TIME: Afternoon of same day. SCENE: Lucrezia’s Laboratory. Retorts, test-tubes, etc. On small Renaissance table, up c., is a great poison-bowl, the contents of which are being stirred by the FIRST APPRENTICE. The SECOND APPRENTICE stands by, watching him. SECOND APP. For whom is the brew destin’d? FIRST APP. I know not. Lady Lucrezia did but lay on me Injunctions as regards the making of ‘t, The which I have obey’d. It is compounded Of a malignant and a deadly weed Found not save in the Gulf of Spezia, And one small phial of ‘t, I am advis’d, Were more than ‘nough to slay a regiment Of Messer Malatesta’s condottieri In all their armour. SECOND APP. I can well believe it. Mark how the purple bubbles froth upon The evil surface of its nether slime! [Enter LUC.] LUC. [To FIRST APP.] Is ‘t done, Sir Sluggard? FIRST APP. Madam, to a turn. LUC. Had it not been so, I with mine own hand Would have outpour’d it down thy gullet, knave. See, here’s a ring of cunningly-wrought gold That I, on a dark night, did purchase from A goldsmith on the Ponte Vecchio. Small was his shop, and hoar of visage he. I did bemark that from the ceiling’s beams Spiders had spun their webs for many a year, The which hung erst like swathes of gossamer Seen in the shadows of a fairy glade, But now most woefully were weighted o’er With gather’d dust. Look well now at the ring! Touch’d here, behold, it opes a cavity Capacious of three drops of yon fell stuff. Dost heed? Whoso then puts it on his finger Dies, and his soul is from his body rapt To Hell or Heaven as the case may be. Take thou this toy and pour the three drops in. [Hands ring to FIRST APP. and comes down c.] So, Sav’narola, thou shalt learn that I Utter no threats but I do make them good. Ere this day’s sun hath wester’d from the view Thou art to preach from out the Loggia Dei Lanzi to the cits in the Piazza. I, thy Lucrezia, will be upon the steps To offer thee with phrases seeming-fair That which shall seal thine eloquence for ever. O mighty lips that held the world in spell But would not meet these little lips of mine In the sweet way that lovers use--O thin, Cold, tight-drawn, bloodless lips, which natheless I Deem of all lips the most magnifical In this our city-- [Enter the Borgias’ FOOL.] Well, Fool, what’s thy latest? FOOL Aristotle’s or Zeno’s, Lady--‘tis neither latest nor last. For, marry, if the cobbler stuck to his last, then were his latest his last in rebus ambulantibus. Argal, I stick at nothing but cobble-stones, which, by the same token, are stuck to the road by men’s fingers. LUC. How many crows may nest in a grocer’s jerkin?