No More Learning

If he be now a cold, stiff corpse. . .

BEATRICE:
O, fear not _5
What may be done, but what is left undone:
The act seals all.
[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO. ]
Is it accomplished?

MARZIO:
What?

OLIMPIO:
Did you not call?

BEATRICE:
When?

OLIMPIO:
Now.

BEATRICE:
I ask if all is over?

OLIMPIO:
We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverend brow, _10
His veined hands crossed on his heaving breast,
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,
Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.

NOTE:
_10 reverend]reverent all editions.

MARZIO:
But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave _15
And leave me the reward.
And now my knife
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man
Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'God! hear, O, hear,
A father's curse! What, art Thou not our Father? '
And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost _20
Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
And could not kill him.

BEATRICE:
Miserable slaves!
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
Found ye the boldness to return to me
With such a deed undone? Base palterers! _25
Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience
Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
Is an equivocation: it sleeps over
A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
And when a deed where mercy insults Heaven. . . _30
Why do I talk?
[SNATCHING A DAGGER FROM ONE OF THEM, AND RAISING IT. ]
Hadst thou a tongue to say,
'She murdered her own father! '--I must do it!