_Fred._ Pain of your lives, let none of you presume to enter but myself. _Duke._ My son!--O, I could burst with spite, and die with shame, to be thus apprehended! this is the baseness and cowardice of guilt: an army now were not so dreadful to me as that son, o'er whom the right of nature gives me power. _Fred._ Sir, I am come-- _Duke._ To laugh at first, and then to blaze abroad, The weakness and the follies of your father. _Val._ Sir, he has men in arms attending him. _Duke._ I know my doom then. You have taken a popular occasion; I am now a ravisher of chastity, fit to be made prisoner first, and then deposed. _Fred._ You will not hear me, sir. _Duke._ No, I confess I have deserved my fate; For, what had these grey hairs to do with love? Or, if the unseemly folly would possess me, Why should I chuse to make my son my rival? _Fred._ Sir, you may add, you banished me from Rome, And, from the light of it, Lucretia's eyes. _Duke._ Nay, if thou aggravat'st my crimes, thou giv'st Me right to justify them: thou doubly art my slave, Both son and subject. I can do thee no wrong, Nor hast thou right to arraign or punish me: But thou inquir'st into thy father's years; Thy swift ambition could not stay my death, But must ride post to empire. Lead me now; Thy crimes have made me guiltless to myself, And given me face to bear the public scorn. You have a guard without? _Fred._ I have some friends. _Duke._ Speak plainly your intent. I love not a sophisticated truth, With an allay of lie in't. _Fred._ [_Kneeling._] This is not, sir, the posture of a rebel, But of a suppliant; if the name of son Be too much honour to me. What first I purpos'd, I scarce know myself. Love, anger, and revenge, then rolled within me, And yet, even then, I was not hurried farther Than to preserve my own. _Duke._ Your own! What mean you? _Fred._ My love, and my Lucretia, which I thought, In my then boiling passion, you pursued With some injustice, and much violence; This led me to repel that force by force. 'Twas easy to surprise you, when I knew Of your intended visit. _Duke._ Thank my folly. _Fred._ But reason now has reassumed its place, And makes me see how black a crime it is To use a force upon my prince and father. _Duke._ You give me hope you will resign Lucretia. _Fred._ Ah no; I never can resign her to you: But, sir, I can my life; which, on my knees, I tender, as the atoning sacrifice: Or if your hand (because you are a father) Be loth to take away that life you gave, I will redeem your crime, by making it My own: So you shall still be innocent, and I Die blessed, and unindebted for my being.