No More Learning

Decide; I wait.

(Falls on his knees. )

MARINA. Rise, poor pretender! Think'st thou
To please with genuflex on my vain heart,
As if I were a weak, confiding girl?
You err, my friend; prone at my feet I've seen
Knights and counts nobly born; but not for this
Did I reject their prayers, that a poor monk--

PRETENDER. (Rises. ) Scorn not the young pretender; noble virtues
May lie perchance in him, virtues well worthy
Of Moscow's throne, even of thy priceless hand--

MARINA. Say of a shameful noose, insolent wretch!

PRETENDER. I am to blame; carried away by pride
I have deceived God and the kings--have lied
To the world; but it is not for thee, Marina,
To judge me; I am guiltless before thee.
No, I could not deceive thee. Thou to me
Wast the one sacred being, before thee
I dared not to dissemble; love alone,
Love, jealous, blind, constrained me to tell all.

MARINA. What's that to boast of, idiot?
Who demanded
Confession of thee? If thou, a nameless vagrant
Couldst wonderfully blind two nations, then
At least thou shouldst have merited success,
And thy bold fraud secured, by constant, deep,
And lasting secrecy. Say, can I yield
Myself to thee, can I, forgetting rank
And maiden modesty, unite my fate
With thine, when thou thyself impetuously
Dost thus with such simplicity reveal
Thy shame? It was from Love he blabbed to me!
I marvel wherefore thou hast not from friendship
Disclosed thyself ere now before my father,
Or else before our king from joy, or else
Before Prince Vishnevetsky from the zeal
Of a devoted servant.

PRETENDER. I swear to thee
That thou alone wast able to extort
My heart's confession; I swear to thee that never,
Nowhere, not in the feast, not in the cup
Of folly, not in friendly confidence,
Not 'neath the knife nor tortures of the rack,
Shall my tongue give away these weighty secrets.

MARINA. Thou swearest! Then I must believe. Believe,
Of course! But may I learn by what thou swearest?
Is it not by the name of God, as suits
The Jesuits' devout adopted son?
Or by thy honour as a high-born knight?
Or, maybe, by thy royal word alone
As a king's son? Is it not so?