No More Learning

--But, say, _45
My innocent sister and my only brother
Are dying underneath my father's eye.
The memorable torturers of this land,
Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
Never inflicted on their meanest slave _50
What these endure; shall they have no protection?

CAMILLO:
Why, if they would petition to the Pope
I see not how he could refuse it--yet
He holds it of most dangerous example
In aught to weaken the paternal power, _55
Being, as 'twere, the shadow of his own.
I pray you now excuse me. I have business
That will not bear delay.

[EXIT CAMILLO. ]

GIACOMO:
But you, Orsino,
Have the petition: wherefore not present it?

ORSINO:
I have presented it, and backed it with _60
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;
It was returned unanswered. I doubt not
But that the strange and execrable deeds
Alleged in it--in truth they might well baffle
Any belief--have turned the Pope's displeasure _65
Upon the accusers from the criminal:
So I should guess from what Camillo said.

GIACOMO:
My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
Has whispered silence to his Holiness:
And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. _70
What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
For he who is our murderous persecutor
Is shielded by a father's holy name,
Or I would--

[STOPS ABRUPTLY. ]

ORSINO:
What? Fear not to speak your thought.
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover: _75
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
A father who is all a tyrant seems, _80
Were the profaner for his sacred name.
NOTE:
_77 makes Truth edition 1821; makes the truth editions 1819, 1839.

GIACOMO:
Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
Imagination with such fantasies
As the tongue dares not fashion into words, _85
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
To the mind's eye. --My heart denies itself
To think what you demand.

ORSINO:
But a friend's bosom
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, _90
And from the all-communicating air.
You look what I suspected--

GIACOMO:
Spare me now!
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
The path across the wilderness, lest he, _95
As my thoughts are, should be--a murderer.
I know you are my friend, and all I dare
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
But now my heart is heavy, and would take
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. _100
Pardon me, that I say farewell--farewell!
I would that to my own suspected self
I could address a word so full of peace.

ORSINO:
Farewell! --Be your thoughts better or more bold.
[EXIT GIACOMO. ]
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo _105
To feed his hope with cold encouragement:
It fortunately serves my close designs
That 'tis a trick of this same family
To analyse their own and other minds.
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will _110
Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,
Knowing what must be thought, and may be done.
Into the depth of darkest purposes:
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, _115
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
To which I grow half reconciled.