No More Learning

Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, _55
And in that hope have saved your life three times.

CENCI:
For which Aldobrandino owes you now
My fief beyond the Pincian. --Cardinal,
One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,
And so we shall converse with less restraint. _60
A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter--
He was accustomed to frequent my house;
So the next day HIS wife and daughter came
And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:
I think they never saw him any more. _65

CAMILLO:
Thou execrable man, beware! --

CENCI:
Of thee?
Nay, this is idle: --We should know each other.
As to my character for what men call crime
Seeing I please my senses as I list,
And vindicate that right with force or guile, _70
It is a public matter, and I care not
If I discuss it with you. I may speak
Alike to you and my own conscious heart--
For you give out that you have half reformed me,
Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent _75
If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.
All men delight in sensual luxury,
All men enjoy revenge; and most exult
Over the tortures they can never feel--
Flattering their secret peace with others' pain. _80
But I delight in nothing else. I love
The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,
When this shall be another's, and that mine.
And I have no remorse and little fear,
Which are, I think, the checks of other men. _85
This mood has grown upon me, until now
Any design my captious fancy makes
The picture of its wish, and it forms none
But such as men like you would start to know,
Is as my natural food and rest debarred _90
Until it be accomplished.

CAMILLO:
Art thou not
Most miserable?
CENCI:
Why miserable? --
No. --I am what your theologians call
Hardened;--which they must be in impudence,
So to revile a man's peculiar taste. _95
True, I was happier than I am, while yet
Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;
While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now
Invention palls:--Ay, we must all grow old--
And but that there remains a deed to act _100
Whose horror might make sharp an appetite
Duller than mine--I'd do,--I know not what.
When I was young I thought of nothing else
But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:
Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees, _105
And I grew tired:--yet, till I killed a foe,
And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans,
Knew I not what delight was else on earth,
Which now delights me little. I the rather
Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals, _110
The dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip,
Which tell me that the spirit weeps within
Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.
I rarely kill the body, which preserves,
Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, _115
Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear
For hourly pain.

NOTE:
_100 And but that edition 1821; But that editions 1819, 1839.

CAMILLO:
Hell's most abandoned fiend
Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,
Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;
I thank my God that I believe you not. _120

[ENTER ANDREA. ]

ANDREA:
My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca
Would speak with you.

CENCI:
Bid him attend me
In the grand saloon.

[EXIT ANDREA. ]

CAMILLO:
Farewell; and I will pray
Almighty God that thy false, impious words
Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee.