Cardinal: To Rome?
Fulvia: Do not pause here to learn
With the dear minutes of a dying man.
(Cardinal goes.
Charles: You baffle and bewilder.
Fulvia: Well.
Charles: You – ? – Yes!
I am beat off by it.
Fulvia: Ten years of shelter
Have you held over me.
Charles: Ten years —
Fulvia: Whose days,
Whose every moment else had borne a torture.
Charles: Now – ?
Fulvia: I, perhaps, must go.
Charles: Must? – Still I grope.
Fulvia: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calm
And melancholy dusk no shadow is
Or niche but may remember prayer for thee.
Charles: To Rome? You must? – I am under a spell.
Fulvia: We, thou and I, after the battle's foam
Or chase's tired return, often have breathed
The passionate deep hours away in rest
And sympathy.
Charles: Say on. Your voice – I marvel —
Fulvia: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slow
With quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.
Charles: You go? – But, on! – your tone – in it I feel —
Fulvia: Have we not fast been friends?
Charles: What hath your voice?
Fulvia: Such friends have we not been as grow up from
Eternity?
Charles: You say it, and I wake.
Fulvia: Such friends – till yesterday you —
Charles: Ah!
Fulvia: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.
Charles: I had forgot – forgot! – the sun! – the sea!
The sea! – Antonio! – The cliff – the surf!
The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!
Fulvia: Be calm.
Charles (rising excitedly): I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!
A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed
This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them,
If he —
Fulvia (drawing him to his chair): Be patient – calm.
Charles: I – I – remember,
'Tis night!
Fulvia: Yes, night.
Charles: The sun's no more! It hath
Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.
Fulvia: Beyond? – Ah!
Charles (quickly): Fulvia?
Fulvia: 'Tis hard to think!
Charles: You utter and he seemeth still of life.
Fulvia: He was a child in mimic mail clad out
When first this threshold poured its welcome to me.
Charles: Softly you muse it, and call to your eyes
No quailing nor a flame of execration!
You do not burst out on me? from me do
Not shrink as from an executioner?
Fulvia: I am a woman who in tears came to
Your strength, in tears depart.