From my father.

CLO.

And do you know whence he?

ROS.

Oh, very well: From one of this same Polish realm of yours, Who promised a return, should come the chance, Of courtesies that he received himself In Muscovy, and left this pledge of it-- Not likely yet, it seems, to be redeem'd.

CLO (aside).

Oh, wondrous chance--or wondrous Providence!

The sword that I myself in Muscovy, When these white hairs were black, for keepsake left Of obligation for a like return To him who saved me wounded as I lay Fighting against his country; took me home; Tended me like a brother till recover'd, Perchance to fight against him once again And now my sword put back into my hand By his--if not his son--still, as so seeming, By me, as first devoir of grat.i.tude, To seem believing, till the wearer's self See fit to drop the ill-dissembling mask.

(Aloud.) Well, a strange turn of fortune has arrested The sharp and sudden penalty that else Had visited your rashness or mischance: In part, your tender youth too--pardon me, And touch not where your sword is not to answer-- Commends you to my care; not your life only, Else by this misadventure forfeited; But ev'n your errand, which, by happy chance, Chimes with the very business I am on, And calls me to the very point you aim at.

ROS.

The capital?

CLO.

Ay, the capital; and ev'n That capital of capitals, the Court: Where you may plead, and, I may promise, win Pardon for this, you say unwilling, trespa.s.s, And prosecute what else you have at heart, With me to help you forward all I can; Provided all in loyalty to those To whom by natural allegiance I first am bound to.

ROS.

As you make, I take Your offer: with like promise on my side Of loyalty to you and those you serve, Under like reservation for regards Nearer and dearer still.

CLO.

Enough, enough; Your hand; a bargain on both sides. Meanwhile, Here shall you rest to-night. The break of day Shall see us both together on the way.

ROS.

Thus then what I for misadventure blamed, Directly draws me where my wishes aim'd.

(Exeunt.)

SCENE II.--The Palace at Warsaw

Enter on one side Astolfo, Duke of Muscovy, with his train: and, on the other, the Princess Estrella, with hers.

ASTOLFO.

My royal cousin, if so near in blood, Till this auspicious meeting scarcely known, Till all that beauty promised in the bud Is now to its consummate blossom blown, Well met at last; and may--

ESTRELLA.

Enough, my Lord, Of compliment devised for you by some Court tailor, and, believe me, still too short To cover the designful heart below.

AST.

Nay, but indeed, fair cousin--

EST.

Ay, let Deed Measure your words, indeed your flowers of speech Ill with your iron equipage atone; Irony indeed, and wordy compliment.

AST.

Indeed, indeed, you wrong me, royal cousin, And fair as royal, misinterpreting What, even for the end you think I aim at, If false to you, were fatal to myself.

EST.

Why, what else means the glittering steel, my Lord, That bristles in the rear of these fine words?

What can it mean, but, failing to cajole, To fight or force me from my just pretension?

AST.

Nay, might I not ask ev'n the same of you, The nodding helmets of whose men-at-arms Out-crest the plumage of your lady court?

EST.

But to defend what yours would force from me.

AST.

Might not I, lady, say the same of mine?

But not to come to battle, ev'n of words, With a fair lady, and my kinswoman; And as averse to stand before your face, Defenceless, and condemn'd in your disgrace, Till the good king be here to clear it all-- Will you vouchsafe to hear me?

EST.

As you will.

AST.

You know that, when about to leave this world, Our royal grandsire, King Alfonso, left Three children; one a son, Basilio, Who wears--long may he wear! the crown of Poland; And daughters twain: of whom the elder was Your mother, Clorilena, now some while Exalted to a more than mortal throne; And Recisunda, mine, the younger sister, Who, married to the Prince of Muscovy, Gave me the light which may she live to see Herself for many, many years to come.

Meanwhile, good King Basilio, as you know, Deep in abstruser studies than this world, And busier with the stars than lady's eyes, Has never by a second marriage yet Replaced, as Poland ask'd of him, the heir An early marriage brought and took away; His young queen dying with the son she bore him; And in such alienation grown so old As leaves no other hope of heir to Poland Than his two sisters' children; you, fair cousin, And me; for whom the Commons of the realm Divide themselves into two several factions; Whether for you, the elder sister's child; Or me, born of the younger, but, they say, My natural prerogative of man Outweighing your priority of birth.

Which discord growing loud and dangerous, Our uncle, King Basilio, doubly sage In prophesying and providing for The future, as to deal with it when come, Bids us here meet to-day in solemn council Our several pretensions to compose.

And, but the martial out-burst that proclaims His coming, makes all further parley vain, Unless my bosom, by which only wise I prophesy, now wrongly prophesies, By such a happy compact as I dare But glance at till the Royal Sage declare.

(Trumpets, etc. Enter King Basilio with his Council.)

ALL.

The King! G.o.d save the King!

ESTRELLA (Kneeling.) Oh, Royal Sir!--

ASTOLFO (Kneeling.) G.o.d save your Majesty--

KING.

Rise both of you, Rise to my arms, Astolfo and Estrella; As my two sisters' children always mine, Now more than ever, since myself and Poland Solely to you for our succession look'd.

And now give ear, you and your several factions, And you, the Peers and Princes of this realm, While I reveal the purport of this meeting In words whose necessary length I trust No unsuccessful issue shall excuse.

You and the world who have surnamed me "Sage"

Know that I owe that t.i.tle, if my due, To my long meditation on the book Which ever lying open overhead-- The book of heaven, I mean--so few have read; Whose golden letters on whose sapphire leaf, Distinguishing the page of day and night, And all the revolution of the year; So with the turning volume where they lie Still changing their prophetic syllables, They register the destinies of men: Until with eyes that, dim with years indeed, Are quicker to pursue the stars than rule them, I get the start of Time, and from his hand The wand of tardy revelation draw.

Oh, had the self-same heaven upon his page Inscribed my death ere I should read my life And, by fore-casting of my own mischance, Play not the victim but the suicide In my own tragedy!--But you shall hear.

You know how once, as kings must for their people, And only once, as wise men for themselves, I woo'd and wedded: know too that my Queen In childing died; but not, as you believe, With her, the son she died in giving life to.

For, as the hour of birth was on the stroke, Her brain conceiving with her womb, she dream'd A serpent tore her entrail. And too surely (For evil omen seldom speaks in vain) The man-child breaking from that living tomb That makes our birth the ant.i.type of death, Man-grateful, for the life she gave him paid By killing her: and with such circ.u.mstance As suited such unnatural tragedy; He coming into light, if light it were That darken'd at his very horoscope, When heaven's two champions--sun and moon I mean-- Suffused in blood upon each other fell In such a raging duel of eclipse As hath not terrified the universe Since that which wept in blood the death of Christ: When the dead walk'd, the waters turn'd to blood, Earth and her cities totter'd, and the world Seem'd shaken to its last paralysis.

In such a paroxysm of dissolution That son of mine was born; by that first act Heading the monstrous catalogue of crime, I found fore-written in his horoscope; As great a monster in man's history As was in nature his nativity; So savage, b.l.o.o.d.y, terrible, and impious, Who, should he live, would tear his country's entrails, As by his birth his mother's; with which crime Beginning, he should clench the dreadful tale By trampling on his father's silver head.

All which fore-reading, and his act of birth Fate's warrant that I read his life aright; To save his country from his mother's fate, I gave abroad that he had died with her His being slew; with midnight secrecy I had him carried to a lonely tower Hewn from the mountain-barriers of the realm, And under strict anathema of death Guarded from men's inquisitive approach, Save from the trusty few one needs must trust; Who while his fasten'd body they provide With salutary garb and nourishment, Instruct his soul in what no soul may miss Of holy faith, and in such other lore As may solace his life-imprisonment, And tame perhaps the Savage prophesied Toward such a trial as I aim at now, And now demand your special hearing to.

What in this fearful business I have done, Judge whether lightly or maliciously,-- I, with my own and only flesh and blood, And proper lineal inheritor!

I swear, had his foretold atrocities Touch'd me alone. I had not saved myself At such a cost to him; but as a king,-- A Christian king,--I say, advisedly, Who would devote his people to a tyrant Worse than Caligula fore-chronicled?

But even this not without grave mis-giving, Lest by some chance mis-reading of the stars, Or mis-direction of what rightly read, I wrong my son of his prerogative, And Poland of her rightful sovereign.

For, sure and certain prophets as the stars, Although they err not, he who reads them may; Or rightly reading--seeing there is One Who governs them, as, under Him, they us, We are not sure if the rough diagram They draw in heaven and we interpret here, Be sure of operation, if the Will Supreme, that sometimes for some special end The course of providential nature breaks By miracle, may not of these same stars Cancel his own first draft, or overrule What else fore-written all else overrules.

As, for example, should the Will Almighty Permit the Free-will of particular man To break the meshes of else strangling fate-- Which Free-will, fearful of foretold abuse, I have myself from my own son fore-closed From ever possible self-extrication; A terrible responsibility, Not to the conscience to be reconciled Unless opposing almost certain evil Against so slight contingency of good.