Or if I blame too widely, sure am I 'Twas Guido sent these rusty prophets here. This daughter whom he keeps in turret high, Making by rarity her beauty dear, In solitude her soul unsullied blows; And he upon her lofty virtue builds A loftier castle than his wisdom knows: He rushes in, disdaining highest guilds Of Belmarie's nobility, to mate His daughter with its prince, himself to make Most potent minister in all the state-- His prince's king, mayhap, for Faustine's sake. For any thought save this, I have no mind-- My heavenly love is, like a goddess, kind. I go to seek her. At some other time Of these predicts we'll reason, or else rhyme. [Goes out. Cinthio. False prophets, or soothsayers, what care I! For me the thread is spun and cast the die; The boat is waiting, and the wind is right. March past, ye steady hours; lead on, midnight. Enter Onesta. Onesta! Hangs this gear where it did? Onesta. Alack, alack, it hangs together like a snow-shower in the air. Cinthio. Then is it indeed alack. What has unbound our plot? Onesta. O, we are all unbound! All undone! twelve o'clock will never, never do. Cinthio. How has that hour become refractory which yesterday was most corrigible? Onesta. O, she does not lack courage, but her father, he is fractious. Cinthio. Her father! what of him? Onesta. O, it's all along of him! He goes to bed every night at eleven, as sure as the clock! Upstairs, at every chime creak goes a step, and his stick comes down between, with his other hand on the baluster. And he talks about a new lamp for the landing, as he has done for the last twenty years--not that I remember; but Marjory, who will be seventy to-morrow--that's May-day; and to hear her talking about the May-days when she was young! This very fore-noon she began gabbling, with her toothless old gums, and her beard going wag, wag---- Cinthio. For God's sake cease thy gabbling and thy wagging, and tell me how Guido has perverted the good-nature of midnight. Onesta. La! what a temper you have! I'll tell Faustine how wild a lover she has caught. Cinthio. Tell her how wild I am for her dear love, While you stand dallying with our happiness. Onesta. Dallying, forsooth, dallying! I'll dally no more between you! Cinthio. My fair Onesta, carry this kiss to thy mistress, and keep this one to yourself. Twelve o'clock is not suitable, because? Onesta. Because, as I was just beginning to tell you, Guido goes to bed at eleven--I mean, he goes to his chamber then; counts his keys, his money; gets undressed; curses his valet; says his prayers; then a door slams, or a chimney rumbles, or a rat scrapes behind the wainscot, or a loose slate on Signor Guido's own head rattles a noise of its own in his ears, and he yells, 'Thieves! Fire!' and the bell's rung, and the whole household roused up; and every room, every bed, and closet and hole, searched and shook, and hacked and pierced; and out to the garden----