BEATRICE: Farewell, my tender brother. Think Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now: And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair, But tears and patience. One thing more, my child: _145 For thine own sake be constant to the love Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I, Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame, Lived ever holy and unstained. And though Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name _150 Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow For men to point at as they pass, do thou Forbear, and never think a thought unkind Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves. So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain _155 Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell! BERNARDO: I cannot say, farewell! CAMILLO: Oh, Lady Beatrice! BEATRICE: Give yourself no unnecessary pain, My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair _160 In any simple knot; ay, that does well. And yours I see is coming down. How often Have we done this for one another; now We shall not do it any more. My Lord, We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well. _165 THE END. NOTE ON THE CENCI, BY MRS. SHELLEY. The sort of mistake that Shelley made as to the extent of his own genius and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a curious instance of his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human mind uses at once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to make its way out of error into the path which Nature has marked out as its right one. He often incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy: he conceived that I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always most earnest and energetic in his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent I possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate of my powers; and above all (though at that time not exactly aware of the fact) I was far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even moderately, in a species of composition that requires a greater scope of experience in, and sympathy with, human passion than could then have fallen to my lot,--or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever possessed, even at the age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.