BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]: Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. _40 [ASIDE.] She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, It is a piteous office. [TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.] Do you know I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales From hall to hall by the entangled hair; _45 At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there, Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams, That I imagined...no, it cannot be! _50 Horrible things have been in this wide world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived Than ever there was found a heart to do. But never fancy imaged such a deed _55 As... [PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.] Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest...Mother! LUCRETIA: Oh! My sweet child, know you... BEATRICE: Yet speak it not: For then if this be truth, that other too _60 Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Never to change, never to pass away. Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace; Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. _65 I have talked some wild words, but will no more. Mother, come near me: from this point of time, I am... [HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.] LUCRETIA: Alas! What has befallen thee, child? What has thy father done? BEATRICE: What have I done? Am I not innocent? Is it my crime _70 That one with white hair, and imperious brow, Who tortured me from my forgotten years, As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!--Oh, what am I? What name, what place, what memory shall be mine? _75 What retrospects, outliving even despair? LUCRETIA: He is a violent tyrant, surely, child: We know that death alone can make us free; His death or ours. But what can he have done Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? _80 Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me, Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another.