_Guard announces a herald_. OPAS _departs_.
_Guard_. A messenger of peace is at the gate,
My lord, safe access, private audience,
And free return, he claims.
_Jul._ Conduct him in.
RODERIGO _enters as a herald_.
A messenger of peace! audacious man!
In what attire appearest thou? a herald’s?
Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.
_Rod._ Thy violence and fancied wrongs I know,
And what thy sacrilegious hands would do,
O traitor and apostate!
_Jul._ What they would
They cannot: thee of kingdom and of life
’Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,
Thyself the violator of allegiance.
Oh would all-righteous Heaven they could restore
The joy of innocence, the calm of age,
The probity of manhood, pride of arms,
And confidence of honour! the august
And holy laws trampled beneath thy feet.
And Spain! O parent, I have lost thee too!
Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,
Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe,
Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,
Sublime in hardihood and piety:
Her strength was mine: I, sailing by her cliffs,
By promontory after promontory,
Opening like flags along some castle-towers,
Have sworn before the cross upon our mast
Ne’er shall invader wave his standard there.
_Rod._ Yet there thou plantest it, false man, thyself.
_Jul._ Accursed he who makes me this reproach,
And made it just! Had I been happy still,
I had been blameless: I had died with glory
Upon the walls of Ceuta.
_Rod._ Which thy treason
Surrendered to the Infidel.
_Jul._ ’Tis hard
And base to live beneath a conqueror:
Yet, amid all this grief and infamy,
’Twere something to have rushed upon the ranks
In their advance; ’twere something to have stood
Defeat, discomfiture; and, when around
No beacon blazes, no far axle groans
Through the wide plain, no sound of sustenance
Or succour soothes the still-believing ear,
To fight upon the last dismantled tower,
And yield to valour, if we yield at all.
But rather should my neck lie trampled down
By every Saracen and Moor on earth,
Than my own country see her laws o’erturned
By those who should protect them: Sir, no prince
Shall ruin Spain; and, least of all, her own.
Is any just or glorious act in view,
Your oaths forbid it: is your avarice,
Or, if there be such, any viler passion,
To have its giddy range, and to be gorged,
It rises over all your sacraments,
A hooded mystery, holier than they all.
_Rod._ Hear me, Don Julian; I have heard thy wrath
Who am thy king, nor heard man’s wrath before.
_Jul._ Thou shalt hear mine, for thou art not my king.
_Rod._ Knowest thou not the altered face of war?
Xeres is ours; from every region round
True loyal Spaniards throng into our camp:
Nay, thy own friends and thy own family,
From the remotest provinces, advance
To crush rebellion: Sisabert is come,
Disclaiming thee and thine; the Asturian hills
Opposed to him their icy chains in vain:
But never wilt thou see him, never more,
Unless in adverse war, and deadly hate.
_Jul._ So lost to me! So generous, so deceived!
I grieve to hear it.
_Rod._ Come, I offer grace,
Honour, dominion: send away these slaves,
Or leave them to our sword, and all beyond
The distant Ebro to the towns of France
Shall bless thy name, and bend before thy throne.
I will myself accompany thee, I,
The king, will hail thee brother.
_Jul._ Ne’er shalt thou
Henceforth be king: the nation in thy name
May issue edicts, champions may command
The vassal multitudes of marshalled war,
And the fierce charger shrink before the shouts,
Lowered as if earth had opened at his feet,
While thy mailed semblance rises toward the ranks,
But God alone sees thee.
_Rod._ What hopest thou?
To conquer Spain, and rule a ravaged land?
To compass me around, to murder me?
_Jul._ No, Don Roderigo: swear thou, in the fight
That thou wilt meet me, hand to hand, alone,
That, if I ever save thee from a foe—
_Rod._ I swear what honour asks—first, to Covilla
Do thou present my crown and dignity.
_Jul._ Darest thou offer any price for shame?
_Rod._ Love and repentance.
_Jul._ Egilona lives:
And were she buried with her ancestors,
Covilla should not be the gaze of men,
Should not, despoiled of honour, rule the free.
_Rod._ Stern man! her virtues well deserve the throne.
_Jul._ And Egilona—what hath she deserved,
The good, the lovely?
_Rod._ But the realm in vain
Hoped a succession.
_Jul._ Thou hast torn away
The roots of royalty.
_Rod._ For her, for thee.
_Jul._ Blind insolence! base insincerity!
Power and renown no mortal ever shared,
Who could retain or grasp them to himself:
And, for Covilla? patience! peace! for her?
She call upon her God, and outrage Him
At His own altar! she repeat the vows
She violates in repeating! who abhors
Thee and thy crimes, and wants no crown of thine.
Force may compel the abhorrent soul, or want
Lash and pursue it to the public ways;
Virtue looks back and weeps, and may return
To these, but never near the abandoned one
Who drags religion to adultery’s feet,
And rears the altar higher for her sake.
_Rod._ Have then the Saracens possessed thee quite,
And wilt thou never yield me thy consent?
_Jul._ Never.
_Rod._ So deep in guilt, in treachery!
Forced to acknowledge it! forced to avow
The traitor!
_Jul._ Not to thee, who reignest not,
But to a country ever dear to me,
And dearer now than ever: what we love
Is loveliest in departure! One I thought,
As every father thinks, the best of all,
Graceful, and mild, and sensible, and chaste:
Now all these qualities of form and soul
Fade from before me, nor on anyone
Can I repose, or be consoled by any.
And yet in this torn heart I love her more
Than I could love her when I dwelt on each,
Or clasped them all united, and thanked God,
Without a wish beyond.—Away, thou fiend!
O ignominy, last and worst of all!
I weep before thee—like a child—like mine—
And tell my woes, fount of them all, to thee!