The Glimpse of Reality
A Tragedietta
Dramatis Personae
Count Ferruccio
Giulia
Squarcio
Sandro
The Glimpse of Reality
In the fifteenth century AD. Gloaming. An inn on the edge of an Italian lake. A stone cross with a pedestal of steps. A very old Friar sitting on the steps.
The Angelus rings. The Friar prays and crosses himself. A girl ferries a boat to the shore and comes up the bank to the cross.
The Girl
Father: were you sent here by a boy from—
The Friar
In a high, piping, but clear voice. I’m a very old man. Oh, very old. Old enough to be your great grandfather, my daughter. Oh, very very old.
The Girl
But were you sent here by a boy from—
The Friar
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Quite a boy, he was. Very young. And I’m very old. Oh, very very old, dear daughter.
The Girl
Are you a holy man?
The Friar
Ecstatically. Oh, very holy. Very, very, very, very holy.
The Girl
But have you your wits still about you, father? Can you absolve me from a great sin?
The Friar
Oh yes, yes, yes. A very great sin. I’m very old; but I’ve my wits about me. I’m one hundred and thirteen years old, by the grace of Our Lady; but I still remember all my Latin; and I can bind and loose; and I’m very very wise; for I’m old and have left far behind me the world, the flesh, and the devil. You see I am blind, daughter; but when a boy told me that there was a duty for me to do here, I came without a guide, straight to this spot, led by St. Barbara. She led me to this stone, daughter. It’s a comfortable stone to me: she has blessed it for me.
The Girl
It’s a cross, father.
The Friar
Piping rapturously. Oh blessed, blessed, ever blessed be my holy patroness for leading me to this sacred spot. Is there any building near this, daughter? The boy mentioned an inn.
The Girl
There is an inn, father, not twenty yards away. It’s kept by my father, Squarcio.
The Friar
And is there a barn where a very very old man may sleep and have a handful of peas for his supper?
The Girl
There is bed and board both for holy men who will take the guilt of our sins from us. Swear to me on the cross that you are a very holy man.
The Friar
I’ll do better than that, daughter. I’ll prove my holiness to you by a miracle.
The Girl
A miracle!
The Friar
A most miraculous miracle. A wonderful miracle! When I was only eighteen years of age I was already famous for my devoutness. When the hand of the blessed Saint Barbara, which was chopped off in the days when the church was persecuted, was found at Viterbo, I was selected by the Pope himself to carry it to Rome for that blessed lady’s festival there; and since that my hand has never grown old. It remains young and warm and plump whilst the rest of my body is withered almost to dust, and my voice is cracked and become the whistling you now hear.
The Girl
Is that true? Let me see. He takes her hand in his. She kneels and kisses it fervently. Oh, it’s true. You are a saint. Heaven has sent you in answer to my prayer.
The Friar
As soft as your neck, is it not? He caresses her neck.
The Girl
It thrills me: it is wonderful.
The Friar
It thrills me also, daughter. That, too, is a miracle at my age.
The Girl
Father—
The Friar
Come closer, daughter. I’m very very old and very very very deaf: you must speak quite close to my ear if you speak low. She kneels with her breast against his arm and her chin on his shoulder. Good. Good. That’s better. Oh, I’m very very old.
The Girl
Father: I am about to commit a deadly sin.
The Friar
Do, my daughter. Do, do, do, do, do.
The Girl
Discouraged. Oh, you do not hear what I say.
The Friar
Not hear! Then come closer, daughter. Oh, much, much closer. Put your arm round my shoulders, and speak in my ear. Do not be ashamed, my daughter: I’m only a sack of old bones. You can hear them rattle. He shakes his shoulders and makes the beads of his rosary rattle at the same time. Listen to the old man’s bones rattling. Oh, take the old old man to heaven, Blessed Barbara.
The Girl
Your wits are wandering. Listen to me. Are you listening?
The Friar
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Remember: whether I hear or not, I can absolve. All the better for you perhaps if I do not hear the worst. He! He! He! Well well. When my wits wander, squeeze my young hand; and the blessed Barbara will restore my faculties. She squeezes his hand vigorously. That’s right. Tha‑a‑a‑a‑ats right. Now I remember what I am and who you are. Proceed, my child.
The Girl
Father, I am to be married this year to a young fisherman.
The Friar
The devil you are, my dear.
The Girl
Squeezing his hand. Oh listen, listen; you are wandering again.
The Friar
That’s right: hold my hand tightly. I understand, I understand. This young fisherman is neither very beautiful nor very brave; but he is honest and devoted to you; and there is something about him different to all the other young men.
The Girl
You know him, then!
The Friar
No no no no no. I’m too old to remember people. But Saint Barbara tells me everything.
The Girl
Then you know why we can’t marry yet.
The Friar
He is too poor. His mother will not let him unless his bride has a dowry—
The Girl
Interrupting him impetuously. Yes, yes: oh blessed be Saint Barbara for sending you to me! Thirty crowns—thirty crowns from a poor girl like me: it is wicked—monstrous. I must sin to earn it.
The Friar
That will not be your sin, but his mother’s.
The Girl
Oh, that is true: I never thought of that. But will she suffer for it?
The Friar
Thousands of years in purgatory for it, my daughter. The worse the sin, the longer she will suffer. So let her have it as hot as possible. The Girl recoils. Do not let go my hand: I’m wandering. She squeezes his hand. That’s right, darling. Sin is a very wicked thing, my daughter. Even a mother-in-law’s sin is very expensive; for your husband would stint you to pay for masses for her soul.
The Girl
That is true. You are very wise, father.
The Friar
Let it be a venial sin: an amiable sin. What sin were you thinking of, for instance?
The Girl
There is a young Count Ferruccio the Friar starts at the name, son of the tyrant of Parma—
The Friar
An excellent young man, daughter. You could not sin with a more excellent young man. But thirty crowns is too much to ask from him. He can’t afford it. He is a beggar: an outcast. He made love to Madonna Brigita, the sister of Cardinal Poldi, a Cardinal eighteen years of age, a nephew of the Holy Father. The Cardinal surprised Ferruccio with his sister; and Ferruccio’s temper got the better of him. He threw that holy young Cardinal out of the window and broke his arm.
The Girl
You know everything.
The Friar
Saint Barbara, my daughter, Saint Barbara. I know nothing. But where have you seen Ferruccio? Saint Barbara says that he never saw you in his life, and has not thirty crowns in the world.
The Girl
Oh, why does not Saint Barbara tell you that I am an honest girl who would not sell herself for a thousand crowns.
The Friar
Do not give way to pride, daughter. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.
The Girl
I know that, father; and believe me, I’m humble and good. I swear to you by Our Lady that it is not Ferruccio’s love that I must take, but his life. The Friar, startled, turns powerfully on her. Do not be angry, dear father: do not cast me off. What is a poor girl to do? We are very poor, my father and I. And I am not to kill him. I am only to decoy him here; for he is a devil for women; and once he is in the inn, my father will do the rest.
The Friar
In a rich baritone voice. Will he, by thunder and lightning and the flood and all the saints, will he? He flings off his gown and beard, revealing himself as a handsome youth, a nobleman by his dress, as he springs up and rushes to the door of the inn, which he batters with a stone. Ho there, Squarcio, rascal, assassin, son of a pig: come out that I may break every bone in your carcass.
The Girl
You are a young man!
The Friar
Another miracle of Saint Barbara. Kicking the door. Come out, whelp: come out, rat. Come out and be killed. Come out and be beaten to a jelly. Come out, dog, swine, animal, mangy hound, lousy—Squarcio comes out, sword in hand. Do you know who I am, dog?
Squarcio
Impressed. No, your Excellency.
The Friar
I am Ferruccio, Count Ferruccio, the man you are to kill, the man your devil of a daughter is to decoy, the man who is now going to cut you into forty thousand pieces and throw you into the lake.
Squarcio
Keep your temper, Signor Count.
Ferruccio
I’ll not keep my temper. I’ve an uncontrollable temper. I get blinding splitting headaches if I do not relieve my temper by acts of violence. I’ll relieve it now by pounding you to jelly, assassin that you are.
Squarcio
Shrugging his shoulders. As you please, Signor Count. I may as well earn my money now as another time. He handles his sword.
Ferruccio
Ass: do you suppose I have trusted myself in this territory without precautions? My father has made a wager with your feudal lord here about me.
Squarcio
What wager, may it please your Excellency?
Ferruccio
What wager, blockhead! Why, that if I am assassinated, the murderer will not be brought to justice.
Squarcio
So that if I kill you—
Ferruccio
Your Baron will lose ten crowns unless you are broken on the wheel for it.
Squarcio
Only ten crowns, Excellency! Your father does not value your life very highly.
Ferruccio
Dolt. Can you not reason? If the sum were larger your Baron would win it by killing me himself and breaking somebody else on the wheel for it: you, most likely. Ten crowns is just enough to make him break you on the wheel if you kill me, but not enough to pay for all the masses that would have to be said for him if the guilt were his.
Squarcio
That is very clever, Excellency. Sheathing his sword. You shall not be slain: I will take care of that. If anything happens, it will be an accident.
Ferruccio
Body of Bacchus! I forgot that trick. I should have killed you when my blood was hot.
Squarcio
Will your Excellency please to step in? My best room and my best cooking are at your Excellency’s disposal.
Ferruccio
To the devil with your mangy kennel! You want to tell every traveller that Count Ferruccio slept in your best bed and was eaten by your army of fleas. Take yourself out of my sight when you have told me where the next inn is.
Squarcio
I’m sorry to thwart your Excellency; but I have not forgotten your father’s wager; and until you leave this territory I shall stick to you like your shadow.
Ferruccio
And why, pray?
Squarcio
Someone else might kill your Excellency; and, as you say, my illustrious Baron might break me on the wheel for your father’s ten crowns. I must protect your Excellency, whether your Excellency is willing or not.
Ferruccio
If you dare to annoy me, I’ll handle your bones so that there will be nothing left for the hangman to break. Now what do you say?
Squarcio
I say that your Excellency overrates your Excellency’s strength. You would have no more chance against me than a grasshopper. Ferruccio makes a demonstration. Oh, I know that your Excellency has been taught by fencers and wrestlers and the like; but I can take all you can give me without turning a hair, and settle the account when you are out of breath. That is why common men are dangerous, your Excellency: they are inured to toil and endurance. Besides, I know all the tricks.
The Girl
Do not attempt to quarrel with my father, Count. It must be as he says. It is his profession to kill. What could you do against him? If you want to beat somebody, you must beat me. She goes into the inn.
Squarcio
I advise you not to try that, Excellency. She also is very strong.
Ferruccio
Then I shall have a headache: that’s all. He throws himself ill-humoredly on a bench at the table outside the inn. Giulia returns with a tablecloth and begins preparing the table for a meal.
Squarcio
A good supper, Excellency, will prevent that. And Giulia will sing for you.
Ferruccio
Not while there’s a broomstick in the house to break her ugly head with. Do you suppose I’m going to listen to the howling of a she-wolf who wanted me to absolve her for getting me killed?
Squarcio
The poor must live as well as the rich, sir. Giulia is a good girl. He goes into the inn.
Ferruccio
Shouting after him. Must the rich die that the poor may live?
Giulia
The poor often die that the rich may live.
Ferruccio
What an honor for them! But it would have been no honor for me to die merely that you might marry your clod of a fisherman.
Giulia
You are spiteful, Signor.
Ferruccio
I am no troubadour, Giuliaccia, if that is what you mean.
Giulia
How did you know about my Sandro and his mother? How were you so wise when you pretended to be an old friar? you that are so childish now that you are yourself?
Ferruccio
I take it that either Saint Barbara inspired me, or else that you are a great fool.
Giulia
Saint Barbara will surely punish you for that wicked lie you told about her hand.
Ferruccio
The hand that thrilled you?
Giulia
That was blasphemy. You should not have done it. You made me feel as if I had had a taste of heaven; and then you poisoned it in my heart as a taste of hell. That was wicked and cruel. You nobles are cruel.
Ferruccio
Well! do you expect us to nurse your babies for you? Our work is to rule and to fight. Ruling is nothing but inflicting cruelties on wrongdoers: fighting is nothing but being cruel to one’s enemies. You poor people leave us all the cruel work, and then wonder that we are cruel. Where would you be if we left it undone? Outside the life I lead all to myself—the life of thought and poetry—I know only two pleasures: cruelty and lust. I desire revenge: I desire women. And both of them disappoint me when I get them.
Giulia
It would have been a good deed to kill you, I think.
Ferruccio
Killing is always sport, my Giuliaccia.
Sandro’s Voice
On the lake. Giulietta! Giulietta!
Ferruccio
Calling to him. Stop that noise. Your Giulietta is here with a young nobleman. Come up and amuse him. To Giulietta. What will you give me if I tempt him to defy his mother and marry you without a dowry?
Giulia
You are tempting me. A poor girl can give no more than she has. I should think you were a devil if you were not a noble, which is worse. She goes out to meet Sandro.
Ferruccio
Calling after her. The devil does evil for pure love of it: he does not ask a price: he offers it. Squarcio returns. Prepare supper for four, bandit.
Squarcio
Is your appetite so great in this heat, Signor?
Ferruccio
There will be four to supper. You, I, your daughter, and Sandro. Do not stint yourselves: I pay for all. Go and prepare more food.
Squarcio
Your order is already obeyed, Excellency.
Ferruccio
How?
Squarcio
I prepared for four, having you here to pay. The only difference your graciousness makes is that we shall have the honor to eat with you instead of after you.
Ferruccio
Dog of a bandit: you should have been born a nobleman.
Squarcio
I was born noble, Signor; but as we had no money to maintain our pretensions, I dropped them. He goes back into the inn.
Giulia returns with Sandro.
Giulia
This is the lad, Excellency. Sandro: this is his lordship Count Ferruccio.
Sandro
At your lordship’s service.
Ferruccio
Sit down, Sandro. You, Giulia, and Squarcio are my guests. They sit.
Giulia
I’ve told Sandro everything, Excellency.
Ferruccio
And what does Sandro say? Squarcio returns with a tray.
Giulia
He says that if you have ten crowns in your purse, and we kill you, we can give them to the Baron. It would be the same to him as if he got it from your illustrious father.
Squarcio
Stupid: the Count is cleverer than you think. No matter how much money you give the Baron he can always get ten crowns more by breaking me on the wheel if the Count is killed.
Giulia
That is true. Sandro did not think of that.
Sandro
With cheerful politeness. Oh! what a head I have! I am not clever, Excellency. At the same time you must know that I did not mean my Giulietta to tell you. I know my duty to your Excellency better than that.
Ferruccio
Come! You are dear people: charming people. Let us get to work at the supper. You shall be the mother of the family and give us our portions, Giulietta. They take their places. That’s right. Serve me last, Giulietta. Sandro is hungry.
Squarcio
To the girl. Come come! do you not see that his Excellency will touch nothing until we have had some first. He eats. See, Excellency! I have tasted everything. To tell you the truth, poisoning is an art I do not understand.
Ferruccio
Very few professional poisoners do, Squarcio. One of the best professionals in Rome poisoned my uncle and aunt. They are alive still. The poison cured my uncle’s gout, and only made my aunt thin, which was exactly what she desired, poor lady, as she was losing her figure terribly.
Squarcio
There is nothing like the sword, Excellency.
Sandro
Except the water, Father Squarcio. Trust a fisherman to know that. Nobody can tell that drowning was not an accident.
Ferruccio
What does Giulietta say?
Giulia
I should not kill a man if I hated him. You cannot torment a man when he is dead. Men kill because they think it is what they call a satisfaction. But that is only fancy.
Ferruccio
And if you loved him? Would you kill him then?
Giulia
Perhaps. If you love a man you are his slave: everything he says—everything he does—is a stab to your heart: every day is a long dread of losing him. Better kill him if there be no other escape.
Ferruccio
How well you have brought up your family, Squarcio! Some more omelette, Sandro?
Sandro
Very cheerfully. I thank your Excellency. He accepts and eats with an appetite.
Ferruccio
I pledge you all. To the sword and the fisherman’s net: to love and hate! He drinks: they drink with him.
Squarcio
To the sword!
Sandro
To the net, Excellency, with thanks for the honor.
Giulia
To love, Signor.
Ferruccio
To hate: the noble’s portion!
Squarcio
The meal has done you good, Excellency. How do you feel now?
Ferruccio
I feel that there is nothing but a bait of ten crowns between me and death, Squarcio.
Squarcio
It is enough, Excellency. And enough is always enough.
Sandro
Do not think of that, Excellency. It is only that we are poor folk, and have to consider how to make both ends meet as one may say. Looking at the dish. Excellency—?
Ferruccio
Finish it, Sandro. I’ve done.
Sandro
Father Squarcio?
Squarcio
Finish it, finish it.
Sandro
Giulietta?
Giulia
Surprised. Me? Oh no. Finish it, Sandro: it will only go to the pig.
Sandro
Then, with your Excellency’s permission—He helps himself.
Squarcio
Sing for his Excellency, my daughter.
Giulia turns to the door to fetch her mandoline.
Ferruccio
I shall jump into the lake, Squarcio, if your cat begins to meowl.
Sandro
Always cheerful and reassuring. No, no, Excellency: Giulietta sings very sweetly: have no fear.
Ferruccio
I do not care for singing: at least not the singing of peasants. There is only one thing for which one woman will do as well as another, and that is lovemaking. Come, Father Squarcio: I will buy Giulietta from you: you can have her back for nothing when I am tired of her. How much?
Squarcio
In ready money, or in promises?
Ferruccio
Old fox. Ready money.
Squarcio
Fifty crowns, Excellency.
Ferruccio
Fifty crowns! Fifty crowns for that black-faced devil! I would not give fifty crowns for one of my mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Fifty pence, you must mean.
Squarcio
Doubtless your Excellency, being a younger son, is poor. Shall we say five and twenty crowns?
Ferruccio
I tell you she is not worth five.
Squarcio
Oh, if you come to what she is worth, Excellency, what are any of us worth? I take it that you are a gentleman, not a merchant.
Giulia
What are you worth, Signorino?
Ferruccio
I am accustomed to be asked for favors, Giuliaccia, not to be asked impertinent questions.
Giulia
What would you do if a strong man took you by the scruff of your neck, or his daughter thrust a knife in your throat, Signor?
Ferruccio
It would be many a year, my gentle Giuliaccia, before any baseborn man or woman would dare threaten a nobleman again. The whole village would be flayed alive.
Sandro
Oh no, Signor. These things often have a great air of being accidents. And the great families are well content that they should appear so. It is such a great trouble to flay a whole village alive. Here by the water, accidents are so common.
Squarcio
We of the nobility, Signor, are not strict enough. I learnt that when I took to breeding horses. The horses you breed from thoroughbreds are not all worth the trouble: most of them are screws. Well, the horsebreeder gets rid of his screws for what they will fetch: they go to labor like any peasant’s beast. But our nobility does not study its business so carefully. If you are a screw, and the son of a baron, you are brought up to think yourself a little god, though you are nothing, and cannot rule yourself, much less a province. And you presume, and presume, and presume—
Giulia
And insult, and insult, and insult.
Squarcio
Until one day you find yourself in a strange place with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own wits—
Giulia
And you perish—
Sandro
Accidentally—
Giulia
And your soul goes crying to your father for vengeance—
Squarcio
If indeed, my daughter, there be any soul left when the body is slain.
Ferruccio
Crossing himself hastily. Dog of a bandit: do you dare doubt the existence of God and the soul?
Squarcio
I think, Excellency, that the soul is so precious a gift that God will not give it to a man for nothing. He must earn it by being something and doing something. I should not like to kill a man with a good soul. I’ve had a dog that had, I’m persuaded, made itself something of a soul; and if anyone had murdered that dog, I would have slain him. But show me a man with no soul: one who has never done anything or been anything; and I will kill him for ten crowns with as little remorse as I would stick a pig.
Sandro
Unless he be a nobleman, of course—
Squarcio
In which case the price is fifty crowns.
Ferruccio
Soul or no soul?
Squarcio
When it comes to a matter of fifty crowns, Excellency, business is business. The man who pays me must square the account with the devil. It is for my employer to consider whether the action be a good one or no: it is for me to earn his money honestly. When I said I should not like to kill a man with a good soul, I meant killing on my own account: not professionally.
Ferruccio
Are you such a fool then as to spoil your own trade by sometimes killing people for nothing?
Squarcio
One kills a snake for nothing, Excellency. One kills a dog for nothing sometimes.
Sandro
Apologetically. Only a mad dog, Excellency, of course.
Squarcio
A pet dog, too. One that eats and eats and is useless, and makes an honest man’s house dirty. He rises. Come Sandro, and help me to clean up. You, Giulia, stay and entertain his Excellency.
He and Sandro make a hammock of the cloth, in which they carry the wooden platters and fragments of the meal indoors. Ferruccio is left alone with Giulia. The gloaming deepens.
Ferruccio
Does your father do the house work with a great girl like you idling about? Squarcio is a fool, after all.
Giulia
No, Signor: he has left me here to prevent you from escaping.
Ferruccio
There is nothing to be gained by killing me, Giuliaccia.
Giulia
Perhaps; but I do not know. I saw Sandro make a sign to my father: that is why they went in. Sandro has something in his head.
Ferruccio
Brutally. Lice, no doubt.
Giulia
Unmoved. That would only make him scratch his head, Signor, not make signs with it to my father. You did wrong to throw the Cardinal out of the window.
Ferruccio
Indeed: and pray why?
Giulia
He will pay thirty crowns for your dead body. Then Sandro could marry me.
Ferruccio
And be broken on the wheel for it.
Giulia
It would look like an accident, Signor. Sandro is very clever; and he is so humble and cheerful and good-tempered that people do not suspect him as they suspect my father.
Ferruccio
Giulietta: if I reach Sacromonte in safety, I swear to send you thirty crowns by a sure messenger within ten days. Then you can marry your Sandro. How does that appeal to you?
Giulia
Your oath is not worth twenty pence, Signor.
Ferruccio
Do you think I will die here like a rat in a trap—His breath fails him.
Giulia
Rats have to wait in their traps for death, Signor. Why not you?
Ferruccio
I’ll fight.
Giulia
You are welcome, Signor. The blood flows freeest when it is hot.
Ferruccio
She devil! Listen to me, Giulietta—
Giulia
It is useless, Signor. Giulietta or Giuliaccia: it makes no difference. If they two in there kill you it will be no more to me—except for the money—than if my father trod on a snail.
Ferruccio
Oh, it is not possible that I, a nobleman, should die by such filthy hands.
Giulia
You have lived by them, Signor. I see no sign of any work on your own hands. We can bring death as well as life, we poor people, Signor.
Ferruccio
Mother of God, what shall I do?
Giulia
Pray, Signor.
Ferruccio
Pray! With the taste of death in my mouth? I can think of nothing.
Giulia
It is only that you have forgotten your beads, Signor. She picks up the Friar’s rosary. You remember the old man’s bones rattling. Here they are. She rattles them before him.
Ferruccio
That reminds me. I know of a painter in the north that can paint such beautiful saints that the heart goes out of one’s body to look at them. If I get out of this alive I’ll make him paint St. Barbara so that everyone can see that she is lovelier than St. Cecilia, who looks like my washerwoman’s mother in her Chapel in our cathedral. Can you give St. Cecilia a picture if she lets me be killed?
Giulia
No; but I can give her many prayers.
Ferruccio
Prayers cost nothing. She will prefer the picture unless she is a greater fool than I take her to be.
Giulia
She will thank the painter for it, not you, Signor. And I’ll tell her in my prayers to appear to the painter in a vision, and order him to paint her just as he sees her if she really wishes to be painted.
Ferruccio
You are devilishly ready with your answers. Tell me, Giulietta: is what your father told me true? Is your blood really noble?
Giulia
It is red, Signor, like the blood of the Christ in the picture in Church. I do not know if yours is different. I shall see when my father kills you.
Ferruccio
Do you know what I am thinking, Giulietta?
Giulia
No, Signor.
Ferruccio
I am thinking that if the good God would oblige me by taking my fool of an elder brother up to heaven, and his silly doll of a wife with him before she has time to give him a son, you would make a rare duchess for me. Come! Will you help me to outwit your father and Sandro if I marry you afterwards?
Giulia
No, Signor: I’ll help them to kill you.
Ferruccio
My back is to the wall, then?
Giulia
To the precipice, I think, Signor.
Ferruccio
No matter, so my face is to the danger. Did you notice, Giulia, a minute ago? I was frightened.
Giulia
Yes, Signor. I saw it in your face.
Ferruccio
The terror of terrors.
Giulia
The terror of death.
Ferruccio
No: death is nothing. I can face a stab just as I faced having my tooth pulled out at Faenza.
Giulia
Shuddering with sincere sympathy. Poor Signorino! That must have hurt horribly.
Ferruccio
What! You pity me for the tooth affair, and you did not pity me in that hideous agony of terror that is not the terror of death nor of anything else, but pure grim terror in itself.
Giulia
It was the terror of the soul, Signor. And I do not pity your soul: you have a wicked soul. But you have pretty teeth.
Ferruccio
The toothache lasted a week; but the agony of my soul was too dreadful to last five minutes: I should have died of it if it could have kept its grip of me. But you helped me out of it.
Giulia
I, Signor!
Ferruccio
Yes: you. If you had pitied me: if you had been less inexorable than death itself, I should have broken down and cried and begged for mercy. But now I have come up against something hard: something real: something that does not care for me. I see now the truth of my excellent uncle’s opinion that I was a spoilt cub. When I wanted anything I threatened men or ran crying to women; and they gave it to me. I dreamed and romanced: imagining things as I wanted them, not as they really are. There is nothing like a good look into the face of death: close up: right on you: for showing you how little you really believe and how little you really are. A priest said to me once, “In your last hour everything will fall away from you except your religion.” But I have lived through my last hour; and my religion was the first thing that fell away from me. When I was forced at last to believe in grim death I knew at last what belief was, and that I had never believed in anything before: I had only flattered myself with pretty stories, and sheltered myself behind Mumbo Jumbo, as a soldier will shelter himself from arrows behind a clump of thistles that only hide the shooters from him. When I believe in everything that is real as I believed for that moment in death, then I shall be a man at last. I have tasted the water of life from the cup of death; and it may be now that my real life began with this he holds up the rosary and will end with the triple crown or the heretic’s fire: I care not which. Springing to his feet. Come out, then, dog of a bandit, and fight a man who has found his soul. Squarcio appears at the door, sword in hand. Ferruccio leaps at him and strikes him full in the chest with his dagger. Squarcio puts back his left foot to brace himself against the shock. The dagger snaps as if it had struck a stone wall.
Giulia
Quick, Sandro.
Sandro, who has come stealing round the corner of the inn with a fishing net, casts it over Ferruccio, and draws it tight.
Squarcio
Your Excellency will excuse my shirt of mail. A good home blow, nevertheless, Excellency.
Sandro
Your Excellency will excuse my net: it is a little damp.
Ferruccio
Well, what now? Accidental drowning, I suppose.
Sandro
Eh, Excellency, it is such a pity to throw a good fish back into the water when once you have got him safe in your net. My Giulietta: hold the net for me.
Giulia
Taking the net and twisting it in her hands to draw it tighter round him. I have you very fast now, Signorino, like a little bird in a cage.
Ferruccio
You have my body, Giulia. My soul is free.
Giulia
Is it, Signor? I think Saint Barbara has got that in her net too. She has turned your jest into earnest.
Sandro
It is indeed true, sir, that those who come under the special protection of God and the Saints are always a little mad; and this makes us think it very unlucky to kill a madman. And since from what Father Squarcio and I overheard, it is clear that your Excellency, though a very wise and reasonable young gentleman in a general way, is somewhat cracked on the subject of the soul and so forth, we have resolved to see that no harm comes to your Excellency.
Ferruccio
As you please. My life is only a drop falling from the vanishing clouds to the everlasting sea, from finite to infinite, and itself part of the infinite.
Sandro
Impressed. Your Excellency speaks like a crazy but very holy book. Heaven forbid that we should raise a hand against you! But your Excellency will notice that this good action will cost us thirty crowns.
Ferruccio
Is it not worth it?
Sandro
Doubtless, doubtless. It will in fact save us the price of certain masses which we should otherwise have had said for the souls of certain persons who—ahem! Well, no matter. But we think it dangerous and unbecoming that a nobleman like your Excellency should travel without a retinue, and unarmed; for your dagger is unfortunately broken, Excellency. If you would therefore have the condescension to accept Father Squarcio as your man-at-arms—your servant in all but the name, to save his nobility—he will go with you to any town in which you will feel safe from His Eminence the Cardinal, and will leave it to your Excellency’s graciousness as to whether his magnanimous conduct will not then deserve some trifling present: say a wedding gift for my Giulietta.
Ferruccio
Good: the man I tried to slay will save me from being slain. Who would have thought Saint Barbara so full of irony!
Sandro
And if the offer your Excellency was good enough to make in respect of Giulietta still stands—
Squarcio
Rascal: have you then no soul?
Sandro
I am a poor man, Excellency: I cannot afford these luxuries of the rich.
Ferruccio
There is a certain painter will presently make a great picture of St. Barbara; and Giulia will be his model. He will pay her well. Giulia: release the bird. It is time for it to fly.
She takes the net from his shoulders.