Judas?

1st. Sig. I am not warranted to answer that.

Ber. F. I'll answer for thee-'tis a certain Bertram,

Even now deposing to the secret giunta.

Doge. Bertram, "the Bergamask! With what vile tools

We operate to slay or save! This creature,
Black with a double treason, now will earn
Rewards and honors, and be stamp'd in story
With the geese in the Capitol, which gabbled
Till Rome awoke, and had an annual triumph,
While Manlius, who hurl'd down the Gauls, was

cast

From the Tarpeian.

1st. Sig.

He aspired to treason,

And sought to rule the state.
Doge.

He saved the state, And sought but to reform what he revivedBut this is idle-Come, sirs, do -Come, sirs, do your work. 1st. Sig. Noble Bertuccio, we must now remove you

Into an inner chamber.

Ber. F.

Farewell, uncle!

If we shall meet again in life I know not,

But they perhaps will let our ashes mingle.

The throne of such a city these lost men
Have risk'd and forfeited their worthless lives-
So let them die the death.
I. Ber.

We are prepared;

Your racks have done that for us. Let'us die.

Ben. If ye have that to say which would obtain
Abatement of your punishment, the Giunta
Will hear you; if you have aught to confess,
Now is your time, perhaps it may avail ye.

I. Ber. We stand to hear, and not to speak.
Ben.
Your crimes

Are fully proved by your accomplices,
And all which circumstance can add to aid them;
Yet we would hear from your own lips complete
Avowal of your treason: on the verge

Of that dread gulf which none repass, the truth
Alone can profit you on earth or heaven-
Say, then, what was your motive?

I. Ber.
Ben.

Your object?

I. Ber.

I. Ber. So my life grows: I

Was bred a soldier, not a senator.

Ben. Perhaps you think by this blunt brevity

fail'd in!

They cannot quench the memory of those

Who would have hurl'd them from their guilty thrones,

And such examples will find heirs, though distant.

ACT V.

SCENE I.

The Hall of the Council of Ten assembled with the additional Senators, who, on the Trials of the Conspirators for the Treason of MARINO FALIERO, composed what was called the Giunta.Guards, Officers, &c., &c.-ISRAEL BERTUCCIO and PHILIP CALENDARO as Prisoners.—BERTRAM, LIONI, and Witnesses, &c.

The Chief of the Ten, BENINTende.
Ben. There now rests, after such conviction of
Their manifold and manifest offences,
But to pronounce on these obdurate men
The sentence of the law: a grievous task

To those who hear, and those who speak. Alas!
That it should fall to me! and that my days
Of office should be stigmatised through all
The years of coming time, as bearing record
To this most foul and complicated treason
Against a just and free state, known to all
The earth as being the Christian bulwark 'gainst
The Saracen and the schismatic Greek,
The savage Hun, and not less barbarous Frank;
A city which has open'd India's wealth
To Europe; the last Roman refuge from
O'erwhelming Attila; the ocean's queen;

Ben. Is this your sole reply to the tribunal ? I. Ber. Go, ask your racks what they have wrung from us,

Or place us there again; we have still some blood left,

And some slight sense of pain in these wrench'd limbs :

But this ye dare not do; for if we die there

And you have left us little life to spend
Upon your engines, gorged with pangs already-
Ye lose the public spectacle, with which

Ye would appal your slaves to further slavery!
Groans are not words, nor agony assent,
Nor affirmation truth, if nature's sense
Should overcome the soul into a lie,
For a short respite-must we bear or die?
Ben. Say, who were your accomplices?
I. Ber.

Ben. What do you mean?
I. Ber.

Can recognize your legal power to try me Show me the law!

Ben.

On great emergencies, The law must be remodell'd or amended: Our fathers had not fix'd the punishment Of such a crime, as on the old Roman tables The sentence against parricide was left In pure forgetfulness; they could not render That penal, which had neither name nor thought In their great bosoms: who would have foreseen That nature could be filed to such a crime

realms ?

And my superiority in action,

You drew me from my honorable toils

In distant lands-on flood-in field-in cities-
You singled me out like a victim to

Stand crown'd, but bound and helpless, at the altar
Where you alone could minister. I knew not-
I sought not-wish'd not-dream'd not the election,
Which reach'd me first at Rome, and I obey'd;
But found on my arrival, that, besides
The jealous vigilance which always led you
To mock and mar your sovereign's best intents,
You had, even in the interregnum of
My journey to the capital, curtail'd
And mutilated the few privileges

Yet left the duke: all this I bore, and would
Have borne, until my very hearth was stain'd
By the pollution of your ribaldry,

And he, the ribald, whom I see among you-
Fit judge in such tribunal!

Ben. (interrupting him.) Michel Steno
Is here in virtue of his office, as
One of the Forty; "the Ten" having craved
A Giunta of patricians from the senate
To aid our judgment in a trial arduous
And novel as the present: he was set
Free from the penalty pronounced upon him,
Because the Doge, who should protect the law,
Seeking to abrogate all law, can claim
No punishment of others by the statutes.
Which he himself denies and violates!

Doge. His PUNISHMENT! I rather see him there,
Where he now sits, to glut him with my death,
T'han in the mockery of castigation,
Which your foul, outward, juggling show of justice
Decreed as sentence! Base as was his crime,
'Twas purity compared with your protection.

Ben. And can it be, that the great Doge of Venice, With three parts of a century of years And honors on his head, could thus allow His fury, like an angry boy's, to master All feeling, wisdom, faith, and fear, on such provocation as a young man's petulance?

A

Doge. A spark creates the flame-'tis the last drop Which makes the cup run over, and mine was full Already you oppress'd the prince and people; I would have freed both, and have fail'd in both :

Doge.

Her former smiles again at this late hour.

Ben. You do not then in aught arraign our equity? Doge. Noble Venetians! stir me not with questions.

I am resign'd to the worst; but in me still
Have something of the blood of brighter days,
And am not over-patient. Pray you, spare me
Further interrogation, which boots nothing,
Except to turn a trial to debate.

I shall but answer that which will offend you,
And please your enemies-a host already;
'Tis true, these sullen walls should yield no echo ;
But walls have ears-nay, more, they have tongues;

and if

There were no other way for truth to o'erleap them,
You who condemn me, you who fear and slay me,
Yet could not bear in silence to your graves
What you would hear from me of good or evil;
The secret were too mighty for your souls :
Then let it sleep in mine, unless you court
A danger which would double that you escape.
Such my defence would be, had I full scope
To make it famous; for true words are things,
And dying men's are things which long outlive,
And oftentimes avenge them; bury mine,

If
ye
would fain survive me: take this counsel,
And though too oft ye made me live in wrath,
Let me die calmly; you may grant me this ;—
I deny nothing-defend nothing-nothing

I ask of you but silence for myself,
And sentence from the court!

Ben.
This full admission
Spares us the harsh necessity of ordering
The torture to elicit the whole truth.
Doge. The torture! you have put me there already
Daily since I was Doge; but if you will
Add the corporeal rack, you may: these limbs
Will yield with age to crushing iron; but
There's that within my heart shall strain your
engines.

Enter an OFFICER.

Officer. Noble Venetians! Duchess Faliero Requests admission to the Giunta's presence. Ben. Say, conscript fathers,8 shall she be admitted?

One of the Giunta. She may have revelations of importance

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 dishonor was the bane of Troy;
A wife's dishonor 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 bead,
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 sometime 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
With earthquakes, pestilence, and foreign foes,
And the great enemy of man, as subject

But let it be so :-it will be in vain.
The veil which blackens o'er this blighted name,
And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,
Shall draw more gazers than the thousand portraits
Which glitter round it in their pictured trappings-
Your delegated slaves-the people's tyrants!
"Decapitated for his crimes!"-What crimes?
Were it not better to record the facts,
So that the contemplator might approve,
Or at the least learn whence the crimes arose ?
When the beholder knows a Doge conspired,
Let him be told the cause-it is your history.
Ben. Time must reply to that: our sons will judge
Their fathers' judgment, which I now pronounce.
As Doge, clad in the ducal robes and cap,
Thou shalt be led hence to the Giant's Staircase,
Where thou and all our princes are invested;
And there, the ducal crown being first resumed
Upon the spot where it was first assumed,
Thy head shall be struck off; and Heaven have mercy
Upon thy soul!

These

Near to Treviso,which I hold by investment
From Laurence the Count-bishop of Ceneda,
In fief perpetual to myself and heirs,
To portion them (leaving my city spoil,
My palace and my treasures, to your forfeit)
Between my consort and my kinsmen.
Ben.
Lie under the state's ban; their chief, thy nephew
In peril of his own life; but the council
Postpones his trial for the present. If
Thou will'st a state unto thy widow'd princess,
Fear not, for we will do her justice.
Ang.

Signors,