CHARLES: You doubt it?--Are my eyes not bloody? Say!
SOLDIER: Sir! sir!
CHARLES: My lips then are not pale with murder
Bitterly done?
SOLDIER: Pale--no.
CHARLES: Yet have I killed;
Spoke death with them--not reasonless--yet death.
And all the lost have echoes of it: hear
You not a spirit clamor on the air?
Ploughing as storms of pain it passes through me.
Mutiny? Go. I could call chaos fair,
And fawn on infinite ruin--fawn and praise.
(_SOLDIER goes._
Yet will not yield! (_To CECCO._) My robes and coronet!
(_CECCO goes to obey._
I'll sit in them and mock at greatness that
A passion may unthrone. If we weep not
Calamity will leave to torture us,
And fate for want of tears will thirst to death!
_Enter CARDINAL._
Ah, priestly sir.
CARDINAL: Infuriate man!
CHARLES: Speak so.
I lust for bitterness.
CARDINAL: What have you done!
CHARLES (_shuddering, then smiling_): Watched the sun set. Did
it not, think you, bleed
Unwontedly along the waves?
CARDINAL: O horror!
Horrible when a father slays and smiles!
CHARLES: Not so, lord Cardinal, not so!--but when
He slays and smileth not.
CARDINAL: Beyond all mercy!
CHARLES: Therefore I smile. Men should not mid the trite
Enchanting and vain trickery of earth
Till they no longer hope of it, or want.
Smiles should be kept for life's unbearable.
CARDINAL: Murderer!
CHARLES: Ah!
CARDINAL: Heretic!
CHARLES: Well.
(_Goes to shrine and casts it out the window._)
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.