And if I refuse, what will happen?
SALFIERI
Only something very simple, six years ago, I left Venice under weight of a death warrant—a motive more powerful than my life has brought me back.
A ship let me off on the beach—and if I get back to it in an hour, it is my vessel. I no longer know a single friend in Venice.
Your protection is my life—your refusal is my death. If you refuse me, we are both young—you have a dagger—I have one. The chances are equal—if you kill me, I have no need of asylum tonight; if I kill you, my refuge is found. I no more fear sleeping near a dead enemy than beside a living friend.
BRAVO
And if, on the contrary, I protect you?
SALFIERI
You will have done an immense service to a man who will remember it eternally.
BRAVO
(extending his hand)
Put it there.
SALFIERI
Thanks.
BRAVO
Now, I am going to close this window for I am no longer alone.
(coming back)
Well?
SALFIERI
Well, my host—I am at your orders. Do you want to stay up, I’ll stay up. Do you want to sleep—toss yourself on this bed and I will toss myself on this cloak—are you disposed to do for me more than you have done so far? I will tell you what brings me to Venice—for what purpose I have come—what woman I am pursuing—what man I am seeking—then, if you cause me to speak to his man, or to meet this woman, you will be more to me than a protector, than a friend, you will be a god.
BRAVO
Speak and what I can do I will do.
SALFIERI
I’m exiled over a political affair, there’s only one thing that can make an exile forget his country—it’s love. Proscribed by the Republic of Venice, I found exile in the Republic of Genoa—by chance, I met a young girl, I loved her, she loved me, I forgot everything.
BRAVO
That’s really a youthful head and a youthful heart—that’s really love.
SALFIERI
Yes, yes—for six months I had only one thought—her—all my days were spent waiting for night, because, guarded as she was, only at night could I see her. Then I crossed over the garden wall. Confident and pure as a Madonna, she came to open up for me—and I, timid and childishly amorous, I lay at her feet seeking my life in her eyes—forgetting the past which was slipping away without her, happy in the present I felt was mine—confident in a future I believed was ours—
BRAVO
That’s really the way the mad hours of youth are spent, I remember myself—
SALFIERI
One night I came as usual—I found open the door that Violetta ordinarily opened to me—
BRAVO
(shivering)
Violetta.
SALFIERI
That was her name—it brings back some memory—?
BRAVO
I, too, I loved a woman named Violetta—
SALFIERI
You—!
BRAVO
For her I left Venice. Venice that I never expected to see again and that to my misfortune I have seen—Oh! But that was sixteen years ago—and that woman is dead—it’s the first time in sixteen years I’ve heard that name mentioned—and it seized my heart—continue—
SALFIERI
I went up the stairs—I entered her room. I called excitedly. I ran to the room of the old man at risk of meeting him—it was deserted like that of Violetta—fragments of torn letters half burned were on the ground—I put them together. I found an order—given by, I don’t know whom—to this man—to immediately escort the young girl who was confided to him—where? The name of the city wasn’t there—she was gone. The old man had taken her away. I came back to Violetta’s room—furious, desperate—asking loudly for indications, a trace—suddenly my eyes were fixed on a mirror—and Violetta’s hand had written with a diamond the sole word, “Venice”—then I forgot everything: proscriptions, arrest, death—the scaffold—I left and here I am.
BRAVO
And now what you are counting on doing with the weak information that you possess—in an immense city where you cannot show your face—in the midst of an incessantly active police—with all their eyes opened—some agent of whom perhaps already knows of your arrival—?
SALFIERI
Yes, yes, I know all that—thus my plan resembles my position—desperate—Listen, I have only told you I was coming to Venice to pursue a woman and to seek a man—the woman that I am pursing is—Violetta.
BRAVO
And the man you are seeking?
SALFIERI
It’s the Bravo.
BRAVO
Huh!
SALFIERI
Do you know him?
BRAVO
And who in Venice does not know this man? Only the Council of Ten can reply to that question.
SALFIERI
Where can one meet him?
BRAVO
On the Piazetta—everyday—at the foot of the Lion column—sad, black and motionless, a type of living scaffold—eternally executed on the public square of Venice.
SALFIERI
And what do they say about this man?
BRAVO
A thousand different things.
SALFIERI
But what is the truth on his account?
BRAVO
God alone and he could
