Scene I.—St. Mark's.
Enter Priuli and Jaffier, L.
Priuli. (r.) No more! I'll hear no more! Begone
and leave me!

Jaf. Not hear me! By my sufferings, but you shall!
My lord—my lord! I'm not that abject wretch
You think me. Patience! where's the distance throws
Me back so far, but I may boldly speak
In right, though proud oppression will not hear me?

Priuli. Have you not wronged me?

Jaf. Could my nature e'er
Have brooked injustice, or the doing wrongs,
I need not now thus low have bent myself
To gain a hearing from a cruel father.—
Wronged you?

Priuli. Yes, wronged me! In the nicest point,
The honour of my house, you've done me wrong.
You may remember (for I now will speak,
And urge its baseness) when you first came borne
From travel, with such hopes as made you looked on
By all men's eyes, a youth of expectation;
Pleased with your growing virtue, I received you;
Courted, and sought to raise you to your merits;
My house, my table, nay, my fortune too,
My very self was yours; you might have used me
To your best service; like an open friend,
I treated, trusted you, and thought you mine:
When, in requital of my best endeavours,
You treacherously practised to undo me;
Seduced the weakness of my age's darling,
My only child, and stole her from my bosom.
Oh! Belvidera!

Jaf. 'Tis to me you owe her:
Childless you had been else, and in the grave
Your name extinct; no more Priuli heard of.
You may remember, scarce five years are past,
Since in your brigantine you sailed to see,
The Adriatic wedded by our duke;
And I was with you: your unskilful pilot
Dashed us upon a rock; when to your boat
You made for safety; entered first yourself;—
The affrighted Belvidera, following next,
As she stood trembling on the vessel's side,
Was, by a wave, washed off into the deep;
When instantly I plunged into the sea,
And buffeting the billows to her rescue,
Redeemed her life with half the loss of mine.
Like a rich conquest, in one hand I bore her,
And with the other dashed the saucy waves,
That thronged and pressed to rob me of my prize.
I brought her, gave her to your despairing arms;
Indeed, you thanked me; but a nobler gratitude
Rose in her soul: for from that hour she loved me,
Till for her life she paid me with herself.

Priuli. You stole her from me; like a thief you stole her,
At dead of night; that cursed hour you chose
To rifle me of all my heart held dear.
May all your joys in her prove false, like mine!
A sterile fortune, and a barren bed,
Attend you both: continual discord make
Your days and nights bitter and grievous still:
May the hard hand of a vexatious need
Oppress and grind you; till at last you find
The curse of disobedience all your portion.

Jaf. Half of your curse you have bestowed in vain,
Heav'n has already crowned our faithful loves
With a young boy, sweet as his mother's beauty:
May he live to prove more gentle than his grandsire,
And happier than his father.

Priuli. Rather live
To bait thee for his bread, and din your ears
With hungry cries; whilst his unhappy mother
Sits down and weeps in bitterness of want.

Jaf. You talk as if 'twould please you.

Priuli. 'T would, by heaven!

Jaf. Would I were in my grave?

Priuli. And she, too, with thee:
For, living here, you're but my cursed remembrances,
I once was happy!

Jaf. You use me thus, because you know my soul
Is fond of Belvidera. You perceive
My life feeds on her, therefore thus you treat me
Were I that thief, the doer of such wrongs
As you upbraid me with, what hinders me
But I might send her back to you with contumely,
And court my fortune where she would be kinder?

Priuli. You dare not do't.

Jaf. Indeed, my lord, I dare not.
My heart, that awes me, is too much my master:
Three years are past since first our vows were plighted,
During which time, the world must bear me witness,
I've treated Belvidera like your daughter,
The daughter of a senator of Venice:
Distinction, place, attendance, and observance,
Due to her birth, she always has commanded:
Out of my little fortune, I've done this;
Because, (though hopeless e'er to win your nature)
The world might see I loved her for herself;
Not as the heiress of the great Priuli.

Priuli. No more.

Jaf. Yes, all, and then, adieu forever.
[Pausing with clasped hands. There's not a wretch that lives on common charity
But's happier than I; for I have known
The luscious sweets of plenty; every night
Have slept with soft content about my head,
And never waked, but to a joyful morning:
Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn,
Whoso blossom 'scaped, yet's withered in the ripenin.

Priuli. Home, and be humble; study to retrench;
Discharge the lazy vermin of thy hall,
Those pageants of thy folly:
Reduce the glitt'ring trappings of thy wife
To humble weeds, fit for thy little state: [ Going. Then to some suburb cottage both retire;
Drudge to feed loathsome life; get brats and starve—
Home, home, I say! [Exit, R.
Jaf. (C.) Yes, if my heart would let me——
This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go,
But that my doors are hateful to my eyes,
Filled and damned up with gaping creditors!
I've now not fifty ducats in the world,
Yet still I am in love, and pleased with ruin.
Oh, Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife—
And we will bear our wayward fate together,
But ne'er know comfort more.

Enter Pierre, L. S. E.
Pierre. (L. C.) My friend, good morrow;
How fares the honest partner of my heart?
What, melancholy! not a word to spare me!

Jaf. (C.) I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damned
starving quality,
Called honesty, got footing in the world.

Pierre. Why, powerful villainy first set it up,
For its own ease and safety. Honest men
Are the-soft easy cushions on which knave's
Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains,
They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice,
Cut-throats, reward: each man would kill his brother
Himself; none would be paid or hanged for murder.
Honesty! 'twas a cheat, invented first
To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,
That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,
And lord it uncontrolled above their betters.

Jaf. Then honesty is but a notion?

Pierre. Nothing else;
Like wit, much talked of, not to be defined:
He that pretends to most, too, has least share in't
Tis a ragged virtue. Honesty! no more on't.

Jaf. Sure, thou art honest?

Pierre. So, indeed, men think me;
But they're mistaken, Jaffier; I'm a rogue,
As well as they;
A fine, gay, bold-faced villain as thou seest me!
'Tis true. I pay my debts, when they're contracted;
I steal from no man; would not cut a throat
To gain admission to a great man's purse;
Would not betray my friend,
To get his place or fortune; I scorn to flatter
A blown-up fool above me, or crush the wretch beneath me;
Yet, Jaffier, for all this, I am a villain.

Jaf. (R. C.) A villain!

Pierre. Yes, a most notorious villain;
To see the sufferings of my fellow-creatures,
And own myself a man; to see our senators
Cheat the deluded people with a show
Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of.
They say, by them our hands are free from fetters;
Yet whom they please, they lay in basest bonds;
Bring w

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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