The Vatican

Enter CÆSAR and VANNOZZA

CÆSAR

Now, mother, though thou love my brother more,
Am I not more thy son than he?

VANNOZZA

Not more.

CÆSAR

Have I more Spaniard in me—less of thee?
Did our Most Holiest father thrill thy womb
With more Italian passion than brought forth
Me?

VANNOZZA

Child, thine elder never was as thou—
Spake never thus.

CÆSAR

I doubt it not. But I,
Mother, am not mine elder. He desires
And he enjoys the life God gives him—God,
The Pope our father, and thy sacred self,
Mother beloved and hallowed. I desire
More.

VANNOZZA

Thou wast ever sleepless as the wind—
A child anhungered for thy time to be
Man. See thy purple about thee. Art thou not
Cardinal?

CÆSAR

Ay; my father’s eminence
Set so the stamp on mine. I will not die
Cardinal.

VANNOZZA

CÆsar, wilt thou cleave my heart?
Have I not loved thee?

CÆSAR

Ay, fair mother—ay.
Thou hast loved my father likewise. Dost thou love
Giulia—the sweet Farnese—called the Fair
In all the Roman streets that call thee Rose?
And that bright babe Giovanni, whom our sire,
Thy holy lord and hers, hath stamped at birth
As duke of Nepi?

VANNOZZA

When thy sire begat
Thee, sinful though he ever was—fierce, fell,
Spaniard—I fear me, Jesus for his sins
Bade Satan pass into him.

CÆSAR

And fill thee full,
Sweet sinless mother. Fear it not. Thou hast
Children more loved of him and thee than me—
Our bright Francesco, born to smile and sway,
And her whose face makes pale the sun in heaven,
Whose eyes outlaugh the splendour of the sea,
Whose hair has all noon’s wonders in its weft,
Whose mouth is God’s and Italy’s one rose,
Lucrezia.

VANNOZZA

Dost thou love them then? My child,
How should not I then love thee?

CÆSAR

God alone
Knows. Was not God—the God of love, who bade
His son be man because he hated man,
And saw him scourged and hanging, and at last
Forgave the sin wherewith he had stamped us, seeing
So fair a full atonement—was not God
Bridesman when Christ’s crowned vicar took to bride
My mother?

VANNOZZA

Speak not thou to me of God.
I have sinned, I have sinned—I would I had died a nun,
Cloistered!

CÆSAR

There too my sire had found thee. Priests
Make way where warriors dare not—save when war
Sets wide the floodgates of the weirs of hell.
And what hast thou to do with sin? Hath he
Whose sin was thine not given thee there and then
God’s actual absolution? Mary lived
God’s virgin, and God’s mother: mine art thou,
Who am Christlike even as thou art virginal.
And if thou love me or love me not God knows,
And God, who made me and my sire and thee,
May take the charge upon him. I am I.
Somewhat I think to do before my day
Pass from me. Did I love thee not at all,
I would not bid thee know it.

VANNOZZA

Alas, my son!

CÆSAR

Alas, my mother, sounds no sense for men—
Rings but reverberate folly, whence resounds
Returning laughter. Weep or smile on me,
Thy sunshine or thy rainbow softens not
The mortal earth wherein thou hast clad me. Nay,
But rather would I see thee smile than weep,
Mother. Thou art lovelier, smiling.

VANNOZZA

What is this
Thou hast at heart to do? God’s judgment hangs
Above us. I that girdled thee in me
As Mary girdled Jesus yet unborn
—Thou dost believe it? A creedless heretic
Thou art not?

CÆSAR

I? God’s vicar’s child?

VANNOZZA

Be God
Praised! I, then, I, thy mother, bid thee, pray,
Pray thee but say what hungers in thy heart,
And whither thou wouldst hurl the strenuous life
That works within thee.

CÆSAR

Whither? Am not I
Hinge of the gate that opens heaven—that bids
God open when my sire thrusts in the key—
Cardinal? Canst thou dream I had rather be
Duke?

Enter Francesco

FRANCESCO

Wilt thou take mine office, CÆsar mine?
I heard thy laugh deride it. Mother, whence
Comes that sweet gift of grace from dawn to dawn
That daily shows thee sweeter?

CÆSAR

Knowest thou none
Lovelier?

VANNOZZA

My CÆsar finds me not so fair.
Thou art over fond, Francesco.

CÆSAR

Nay, no whit.
Our heavenly father on earth adores no less
Our mother than our sister: and I hold
His heart and eye, his spirit and his sense,
Infallible.

Enter the Pope

ALEXANDER

Jest not with God. I heard
A holy word, a hallowing epithet,
Cardinal CÆsar, trip across thy tongue
Lightly.

CÆSAR

Most holiest father, I desire
Paternal absolution—when thy laugh
Has waned from lip and eyelid.

ALEXANDER

Take it now,
And Christ preserve thee, CÆsar, as thou art,
To serve him as I serve him. Rose of mine,
My rose of roses, whence has fallen this dew
That dims the sweetest eyes love ever lit
With light that mocks the morning?

VANNOZZA

Nay, my lord,
I know not—nay, I knew not if I wept.

ALEXANDER

Our sons and Christ’s and Peter’s whom we praise,
Are they—are these—fallen out?

FRANCESCO

Not I with him,
Nor he, I think, with me.

CÆSAR

Forbid it, God!
The God that set thee where thou art, and there
Sustains thee, bids the love he kindles bind
Brother to brother.

ALEXANDER

God or no God, man
Must live and let man live—while one man’s life
Galls not another’s. Fools and fiends are men
Who play the fiend that is not. Why shouldst thou,
Girt with the girdle of the church, and given
Power to preside on spirit and flesh—or thou,
Clothed with the glad world’s glory—priest or prince,
Turn on thy brother an evil eye, or deem
Your father God hath dealt his doom amiss
Toward either or toward any? Hath not Rome,
Hath not the Lord Christ’s kingdom, where his will
Is done on earth, enough of all that man
Thirsts, hungers, lusts for—pleasure, pride, and power—
To sate you and to share between you? Whence
Should she, the godless heathen’s goddess once,
Discord, heave up her hissing head again
Between love’s Christian children—love’s? Hath God
Cut short the thrill that glorifies the flesh,
Chilled the sharp rapturous pang that burns the blood,
Because an hundred even as twain at once
Partake it? Boys, my boys, be wise, and rest,
Whatever fire take hold upon your flesh,
Whatever dream set all your life on fire,
Friends.

CÆSAR

Friends? Our father on earth, thy will be done.

FRANCESCO

Christ’s body, CÆsar! dost thou mock?

CÆSAR

Not I.
Hast thou fallen out with me, then, that thy tongue
Disclaims its lingering utterance?

ALEXANDER

Now, by nought,
As nought abides to swear by, folly seen
So plain and heard so loud might well nigh make
Wise men believe in even the devil and God.
What ails you? Whence comes lightning in your eyes,
With hissing hints of thunder on your lips?
Fools! and the fools I thought to make for men
Gods. Is it love or hate divides you—turns
Tooth, fang, or claw, when time provides them prey,
To nip, rip, rend each other?

CÆSAR

Hate or love,
Francesco?

FRANCESCO

Why, I hate thee not—thou knowest
I hate thee not, my CÆsar.

CÆSAR

I believe
Thou dost not hate or love or envy me;
Even as I know, and knowing believe, we all—
Our father, thou and I—triune in heart—
Hold loveliest of all living things to love
This.

Enter Lucrezia

LUCREZIA

Mother! What do tears and thou for once
Together? Rain in sunshine?

VANNOZZA

Ask thy sire,
Am I not now the moon? Saint Anna bore
Saint Mary Virgin—did not God prefer
The child, and thrust behind with scarce a smile
The mother?

ALEXANDER

Thrust not out thy thorns at heaven,
Rose.

LUCREZIA

But what ailed her? And she will not say.

CÆSAR

Sister, I sinned—sin must be mine. A word
Fell out askance between us, and she wept
Because our father chid us.

LUCREZIA

How should strife
Find here a tongue to hiss with? Are not we,
Brothers and sire and sister, sealed of God
Lovers—made one in love?

ALEXANDER

Deride not God,
Lucrezia.

LUCREZIA

Father, dost thou fear him, then?

ALEXANDER

I say not and I know not if I fear.

FRANCESCO

Thou canst not. Father, were he terrible,
How long wouldst thou live—thou, his mask on earth?

ALEXANDER

Boy, art thou all a child? What knew they more,
The men that loved and feared and died for God,
Than I and thou who know him not? We know
This life is ours, and sweet, if shame and fear
Make us not less than man: and less were they
Who crawled and writhed and cowered and called on God
To save them from him. Here I stand as he,
God, or God’s very figure wrought in flesh,
More godlike than was Jesus. Dare I fear
Whipping and hanging? Thou, my cardinal,
Canst think not to be scourged and crucified—
Ha?

CÆSAR

Nay: there lurks no God in me. And thou,
Father, dost thou fear?

ALEXANDER

I? Nought less than God.
But if we take him lightly on our lips
Too light his name will sound in all men’s ears
Till earth and air, when man says God, respond
Laughter. Forbear him.

CÆSAR

Wisdom lives in thee,
And cries not out along the streets as when
None of God’s folk that heard regarded her,
As all that hear thy word regard—or die,
Being not outside God’s eyeshot. Dost thou sleep
Here in his special keeping—here—to-night,
Brother?

FRANCESCO

What bids thee care to know?

CÆSAR

They say
These holy streets of heaven’s most holiest choice
Lie dangerous now in darkness if a man
Walk not on holiest errands. Thou, they say,
Wert scarce a Christlike sacrifice if slain.
Too many dead flow down the Tiber’s flow
Nightly. They say it.

FRANCESCO

I never called thee yet
Fool.

CÆSAR

Ah, my lord and brother, didst thou now,
Were this not thankless? God—our father’s God—
Guide thee!

[Exit Francesco.

He goes, and thanks me not. Our sire,
What says the God that lives upon thy lips
And withers in thy silence?

LUCREZIA

Vex him not,
CÆsar. Thou seest he is weary.

ALEXANDER

Yea. Come ye
With me. Bethink thee, CÆsar. Vex me not.

Exeunt Alexander, Vannozza, and Lucrezia.

CÆSAR

Thou wilt not bid me this, I think, again,
Father.

Enter Michelotto

Thou art swift of speed at need. I bade thee
Abide my bidding.

MICHELOTTO

Till my lord were left
Alone.

CÆSAR

Thou knewest it?

MICHELOTTO

Where my lord may be
And what beseems his thrall to know of him
I were not worthy, knew I not, to know.

CÆSAR

I do not ask thee where my brother sleeps.
And where to-morrow sees him yet asleep—

MICHELOTTO

Ask of the fishers’ nets on Tiber.

CÆSAR

Nay—
Not I but Rome shall ask it. Pass in peace.
The benediction of my sire be thine.

[Exeunt.