CENCI [KNEELING]: God, Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh, _115 Which Thou hast made my daughter; this my blood, This particle of my divided being; Or rather, this my bane and my disease, Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant _120 To aught good use; if her bright loveliness Was kindled to illumine this dark world; If nursed by Thy selectest dew of love Such virtues blossom in her as should make The peace of life, I pray Thee for my sake, _125 As Thou the common God and Father art Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom! Earth, in the name of God, let her food be Poison, until she be encrusted round With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head _130 The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew, Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs To loathed lameness! All-beholding sun, Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes _135 With thine own blinding beams! LUCRETIA: Peace! Peace! For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words. When high God grants He punishes such prayers. CENCI [LEAPING UP, AND THROWING HIS RIGHT HAND TOWARDS HEAVEN]: He does his will, I mine! This in addition, That if she have a child... LUCRETIA: Horrible thought! _140 CENCI: That if she ever have a child; and thou, Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God, That thou be fruitful in her, and increase And multiply, fulfilling his command, And my deep imprecation! May it be _145 A hideous likeness of herself, that as From a distorting mirror, she may see Her image mixed with what she most abhors, Smiling upon her from her nursing breast. And that the child may from its infancy _150 Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed, Turning her mother's love to misery: And that both she and it may live until It shall repay her care and pain with hate, Or what may else be more unnatural. _155 So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave. Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come, Before my words are chronicled in Heaven. [EXIT LUCRETIA.] I do not feel as if I were a man, _160 But like a fiend appointed to chastise The offences of some unremembered world. My blood is running up and down my veins; A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle: I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe; _165 My heart is beating with an expectation Of horrid joy. [ENTER LUCRETIA.] What? Speak! LUCRETIA: She bids thee curse; And if thy curses, as they cannot do, Could kill her soul...