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As why should I?
I’ll question not, nor answer. ‘Neath your brow
My sentence hunches, crawls, like cat to spring.
Pah! there’s no prude will match your virtuous wife
You’d banish me?

REGENT.
I do. Cesario,
See to it the City gate shuts not to-night.
And she this side.

FULVIA
(laughs recklessly).

To-night? To-night’s your own.
Most modest woman! Duchess, there’s a well
By the road, some seven miles beyond the town.
There, ‘neath the stars, I’ll dip a hand and drink
To the good Duke’s disport. But have a care!
That cup’s not yet to lip.

REGENT.
Captain, remove her.
Lucio, remain.

[Exeunt the Countess Fulvia, Cesario following]

LUCIO.
I’ll not remain–When ice
Sits judge of fire, what justice shall be done?
Sister, there be your books–peruse them. There
The sea-line–bide you so with back to it.
While the cold inward heat of cruelty
Warms what was once your heart, now crusted o’er
With duty and slimed with poisonous drip of tongues.
God help the Duke, if what he left he’d find!

[Exit Lucio]

REGENT.
Is’t so, I wonder? Go, Lucetta, fetch
My glass, if haply I may tell.

[Exit Lucetta.]

Is’t so?
And have these years enforced, encrusted me
To something monstrous, neither woman nor man?
My lord, my lord! too heavy was the load
You laid! Yet I’ll not blame you: for myself
Ruled the straight path the long account correct
As in these books, my ledgers….

[While she turns the pages, Gamba the Fool creeps
in and hoists himself on the balustrade. He
tries his viol, and sings.]

SONG: Gamba.

Bird of the South, my Rondinello–

REGENT.
Hey? That Song!

GAMBA.
Hie to me, fly to me, steel-blue mate!
Under my breast-knot flutters thy fellow;
Here can I rest not, and thou so late.
Home, to me, home!
‘Love, love, I come!’
–Dear one, I wait!
Quanno nacesti tu, nacqui pur io:
La lundananza tua, ‘l desiderio mio!
You know the song, madonna?

REGENT.
Ay, fool. Sit
Here at my feet, sing on.

GAMBA
(sings).

Bird of the South, my Rondinello
Under thy wing my heart hath lain
Till the rain falling on last leaves yellow
Drumm’d to thee, calling southward again.
Home, to me, home!
‘Love, love, I come!’
Ah, love, the pain!
Addio, addio! ed un’ altra volt’ addio!
La lundananza tua, ‘l desiderio mio!

(Pause).

A foolish rustic thing the shepherd wives
In our Abruzzi croon by winter fires,
Of their husbands in the plains.

REGENT.
Gamba!

GAMBA.
Madonna?

REGENT.
I’d make thee my confessor. Mindest thou,
By Villalago, where from Sanno’s lake
The stream, our Tasso, hurls it down the glen?
One noon, with Lucio–ever in those days
With Lucio–on a rock within the spray,
I wove a ferny garland, while the boy
Roamed, but returned in triumph, having trapped
A bee in a bell-flower–held it to my ear,
Laughing, dissembling that he feared to loose
The hairy thief. So laughed we–and were still,
As deep in Vallescura wound a horn,
And up the pathway ‘neath the dappling bough
Came riding–flecked with sunshine, man and horse,–
My lord, my lover; and that song, that song
Upon his lips….

VOICE OF WATCHMAN.
Sail ho! a sail! a sail!

[Murmur of populace below. It grows and swells to
a roar as enter hurriedly courtiers, guards, and
others: Cesario; Lucetta with mirror.]