The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning

My first thought was, he lied in every word,

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

Askance to watch the working of his lie

On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored

Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?

What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare

All travellers who might find him posted there,

And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh

Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph

For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside

Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

I did turn as he pointed: neither pride

Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering.

What with my search drawn out through years, my hope

Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

With that obstreperous joy success would bring,—

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring

My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

As when a sick man very near to death

Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end

The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend,

And hears one bid the other go, draw breath

Freelier outside, ("since all is o'er," he saith,

"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;")

While some discuss if near the other graves

Be room enough for this, and when a day

Suits best for carrying the corpse away,

With care about the banners, scarves and staves:

And still the man hears all, and only craves

He may not shame such tender love and stay.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times among "The Band"—to wit,

The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed

Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,

And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,

That hateful cripple, out of his highway

Into the path he pointed. All the day

Had been a dreary one at best, and dim

Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim

Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found

Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

Than, pausing to throw backward a last view

O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round:

Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.

I might go on; naught else remained to do.

So, on I went. I think I never saw

Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!

But cockle, spurge, according to their law

Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,

You'd think: a burr had been a treasure trove.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,

In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See

Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,

"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,

Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents

Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk

All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk

Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there:

Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,

With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,

And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;.

I never saw a brute I hated so;

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.

As a man calls for wine before he fights,

I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier's art:

One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face

Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold

An arm in mine to fix me to the place,

That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!.

Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honor—there he stands

Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.

What honest man should dare (he said) lie durst.

Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands

Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands

Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that;

Back therefore to my darkening path again!

No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.

Will the night send a howlet or a bat?

I asked: when something on the dismal flat

Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river crossed my path

As unexpected as a serpent comes.

No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;

This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath

For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath

Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,

Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;

Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit

Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:

The river which had done them all the wrong,

Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I feared

To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,

Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek

For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!

—It may have been a water-rat I speared,

But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

Now for a better country. Vain presage!

Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,

Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.

What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?

No footprint leading to that horrid mews,

None out of it. Mad brewage set to work

Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk

Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!

What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,

Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel

Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air

Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,

Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,

Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth

Desperate and done with: (so a fool finds mirth,

Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood

Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—

Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim,

Now patches where some leanness of the soil's

Broke into moss or substances like boils;

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end!

Naught in the distance but the evening, naught

To point my footstep further! At the thought,

A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,

Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned

That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,

'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

All round to mountains—with such name to grace

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!

How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—

In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,

Progress this way. When, in the very nick

Of giving up, one time more, came a click

As when a trap shuts—you're inside the den!

Burningly it came on me all at once,

This was the place! those two hills on the right,

Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;

While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,

Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,

After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,

Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf

Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf

He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—why, day

Came back again for that! before it left,

The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,

Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—

"Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!"

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled

Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,

Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—

How such a one was strong, and such was bold,

And such was fortunate, yet each of old

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! in a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

Eulalia. What is it keeps Luitolfo? Night 's fast falling,

And 't was scarce sunset ... had the ave-bell

Sounded before he sought the Provost's house?

I think not: all he had to say would take

Few minutes, such a very few, to say!

How do you think, Chiappino? If our lord

The Provost were less friendly to your friend

Than everybody here professes him,

I should begin to tremble—should not you?

Why are you silent when so many times

I turn and speak to you?

Chiappino. That 's good!

Eu. You laugh!

Ch. Yes. I had fancied nothing that bears price

In the whole world was left to call my own;

And, maybe, felt a little pride thereat.

Up to a single man's or woman's love,

Down to the right in my own flesh and blood,

There 's nothing mine, I fancied,—till you spoke:

—Counting, you see, as "nothing" the permission

To study this peculiar lot of mine

In silence: well, go silence with the rest

Of the world's good! What can I say, shall serve?

Eu. This,—lest you, even more than needs, embitter

Our parting: say your wrongs have cast, for once,

A cloud across your spirit!

Ch. How a cloud?

Eu. No man nor woman loves you, did you say?

Ch. My God, were 't not for thee!

Eu. Ay, God remains,

Even did men forsake you.

Ch. Oh, not so!

Were 't not for God, I mean, what hope of truth—

Speaking truth, hearing truth, would stay with man?

I, now—the homeless friendless penniless

Proscribed and exiled wretch who speak to you,—

Ought to speak truth, yet could not, for my death,

(The thing that tempts me most) help speaking lies

About your friendship and Luitolfo's courage

And all our townsfolk's equanimity—

Through sheer incompetence to rid myself

Of the old miserable lying trick

Caught from the liars I have lived with,—God,

Did I not turn to thee! It is thy prompting

I dare to be ashamed of, and thy counsel

Would die along my coward lip, I know.

But I do turn to thee. This craven tongue,

These features which refuse the soul its way,

Reclaim thou! Give me truth—truth, power to speak

—And after be sole present to approve

The spoken truth! Or, stay, that spoken truth,

Who knows but you, too, may approve?

Eu. Ah, well—

Keep silence then, Chiappino!

Ch. You would hear,—

You shall now,—why the thing we please to style

My gratitude to you and all your friends

For service done me, is just gratitude

So much as yours was service: no whit more.

I was born here, so was Luitolfo; both

At one time, much with the same circumstance

Of rank and wealth; and both, up to this night

Of parting company, have side by side

Still fared, he in the sunshine—I, the shadow.

"Why?" asks the world. "Because," replies the world

To its complacent self, "these playfellows,

Who took at church the holy-water drop

Each from the other's finger, and so forth,—

Were of two moods: Luitolfo was the proper

Friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul,

Fit for the sunshine, so, it followed him.

A happy-tempered bringer of the best

Out of the worst; who bears with what 's past cure,

And puts so good a face on 't—wisely passive

Where action 's fruitless, while he remedies

In silence what the foolish rail against;

A man to smooth such natures as parade

Of opposition must exasperate;

No general gauntlet-gatherer for the weak

Against the strong, yet over-scrupulous

At lucky junctures; one who won't forego

The after-battle work of binding wounds,

Because, forsooth he 'd have to bring himself

To side with wound-inflictors for their leave!"

—Why do you gaze, nor help me to repeat

What comes so glibly from the common mouth,

About Luitolfo and his so-styled friend?

Eu. Because, that friend's sense is obscured ...

Ch. I thought

You would be readier with the other half

Of the world's story, my half! Yet, 't is true.

For all the world does say it. Say your worst!

True, I thank God, I ever said "you sin,"

When a man did sin: if I could not say it,

I glared it at him; if I could not glare it,

I prayed against him; then my part seemed over.

God's may begin yet: so it will, I trust.

Eu. If the world outraged you, did we?

Ch. What 's "me"

That you use well or ill? It 's man, in me,

All your successes are an outrage to,

You all, whom sunshine follows, as you say!

Here 's our Faenza birthplace; they send here

A provost from Ravenna: how he rules,

You can at times be eloquent about.

"Then, end his rule!"—" Ah yes, one stroke does that!

But patience under wrong works slow and sure.

Must violence still bring peace forth? He, beside,

Returns so blandly one's obeisance! ah—

Some latent virtue may be lingering yet,

Some human sympathy which, once excite,

And all the lump were leavened quietly:

So, no more talk of striking, for this time!"

But I, as one of those he rules, won't bear

These pretty takings-up and layings-down

Our cause, just as you think occasion suits.

Enough of earnest, is there? You'll play, will you?

Diversify your tactics, give submission,

Obsequiousness and flattery a turn,

While we die in our misery patient deaths?

We all are outraged then, and I the first:

I, for mankind, resent each shrug and smirk,

Each beck and bend, each ... all you do and are,

I hate!

Eu. We share a common censure, then.

'T is well you have not poor Luitolfo's part

Nor mine to point out in the wide offence.

Ch. Oh, shall I let you so escape me, lady?

Come, on your own ground, lady,—from yourself,

(Leaving the people's wrong, which most is mine)

What have I got to be so grateful for?

These three last fines, no doubt, one on the other

Paid by Luitolfo?

Eu. Shame, Chiappino!

Ch. Shame

Fall presently on who deserves it most!

—Which is to see. He paid my fines—my friend,

Your prosperous smooth lover presently,

Then, scarce your wooer,—soon, your husband: well—

I loved you.

Eu. Hold!

Ch. You knew it, years ago.

When my voice faltered and my eye grew dim

Because you gave me your silk mask to hold—

My voice that greatens when there 's need to curse

The people's Provost to their heart's content,

—My eye, the Provost, who bears all men's eyes,

Banishes now because he cannot bear,—

You knew ... but you do your parts—my part, I:

So be it! You flourish, I decay: all 's well.

Eu. I hear this for the first time.

Ch. The fault 's there?

Then my days spoke not, and my nights of fire

Were voiceless? Then the very heart may burst.

Yet all prove naught, because no mincing speech

Tells leisurely that thus it is and thus?

Eulalia, truce with toying for this once!

A banished fool, who troubles you to-night

For the last time—why, what 's to fear from me?

You knew I loved you!

Eu. Not so, on my faith!

You were my now-affianced lover's friend—

Came in, went out with him, could speak as he.

All praise your ready parts and pregnant wit;

See how your words come from you in a crowd!

Luitolfo 's first to place you o'er himself

In all that challenges respect and love:

Yet you were silent then, who blame me now.

I say all this by fascination, sure:

I, all but wed to one I love, yet listen!

It must be, you are wronged, and that the wrongs

Luitolfo pities ...

Ch. —You too pity? Do!

But hear first what my wrongs are; so began

This talk and so shall end this talk. I say,

Was 't not enough that I must strive (I saw)

To grow so far familiar with your charms

As next contrive some way to win them—which

To do, an age seemed far too brief—for, see!

We all aspire to heaven; and there lies heaven

Above us: go there! Dare we go? no, surely!

How dare we go without a reverent pause,

A growing less unfit for heaven? Just so,

I dared not speak: the greater fool, it seems!

Was 't not enough to struggle with such folly,

But I must have, beside, the very man

Whose slight free loose and incapacious soul

Gave his tongue scope to say whate'er he would

—Must have him load me with his benefits

—For fortune's fiercest stroke?

Eu. Justice to him

That 's now entreating, at his risk perhaps,

Justice for you! Did he once call those acts

Of simple friendship—bounties, benefits?

Ch. No: the straight course had been to call them thus.

Then, I had flung them back, and kept myself

Unhampered, free as he to win the prize

We both sought. But "the gold was dross," he said:

"He loved me, and I loved him not: why spurn

A trifle out of superfluity?

He had forgotten he had done as much."

So had not I! Henceforth, try as I could

To take him at his word, there stood by you

My benefactor; who might speak and laugh

And urge his nothings, even banter me

Before you—but my tongue was tied. A dream!

Let 's wake: your husband ... how you shake at that!

Good—my revenge!

Eu. Why should I shake? What forced

Or forces me to be Luitolfo's bride?

Ch. There 's my revenge, that nothing forces you.

No gratitude, no liking of the eye

Nor longing of the heart, but the poor bond

Of habit—here so many times he came,

So much he spoke,—all these compose the tie

That pulls you from me. Well, he paid my fines,

Nor missed, a cloak from wardrobe, dish from table;

He spoke a good word to the Provost here,

Held me up when my fortunes fell away,

—It had not looked so well to let me drop,—

Men take pains to preserve a tree-stump, even,

Whose boughs they played beneath—much more a friend.

But one grows tired of seeing, after the first,

Pains spent upon impracticable stuff

Like me. I could not change: you know the rest:

I 've spoke my mind too fully out, by chance,

This morning to our Provost; so, ere night

I leave the city on pain of death. And now

On my account there 's gallant intercession

Goes forward—that 's so graceful!—and anon

He 'll noisily come back: "the intercession

Was made and fails; all 's over for us both;

'T is vain contending; I would better go."

And I do go—and straight to you he turns

Light of a load; and ease of that permits

His visage to repair the natural bland

Œconomy, sore broken late to suit

My discontent. Thus, all are pleased—you, with him,

He with himself, and all of you with me

—"Who," say the citizens, "had done far better

In letting people sleep upon their woes,

If not possessed with talent to relieve them

When once awake;—but then I had," they 'll say,

"Doubtless some unknown compensating pride

In what I did; and as I seem content

With ruining myself, why, so should they be."

And so they are, and so be with his prize

The devil, when he gets them speedily!

Why does not your Luitolfo come? I long

To don this cloak and take the Lugo path.

It seems you never loved me, then?

Eu. Chiappino!

Ch. Never?

Eu. Never.

Ch. That 's sad. Say what I might,

There was no help from being sure this while

You loved me. Love like mine must have return,

I thought: no river starts but to some sea.

And had you loved me, I could soon devise

Some specious reason why you stifled love,

Some fancied self-denial on your part,

Which made you choose Luitolfo; so, excepting

From the wide condemnation of all here,

One woman. Well, the other dream may break!

If I knew any heart, as mine loved you,

Loved me, though in the vilest breast 't were lodged,

I should, I think, be forced to love again:

Else there 's no right nor reason in the world.

Eu. "If you knew," say you,—but I did not know.

That 's where you 're blind, Chiappino!—a disease

Which if I may remove, I 'll not repent

The listening to. You cannot, will not, see

How, place you but in every circumstance

Of us, you are just now indignant at,

You 'd be as we.

Ch. I should be?... that; again!

I, to my friend, my country and my love,

Be as Luitolfo and these Faentines?

Eu. As we.

Ch. Now, I 'll say something to remember.

I trust in nature for the stable laws

Of beauty and utility.—Spring shall plant,

And Autumn garner to the end of time:

I trust in God—the right shall be the right

And other than the wrong, while he endures:

I trust in my own soul, that can perceive

The outward and the inward, nature's good

And God's: so, seeing these men and myself,

Having a right to speak, thus do I speak.

I 'll not curse—God bears with them, well may I—

But I—protest against their claiming me.

I simply say, if that 's allowable,

I would not (broadly) do as they have done.

—God curse this townful of born slaves, bred slaves,

Branded into the blood and bone, slaves! Curse

Whoever loves, above his liberty,

House, land or life! and ...

[A knocking without.

—bless my hero-friend,

Luitolfo!

Eu. How he knocks!

Ch. The peril, lady!

"Chiappino, I have run a risk—a risk!

For when I prayed the Provost (he 's my friend)

To grant you a week's respite of the sentence

That confiscates your goods, exiles yourself,

He shrugged his shoulder—I say, shrugged it! Yes,

And fright of that drove all else from my head.

Here 's a good purse of scudi: off with you,

Lest of that shrug come what God only knows!

The scudi—friend, they 're trash—no thanks, I beg!

Take the north gate,—for San Vitale's suburb,

Whose double taxes you appealed against,

In discomposure at your ill-success

Is apt to stone you: there, there—only go!

Beside, Eulalia here looks sleepily.

Shake ... oh, you hurt me, so you squeeze my wrist!"

—Is it not thus you 'll speak, adventurous friend?

[As he opens the door, Luitolfo rushes in, his garments disordered.

Eu. Luitolfo! Blood?

Luitolfo. There 's more—and more of it!

Eulalia—take the garment! No—you, friend!

You take it and the blood from me—you dare!

Eu. Oh, who has hurt you? where's the wound?

Ch. "Who," say you?

The man with many a touch of virtue yet!

The Provost's friend has proved too frank of speech,

And this comes of it. Miserable hound!

This comes of temporizing, as I said!

Here 's fruit of your smooth speeches and soft looks!

Now see my way! As God lives, I go straight

To the palace and do justice, once for all!

Luit. What says he?

Ch. I'll do justice on him.

Luit. Him?

Ch. The Provost.

Luit. I 've just killed him.

Eu. Oh, my God!

Luit. My friend, they 're on my trace; they 'll have me—now!

They 're round him, busy with him: soon they 'll find

He 's past their help, and then they 'll be on me!

Chiappino, save Eulalia! I forget ...

Were you not bound for ...

Ch. Lugo?

Luit. Ah—yes—yes!

That was the point I prayed of him to change.

Well, go—be happy! Is Eulalia safe?

They 're on me!

Ch. 'T is through me they reach you, then!

Friend, seem the man you are! Lock arms—that 's right!

Now tell me what you 've done; explain how you,

That still professed forbearance, still preached peace,

Could bring yourself ...

Luit. What was peace for, Chiappino?

I tried peace: did that promise, when peace failed,

Strife should not follow? All my peaceful days

Were just the prelude to a day like this.

I cried "You call me 'friend': save my true friend!

Save him, or lose me!"

Ch. But you never said

You meant to tell the Provost thus and thus.

Luit. Why should I say it? What else did I mean?

Ch. Well? He persisted?

Luit. —"Would so order it

You should not trouble him too soon again."

I saw a meaning in his eye and lip;

I poured my heart's store of indignant words

Out on him: then—I know not! He retorted.

And I ... some staff lay there to hand—I think

He bade his servants thrust me out—I struck ...

Ah, they come! Fly you, save yourselves, you two!

The dead back-weight of the beheading axe!

The glowing trip-hook, thumbscrews and the gadge!

Eu. They do come! Torches in the Place! Farewell,

Chiappino! You can work no good to us—

Much to yourself; believe not, all the world

Must needs be cursed henceforth!

Ch. And you?

Eu. I stay.

Ch. Ha, ha! Now, listen! I am master here!

This was my coarse disguise; this paper shows

My path of flight and place of refuge—see—

Lugo, Argenta, past San Nicolo,

Ferrara, then to Venice and all 's safe!

Put on the cloak! His people have to fetch

A compass round about. There 's time enough

Ere they can reach us, so you straightway make

For Lugo ... nay, he hears not! On with it—

The cloak, Luitolfo, do you hear me? See—

He obeys he knows not how. Then, if I must—

Answer me! Do you know the Lugo gate?

Eu. The northwest gate, over the bridge?

Luit. I know.

Ch. Well, there—you are not frightened? all my route

Is traced in that: at Venice you escape

Their power. Eulalia, I am master here!

[Shouts from without. He pushes out Luitolfo, who complies mechanically.

In time! Nay, help me with him—so! He 's gone.

Eu. What have you done? On you, perchance, all know

The Provost's hater, will men's vengeance fall

As our accomplice.

Ch. Mere accomplice? See!

[Putting on Luitolfo's vest.

Now, lady, am I true to my profession,

Or one of these?

Eu. You take Luitolfo's place?

Ch. Die for him.

Eu. Well done!

[Shouts increase.

Ch. How the people tarry!

I can't be silent; I must speak: or sing—

How natural to sing now!

Eu. Hush and pray!

We are to die; but even I perceive

'T is not a very hard thing so to die.

My cousin of the pale-blue tearful eyes,

Poor Cesca, suffers more from one day's life

With the stern husband; Tisbe's heart goes forth

Each evening after that wild son of hers,

To track his thoughtless footstep through the streets:

How easy for them both to die like this!

I am not sure that I could live as they.

Ch. Here they come, crowds! they pass the gate? Yes!—No!—

One torch is in the courtyard. Here flock all.

Eu. At least Luitolfo has escaped. What cries!

Ch. If they would drag one to the marketplace,

One might speak there!

Eu. List, list!

Ch. They mount the steps.

(Enter the Populace.)

Ch. I killed the Provost!

The Populace. [Speaking together.] 'T was Chiappino, friends!

Our savior! The best man at last as first!

He who first made us feel what chains we wore,

He also strikes the blow that shatters them,

He at last saves us—our best citizen!

—Oh, have you only courage to speak now?

My eldest son was christened a year since

"Cino" to keep Chiappino's name in mind—

Cino, for shortness merely, you observe!

The city 's in our hands. The guards are fled.

Do you, the cause of all, come down—come up—

Come out to counsel us, our chief, our king,

Whate'er rewards you! Choose your own reward!

The peril over, its reward begins!

Come and harangue us in the market-place!

Eu. Chiappino?

Ch. Yes—I understand your eyes!

You think I should have promptlier disowned

This deed with its strange unforeseen success,

In favor of Luitolfo. But the peril,

So far from ended, hardly seems begun.

To-morrow, rather, when a calm succeeds,

We easily shall make him full amends:

And meantime—if we save them as they pray,

And justify the deed by its effects?

Eu. You would, for worlds, you had denied at once.

Ch. I know my own intention, be assured!

All 's well. Precede us, fellow-citizens!

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"

A SOUL'S TRAGEDY

ACT I

ACT II