_Ottima._ To me--not of me! Ungrateful, perjured cheat! A coward, too: but ingrate's worse than all! Beggar--my slave--a fawning, cringing lie! Leave me! Betray me! I can see your drift! 245 A lie that walks and eats and drinks! _Sebald._ My God! Those morbid, olive, faultless shoulder-blades-- I should have known there was no blood beneath! _Ottima._ You hate me then? You hate me then? _Sebald._ To think She would succeed in her absurd attempt, 250 And fascinate by sinning, show herself Superior--guilt from its excess superior To innocence! That little peasant's voice Has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better, never fear, 255 Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, Nature or trick! I see what I have done, Entirely now! Oh, I am proud to feel Such torments--let the world take credit thence-- I, having done my deed, pay too its price! 260 I hate, hate--curse you! God's in his heaven! _Ottima._ --Me! Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself--kill me! Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me--then Yourself--then--presently--first hear me speak I always meant to kill myself--wait, you! 265 Lean on my breast--not as a breast; don't love me The more because you lean on me, my own Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently! _Sebald._ My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals, 270 A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go--whirls from a black, fiery sea! _Ottima._ Not me--to him, O God, be merciful! _Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from the hillside to Orcana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of_ JULES, _a young French statuary, at Possagno_. _1st Student._ Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five--who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be 5 suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.