our daggers.
bianca
[to Guido] Kill him! kill him!
simone
Put out the torch, Bianca. [Bianca puts out torch.]
Now, my good Lord,
Now to the death of one, or both of us,
Or all three it may be. [They fight.]
There and there.
Ah, devil! do I hold thee in my grip?
[Simone overpowers Guido and throws him down over table.]
·178· guido
Fool! take your strangling fingers from my throat.
I am my father’s only son; the State
Has but one heir, and that false enemy France
Waits for the ending of my father’s line
To fall upon our city.
simone
Hush! your father
When he is childless will be happier.
As for the State, I think our state of Florence
Needs no adulterous pilot at its helm.
Your life would soil its lilies.
guido
Take off your hands
Take off your damnèd hands. Loose me, I say!
simone
Nay, you are caught in such a cunning vice
That nothing will avail you, and your life
Narrowed into a single point of shame
Ends with that shame and ends most shamefully.
·179· guido
Oh! let me have a priest before I die!
simone
What wouldst thou have a priest for? Tell thy sins
To God, whom thou shalt see this very night
And then no more for ever. Tell thy sins
To Him who is most just, being pitiless,
Most pitiful being just. As for myself …
guido
Oh! help me, sweet Bianca! help me, Bianca,
Thou knowest I am innocent of harm.
simone
What, is there life yet in those lying lips?
Die like a dog with lolling tongue! Die! Die!
And the dumb river shall receive your corse
And wash it all unheeded to the sea.
guido
Lord Christ receive my wretched soul to-night!
·180· simone
Amen to that. Now for the other.
[He dies. Simone rises and looks at Bianca. She comes towards him as one dazed with wonder and with outstretched arms.]
bianca
Why
Did you not tell me you were so strong?
simone
Why
Did you not tell me you were beautiful?
[He kisses her on the mouth.]
Curtain
The Picture
of
Dorian Gray.
by
Oscar Wilde
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine,
London: Ward, Lock & Co., Salisbury Square, E.C.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.
July 1890
[The text follows the
magazine release.]
contents.
·3· Chapter I.
The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those
