ANG.

If there are so

Within these walls, thou art not of the number:

The truly brave are generous to the fallen!-

Is there no hope?

BEN.

Lady, it cannot be.

ANG. (turning to the DOGE). Then die, Faliero! since it must be so;

But with the spirit of my father's friend.
Thou hast been guilty of a great offence,
Half-cancell'd by the harshness of these men.
I would have sued to them-have pray'd to them-
Have begg❜d as famish❜d mendicants for bread—
Have wept as they will cry unto their God
For mercy, and be answer❜d as they answer-
Had it been fitting for thy name or mine,
And if the cruelty in their cold eyes

Had not announced the heartless wrath within.

Then, as a prince, address thee to thy doom!

DOGE. I have lived too long not to know how to

die!

Thy suing to these men were but the bleating

Of the lamb to the butcher, or the cry

Of seamen to the surge: : I would not take

A life eternal, granted at the hands

Of wretches, from whose monstrous villanies

I sought to free the groaning nations!

MIC. STENO.

Doge,

A word with thee, and with this noble lady,
Whom I have grievously offended. Would
Sorrow, or shame, or penance on my part,
Could cancel the inexorable past!

But since that cannot be, as Christians let us
Say farewell, and in peace: with full contrition
I crave, not pardon, but compassion from you,
And give, however weak, my prayers for both.

ANG. Sage Benintende, now chief judge of Venice,

I speak to thee in answer to yon signor.

Inform the ribald Steno, that his words

Ne'er weigh'd in mind with Loredano's daughter
Further than to create a moment's pity

For such as he is: would that others had
Despised him as I pity! I prefer

My honour to a thousand lives, could such
Be multiplied in mine, but would not have
A single life of others lost for that

Which nothing human can impugn—the sense
Of virtue, looking not to what is called
A good name for reward, but to itself.

To me the scorner's words were as the wind
Unto the rock: but as there are-alas!
Spirits more sensitive, on which such things
Light as the whirlwind on the waters; souls
To whom dishonour's shadow is a substance
More terrible than death here and hereafter;
Men whose vice is to start at vice's scoffing,
And who, though proof against all blandishments
Of pleasure, and all pangs of pain, are feeble
When the proud name on which they pinnacled
Their hopes is breathed on, jealous as the eagle
Of her high aiery; let what we now

Behold, and feel, and suffer, be a lesson

To wretches how they tamper in their spleen
With beings of a higher order. Insects
Have made the lion mad ere now; a shaft

I' the heel o'erthrew the bravest of the brave ;
A wife's dishonour was the bane of Troy;
A wife's dishonour unking'd Rome for ever;

An injured husband brought the Gauls to Clusium,
And thence to Rome, which perish'd for a time;
An obscene gesture cost Caligula

His life, while earth yet bore his cruelties;

A virgin's wrong made Spain a Moorish province;

And Steno's lie, couch'd in two worthless lines,
Hath decimated Venice, put in peril

A senate which hath stood eight hundred years,
Discrown'd a prince, cut off his crownless head,
And forged new fetters for a groaning people!
Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesan
Who fired Persepolis, be proud of this,
If it so please him—'twere a pride fit for him!
But let him not insult the last hours of
Him, who, whate'er he now is, was a hero,
By the intrusion of his very prayers:

Nothing of good can come from such a source,
Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever :

We leave him to himself, that lowest depth

Of human baseness.

Pardon is for men,

And not for reptiles-we have none for Steno,
And no resentment; things like him must sting,
And higher beings suffer: 'tis the charter

Of life. The man who dies by the adder's fang
May have the crawler crush'd, but feels no anger:
'Twas the worm's nature; and some men are worms

In soul, more than the living things of tombs.

DOGE (to BEN.) Signor! complete that which

you

deem

your duty.

BEN. Before we can proceed upon that duty, We would request the princess to withdraw; "Twill move her too much to be witness to it. ANG. I know it will, and yet I must endure it, For 'tis a part of mine-I will not quit, Except by force, my husband's side.-Proceed! Nay, fear not either shriek, or sigh, or tear; Though my heart burst, it shall be silent.-Speak!

I have that within which shall o'ermaster all.

BEN.

Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice,

Count of Val di Marino, Senator,

And some time General of the Fleet and Army,
Noble Venetian, many times and oft

Intrusted by the state with high employments,
Even to the highest, listen to the sentence.
Convict by many witnesses and proofs,
And by thine own confession, of the guilt
Of treachery and treason, yet unheard of
Until this trial-the decree is death.

Thy goods are confiscate unto the state,
Thy name is razed from out her records, save

Upon a public day of thanksgiving

For this our most miraculous deliverance,

When thou art noted in our calendars