MARZIO: You know me too well, Lady Beatrice. BEATRICE: I know thee! How? where? when? MARZIO: You know 'twas I Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes To kill your father. When the thing was done _25 You clothed me in a robe of woven gold And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see. You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, You know that what I speak is true. [BEATRICE ADVANCES TOWARDS HIM; HE COVERS HIS FACE, AND SHRINKS BACK.] Oh, dart The terrible resentment of those eyes _30 On the dead earth! Turn them away from me! They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My Lords, Having said this let me be led to death. BEATRICE: Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile. CAMILLO: Guards, lead him not away. BEATRICE: Cardinal Camillo, _35 You have a good repute for gentleness And wisdom: can it be that you sit here To countenance a wicked farce like this? When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart _40 And bade to answer, not as he believes, But as those may suspect or do desire Whose questions thence suggest their own reply: And that in peril of such hideous torments As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now _45 The thing you surely know, which is that you, If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, And you were told: 'Confess that you did poison Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and though _50 All see, since his most swift and piteous death, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, And all the things hoped for or done therein Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief, Yet you would say, 'I confess anything:' _55 And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, The refuge of dishonourable death. I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert My innocence. CAMILLO [MUCH MOVED]: What shall we think, my Lords? Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen _60 Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul That she is guiltless. JUDGE: Yet she must be tortured. CAMILLO: I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes _65 Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep) As that most perfect image of God's love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy! JUDGE: Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, _70 If you forbid the rack. His Holiness Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime By the severest forms of law; nay even To stretch a point against the criminals. The prisoners stand accused of parricide _75 Upon such evidence as justifies Torture. BEATRICE: What evidence? This man's? JUDGE: Even so.