Marino Faliero (Act 3 Scene 1)

Scene I.—Scene, the Space between the Canal and the Church of San Giovanni e San Paolo. An equestrian Statue before it.—A Gondola lies in the Canal at some distance.                                             Enter the Doge alone, disguised. Doge (solus). I am before the hour, the hour whose voice, Pealing into the arch of night, might strike These palaces with ominous tottering, And rock their marbles to the corner-stone, Waking the sleepers from some hideous dream Of indistinct but awful augury Of that which will befall them. Yes, proud city! Thou must be cleansed of the black blood which makes thee A lazar-house of tyranny: the task Is forced upon me, I have sought it not; And therefore was I punished, seeing this Patrician pestilence spread on and on, Until at length it smote me in my slumbers, And I am tainted, and must wash away The plague spots in the healing wave. Tall fane! Where sleep my fathers, whose dim statues shadow The floor which doth divide us from the dead, Where all the pregnant hearts of our bold blood, Mouldered into a mite of ashes, hold In one shrunk heap what once made many heroes, When what is now a handful shook the earth— Fane of the tutelar saints who guard our house! Vault where two Doges rest—my sires! who died The one of toil, the other in the field, With a long race of other lineal chiefs And sages, whose great labours, wounds, and state I have inherited,—let the graves gape, Till all thine aisles be peopled with the dead, And pour them from thy portals to gaze on me! I call them up, and them and thee to witness What it hath been which put me to this task— Their pure high blood, their blazon-roll of glories, Their mighty name dishonoured all in me, Not by me, but by the ungrateful nobles We fought to make our equals, not our lords: And chiefly thou, Ordelafo the brave, Who perished in the field, where I since conquered, Battling at Zara, did the hecatombs Of thine and Venice' foes, there offered up By thy descendant, merit such acquittance? Spirits! smile down upon me! for my cause Is yours, in all life now can be of yours,— Your fame, your name, all mingled up in mine, And in the future fortunes of our race! Let me but prosper, and I make this city Free and immortal, and our House's name Worthier of what you were—now and hereafter!                                             Enter Israel Bertuccio. I. Ber. Who goes there? Doge. A friend to Venice. I. Ber. 'Tis he. Welcome, my Lord,—you are before the time. Doge. I am ready to proceed to your assembly. I. Ber. Have with you.—I am proud and pleased to see Such confident alacrity. Your doubts Since our last meeting, then, are all dispelled? Doge. Not so—but I have set my little left Of life upon this cast: the die was thrown When I first listened to your treason.—Start not! That is the word; I cannot shape my tongue To syllable black deeds into smooth names, Though I be wrought on to commit them. When I heard you tempt your Sovereign, and forbore To have you dragged to prison, I became Your guiltiest accomplice: now you may, If it so please you, do as much by me. I. Ber. Strange words, my Lord, and most unmerited; I am no spy, and neither are we traitors. Doge. We—We!—no matter—you have earned the right To talk of us.—But to the point.—If this Attempt succeeds, and Venice, rendered free And flourishing, when we are in our graves, Conducts her generations to our tombs, And makes her children with their little hands Strew flowers o'er her deliverers' ashes, then The consequence will sanctify the deed, And we shall be like the two Bruti in The annals of hereafter; but if not, If we should fail, employing bloody means And secret plot, although to a good end, Still we are traitors, honest Israel;—thou No less than he who was thy Sovereign Six hours ago, and now thy brother rebel. I. Ber. 'Tis not the moment to consider thus, Else I could answer.—Let us to the meeting, Or we may be observed in lingering here. Doge. We are observed, and have been. I. Ber. We observed! Let me discover—and this steel——- Doge. Put up; Here are no human witnesses: look there— What see you? I. Ber. Only a tall warrior's statue Bestriding a proud steed, in the dim light Of the dull moon. Doge. That Warrior was the sire Of my sire's fathers, and that statue was Decreed to him by the twice rescued city:— Think you that he looks down on us or no? I. Ber. My Lord, these are mere fantasies; there are No eyes in marble. Doge. But there are in Death. I tell thee, man, there is a spirit in Such things that acts and sees, unseen, though felt; And, if there be a spell to stir the dead, 'Tis in such deeds as we are now upon. Deem'st thou the souls of such a race as mine Can rest, when he, their last descendant Chief, Stands plotting on the brink of their pure graves With stung plebeians? I. Ber. It had been as well To have pondered this before,—ere you embarked In our great enterprise.—Do you repent? Doge. No—but I feel, and shall do to the last. I cannot quench a glorious life at once, Nor dwindle to the thing I now must be,[dm] And take men's lives by stealth, without some pause: Yet doubt me not; it is this very feeling, And knowing what has wrung me to be thus, Which is your best security. There's not A roused mechanic in your busy plot[dn] So wronged as I, so fall'n, so loudly called To his redress: the very means I am forced By these fell tyrants to adopt is such, That I abhor them doubly for the deeds Which I must do to pay them back for theirs. I. Ber. Let us away—hark—the Hour strikes. Doge. On—on— It is our knell, or that of Venice.—On. I. Ber. Say rather, 'tis her Freedom's rising peal Of Triumph. This way—we are near the place.