No More Learning

I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
My innocence.

CAMILLO [MUCH MOVED]:
What shall we think, my Lords?
Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen _60
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul
That she is guiltless.

JUDGE:
Yet she must be tortured.

CAMILLO:
I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
(If he now lived he would be just her age;
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes _65
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
As that most perfect image of God's love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
She is as pure as speechless infancy!

JUDGE:
Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, _70
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime
By the severest forms of law; nay even
To stretch a point against the criminals.
The prisoners stand accused of parricide _75
Upon such evidence as justifies
Torture.

BEATRICE:
What evidence? This man's?

JUDGE:
Even so.

BEATRICE [TO MARZIO]:
Come near.
And who art thou thus chosen forth
Out of the multitude of living men
To kill the innocent?

MARZIO:
I am Marzio, _80
Thy father's vassal.

BEATRICE:
Fix thine eyes on mine;
Answer to what I ask.
[TURNING TO THE JUDGES. ]
I prithee mark
His countenance: unlike bold calumny
Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,
He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends _85
His gaze on the blind earth.
[TO MARZIO. ]
What! wilt thou say
That I did murder my own father?

MARZIO:
Oh!
Spare me! My brain swims round. . . I cannot speak. . .