
[Walks over to GUIDO and puts his hand upon his shoulder.]
On a red scaffold, with a butcher's block
Set for his neck.

GUIDO

[leaping up]
What dreadful man art thou,
That like a raven, or the midnight owl,
Com'st with this awful message from the grave?

MORANZONE

I am known here as the Count Moranzone,
Lord of a barren castle on a rock,
With a few acres of unkindly land
And six not thrifty servants.  But I was one
Of Parma's noblest princes; more than that,
I was your father's friend.

GUIDO

[clasping his hand]  Tell me of him.

MORANZONE

You are the son of that great Duke Lorenzo,
He was the Prince of Parma, and the Duke
Of all the fair domains of Lombardy
Down to the gates of Florence; nay, Florence even
Was wont to pay him tribute -

GUIDO

Come to his death.

MORANZONE

You will hear that soon enough.  Being at war -
O noble lion of war, that would not suffer
Injustice done in Italy!--he led
The very flower of chivalry against
That foul adulterous Lord of Rimini,
Giovanni Malatesta--whom God curse!
And was by him in treacherous ambush taken,
And like a villain, or a low-born knave,
Was by him on the public scaffold murdered.

GUIDO

[clutching his dagger]  Doth Malatesta live?

MORANZONE

No, he is dead.

GUIDO

Did you say dead?  O too swift runner, Death,
Couldst thou not wait for me a little space,
And I had done thy bidding!

MORANZONE

[clutching his wrist]  Thou canst do it!
The man who sold thy father is alive.

GUIDO

Sold! was my father sold?

MORANZONE

Ay! trafficked for,
Like a vile chattel, for a price betrayed,
Bartered and bargained for in privy market
By one whom he had held his perfect friend,
One he had trusted, one he had well loved,
One whom by ties of kindness he had bound -

GUIDO

And he lives
Who sold my father?

MORANZONE

I will bring you to him.

GUIDO

So, Judas, thou art living! well, I will make
This world thy field of blood, so buy it straight-way,
For thou must hang there.

MORANZONE

Judas said you, boy?
Yes, Judas in his treachery, but still
He was more wise than Judas was, and held
Those thirty silver pieces not enough.

GUIDO

What got he for my father's blood?

MORANZONE

What got he?
Why cities, fiefs, and principalities,
Vineyards, and lands.

GUIDO

Of which he shall but keep
Six feet of ground to rot in.  Where is he,
This damned villain, this foul devil? where?
Show me the man, and come he cased in steel,
In complete panoply and pride of war,
Ay, guarded by a thousand men-at-arms,
Yet I shall reach him through their spears, and feel
The last black drop of blood from his black heart
Crawl down my blade.  Show me the man, I say,
And I will kill him.

MORANZONE

[coldly]
Fool, what revenge is there?
Death is the common heritage of all,
And death comes best when it comes suddenly.
[Goes up close to GUIDO.]
Your father was betrayed, there is your cue;
For you shall sell the seller in his turn.
I will make you of his household, you shall sit
At the same board with him, eat of his bread -

GUIDO

O bitter bread!

MORANZONE

Thy palate is too nice,
Revenge will make it sweet.  Thou shalt o' nights
Pledge him in wine, drink from his cup, and be
His intimate, so he will fawn on thee,
Love thee, and trust thee in all secret things.
If he bid thee be merry thou must laugh,
And if it be his humour to be sad
Thou shalt don sables.  Then when the time is ripe -
[GUIDO clutches his sword.]
Nay, nay, I trust thee not; your hot young blood,
Undisciplined nature, and too violent rage
Will never tarry for this great revenge,
But wreck itself on passion.

GUIDO

Thou knowest me not.
Tell me the man, and I in everything
Will do thy bidding.

MORANZONE

Well, when the time is ripe,
The victim trusting and the occasion sure,
I will by sudden secret messenger
Send thee a sign.

GUIDO

How shall I kill him, tell me?

MORANZONE

That night thou shalt creep into his private chamber;
But if he sleep see that thou wake him first,
And hold thy hand upon his throat, ay! that way,
Then having told him of what blood thou art,
Sprung from what father, and for what revenge,
Bid him to pray for mercy; when he prays,
Bid him to set a price upon his life,
And when he strips himself of all his gold
Tell him thou needest not gold, and hast not mercy,
And do thy business straight away.  Swear to me
Thou wilt not kill him till I bid thee do it,
Or else I go to mine own house, and leave
Thee ignorant, and thy father unavenged.

GUIDO

Now by my father's sword -

MORANZONE

The common hangman
Brake that in sunder in the public square.

GUIDO

Then by my father's grave -

MORANZONE

What grave? what grave?
Your noble father lieth in no grave,
I saw his dust strewn on the air, his ashes
Whirled through the windy streets like common straws
To plague a beggar's eyesight, and his head,
That gentle head, set on the prison spike,
For the vile rabble in their insolence
To shoot their tongues at.

GUIDO

Was it so indeed?
Then by my father's spotless memory,
And by the shameful manner of his death,
And by the base betrayal by his friend,
For these at least remain, by these I swear
I will not lay my hand upon his life
Until you bid me, then--God help his soul,
For he shall die as never dog died yet.
And now, the sign, what is it?

MORANZONE

This dagger, boy;
It was your father's.

GUIDO

Oh, let me look at it!
I do remember now my reputed uncle,
That good old husbandman I left at home,
Told me a cloak wrapped round me when a babe
Bare too such yellow leopards wrought in gold;
I like them best in steel, as they are here,
They suit my purpose better.  Tell me, sir,
Have you no message from my father to me?

MORANZONE

Poor boy, you never saw that noble father,
For when by his false friend he had been sold,
Alone of all his gentlemen I escaped
To bear the news to Parma to the Duchess.

GUIDO

Speak to me of my mother.

MORANZONE

When thy mother
Heard my black news, she fell into a swoon,
And, being with untimely travail seized -
Bare thee into the world before thy time,
And then her soul went heavenward, to wait
Thy father, at the gates of Paradise.

GUIDO

A mother dead, a father sold and bartered!
I seem to stand on some beleaguered wall,
And messenger comes after messenger
With a new tale of terror; give me breath,
Mine ears are tired.

MORANZONE

When thy mother died,
Fearing our enemies, I gave it out
Thou wert dead also, and then privily
Conveyed thee to an ancient servitor,
Who by Perugia lived; the rest thou knowest.

GUIDO

Saw you my father afterwards?

MORANZONE

Ay! once;
In mean attire, like a vineyard dresser,
I stole to Rimini.

GUIDO

[taking his hand]
O generous heart!

MORANZONE

One can buy everything in Rimini,
And so I bought the gaolers! when your father
Heard that a man child had been born to him,
His noble face lit up beneath his helm
Like a great fire seen far out at sea,
And taking my two hands, he bade me, Guido,
To rear you worthy of him; so I have reared you
To revenge his death upon the friend who sold him.

GUIDO

Thou hast done well; I for my father thank thee.
And now his name?

MORANZONE

How you remind me of him,
You have each gesture that your father had.

GUIDO

The traitor's name?

MORANZONE

Thou wilt hear that anon;
The Duke and other nobles at the Court
Are coming hither.

GUIDO

What of that? his name?

MORANZONE

Do they not seem a valiant company
Of honourable, honest gentlemen?

GUIDO

His name, milord?

[Enter the DUKE OF PADUA with COUNT BARDI, MAFFIO, PETRUCCI, and
other gentlemen of his Court.]

MORANZONE

[quickly]
The man to whom I kneel
Is he who sold your father! mark me well.

GUIDO

[clutches hit dagger]
The Duke!

MORANZONE

Leave off that fingering of thy knife.
Hast thou so soon forgotten?
[Kneels to the DUKE.]
My noble Lord.

DUKE

Welcome, Count Moranzone; 'tis some time
Since we have seen you here in Padua.
We hunted near your castle yesterday -
Call you it castle? that bleak house of yours
Wherein you sit a-mumbling o'er your beads,
Telling your vices like a good old man.
[Catches sight of GUIDO and starts back.]
Who is that?

MORANZONE

My sister's son, your Grace,
Who being now of age to carry arms,
Would for a season tarry at your Court

DUKE

[still looking at GUIDO]
What is his name?

MORANZONE

Guido Ferranti, sir.

DUKE

His city?

MORANZONE

He is Mantuan by birth.

DUKE

[advancing towards GUIDO]
You have the eyes of one I used to know,
But he died childless.  Are you honest, boy?
Then be not spendthrift of your honesty,
But keep it to yourself; in Padua
Men think that honesty is ostentatious, so
It is not of the fashion.  Look at these lords.

COUNT BARDI

[aside]
Here is some bitter arrow for us, sure.

DUKE

Why, every man among them has his price,
Although, to do them justice, some of them
Are quite expensive.

COUNT BARDI

[aside]
There it comes indeed.

DUKE

So be not honest; eccentricity
Is not a thing should ever be encouraged,
Although, in this dull stupid age of ours,
The most eccentric thing a man can do
Is to have brains, then the mob mocks at him;
And for the mob, despise it as I do,
I hold its bubble praise and windy favours
In such account, that popularity
Is the one insult I have never suffered.

MAFFIO

[aside]

He has enough of hate, if he needs that.

DUKE

Have prudence; in your dealings with the world
Be not too hasty; act on the second thought,
First impulses are generally good.

GUIDO

[aside]
Surely a toad sits on his lips, and spills its venom there.

DUKE

See thou hast enemies,
Else will the world think very little of thee;
It is its test of power; yet see thou show'st
A smiling mask of friendship to all men,
Until thou hast them safely in thy grip,
Then thou canst crush them.

GUIDO

[aside]
O wise philosopher!
That for thyself dost dig so deep a grave.

MORANZONE

[to him]
Dost thou mark his words?

GUIDO

Oh, be thou sure I do.

DUKE

And be not over-scrupulous; clean hands
With nothing in them make a sorry show.
If you would have the lion's share of life
You must wear the fox's skin.  Oh, it will fit you;
It is a coat which fitteth every man.

GUIDO

Your Grace, I shall remember.

DUKE

That is well, boy, well.
I would not have about me shallow fools,
Who with mean scruples weigh the gold of life,
And faltering, paltering, end by failure; failure,
The only crime which I have not committed:
I would have MEN about me.  As for conscience,
Conscience is but the name which cowardice
Fleeing from battle scrawls upon its shield.
You understand me, boy?

GUIDO

I do, your Grace,
And will in all things carry out the creed
Which you have taught me.

MAFFIO

I never heard your Grace
So much in the vein for preaching; let the Cardinal
Look to his laurels, sir.

DUKE

The Cardinal!
Men follow my creed, and they gabble his.
I do not think much of the Cardinal;
Although he is a holy churchman, and
I quite admit his dulness.  Well, sir, from now
We count you of our household
[He holds out his hand for GUIDO to kiss.  GUIDO starts back in
horror, but at a gesture from COUNT MORANZONE, kneels and kisses
it.]
We will see
That you are furnished with such equipage
As doth befit your honour and our state.

GUIDO

I thank your Grace most heartily.

DUKE

Tell me again
What is your name?

GUIDO

Guido Ferranti, sir.

DUKE

And you are Mantuan?  Look to your wives, my lords,
When such a gallant comes to Padua.
Thou dost well to laugh, Count Bardi; I have noted
How merry is that husband by whose hearth
Sits an uncomely wife.

MAFFIO

May it please your Grace,
The wives of Padua are above suspicion.

DUKE

What, are they so ill-favoured!  Let us go,
This Cardinal detains our pious Duchess;
His sermon and his beard want cutting both:
Will you come with us, sir, and hear a text
From holy Jerome?

MORANZONE

[bowing]
My liege, there are some matters -

DUKE

[interrupting]
Thou need'st make no excuse for missing mass.
Come, gentlemen.
[Exit with his suite into Cathedral.]

GUIDO

[after a pause]
So the Duke sold my father;
I kissed his hand.

MORANZONE

Thou shalt do that many times.

GUIDO

Must it be so?

MORANZONE

Ay! thou hast sworn an oath.

GUIDO

That oath shall make me marble.

MORANZONE

Farewell, boy,
Thou wilt not see me till the time is ripe.

GUIDO

I pray thou comest quickly.

MORANZONE

I will come
When it is time; be ready.

GUIDO

Fear me not.

MORANZONE

Here is your friend; see that you banish him
Both from your heart and Padua.

GUIDO

From Padua,
Not from my heart.

MORANZONE

Nay, from thy heart as well,
I will not leave thee till I see thee do it.

GUIDO

Can I have no friend?

MORANZONE

Revenge shall be thy friend;
Thou need'st no other.

GUIDO

Well, then be it so.
[Enter ASCANIO CRISTOFANO.]

ASCANIO

Come, Guido, I have been beforehand with you in everything, for I
have drunk a flagon of wine, eaten a pasty, and kissed the maid who
served it.  Why, you look as melancholy as a schoolboy who cannot
buy apples, or a politician who cannot sell his vote.  What news,
Guido, what news?

GUIDO

Why, that we two must part, Ascanio.

ASCANIO

That would be news indeed, but it is not true.

GUIDO

Too true it is, you must get hence, Ascanio,
And never look upon my face again.

ASCANIO

No, no; indeed you do not know me, Guido;
'Tis true I am a common yeoman's son,
Nor versed in fashions of much courtesy;
But, if you are nobly born, cannot I be
Your serving man?  I will tend you with more love
Than any hired servant.

GUIDO

[clasping his hand]
Ascanio!
[Sees MORANZONE looking at him and drops ASCANIO'S hand.]
It cannot be.

ASCANIO

What, is it so with you?
I thought the friendship of the antique world
Was not yet dead, but that the Roman type
Might even in this poor and common age
Find counterparts of love; then by this love
Which beats between us like a summer sea,
Whatever lot has fallen to your hand
May I not share it?

GUIDO

Share it?

ASCANIO

Ay!

GUIDO

No, no.

ASCANIO

Have you then come to some inheritance
Of lordly castle, or of stored-up gold?

GUIDO

[bitterly]
Ay! I have come to my inheritance.
O bloody legacy! and O murderous dole!
Which, like the thrifty miser, must I hoard,
And to my own self keep; and so, I pray you,
Let us part here.

ASCANIO

What, shall we never more
Sit hand in hand, as we were wont to sit,
Over some book of ancient chivalry
Stealing a truant holiday from school,
Follow the huntsmen through the autumn woods,
And watch the falcons burst their tasselled jesses,
When the hare breaks from covert.

GUIDO

Never more.

ASCANIO

Must I go hence without a word of love?

GUIDO

You must go hence, and may love go with you.

ASCANIO

You are unknightly, and ungenerous.

GUIDO

Unknightly and ungenerous if you will.
Why should we waste more words about the matter
Let us part now.

ASCANIO

Have you no message, Guido?

GUIDO

None; my whole past was but a schoolboy's dream;
To-day my life begins.  Farewell.

ASCANIO

Farewell [exit slowly.]

GUIDO

Now are you satisfied?  Have you not seen
My dearest friend, and my most loved companion,
Thrust from me like a common kitchen knave!
Oh, that I did it!  Are you not satisfied?

MORANZONE

Ay! I am satisfied.  Now I go hence,
Do not forget the sign, your father's dagger,
And do the business when I send it to you.

GUIDO

Be sure I shall.  [Exit LORD MORANZONE.]

GUIDO

O thou eternal heaven!
If there is aught of nature in my soul,
Of gentle pity, or fond kindliness,
Wither it up, blast it, bring it to nothing,
Or if thou wilt not, then will I myself
Cut pity with a sharp knife from my heart
And strangle mercy in her sleep at night
Lest she speak to me.  Vengeance there I have it.
Be thou my comrade and my bedfellow,
Sit by my side, ride to the chase with me,
When I am weary sing me pretty songs,
When I am light o' heart, make jest with me,
And when I dream, whisper into my ear
The dreadful secret of a father's murder -
Did I say murder?  [Draws his dagger.]
Listen, thou terrible God!
Thou God that punishest all broken oaths,
And bid some angel write this oath in fire,
That from this hour, till my dear father's murder
In blood I have revenged, I do forswear
The noble ties of honourable friendship,
The noble joys of dear companionship,
Affection's bonds, and loyal gratitude,
Ay, more, from this same hour I do forswear
All love of women, and the barren thing
Which men call beauty -
[The organ peals in the Cathedral, and under a canopy of cloth of
silver tissue, borne by four pages in scarlet, the DUCHESS OF PADUA
comes down the steps; as she passes across their eyes meet for a
moment, and as she leaves the stage she looks back at GUIDO, and
the dagger falls from his hand.]
Oh! who is that?

A CITIZEN

The Duchess of Padua!

End of Act I.

Act II


Scene

A state room in the Ducal Palace, hung with tapestries representing
the Masque of Venus; a large door in the centre opens into a
corridor of red marble, through which one can see a view of Padua;
a large canopy is set (R.C.) with three thrones, one a little lower
than the others; the ceiling is made of long gilded beams;
furniture of the period, chairs covered with gilt leather, and
buffets set with gold and silver plate, and chests painted with
mythological scenes.  A number of the courtiers is out on the
corridor looking from it down into the street below; from the
street comes the roar of a mob and cries of 'Death to the Duke':
after a little interval enter the Duke very calmly; he is leaning
on the arm of Guido Ferranti; with him enters also the Lord
Cardinal; the mob still shouting.

DUKE

No, my Lord Cardinal, I weary of her!
Why, she is worse than ugly, she is good.

MAFFIO

[excitedly]
Your Grace, there are two thousand people there
Who every moment grow more clamorous.

DUKE

Tut, man, they waste their strength upon their lungs!
People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing;
The only men I fear are silent men.
[A yell from the people.]
You see, Lord Cardinal, how my people love me.
[Another yell.]  Go, Petrucci,
And tell the captain of the guard below
To clear the square.  Do you not hear me, sir?
Do what I bid you.

[Exit PETRUCCI.]

CARDINAL

I beseech your Grace
To listen to their grievances.

DUKE

[sitting on his throne]
Ay! the peaches
Are not so big this year as they were last.
I crave your pardon, my lord Cardinal,
I thought you spake of peaches.
[A cheer from the people.]
What is that?

GUIDO

[rushes to the window]
The Duchess has gone forth into the square,
And stands between the people and the guard,
And will not let them shoot.

DUKE

The devil take her!

GUIDO

[still at the window]
And followed by a dozen of the citizens
Has come into the Palace.

DUKE

[starting up]
By Saint James,
Our Duchess waxes bold!

BARDI

Here comes the Duchess.

DUKE

Shut that door there; this morning air is cold.
[They close the door on the corridor.]
[Enter the Duchess followed by a crowd of meanly dressed Citizens.]

DUCHESS

[flinging herself upon her knees]
I do beseech your Grace to give us audience.

DUKE

What are these grievances?

DUCHESS

Alas, my Lord,
Such common things as neither you nor I,
Nor any of these noble gentlemen,
Have ever need at all to think about;
They say the bread, the very bread they eat,
Is made of sorry chaff.

FIRST CITIZEN

Ay! so it is,
Nothing but chaff.

DUKE

And very good food too,
I give it to my horses.

DUCHESS

[restraining herself]
They say the water,
Set in the public cisterns for their use,
[Has, through the breaking of the aqueduct,]
To stagnant pools and muddy puddles turned.

DUKE

They should drink wine; water is quite unwholesome.

SECOND CITIZEN

Alack, your Grace, the taxes which the customs
Take at the city gate are grown so high
We cannot buy wine.

DUKE

Then you should bless the taxes
Which make you temperate.

DUCHESS

Think, while we sit
In gorgeous pomp and state, gaunt poverty
Creeps through their sunless lanes, and with sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily
And no word said.

THIRD CITIZEN

Ay! marry, that is true,
My little son died yesternight from hunger;
He was but six years old; I am so poor,
I cannot bury him.

DUKE

If you are poor,
Are you not blessed in that?  Why, poverty
Is one of the Christian virtues,
[Turns to the CARDINAL.]
Is it not?
I know, Lord Cardinal, you have great revenues,
Rich abbey-lands, and tithes, and large estates
For preaching voluntary poverty.

DUCHESS

Nay but, my lord the Duke, be generous;
While we sit here within a noble house
[With shaded porticoes against the sun,
And walls and roofs to keep the winter out],
There are many citizens of Padua
Who in vile tenements live so full of holes,
That the chill rain, the snow, and the rude blast,
Are tenants also with them; others sleep
Under the arches of the public bridges
All through the autumn nights, till the wet mist
Stiffens their limbs, and fevers come, and so -

DUKE

And so they go to Abraham's bosom, Madam.
They should thank me for sending them to Heaven,
If they are wretched here.
[To the CARDINAL.]
Is it not said
Somewhere in Holy Writ, that every man
Should be contented with that state of life
God calls him to?  Why should I change their state,
Or meddle with an all-wise providence,
Which has apportioned that some men should starve,
And others surfeit?  I did not make the world.

FIRST CITIZEN

He hath a hard heart.

SECOND CITIZEN

Nay, be silent, neighbour;
I think the Cardinal will speak for us.

CARDINAL

True, it is Christian to bear misery,
Yet it is Christian also to be kind,
And there seem many evils in this town,
Which in your wisdom might your Grace reform.

FIRST CITIZEN

What is that word reform?  What does it mean?

SECOND CITIZEN

Marry, it means leaving things as they are; I like it not.

DUKE

Reform Lord Cardinal, did YOU say reform?
There is a man in Germany called Luther,
Who would reform the Holy Catholic Church.
Have you not made him heretic, and uttered
Anathema, maranatha, against him?

CARDINAL

[rising from his seat]
He would have led the sheep out of the fold,
We do but ask of you to feed the sheep.

DUKE

When I have shorn their fleeces I may feed them.
As for these rebels -
[DUCHESS entreats him.]

FIRST CITIZEN

That is a kind word,
He means to give us something.

SECOND CITIZEN

Is that so?

DUKE

These ragged knaves who come before us here,
With mouths chock-full of treason.

THIRD CITIZEN

Good my Lord,
Fill up our mouths with bread; we'll hold our tongues.

DUKE

Ye shall hold your tongues, whether you starve or not.
My lords, this age is so familiar grown,
That the low peasant hardly doffs his hat,
Unless you beat him; and the raw mechanic
Elbows the noble in the public streets.
[To the Citizens.]
Still as our gentle Duchess has so prayed us,
And to refuse so beautiful a beggar
Were to lack both courtesy and love,
Touching your grievances, I promise this -

FIRST CITIZEN

Marry, he will lighten the taxes!

SECOND CITIZEN

Or a dole of bread, think you, for each man?

DUKE

That, on next Sunday, the Lord Cardinal
Shall, after Holy Mass, preach you a sermon
Upon the Beauty of Obedience.
[Citizens murmur.]

FIRST CITIZEN

I' faith, that will not fill our stomachs!

SECOND CITIZEN

A sermon is but a sorry sauce, when
You have nothing to eat with it.

DUCHESS

Poor people,
You see I have no power with the Duke,
But if you go into the court without,
My almoner shall from my private purse,
Divide a hundred ducats 'mongst you all.

FIRST CITIZEN

God save the Duchess, say I.

SECOND CITIZEN

God save her.

DUCHESS

And every Monday morn shall bread be set
For those who lack it.
[Citizens applaud and go out.]

FIRST CITIZEN

[going out]
Why, God save the Duchess again!

DUKE

[calling him back]
Come hither, fellow! what is your name?

FIRST CITIZEN

Dominick, sir.

DUKE

A good name!  Why were you called Dominick?

FIRST CITIZEN

[scratching his head]
Marry, because I was born on St. George's day.

DUKE

A good reason! here is a ducat for you!
Will you not cry for me God save the Duke?

FIRST CITIZEN

[feebly]
God save the Duke.

DUKE

Nay! louder, fellow, louder.

FIRST CITIZEN

[a little louder]
God save the Duke!

DUKE

More lustily, fellow, put more heart in it!
Here is another ducat for you.

FIRST CITIZEN

[enthusiastically]
God save the Duke!

DUKE

[mockingly]
Why, gentlemen, this simple fellow's love
Touches me much.  [To the Citizen, harshly.]
Go!  [Exit Citizen, bowing.]
This is the way, my lords,
You can buy popularity nowadays.
Oh, we are nothing if not democratic!
[To the DUCHESS.]
Well, Madam,
You spread rebellion 'midst our citizens.

DUCHESS

My Lord, the poor have rights you cannot touch,
The right to pity, and the right to mercy.

DUKE

So, so, you argue with me?  This is she,
The gentle Duchess for whose hand I yielded
Three of the fairest towns in Italy,
Pisa, and Genoa, and Orvieto.

DUCHESS

Promised, my Lord, not yielded:  in that matter
Brake you your word as ever.

DUKE

You wrong us, Madam,
There were state reasons.

DUCHESS

What state reasons are there
For breaking holy promises to a state?

DUKE

There are wild boars at Pisa in a forest
Close to the city:  when I promised Pisa
Unto your noble and most trusting father,
I had forgotten there was hunting there.
At Genoa they say,
Indeed I doubt them not, that the red mullet
Runs larger in the harbour of that town
Than anywhere in Italy.
[Turning to one of the Court.]
You, my lord,
Whose gluttonous appetite is your only god,
Could satisfy our Duchess on that point.

DUCHESS

And Orvieto?

DUKE

[yawning]
I cannot now recall
Why I did not surrender Orvieto
According to the word of my contract.
Maybe it was because I did not choose.
[Goes over to the DUCHESS.]
Why look you, Madam, you are here alone;
'Tis many a dusty league to your grey France,
And even there your father barely keeps
A hundred ragged squires for his Court.
What hope have you, I say?  Which of these lords
And noble gentlemen of Padua
Stands by your side.

DUCHESS

There is not one.

[GUIDO starts, but restrains himself.]

DUKE

Nor shall be,
While I am Duke in Padua:  listen, Madam,
Being mine own, you shall do as I will,
And if it be my will you keep the house,
Why then, this palace shall your prison be;
And if it be my will you walk abroad,
Why, you shall take the air from morn to night.

DUCHESS

Sir, by what right -?

DUKE

Madam, my second Duchess
Asked the same question once:  her monument
Lies in the chapel of Bartholomew,
Wrought in red marble; very beautiful.
Guido, your arm.  Come, gentlemen, let us go
And spur our falcons for the mid-day chase.
Bethink you, Madam, you are here alone.
[Exit the DUKE leaning on GUIDO, with his Court.]

DUCHESS

[looking after them]
The Duke said rightly that I was alone;
Deserted, and dishonoured, and defamed,
Stood ever woman so alone indeed?
Men when they woo us call us pretty children,
Tell us we have not wit to make our lives,
And so they mar them for us.  Did I say woo?
We are their chattels, and their common slaves,
Less dear than the poor hound that licks their hand,
Less fondled than the hawk upon their wrist.
Woo, did I say? bought rather, sold and bartered,
Our very bodies being merchandise.
I know it is the general lot of women,
Each miserably mated to some man
Wrecks her own life upon his selfishness:
That it is general makes it not less bitter.
I think I never heard a woman laugh,
Laugh for pure merriment, except one woman,
That was at night time, in the public streets.
Poor soul, she walked with painted lips, and wore
The mask of pleasure:  I would not laugh like her;
No, death were better.
[Enter GUIDO behind unobserved; the DUCHESS flings herself down
before a picture of the Madonna.]
O Mary mother, with your sweet pale face
Bending between the little angel heads
That hover round you, have you no help for me?
Mother of God, have you no help for me?

GUIDO

I can endure no longer.
This is my love, and I will speak to her.
Lady, am I a stranger to your prayers?

DUCHESS

[rising]
None but the wretched needs my prayers, my lord.

GUIDO

Then must I need them, lady.

DUCHESS

How is that?
Does not the Duke show thee sufficient honour?

GUIDO

Your Grace, I lack no favours from the Duke,
Whom my soul loathes as I loathe wickedness,
But come to proffer on my bended knees,
My loyal service to thee unto death.

DUCHESS

Alas!  I am so fallen in estate
I can but give thee a poor meed of thanks.

GUIDO

[seizing her hand]
Hast thou no love to give me?
[The DUCHESS starts, and GUIDO falls at her feet.]
O dear saint,
If I have been too daring, pardon me!
Thy beauty sets my boyish blood aflame,
And, when my reverent lips touch thy white hand,
Each little nerve with such wild passion thrills
That there is nothing which I would not do
To gain thy love.  [Leaps up.]
Bid me reach forth and pluck
Perilous honour from the lion's jaws,
And I will wrestle with the Nemean beast
On the bare desert!  Fling to the cave of War
A gaud, a ribbon, a dead flower, something
That once has touched thee, and I'll bring it back
Though all the hosts of Christendom were there,
Inviolate again! ay, more than this,
Set me to scale the pallid white-faced cliffs
Of mighty England, and from that arrogant shield
Will I raze out the lilies of your France
Which England, that sea-lion of the sea,
Hath taken from her!
O dear Beatrice,
Drive me not from thy presence! without thee
The heavy minutes crawl with feet of lead,
But, while I look upon thy loveliness,
The hours fly like winged Mercuries
And leave existence golden.

DUCHESS

I did not think
I should be ever loved:  do you indeed
Love me so much as now you say you do?

GUIDO

Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea,
Ask of the roses if they love the rain,
Ask of the little lark, that will not sing
Till day break, if it loves to see the day:-
And yet, these are but empty images,
Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire
So great that all the waters of the main
Can not avail to quench it.  Will you not speak?

DUCHESS

I hardly know what I should say to you.

GUIDO

Will you not say you love me?

DUCHESS

Is that my lesson?
Must I say all at once?  'Twere a good lesson
If I did love you, sir; but, if I do not,
What shall I say then?

GUIDO

If you do not love me,
Say, none the less, you do, for on your tongue
Falsehood for very shame would turn to truth.

DUCHESS

What if I do not speak at all?  They say
Lovers are happiest when they are in doubt

GUIDO

Nay, doubt would kill me, and if I must die,
Why, let me die for joy and not for doubt.
Oh, tell me may I stay, or must I go?

DUCHESS

I would not have you either stay or go;
For if you stay you steal my love from me,
And if you go you take my love away.
Guido, though all the morning stars could sing
They could not tell the measure of my love.
I love you, Guido.

GUIDO

[stretching out his hands]
Oh, do not cease at all;
I thought the nightingale sang but at night;
Or if thou needst must cease, then let my lips
Touch the sweet lips that can such music make.

DUCHESS

To touch my lips is not to touch my heart.

GUIDO

Do you close that against me?

DUCHESS

Alas! my lord,
I have it not:  the first day that I saw you
I let you take my heart away from me;
Unwilling thief, that without meaning it
Did break into my fenced treasury
And filch my jewel from it!  O strange theft,
Which made you richer though you knew it not,
And left me poorer, and yet glad of it!

GUIDO

[clasping her in his arms]
O love, love, love!  Nay, sweet, lift up your head,
Let me unlock those little scarlet doors
That shut in music, let me dive for coral
In your red lips, and I'll bear back a prize
Richer than all the gold the Gryphon guards
In rude Armenia.

DUCHESS

You are my lord,
And what I have is yours, and what I have not
Your fancy lends me, like a prodigal
Spending its wealth on what is nothing worth.
[Kisses him.]

GUIDO

Methinks I am bold to look upon you thus:
The gentle violet hides beneath its leaf
And is afraid to look at the great sun
For fear of too much splendour, but my eyes,
O daring eyes! are grown so venturous
That like fixed stars they stand, gazing at you,
And surfeit sense with beauty.

DUCHESS

Dear love, I would
You could look upon me ever, for your eyes
Are polished mirrors, and when I peer
Into those mirrors I can see myself,
And so I know my image lives in you.

GUIDO

[taking her in his arms]
Stand still, thou hurrying orb in the high heavens,
And make this hour immortal!  [A pause.]

DUCHESS

Sit down here,
A little lower than me:  yes, just so, sweet,
That I may run my fingers through your hair,
And see your face turn upwards like a flower
To meet my kiss.
Have you not sometimes noted,
When we unlock some long-disused room
With heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,
Where never foot of man has come for years,
And from the windows take the rusty bar,
And fling the broken shutters to the air,
And let the bright sun in, how the good sun
Turns every grimy particle of dust
Into a little thing of dancing gold?
Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,
But you have let love in, and with its gold
Gilded all life.  Do you not think that love
Fills up the sum of life?

GUIDO

Ay! without love
Life is no better than the unhewn stone
Which in the quarry lies, before the sculptor
Has set the God within it.  Without love
Life is as silent as the common reeds
That through the marshes or by rivers grow,
And have no music in them.

DUCHESS

Yet out of these
The singer, who is Love, will make a pipe
And from them he draws music; so I think
Love will bring music out of any life.
Is that not true?

GUIDO

Sweet, women make it true.
There are men who paint pictures, and carve statues,
Paul of Verona and the dyer's son,
Or their great rival, who, by the sea at Venice,
Has set God's little maid upon the stair,
White as her own white lily, and as tall,
Or Raphael, whose Madonnas are divine
Because they are mothers merely; yet I think
Women are the best artists of the world,
For they can take the common lives of men
Soiled with the money-getting of our age,
And with love make them beautiful.

DUCHESS

Ah, dear,
I wish that you and I were very poor;
The poor, who love each other, are so rich.

GUIDO

Tell me again you love me, Beatrice.

DUCHESS

[fingering his collar]
How well this collar lies about your throat.
[LORD MORANZONE looks through the door from the corridor outside.]

GUIDO

Nay, tell me that you love me.

DUCHESS

I remember,
That when I was a child in my dear France,
Being at Court at Fontainebleau, the King
Wore such a collar.

GUIDO

Will you not say you love me?

DUCHESS

[smiling]
He was a very royal man, King Francis,
Yet he was not royal as you are.
Why need I tell you, Guido, that I love you?
[Takes his head in her hands and turns his face up to her.]
Do you not know that I am yours for ever,
Body and soul?
[Kisses him, and then suddenly catches sight of MORANZONE and leaps
up.]
Oh, what is that?  [MORANZONE disappears.]

GUIDO

What, love?

DUCHESS

Methought I saw a face with eyes of flame
Look at us through the doorway.

GUIDO

Nay, 'twas nothing:
The passing shadow of the man on guard.
[The DUCHESS still stands looking at the window.]
'Twas nothing, sweet.

DUCHESS

Ay! what can harm us now,
Who are in Love's hand?  I do not think I'd care
Though the vile world should with its lackey Slander
Trample and tread upon my life; why should I?
They say the common field-flowers of the field
Have sweeter scent when they are trodden on
Than when they bloom alone, and that some herbs
Which have no perfume, on being bruised die
With all Arabia round them; so it is
With the young lives this dull world seeks to crush,
It does but bring the sweetness out of them,
And makes them lovelier often.  And besides,
While we have love we have the best of life:
Is it not so?


GUIDO

Dear, shall we play or sing?
I think that I could sing now.

DUCHESS

Do not speak,
For there are times when all existences
Seem narrowed to one single ecstasy,
And Passion sets a seal upon the lips.

GUIDO

Oh, with mine own lips let me break that seal!
You love me, Beatrice?

DUCHESS

Ay! is it not strange
I should so love mine enemy?

GUIDO

Who is he?

DUCHESS

Why, you:  that with your shaft did pierce my heart!
Poor heart, that lived its little lonely life
Until it met your arrow.

GUIDO

Ah, dear love,
I am so wounded by that bolt myself
That with untended wounds I lie a-dying,
Unless you cure me, dear Physician.

DUCHESS

I would not have you cured; for I am sick
With the same malady.

GUIDO

Oh, how I love you!
See, I must steal the cuckoo's voice, and tell
The one tale over.

DUCHESS

Tell no other tale!
For, if that is the little cuckoo's song,
The nightingale is hoarse, and the loud lark
Has lost its music.

GUIDO

Kiss me, Beatrice!
[She takes his face in her hands and bends down and kisses him; a
loud knocking then comes at the door, and GUIDO leaps up; enter a
Servant.]

SERVANT

A package for you, sir.

GUIDO

[carelessly]  Ah! give it to me.  [Servant hands package wrapped in
vermilion silk, and exit; as GUIDO is about to open it the DUCHESS
comes up behind, and in sport takes it from him.]

DUCHESS

[laughing]
Now I will wager it is from some girl
Who would have you wear her favour; I am so jealous
I will not give up the least part in you,
But like a miser keep you to myself,
And spoil you perhaps in keeping.

GUIDO

It is nothing.

DUCHESS

Nay, it is from some girl.

GUIDO

You know 'tis not.

DUCHESS

[turns her back and opens it]
Now, traitor, tell me what does this sign mean,
A dagger with two leopards wrought in steel?

GUIDO

[taking it from her]  O God!

DUCHESS

I'll from the window look, and try
If I can't see the porter's livery
Who left it at the gate!  I will not rest
Till I have learned your secret.
[Runs laughing into the corridor.]

GUIDO

Oh, horrible!
Had I so soon forgot my father's death,
Did I so soon let love into my heart,
And must I banish love, and let in murder
That beats and clamours at the outer gate?
Ay, that I must!  Have I not sworn an oath?
Yet not to-night; nay, it must be to-night.
Farewell then all the joy and light of life,
All dear recorded memories, farewell,
Farewell all love!  Could I with bloody hands
Fondle and paddle with her innocent hands?
Could I with lips fresh from this butchery
Play with her lips?  Could I with murderous eyes
Look in those violet eyes, whose purity
Would strike men blind, and make each eyeball reel
In night perpetual?  No, murder has set
A barrier between us far too high
For us to kiss across it.

DUCHESS

Guido!

GUIDO

Beatrice,
You must forget that name, and banish me
Out of your life for ever.

DUCHESS

[going towards him]
O dear love!

GUIDO

[stepping back]
There lies a barrier between us two
We dare not pass.

DUCHESS

I dare do anything
So that you are beside me.

GUIDO

Ah!  There it is,
I cannot be beside you, cannot breathe
The air you breathe; I cannot any more
Stand face to face with beauty, which unnerves
My shaking heart, and makes my desperate hand
Fail of its purpose.  Let me go hence, I pray;
Forget you ever looked upon me.

DUCHESS

What!
With your hot kisses fresh upon my lips
Forget the vows of love you made to me?

GUIDO

I take them back.

DUCHESS

Alas, you cannot, Guido,
For they are part of nature now; the air
Is tremulous with their music, and outside
The little birds sing sweeter for those vows.

GUIDO

There lies a barrier between us now,
Which then I knew not, or I had forgot.

DUCHESS

There is no barrier, Guido; why, I will go
In poor attire, and will follow you
Over the world.

GUIDO

[wildly]
The world's not wide enough
To hold us two!  Farewell, farewell for ever.

DUCHESS

[calm, and controlling her passion]
Why did you come into my life at all, then,
Or in the desolate garden of my heart
Sow that white flower of love -?

GUIDO

O Beatrice!

DUCHESS

Which now you would dig up, uproot, tear out,
Though each small fibre doth so hold my heart
That if you break one, my heart breaks with it?
Why did you come into my life?  Why open
The secret wells of love I had sealed up?
Why did you open them -?

GUIDO

O God!

DUCHESS

[clenching her hand]
And let
The floodgates of my passion swell and burst
Till, like the wave when rivers overflow
That sweeps the forest and the farm away,
Love in the splendid avalanche of its might
Swept my life with it?  Must I drop by drop
Gather these waters back and seal them up?
Alas!  Each drop will be a tear, and so
Will with its saltness make life very bitter.

GUIDO

I pray you speak no more, for I must go
Forth from your life and love, and make a way
On which you cannot follow.

DUCHESS

I have heard
That sailors dying of thirst upon a raft,
Poor castaways upon a lonely sea,
Dream of green fields and pleasant water-courses,
And then wake up with red thirst in their throats,
And die more miserably because sleep
Has cheated them:  so they die cursing sleep
For having sent them dreams:  I will not curse you
Though I am cast away upon the sea
Which men call Desolation.

GUIDO

O God, God!

DUCHESS

But you will stay:  listen, I love you, Guido.
[She waits a little.]
Is echo dead, that when I say I love you
There is no answer?

GUIDO

Everything is dead,
Save one thing only, which shall die to-night!

DUCHESS

If you are going, touch me not, but go.
[Exit GUIDO.]
Barrier!  Barrier!
Why did he say there was a barrier?
There is no barrier between us two.
He lied to me, and shall I for that reason
Loathe what I love, and what I worshipped, hate?
I think we women do not love like that.
For if I cut his image from my heart,
My heart would, like a bleeding pilgrim, follow
That image through the world, and call it back
With little cries of love.
[Enter DUKE equipped for the chase, with falconers and hounds.]

DUKE

Madam, you keep us waiting;
You keep my dogs waiting.

DUCHESS

I will not ride to-day.

DUKE

How now, what's this?

DUCHESS

My Lord, I cannot go.

DUKE

What, pale face, do you dare to stand against me?
Why, I could set you on a sorry jade
And lead you through the town, till the low rabble
You feed toss up their hats and mock at you.

DUCHESS

Have you no word of kindness ever for me?

DUKE

I hold you in the hollow of my hand
And have no need on you to waste kind words.

DUCHESS

Well, I will go.

DUKE

[slapping his boot with his whip]
No, I have changed my mind,
You will stay here, and like a faithful wife
Watch from the window for our coming back.
Were it not dreadful if some accident
By chance should happen to your loving Lord?
Come, gentlemen, my hounds begin to chafe,
And I chafe too, having a patient wife.
Where is young Guido?

MAFFIO

My liege, I have not seen him
For a full hour past.

DUKE

It matters not,
I dare say I shall see him soon enough.
Well, Madam, you will sit at home and spin.
I do protest, sirs, the domestic virtues
Are often very beautiful in others.

[Exit DUKE with his Court.]

DUCHESS

The stars have fought against me, that is all,
And thus to-night when my Lord lieth asleep,
Will I fall upon my dagger, and so cease.
My heart is such a stone nothing can reach it
Except the dagger's edge:  let it go there,
To find what name it carries:  ay! to-night
Death will divorce the Duke; and yet to-night
He may die also, he is very old.
Why should he not die?  Yesterday his hand
Shook with a palsy:  men have died from palsy,
And why not he?  Are there not fevers also,
Agues and chills, and other maladies
Most incident to old age?
No, no, he will not die, he is too sinful;
Honest men die before their proper time.
Good men will die:  men by whose side the Duke
In all the sick pollution of his life
Seems like a leper:  women and children die,
But the Duke will not die, he is too sinful.
Oh, can it be
There is some immortality in sin,
Which virtue has not?  And does the wicked man
Draw life from what to other men were death,
Like poisonous plants that on corruption live?
No, no, I think God would not suffer that:
Yet the Duke will not die:  he is too sinful.
But I will die alone, and on this night
Grim Death shall be my bridegroom, and the tomb
My secret house of pleasure:  well, what of that?
The world's a graveyard, and we each, like coffins,
Within us bear a skeleton.
[Enter LORD MORANZONE all in black; he passes across the back of
the stage looking anxiously about.]

MORANZONE

Where is Guido?
I cannot find him anywhere.

DUCHESS

[catches sight of him]  O God!
'Twas thou who took my love away from me.

MORANZONE

[with a look of joy]
What, has he left you?

DUCHESS

Nay, you know he has.
Oh, give him back to me, give him back, I say,
Or I will tear your body limb from limb,
And to the common gibbet nail your head
Until the carrion crows have stripped it bare.
Better you had crossed a hungry lioness
Before you came between me and my love.
[With more pathos.]
Nay, give him back, you know not how I love him.
Here by this chair he knelt a half hour since;
'Twas there he stood, and there he looked at me;
This is the hand he kissed, and these the ears
Into whose open portals he did pour
A tale of love so musical that all
The birds stopped singing!  Oh, give him back to me.

MORANZONE

He does not love you, Madam.

DUCHESS

May the plague
Wither the tongue that says so!  Give him back.

MORANZONE

Madam, I tell you you will never see him,
Neither to-night, nor any other night.

DUCHESS

What is your name?

MORANZONE

My name?  Revenge!
[Exit.]

DUCHESS

Revenge!
I think I never harmed a little child.
What should Revenge do coming to my door?
It matters not, for Death is there already,
Waiting with his dim torch to light my way.
'Tis true men hate thee, Death, and yet I think
Thou wilt be kinder to me than my lover,
And so dispatch the messengers at once,
Harry the lazy steeds of lingering day,
And let the night, thy sister, come instead,
And drape the world in mourning; let the owl,
Who is thy minister, scream from his tower
And wake the toad with hooting, and the bat,
That is the slave of dim Persephone,
Wheel through the sombre air on wandering wing!
Tear up the shrieking mandrakes from the earth
And bid them make us music, and tell the mole
To dig deep down thy cold and narrow bed,
For I shall lie within thine arms to-night.

End of Act II.

Act III



Scene

A large corridor in the Ducal Palace:  a window (L.C.) looks out on
a view of Padua by moonlight:  a staircase (R.C.) leads up to a
door with a portiere of crimson velvet, with the Duke's arms
embroidered in gold on it:  on the lowest step of the staircase a
figure draped in black is sitting:  the hall is lit by an iron
cresset filled with burning tow:  thunder and lightning outside:
the time is night.

[Enter GUIDO through the window.]

GUIDO

The wind is rising:  how my ladder shook!
I thought that every gust would break the cords!
[Looks out at the city.]
Christ!  What a night:
Great thunder in the heavens, and wild lightnings
Striking from pinnacle to pinnacle
Across the city, till the dim houses seem
To shudder and to shake as each new glare
Dashes adown the street.
[Passes across the stage to foot of staircase.]
Ah! who art thou
That sittest on the stair, like unto Death
Waiting a guilty soul?  [A pause.]
Canst thou not speak?
Or has this storm laid palsy on thy tongue,
And chilled thy utterance?
[The figure rises and takes off his mask.]

MORANZONE

Guido Ferranti,
Thy murdered father laughs for joy to-night.

GUIDO

[confusedly]
What, art thou here?

MORANZONE

Ay, waiting for your coming.

GUIDO

[looking away from him]
I did not think to see you, but am glad,
That you may know the thing I mean to do.

MORANZONE

First, I would have you know my well-laid plans;
Listen:  I have set horses at the gate
Which leads to Parma:  when you have done your business
We will ride hence, and by to-morrow night -

GUIDO

It cannot be.

MORANZONE

Nay, but it shall.

GUIDO

Listen, Lord Moranzone,
I am resolved not to kill this man.

MORANZONE

Surely my ears are traitors, speak again:
It cannot be but age has dulled my powers,
I am an old man now:  what did you say?
You said that with that dagger in your belt
You would avenge your father's bloody murder;
Did you not say that?

GUIDO

No, my lord, I said
I was resolved not to kill the Duke.

MORANZONE

You said not that; it is my senses mock me;
Or else this midnight air o'ercharged with storm
Alters your message in the giving it.

GUIDO

Nay, you heard rightly; I'll not kill this man.

MORANZONE

What of thine oath, thou traitor, what of thine oath?

GUIDO

I am resolved not to keep that oath.

MORANZONE

What of thy murdered father?

GUIDO

Dost thou think
My father would be glad to see me coming,
This old man's blood still hot upon mine hands?

MORANZONE

Ay! he would laugh for joy.

GUIDO

I do not think so,
There is better knowledge in the other world;
Vengeance is God's, let God himself revenge.

MORANZONE

Thou art God's minister of vengeance.

GUIDO

No!
God hath no minister but his own hand.
I will not kill this man.

MORANZONE

Why are you here,
If not to kill him, then?

GUIDO

Lord Moranzone,
I purpose to ascend to the Duke's chamber,
And as he lies asleep lay on his breast
The dagger and this writing; when he awakes
Then he will know who held him in his power
And slew him not:  this is the noblest vengeance
Which I can take.

MORANZONE

You will not slay him?

GUIDO

No.

MORANZONE

Ignoble son of a noble father,
Who sufferest this man who sold that father
To live an hour.

GUIDO

'Twas thou that hindered me;
I would have killed him in the open square,
The day I saw him first.

MORANZONE

It was not yet time;
Now it is time, and, like some green-faced girl,
Thou pratest of forgiveness.

GUIDO

No! revenge:
The right revenge my father's son should take.

MORANZONE

You are a coward,
Take out the knife, get to the Duke's chamber,
And bring me back his heart upon the blade.
When he is dead, then you can talk to me
Of noble vengeances.

GUIDO

Upon thine honour,
And by the love thou bearest my father's name,
Dost thou think my father, that great gentleman,
That generous soldier, that most chivalrous lord,
Would have crept at night-time, like a common thief,
And stabbed an old man sleeping in his bed,
However he had wronged him:  tell me that.

MORANZONE

[after some hesitation]
You have sworn an oath, see that you keep that oath.
Boy, do you think I do not know your secret,
Your traffic with the Duchess?

GUIDO

Silence, liar!
The very moon in heaven is not more chaste.
Nor the white stars so pure.

MORANZONE

And yet, you love her;
Weak fool, to let love in upon your life,
Save as a plaything.

GUIDO

You do well to talk:
Within your veins, old man, the pulse of youth
Throbs with no ardour.  Your eyes full of rheum
Have against Beauty closed their filmy doors,
And your clogged ears, losing their natural sense,
Have shut you from the music of the world.
You talk of love!  You know not what it is.

MORANZONE

Oh, in my time, boy, have I walked i' the moon,
Swore I would live on kisses and on blisses,
Swore I would die for love, and did not die,
Wrote love bad verses; ay, and sung them badly,
Like all true lovers:  Oh, I have done the tricks!
I know the partings and the chamberings;
We are all animals at best, and love
Is merely passion with a holy name.

GUIDO

Now then I know you have not loved at all.
Love is the sacrament of life; it sets
Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men
Of all the vile pollutions of this world;
It is the fire which purges gold from dross,
It is the fan which winnows wheat from chaff,
It is the spring which in some wintry soil
Makes innocence to blossom like a rose.
The days are over when God walked with men,
But Love, which is his image, holds his place.
When a man loves a woman, then he knows
God's secret, and the secret of the world.
There is no house so lowly or so mean,
Which, if their hearts be pure who live in it,
Love will not enter; but if bloody murder
Knock at the Palace gate and is let in,
Love like a wounded thing creeps out and dies.
This is the punishment God sets on sin.
The wicked cannot love.
[A groan comes from the DUKE's chamber.]
Ah!  What is that?
Do you not hear?  'Twas nothing.
So I think
That it is woman's mission by their love
To save the souls of men:  and loving her,
My Lady, my white Beatrice, I begin
To see a nobler and a holier vengeance
In letting this man live, than doth reside
In bloody deeds o' night, stabs in the dark,
And young hands clutching at a palsied throat.
It was, I think, for love's sake that Lord Christ,
Who was indeed himself incarnate Love,
Bade every man forgive his enemy.

MORANZONE

[sneeringly]
That was in Palestine, not Padua;
And said for saints:  I have to do with men.

GUIDO

It was for all time said.

MORANZONE

And your white Duchess,
What will she do to thank you?

GUIDO

Alas, I will not see her face again.
'Tis but twelve hours since I parted from her,
So suddenly, and with such violent passion,
That she has shut her heart against me now:
No, I will never see her.

MORANZONE

What will you do?

GUIDO

After that I have laid the dagger there,
Get hence to-night from Padua.

MORANZONE

And then?

GUIDO

I will take service with the Doge at Venice,
And bid him pack me straightway to the wars,
And there I will, being now sick of life,
Throw that poor life against some desperate spear.
[A groan from the DUKE'S chamber again.]
Did you not hear a voice?

MORANZONE

I always hear,
From the dim confines of some sepulchre,
A voice that cries for vengeance.  We waste time,
It will be morning soon; are you resolved
You will not kill the Duke?

GUIDO

I am resolved.

MORANZONE

O wretched father, lying unavenged.

GUIDO

More wretched, were thy son a murderer.

MORANZONE

Why, what is life?

GUIDO

I do not know, my lord,
I did not give it, and I dare not take it.

MORANZONE

I do not thank God often; but I think
I thank him now that I have got no son!
And you, what bastard blood flows in your veins
That when you have your enemy in your grasp
You let him go!  I would that I had left you
With the dull hinds that reared you.

GUIDO

Better perhaps
That you had done so!  May be better still
I'd not been born to this distressful world.

MORANZONE

Farewell!

GUIDO

Farewell!  Some day, Lord Moranzone,
You will understand my vengeance.

MORANZONE

Never, boy.
[Gets out of window and exit by rope ladder.]

GUIDO

Father, I think thou knowest my resolve,
And with this nobler vengeance art content.
Father, I think in letting this man live
That I am doing what thou wouldst have done.
Father, I know not if a human voice
Can pierce the iron gateway of the dead,
Or if the dead are set in ignorance
Of what we do, or do not, for their sakes.
And yet I feel a presence in the air,
There is a shadow standing at my side,
And ghostly kisses seem to touch my lips,
And leave them holier.  [Kneels down.]
O father, if 'tis thou,
Canst thou not burst through the decrees of death,
And if corporeal semblance show thyself,
That I may touch thy hand!
No, there is nothing.  [Rises.]
'Tis the night that cheats us with its phantoms,
And, like a puppet-master, makes us think
That things are real which are not.  It grows late.
Now must I to my business.
[Pulls out a letter from his doublet and reads it.]
When he wakes,
And sees this letter, and the dagger with it,
Will he not have some loathing for his life,
Repent, perchance, and lead a better life,
Or will he mock because a young man spared
His natural enemy?  I do not care.
Father, it is thy bidding that I do,
Thy bidding, and the bidding of my love
Which teaches me to know thee as thou art.
[Ascends staircase stealthily, and just as he reaches out his hand
to draw back the curtain the Duchess appears all in white.  GUIDO
starts back.]

DUCHESS

Guido! what do you here so late?

GUIDO

O white and spotless angel of my life,
Sure thou hast come from Heaven with a message
That mercy is more noble than revenge?

DUCHESS

There is no barrier between us now.

GUIDO

None, love, nor shall be.

DUCHESS

I have seen to that.

GUIDO

Tarry here for me.

DUCHESS

No, you are not going?
You will not leave me as you did before?

GUIDO

I will return within a moment's space,
But first I must repair to the Duke's chamber,
And leave this letter and this dagger there,
That when he wakes -

DUCHESS

When who wakes?

GUIDO

Why, the Duke.

DUCHESS

He will not wake again.

GUIDO

What, is he dead?

DUCHESS

Ay! he is dead.

GUIDO

O God! how wonderful
Are all thy secret ways!  Who would have said
That on this very night, when I had yielded
Into thy hands the vengeance that is thine,
Thou with thy finger wouldst have touched the man,
And bade him come before thy judgment seat.

DUCHESS

I have just killed him.

GUIDO

[in horror]  Oh!

DUCHESS

He was asleep;
Come closer, love, and I will tell you all.
I had resolved to kill myself to-night.
About an hour ago I waked from sleep,
And took my dagger from beneath my pillow,
Where I had hidden it to serve my need,
And drew it from the sheath, and felt the edge,
And thought of you, and how I loved you, Guido,
And turned to fall upon it, when I marked
The old man sleeping, full of years and sin;
There lay he muttering curses in his sleep,
And as I looked upon his evil face
Suddenly like a flame there flashed across me,
There is the barrier which Guido spoke of:
You said there lay a barrier between us,
What barrier but he? -
I hardly know
What happened, but a steaming mist of blood
Rose up between us two.

GUIDO

Oh, horrible!

DUCHESS

And then he groaned,
And then he groaned no more!  I only heard
The dripping of the blood upon the floor.

GUIDO

Enough, enough.

DUCHESS

Will you not kiss me now?
Do you remember saying that women's love
Turns men to angels? well, the love of man
Turns women into martyrs; for its sake
We do or suffer anything.

GUIDO

O God!

DUCHESS

Will you not speak?

GUIDO

I cannot speak at all.

DUCHESS

Let as not talk of this!  Let us go hence:
Is not the barrier broken down between us?
What would you more?  Come, it is almost morning.
[Puts her hand on GUIDO'S.]

GUIDO

[breaking from her]
O damned saint!  O angel fresh from Hell!
What bloody devil tempted thee to this!
That thou hast killed thy husband, that is nothing -
Hell was already gaping for his soul -
But thou hast murdered Love, and in its place
Hast set a horrible and bloodstained thing,
Whose very breath breeds pestilence and plague,
And strangles Love.

DUCHESS

[in amazed wonder]
I did it all for you.
I would not have you do it, had you willed it,
For I would keep you without blot or stain,
A thing unblemished, unassailed, untarnished.
Men do not know what women do for love.
Have I not wrecked my soul for your dear sake,
Here and hereafter?

GUIDO

No, do not touch me,
Between us lies a thin red stream of blood;
I dare not look across it:  when you stabbed him
You stabbed Love with a sharp knife to the heart.
We cannot meet again.

DUCHESS

[wringing her hands]
For you!  For you!
I did it all for you:  have you forgotten?
You said there was a barrier between us;
That barrier lies now i' the upper chamber
Upset, overthrown, beaten, and battered down,
And will not part us ever.

GUIDO

No, you mistook:
Sin was the barrier, you have raised it up;
Crime was the barrier, you have set it there.
The barrier was murder, and your hand
Has builded it so high it shuts out heaven,
It shuts out God.

DUCHESS

I did it all for you;
You dare not leave me now:  nay, Guido, listen.
Get horses ready, we will fly to-night.
The past is a bad dream, we will forget it:
Before us lies the future:  shall we not have
Sweet days of love beneath our vines and laugh? -
No, no, we will not laugh, but, when we weep,
Well, we will weep together; I will serve you;
I will be very meek and very gentle:
You do not know me.

GUIDO

Nay, I know you now;
Get hence, I say, out of my sight.

DUCHESS

[pacing up and down]
O God,
How I have loved this man!

GUIDO

You never loved me.
Had it been so, Love would have stayed your hand.
How could we sit together at Love's table?
You have poured poison in the sacred wine,
And Murder dips his fingers in the sop.

DUCHESS

[throws herself on her knees]
Then slay me now!  I have spilt blood to-night,
You shall spill more, so we go hand in hand
To heaven or to hell.  Draw your sword, Guido.
Quick, let your soul go chambering in my heart,
It will but find its master's image there.
Nay, if you will not slay me with your sword,
Bid me to fall upon this reeking knife,
And I will do it.

GUIDO

[wresting knife from her]
Give it to me, I say.
O God, your very hands are wet with blood!
This place is Hell, I cannot tarry here.
I pray you let me see your face no more.

DUCHESS

Better for me I had not seen your face.
[GUIDO recoils:  she seizes his hands as she kneels.]
Nay, Guido, listen for a while:
Until you came to Padua I lived
Wretched indeed, but with no murderous thought,
Very submissive to a cruel Lord,
Very obedient to unjust commands,

As pure I think as any gentle girl
Who now would turn in horror from my hands -
[Stands up.]
You came:  ah!  Guido, the first kindly words
I ever heard since I had come from France
Were from your lips:  well, well, that is no matter.
You came, and in the passion of your eyes
I read love's meaning; everything you said
Touched my dumb soul to music, so I loved you.
And yet I did not tell you of my love.
'Twas you who sought me out, knelt at my feet
As I kneel now at yours, and with sweet vows,
[Kneels.]
Whose music seems to linger in my ears,
Swore that you loved me, and I trusted you.
I think there are many women in the world
Who would have tempted you to kill the man.
I did not.
Yet I know that had I done so,
I had not been thus humbled in the dust,
[Stands up.]
But you had loved me very faithfully.
[After a pause approaches him timidly.]
I do not think you understand me, Guido:
It was for your sake that I wrought this deed
Whose horror now chills my young blood to ice,
For your sake only.  [Stretching out her arm.]
Will you not speak to me?
Love me a little:  in my girlish life
I have been starved for love, and kindliness
Has passed me by.

GUIDO

I dare not look at you:
You come to me with too pronounced a favour;
Get to your tirewomen.

DUCHESS

Ay, there it is!
There speaks the man! yet had you come to me
With any heavy sin upon your soul,
Some murder done for hire, not for love,
Why, I had sat and watched at your bedside
All through the night-time, lest Remorse might come
And pour his poisons in your ear, and so
Keep you from sleeping!  Sure it is the guilty,
Who, being very wretched, need love most.

GUIDO

There is no love where there is any guilt.

DUCHESS

No love where there is any guilt!  O God,
How differently do we love from men!
There is many a woman here in Padua,
Some workman's wife, or ruder artisan's,
Whose husband spends the wages of the week
In a coarse revel, or a tavern brawl,
And reeling home late on the Saturday night,
Finds his wife sitting by a fireless hearth,
Trying to hush the child who cries for hunger,
And then sets to and beats his wife because
The child is hungry, and the fire black.
Yet the wife loves him! and will rise next day
With some red bruise across a careworn face,
And sweep the house, and do the common service,
And try and smile, and only be too glad
If he does not beat her a second time
Before her child!--that is how women love.
[A pause:  GUIDO says nothing.]
I think you will not drive me from your side.
Where have I got to go if you reject me? -
You for whose sake this hand has murdered life,
You for whose sake my soul has wrecked itself
Beyond all hope of pardon.

GUIDO

Get thee gone:
The dead man is a ghost, and our love too,
Flits like a ghost about its desolate tomb,
And wanders through this charnel house, and weeps
That when you slew your lord you slew it also.
Do you not see?

DUCHESS

I see when men love women
They give them but a little of their lives,
But women when they love give everything;
I see that, Guido, now.

GUIDO

Away, away,
And come not back till you have waked your dead.

DUCHESS

I would to God that I could wake the dead,
Put vision in the glazed eves, and give
The tongue its natural utterance, and bid
The heart to beat again:  that cannot be:
For what is done, is done:  and what is dead
Is dead for ever:  the fire cannot warm him:
The winter cannot hurt him with its snows;
Something has gone from him; if you call him now,
He will not answer; if you mock him now,
He will not laugh; and if you stab him now
He will not bleed.
I would that I could wake him!
O God, put back the sun a little space,
And from the roll of time blot out to-night,
And bid it not have been!  Put back the sun,
And make me what I was an hour ago!
No, no, time will not stop for anything,
Nor the sun stay its courses, though Repentance
Calling it back grow hoarse; but you, my love,
Have you no word of pity even for me?
O Guido, Guido, will you not kiss me once?
Drive me not to some desperate resolve:
Women grow mad when they are treated thus:
Will you not kiss me once?

GUIDO

[holding up knife]
I will not kiss you
Until the blood grows dry upon this knife,
[Wildly]  Back to your dead!

DUCHESS

[going up the stairs]
Why, then I will be gone! and may you find
More mercy than you showed to me to-night!

GUIDO

Let me find mercy when I go at night
And do foul murder.

DUCHESS

[coming down a few steps.]
Murder did you say?
Murder is hungry, and still cries for more,
And Death, his brother, is not satisfied,
But walks the house, and will not go away,
Unless he has a comrade!  Tarry, Death,
For I will give thee a most faithful lackey
To travel with thee!  Murder, call no more,
For thou shalt eat thy fill.
There is a storm
Will break upon this house before the morning,
So horrible, that the white moon already
Turns grey and sick with terror, the low wind
Goes moaning round the house, and the high stars
Run madly through the vaulted firmament,
As though the night wept tears of liquid fire
For what the day shall look upon.  Oh, weep,
Thou lamentable heaven!  Weep thy fill!
Though sorrow like a cataract drench the fields,
And make the earth one bitter lake of tears,
It would not be enough.  [A peal of thunder.]
Do you not hear,
There is artillery in the Heaven to-night.
Vengeance is wakened up, and has unloosed
His dogs upon the world, and in this matter
Which lies between us two, let him who draws
The thunder on his head beware the ruin
Which the forked flame brings after.
[A flash of lightning followed by a peal of thunder.]

GUIDO

Away! away!
[Exit the DUCHESS, who as she lifts the crimson curtain looks back
for a moment at GUIDO, but he makes no sign.  More thunder.]
Now is life fallen in ashes at my feet
And noble love self-slain; and in its place
Crept murder with its silent bloody feet.
And she who wrought it--Oh! and yet she loved me,
And for my sake did do this dreadful thing.
I have been cruel to her:  Beatrice!
Beatrice, I say, come back.
[Begins to ascend staircase, when the noise of Soldiers is heard.]
Ah! what is that?
Torches ablaze, and noise of hurrying feet.
Pray God they have not seized her.
[Noise grows louder.]
Beatrice!
There is yet time to escape.  Come down, come out!
[The voice of the DUCHESS outside.]
This way went he, the man who slew my lord.
[Down the staircase comes hurrying a confused body of Soldiers;
GUIDO is not seen at first, till the DUCHESS surrounded by Servants
carrying torches appears at the top of the staircase, and points to
GUIDO, who is seized at once, one of the Soldiers dragging the
knife from his hand and showing it to the Captain of the Guard in
sight of the audience.  Tableau.]

End of Act III.

Act IV


Scene

The Court of Justice:  the walls are hung with stamped grey velvet:
above the hangings the wall is red, and gilt symbolical figures
bear up the roof, which is made of red beams with grey soffits and
moulding:  a canopy of white satin flowered with gold is set for
the Duchess:  below it a long bench with red cloth for the Judges:
below that a table for the clerks of the court.  Two soldiers stand
on each side of the canopy, and two soldiers guard the door; the
citizens have some of them collected in the Court; others are
coming in greeting one another; two tipstaffs in violet keep order
with long white wands.

FIRST CITIZEN

Good morrow, neighbour Anthony.

SECOND CITIZEN

Good morrow, neighbour Dominick.

FIRST CITIZEN

This is a strange day for Padua, is it not?--the Duke being dead.

SECOND CITIZEN

I tell you, neighbour Dominick, I have not known such a day since
the last Duke died.

FIRST CITIZEN

They will try him first, and sentence him afterwards, will they
not, neighbour Anthony?

SECOND CITIZEN

Nay, for he might 'scape his punishment then; but they will condemn
him first so that he gets his deserts, and give him trial
afterwards so that no injustice is done.

FIRST CITIZEN

Well, well, it will go hard with him I doubt not.

SECOND CITIZEN

Surely it is a grievous thing to shed a Duke's blood.

THIRD CITIZEN

They say a Duke has blue blood.

SECOND CITIZEN

I think our Duke's blood was black like his soul.

FIRST CITIZEN

Have a watch, neighbour Anthony, the officer is looking at thee.

SECOND CITIZEN

I care not if he does but look at me; he cannot whip me with the
lashes of his eye.

THIRD CITIZEN

What think you of this young man who stuck the knife into the Duke?

SECOND CITIZEN

Why, that he is a well-behaved, and a well-meaning, and a well-
favoured lad, and yet wicked in that he killed the Duke.

THIRD CITIZEN

'Twas the first time he did it:  may be the law will not be hard on
him, as he did not do it before.

SECOND CITIZEN

True.

TIPSTAFF

Silence, knave.

SECOND CITIZEN

Am I thy looking-glass, Master Tipstaff, that thou callest me
knave?

FIRST CITIZEN

Here be one of the household coming.  Well, Dame Lucy, thou art of
the Court, how does thy poor mistress the Duchess, with her sweet
face?

MISTRESS LUCY

O well-a-day!  O miserable day!  O day!  O misery!  Why it is just
nineteen years last June, at Michaelmas, since I was married to my
husband, and it is August now, and here is the Duke murdered; there
is a coincidence for you!

SECOND CITIZEN

Why, if it is a coincidence, they may not kill the young man:
there is no law against coincidences.

FIRST CITIZEN

But how does the Duchess?

MISTRESS LUCY

Well well, I knew some harm would happen to the house:  six weeks
ago the cakes were all burned on one side, and last Saint Martin
even as ever was, there flew into the candle a big moth that had
wings, and a'most scared me.

FIRST CITIZEN

But come to the Duchess, good gossip:  what of her?

MISTRESS LUCY

Marry, it is time you should ask after her, poor lady; she is
distraught almost.  Why, she has not slept, but paced the chamber
all night long.  I prayed her to have a posset, or some aqua-vitae,
and to get to bed and sleep a little for her health's sake, but she
answered me she was afraid she might dream.  That was a strange
answer, was it not?

SECOND CITIZEN

These great folk have not much sense, so Providence makes it up to
them in fine clothes.

MISTRESS LUCY

Well, well, God keep murder from us, I say, as long as we are
alive.

[Enter LORD MORANZONE hurriedly.]

MORANZONE

Is the Duke dead?

SECOND CITIZEN

He has a knife in his heart, which they say is not healthy for any
man.

MORANZONE

Who is accused of having killed him?

SECOND CITIZEN

Why, the prisoner, sir.

MORANZONE

But who is the prisoner?

SECOND CITIZEN

Why, he that is accused of the Duke's murder.

MORANZONE

I mean, what is his name?

SECOND CITIZEN

Faith, the same which his godfathers gave him:  what else should it
be?

TIPSTAFF

Guido Ferranti is his name, my lord.

MORANZONE

I almost knew thine answer ere you gave it.
[Aside.]
Yet it is strange he should have killed the Duke,
Seeing he left me in such different mood.
It is most likely when he saw the man,
This devil who had sold his father's life,
That passion from their seat within his heart
Thrust all his boyish theories of love,
And in their place set vengeance; yet I marvel
That he escaped not.
[Turning again to the crowd.]
How was he taken?  Tell me.

THIRD CITIZEN

Marry, sir, he was taken by the heels.

MORANZONE

But who seized him?

THIRD CITIZEN

Why, those that did lay hold of him.

MORANZONE

How was the alarm given?

THIRD CITIZEN

That I cannot tell you, sir.

MISTRESS LUCY

It was the Duchess herself who pointed him out.

MORANZONE

[aside]
The Duchess!  There is something strange in this.

MISTRESS LUCY

Ay! And the dagger was in his hand--the Duchess's own dagger.

MORANZONE

What did you say?

MISTRESS LUCY

Why, marry, that it was with the Duchess's dagger that the Duke was
killed.

MORANZONE

[aside]
There is some mystery about this:  I cannot understand it.

SECOND CITIZEN

They be very long a-coming,

FIRST CITIZEN

I warrant they will come soon enough for the prisoner.

TIPSTAFF

Silence in the Court!

FIRST CITIZEN

Thou dost break silence in bidding us keep it, Master Tipstaff.
[Enter the LORD JUSTICE and the other Judges.]

SECOND CITIZEN

Who is he in scarlet?  Is he the headsman?

THIRD CITIZEN

Nay, he is the Lord Justice.
[Enter GUIDO guarded.]

SECOND CITIZEN

There be the prisoner surely.

THIRD CITIZEN

He looks honest.

FIRST CITIZEN

That be his villany:  knaves nowadays do look so honest that honest
folk are forced to look like knaves so as to be different.
[Enter the Headman, who takes his stand behind GUIDO.]

SECOND CITIZEN

Yon be the headsman then!  O Lord!  Is the axe sharp, think you?

FIRST CITIZEN

Ay! sharper than thy wits are; but the edge is not towards him,
mark you.

SECOND CITIZEN

[scratching his neck]
I' faith, I like it not so near.

FIRST CITIZEN

Tut, thou need'st not be afraid; they never cut the heads of common
folk:  they do but hang us.
[Trumpets outside.]

THIRD CITIZEN

What are the trumpets for?  Is the trial over?

FIRST CITIZEN

Nay, 'tis for the Duchess.
[Enter the DUCHESS in black velvet; her train of flowered black
velvet is carried by two pages in violet; with her is the CARDINAL
in scarlet, and the gentlemen of the Court in black; she takes her
seat on the throne above the Judges, who rise and take their caps
off as she enters; the CARDINAL sits next to her a little lower;
the Courtiers group themselves about the throne.]

SECOND CITIZEN

O poor lady, how pale she is!  Will she sit there?

FIRST CITIZEN

Ay! she is in the Duke's place now.

SECOND CITIZEN

That is a good thing for Padua; the Duchess is a very kind and
merciful Duchess; why, she cured my child of the ague once.

THIRD CITIZEN

Ay, and has given us bread:  do not forget the bread.

A SOLDIER

Stand back, good people.

SECOND CITIZEN

If we be good, why should we stand back?

TIPSTAFF

Silence in the Court!

LORD JUSTICE

May it please your Grace,
Is it your pleasure we proceed to trial
Of the Duke's murder?  [DUCHESS bows.]
Set the prisoner forth.
What is thy name?

GUIDO

It matters not, my lord.

LORD JUSTICE

Guido Ferranti is thy name in Padua.

GUIDO

A man may die as well under that name as any other.

LORD JUSTICE

Thou art not ignorant
What dreadful charge men lay against thee here,
Namely, the treacherous murder of thy Lord,
Simone Gesso, Duke of Padua;
What dost thou say in answer?

GUIDO

I say nothing.

LORD JUSTICE

[rising]
Guido Ferranti -

MORANZONE

[stepping from the crowd]
Tarry, my Lord Justice.

LORD JUSTICE

Who art thou that bid'st justice tarry, sir?

MORANZONE

So be it justice it can go its way;
But if it be not justice -

LORD JUSTICE

Who is this?

COUNT BARDI

A very noble gentleman, and well known
To the late Duke.

LORD JUSTICE

Sir, thou art come in time
To see the murder of the Duke avenged.
There stands the man who did this heinous thing.

MORANZONE

My lord,
I ask again what proof have ye?

LORD JUSTICE

[holding up the dagger]
This dagger,
Which from his blood-stained hands, itself all blood,
Last night the soldiers seized:  what further proof
Need we indeed?

MORANZONE

[takes the danger and approaches the DUCHESS]
Saw I not such a dagger
Hang from your Grace's girdle yesterday?
[The DUCHESS shudders and makes no answer.]
Ah! my Lord Justice, may I speak a moment
With this young man, who in such peril stands?

LORD JUSTICE

Ay, willingly, my lord, and may you turn him
To make a full avowal of his guilt.
[LORD MORANZONE goes over to GUIDO, who stands R. and clutches him
by the hand.]

MORANZONE

[in a low voice]
She did it!  Nay, I saw it in her eyes.
Boy, dost thou think I'll let thy father's son
Be by this woman butchered to his death?
Her husband sold your father, and the wife
Would sell the son in turn.

GUIDO

Lord Moranzone,
I alone did this thing:  be satisfied,
My father is avenged.

LORD JUSTICE

Doth he confess?

GUIDO

My lord, I do confess
That foul unnatural murder has been done.

FIRST CITIZEN

Why, look at that:  he has a pitiful heart, and does not like
murder; they will let him go for that.

LORD JUSTICE

Say you no more?

GUIDO

My lord, I say this also,
That to spill human blood is deadly sin.

SECOND CITIZEN

Marry, he should tell that to the headsman:  'tis a good sentiment.

GUIDO

Lastly, my lord, I do entreat the Court
To give me leave to utter openly
The dreadful secret of this mystery,
And to point out the very guilty one
Who with this dagger last night slew the Duke.

LORD JUSTICE

Thou hast leave to speak.

DUCHESS

[rising]
I say he shall not speak:
What need have we of further evidence?
Was he not taken in the house at night
In Guilt's own bloody livery?

LORD JUSTICE

[showing her the statute]
Your Grace
Can read the law.

DUCHESS

[waiving book aside]
Bethink you, my Lord Justice,
Is it not very like that such a one
May, in the presence of the people here,
Utter some slanderous word against my Lord,
Against the city, or the city's honour,
Perchance against myself.

LORD JUSTICE

My liege, the law.

DUCHESS

He shall not speak, but, with gags in his mouth,
Shall climb the ladder to the bloody block.

LORD JUSTICE

The law, my liege.

DUCHESS

We are not bound by law,
But with it we bind others.

MORANZONE

My Lord Justice,
Thou wilt not suffer this injustice here.

LORD JUSTICE

The Court needs not thy voice, Lord Moranzone.
Madam, it were a precedent most evil
To wrest the law from its appointed course,
For, though the cause be just, yet anarchy
Might on this licence touch these golden scales
And unjust causes unjust victories gain.

COUNT BARDI

I do not think your Grace can stay the law.

DUCHESS

Ay, it is well to preach and prate of law:
Methinks, my haughty lords of Padua,
If ye are hurt in pocket or estate,
So much as makes your monstrous revenues
Less by the value of one ferry toll,
Ye do not wait the tedious law's delay
With such sweet patience as ye counsel me.

COUNT BARDI

Madam, I think you wrong our nobles here.

DUCHESS

I think I wrong them not.  Which of you all
Finding a thief within his house at night,
With some poor chattel thrust into his rags,
Will stop and parley with him? do ye not
Give him unto the officer and his hook
To be dragged gaolwards straightway?
And so now,
Had ye been men, finding this fellow here,
With my Lord's life still hot upon his hands,
Ye would have haled him out into the court,
And struck his head off with an axe.

GUIDO

O God!

DUCHESS

Speak, my Lord Justice.

LORD JUSTICE

Your Grace, it cannot be:
The laws of Padua are most certain here:
And by those laws the common murderer even
May with his own lips plead, and make defence.

DUCHESS

This is no common murderer, Lord Justice,
But a great outlaw, and a most vile traitor,
Taken in open arms against the state.
For he who slays the man who rules a state
Slays the state also, widows every wife,
And makes each child an orphan, and no less
Is to be held a public enemy,
Than if he came with mighty ordonnance,
And all the spears of Venice at his back,
To beat and batter at our city gates -
Nay, is more dangerous to our commonwealth,
For walls and gates, bastions and forts, and things
Whose common elements are wood and stone
May be raised up, but who can raise again
The ruined body of my murdered lord,
And bid it live and laugh?

MAFFIO

Now by Saint Paul
I do not think that they will let him speak.

JEPPO VITELLOZZO

There is much in this, listen.

DUCHESS

Wherefore now,
Throw ashes on the head of Padua,
With sable banners hang each silent street,
Let every man be clad in solemn black;
But ere we turn to these sad rites of mourning
Let us bethink us of the desperate hand
Which wrought and brought this ruin on our state,
And straightway pack him to that narrow house,
Where no voice is, but with a little dust
Death fills right up the lying mouths of men.

GUIDO

Unhand me, knaves!  I tell thee, my Lord Justice,
Thou mightst as well bid the untrammelled ocean,
The winter whirlwind, or the Alpine storm,
Not roar their will, as bid me hold my peace!
Ay! though ye put your knives into my throat,
Each grim and gaping wound shall find a tongue,
And cry against you.

LORD JUSTICE

Sir, this violence
Avails you nothing; for save the tribunal
Give thee a lawful right to open speech,
Naught that thou sayest can be credited.
[The DUCHESS smiles and GUIDO falls back with a gesture of
despair.]
Madam, myself, and these wise Justices,
Will with your Grace's sanction now retire
Into another chamber, to decide
Upon this difficult matter of the law,
And search the statutes and the precedents.

DUCHESS

Go, my Lord Justice, search the statutes well,
Nor let this brawling traitor have his way.

MORANZONE

Go, my Lord Justice, search thy conscience well,
Nor let a man be sent to death unheard.
[Exit the LORD JUSTICE and the Judges.]

DUCHESS

Silence, thou evil genius of my life!
Thou com'st between us two a second time;
This time, my lord, I think the turn is mine.

GUIDO

I shall not die till I have uttered voice.

DUCHESS

Thou shalt die silent, and thy secret with thee.

GUIDO

Art thou that Beatrice, Duchess of Padua?

DUCHESS

I am what thou hast made me; look at me well,
I am thy handiwork.

MAFFIO

See, is she not
Like that white tigress which we saw at Venice,
Sent by some Indian soldan to the Doge?

JEPPO

Hush! she may hear thy chatter.

HEADSMAN

My young fellow,
I do not know why thou shouldst care to speak,
Seeing my axe is close upon thy neck,
And words of thine will never blunt its edge.
But if thou art so bent upon it, why
Thou mightest plead unto the Churchman yonder:
The common people call him kindly here,
Indeed I know he has a kindly soul.

GUIDO

This man, whose trade is death, hath courtesies
More than the others.

HEADSMAN

Why, God love you, sir,
I'll do you your last service on this earth.

GUIDO

My good Lord Cardinal, in a Christian land,
With Lord Christ's face of mercy looking down
From the high seat of Judgment, shall a man
Die unabsolved, unshrived?  And if not so,
May I not tell this dreadful tale of sin,
If any sin there be upon my soul?

DUCHESS

Thou dost but waste thy time.

CARDINAL

Alack, my son,
I have no power with the secular arm.
My task begins when justice has been done,
To urge the wavering sinner to repent
And to confess to Holy Church's ear
The dreadful secrets of a sinful mind.

DUCHESS

Thou mayest speak to the confessional
Until thy lips grow weary of their tale,
But here thou shalt not speak.

GUIDO

My reverend father,
You bring me but cold comfort.

CARDINAL

Nay, my son,
For the great power of our mother Church,
Ends not with this poor bubble of a world,
Of which we are but dust, as Jerome saith,
For if the sinner doth repentant die,
Our prayers and holy masses much avail
To bring the guilty soul from purgatory.

DUCHESS

And when in purgatory thou seest my Lord
With that red star of blood upon his heart,
Tell him I sent thee hither.

GUIDO

O dear God!

MORANZONE

This is the woman, is it, whom you loved?

CARDINAL

Your Grace is very cruel to this man.

DUCHESS

No more than he was cruel to her Grace.

CARDINAL

Yet mercy is the sovereign right of princes.

DUCHESS

I got no mercy, and I give it not.
He hath changed my heart into a heart of stone,
He hath sown rank nettles in a goodly field,
He hath poisoned the wells of pity in my breast,
He hath withered up all kindness at the root;
My life is as some famine murdered land,
Whence all good things have perished utterly:
I am what he hath made me.
[The DUCHESS weeps.]

JEPPO

Is it not strange
That she should so have loved the wicked Duke?

MAFFIO

It is most strange when women love their lords,
And when they love them not it is most strange.

JEPPO

What a philosopher thou art, Petrucci!

MAFFIO

Ay!  I can bear the ills of other men,
Which is philosophy.

DUCHESS

They tarry long,
These greybeards and their council; bid them come;
Bid them come quickly, else I think my heart
Will beat itself to bursting:  not indeed,
That I here care to live; God knows my life
Is not so full of joy, yet, for all that,
I would not die companionless, or go
Lonely to Hell.
Look, my Lord Cardinal,
Canst thou not see across my forehead here,
In scarlet letters writ, the word Revenge?
Fetch me some water, I will wash it off:
'Twas branded there last night, but in the day-time
I need not wear it, need I, my Lord Cardinal?
Oh, how it sears and burns into my brain:
Give me a knife; not that one, but another,
And I will cut it out.

CARDINAL

It is most natural
To be incensed against the murderous hand
That treacherously stabbed your sleeping lord.

DUCHESS

I would, old Cardinal, I could burn that hand;
But it will burn hereafter.

CARDINAL

Nay, the Church
Ordains us to forgive our enemies.

DUCHESS

Forgiveness? what is that?  I never got it.
They come at last:  well, my Lord Justice, well.
[Enter the LORD JUSTICE.]

LORD JUSTICE

Most gracious Lady, and our sovereign Liege,
We have long pondered on the point at issue,
And much considered of your Grace's wisdom,
And never wisdom spake from fairer lips -

DUCHESS

Proceed, sir, without compliment.

LORD JUSTICE

We find,
As your own Grace did rightly signify,
That any citizen, who by force or craft
Conspires against the person of the Liege,
Is ipso facto outlaw, void of rights
Such as pertain to other citizens,
Is traitor, and a public enemy,
Who may by any casual sword be slain
Without the slayer's danger; nay, if brought
Into the presence of the tribunal,
Must with dumb lips and silence reverent
Listen unto his well-deserved doom,
Nor has the privilege of open speech.

DUCHESS

I thank thee, my Lord Justice, heartily;
I like your law:  and now I pray dispatch
This public outlaw to his righteous doom;
What is there more?

LORD JUSTICE

Ay, there is more, your Grace.
This man being alien born, not Paduan,
Nor by allegiance bound unto the Duke,
Save such as common nature doth lay down,
Hath, though accused of treasons manifold,
Whose slightest penalty is certain death,
Yet still the right of public utterance
Before the people and the open court;
Nay, shall be much entreated by the Court,
To make some formal pleading for his life,
Lest his own city, righteously incensed,
Should with an unjust trial tax our state,
And wars spring up against the commonwealth:
So merciful are the laws of Padua
Unto the stranger living in her gates.

DUCHESS

Being of my Lord's household, is he stranger here?

LORD JUSTICE

Ay, until seven years of service spent
He cannot be a Paduan citizen.

GUIDO

I thank thee, my Lord Justice, heartily;
I like your law.

SECOND CITIZEN

I like no law at all:
Were there no law there'd be no law-breakers,
So all men would be virtuous.

FIRST CITIZEN

So they would;
'Tis a wise saying that, and brings you far.

TIPSTAFF

Ay! to the gallows, knave.

DUCHESS

Is this the law?

LORD JUSTICE

It is the law most certainly, my liege.

DUCHESS

Show me the book:  'tis written in blood-red.

JEPPO

Look at the Duchess.

DUCHESS

Thou accursed law,
I would that I could tear thee from the state
As easy as I tear thee from this book.
[Tears out the page.]
Come here, Count Bardi:  are you honourable?
Get a horse ready for me at my house,
For I must ride to Venice instantly.

BARDI

To Venice, Madam?

DUCHESS

Not a word of this,
Go, go at once.  [Exit COUNT BARDI.]
A moment, my Lord Justice.
If, as thou sayest it, this is the law -
Nay, nay, I doubt not that thou sayest right,
Though right be wrong in such a case as this -
May I not by the virtue of mine office
Adjourn this court until another day?

LORD JUSTICE

Madam, you cannot stay a trial for blood.

DUCHESS

I will not tarry then to hear this man
Rail with rude tongue against our sacred person.
Come, gentlemen.

LORD JUSTICE

My liege,
You cannot leave this court until the prisoner
Be purged or guilty of this dread offence.

DUCHESS

Cannot, Lord Justice?  By what right do you
Set barriers in my path where I should go?
Am I not Duchess here in Padua,
And the state's regent?

LORD JUSTICE

For that reason, Madam,
Being the fountain-head of life and death
Whence, like a mighty river, justice flows,
Without thy presence justice is dried up
And fails of purpose:  thou must tarry here.

DUCHESS

What, wilt thou keep me here against my will?

LORD JUSTICE

We pray thy will be not against the law.

DUCHESS

What if I force my way out of the court?

LORD JUSTICE

Thou canst not force the Court to give thee way.

DUCHESS

I will not tarry.  [Rises from her seat.]

LORD JUSTICE

Is the usher here?
Let him stand forth.  [Usher comes forward.]
Thou knowest thy business, sir.
[The Usher closes the doors of the court, which are L., and when
the DUCHESS and her retinue approach, kneels down.]

USHER

In all humility I beseech your Grace
Turn not my duty to discourtesy,
Nor make my unwelcome office an offence.

DUCHESS

Is there no gentleman amongst you all
To prick this prating fellow from our way?

MAFFIO

[drawing his sword]
Ay! that will I.

LORD JUSTICE

Count Maffio, have a care,
And you, sir.  [To JEPPO.]
The first man who draws his sword
Upon the meanest officer of this Court,
Dies before nightfall.

DUCHESS

Sirs, put up your swords:
It is most meet that I should hear this man.
[Goes back to throne.]

MORANZONE

Now hast thou got thy enemy in thy hand.

LORD JUSTICE

[taking the time-glass up]
Guido Ferranti, while the crumbling sand
Falls through this time-glass, thou hast leave to speak.
This and no more.

GUIDO

It is enough, my lord.

LORD JUSTICE

Thou standest on the extreme verge of death;
See that thou speakest nothing but the truth,
Naught else will serve thee.

GUIDO

If I speak it not,
Then give my body to the headsman there.

LORD JUSTICE

[turns the time-glass]
Let there be silence while the prisoner speaks.

TIPSTAFF

Silence in the Court there.

GUIDO

My Lords Justices,
And reverent judges of this worthy court,
I hardly know where to begin my tale,
So strangely dreadful is this history.
First, let me tell you of what birth I am.
I am the son of that good Duke Lorenzo
Who was with damned treachery done to death
By a most wicked villain, lately Duke
Of this good town of Padua.

LORD JUSTICE

Have a care,
It will avail thee nought to mock this prince
Who now lies in his coffin.

MAFFIO

By Saint James,
This is the Duke of Parma's rightful heir.

JEPPO

I always thought him noble.

GUIDO

I confess
That with the purport of a just revenge,
A most just vengeance on a man of blood,
I entered the Duke's household, served his will,
Sat at his board, drank of his wine, and was
His intimate:  so much I will confess,
And this too, that I waited till he grew
To give the fondest secrets of his life
Into my keeping, till he fawned on me,
And trusted me in every private matter
Even as my noble father trusted him;
That for this thing I waited.
[To the Headsman.]  Thou man of blood!
Turn not thine axe on me before the time:
Who knows if it be time for me to die?
Is there no other neck in court but mine?

LORD JUSTICE

The sand within the time-glass flows apace.
Come quickly to the murder of the Duke.

GUIDO

I will be brief:  Last night at twelve o' the clock,
By a strong rope I scaled the palace wall,
With purport to revenge my father's murder -
Ay! with that purport I confess, my lord.
This much I will acknowledge, and this also,
That as with stealthy feet I climbed the stair
Which led unto the chamber of the Duke,
And reached my hand out for the scarlet cloth
Which shook and shivered in the gusty door,
Lo! the white moon that sailed in the great heaven
Flooded with silver light the darkened room,
Night lit her candles for me, and I saw
The man I hated, cursing in his sleep;
And thinking of a most dear father murdered,
Sold to the scaffold, bartered to the block,
I smote the treacherous villain to the heart
With this same dagger, which by chance I found
Within the chamber.

DUCHESS

[rising from her seat]
Oh!

GUIDO

[hurriedly]
I killed the Duke.
Now, my Lord Justice, if I may crave a boon,
Suffer me not to see another sun
Light up the misery of this loathsome world.

LORD JUSTICE

Thy boon is granted, thou shalt die to-night.
Lead him away.  Come, Madam
[GUIDO is led off; as he goes the DUCHESS stretches out her arms
and rushes down the stage.]

DUCHESS

Guido!  Guido!
[Faints.]

Tableau

End of Act IV.