style="font-size:15px;"> Seeing my axe is close upon thy neck,And words of thine will never blunt its edge.
But if thou art so bent upon it, why
Thou mightest plead unto the Churchman yonder:
The common people call him kindly here,
Indeed I know he has a kindly soul.
GUIDO
This man, whose trade is death, hath courtesies
More than the others.
HEADSMAN
Why, God love you, sir,
I’ll do you your last service on this earth.
GUIDO
My good Lord Cardinal, in a Christian land,
With Lord Christ’s face of mercy looking down
From the high seat of Judgment, shall a man
Die unabsolved, unshrived? And if not so,
May I not tell this dreadful tale of sin,
If any sin there be upon my soul?
DUCHESS
Thou dost but waste thy time.
CARDINAL
Alack, my son,
I have no power with the secular arm.
My task begins when justice has been done,
To urge the wavering sinner to repent
And to confess to Holy Church’s ear
The dreadful secrets of a sinful mind.
DUCHESS
Thou mayest speak to the confessional
Until thy lips grow weary of their tale,
But here thou shalt not speak.
GUIDO
My reverend father,
You bring me but cold comfort.
CARDINAL
Nay, my son,
For the great power of our mother Church,
Ends not with this poor bubble of a world,
Of which we are but dust, as Jerome saith,
For if the sinner doth repentant die,
Our prayers and holy masses much avail
To bring the guilty soul from purgatory.
DUCHESS
And when in purgatory thou seest my Lord
With that red star of blood upon his heart,
Tell him I sent thee hither.
GUIDO
O dear God!
MORANZONE
This is the woman, is it, whom you loved?
CARDINAL
Your Grace is very cruel to this man.
DUCHESS
No more than he was cruel to her Grace.
CARDINAL
Yet mercy is the sovereign right of princes.
DUCHESS
I got no mercy, and I give it not.
He hath changed my heart into a heart of stone,
He hath sown rank nettles in a goodly field,
He hath poisoned the wells of pity in my breast,
He hath withered up all kindness at the root;
My life is as some famine murdered land,
Whence all good things have perished utterly:
I am what he hath made me.
[The DUCHESS weeps.]
JEPPO
Is it not strange
That she should so have loved the wicked Duke?
MAFFIO
It is most strange when women love their lords,
And when they love them not it is most strange.
JEPPO
What a philosopher thou art, Petrucci!
MAFFIO
Ay! I can bear the ills of other men,
Which is philosophy.
DUCHESS
They tarry long,
These greybeards and their council; bid them come;
Bid them come quickly, else I think my heart
Will beat itself to bursting: not indeed,
That I here care to live; God knows my life
Is not so full of joy, yet, for all that,
I would not die companionless, or go
Lonely to Hell.
Look, my Lord Cardinal,
Canst thou not see across my forehead here,
In scarlet letters writ, the word Revenge?
Fetch me some water, I will wash it off:
‘Twas branded there last night, but in the daytime
I need not wear it, need I, my Lord Cardinal?
Oh, how it sears and burns into my brain:
Give me a knife; not that one, but another,
And I will cut it out.
CARDINAL
It is most natural
To be incensed against the murderous hand
That treacherously stabbed your sleeping lord.
DUCHESS
