Charles Di Tocca - BestLightNovel.com
You’re reading novel Charles Di Tocca Part 20 online at BestLightNovel.com. Please use the follow button to get notification about the latest chapter next time when you visit BestLightNovel.com. Use F11 button to read novel in full-screen(PC only). Drop by anytime you want to read free – fast – latest novel. It’s great if you could leave a comment, share your opinion about the new chapters, new novel with others on the internet. We’ll do our best to bring you the finest, latest novel everyday. Enjoy
CARDINAL: Fool! fool!
CHARLES: There are no wise men, O lord Cardinal.
CARDINAL: Heaven let Antonio's death under the sea Make every wave a tongue against your rest, And 'gainst the rock of this impenitence!
(_CHARLES listens as to something afar off._) No wind should blow that has not sting of it, No light stream that it stains not!
CHARLES (_sighing_): You have loosed Your robe, lord prelate--see.
CARDINAL: O stone! thou stone!
CHARLES: Have peace. A keener cry comes up to me Than frenzy can invoke: a vaster pain Than justice from Omnipotence may call.
CARDINAL: My lips shall learn it.
CHARLES: "Father" moans it. "Father!"---- It is my ears' inheritance forever.
_Enter FULVIA_
FULVIA: Lord Cardinal, one of your servants has In quarrel been struck, and mortally 'tis feared.
Quickly to him: then I may plead of you Escort to Rome.
CARDINAL: I do not understand.
FULVIA: But shall.
CARDINAL: To Rome?
FULVIA: Do not pause here to learn With the dear minutes of a dying man.
(_CARDINAL goes._
CHARLES: You baffle and bewilder.
FULVIA: Well.
CHARLES: You--?--Yes!
I am beat off by it.
FULVIA: Ten years of shelter Have you held over me.
CHARLES: Ten years----
FULVIA: Whose days, Whose every moment else had borne a torture.
CHARLES: Now----?
FULVIA: I, perhaps, must go.
CHARLES: Must?--Still I grope.
FULVIA: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calm And melancholy dusk no shadow is Or niche but may remember prayer for thee.
CHARLES: To Rome? You must?--I am under a spell.
FULVIA: We, thou and I, after the battle's foam Or chase's tired return, often have breathed The pa.s.sionate deep hours away in rest And sympathy.
CHARLES: Say on. Your voice--I marvel----
FULVIA: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slow With quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.
CHARLES: You go?--But, on!--your tone--in it I feel----
FULVIA: Have we not fast been friends?
CHARLES: What hath your voice?
FULVIA: Such friends have we not been as grow up from Eternity?
CHARLES: You say it, and I wake.
Fulvia: Such friends--till yesterday you----
CHARLES: Ah!
FULVIA: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.
CHARLES: I had forgot--forgot!--the sun!--the sea!
The sea!--Antonio!--The cliff--the surf!
The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!
FULVIA: Be calm.
CHARLES (_rising excitedly_): I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!
A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them, If he----
FULVIA (_drawing him to his chair_): Be patient--calm.
CHARLES: I--I--remember, 'Tis night!
FULVIA: Yes, night.
CHARLES: The sun's no more! It hath Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.
FULVIA: Beyond?--Ah!
CHARLES (_quickly_): Fulvia?
FULVIA: 'Tis hard to think!
