[STOPS ABRUPTLY.]

ORSINO: 
What?  Fear not to speak your thought. 
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover:  75
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
A father who is all a tyrant seems, 80
Were the profaner for his sacred name.

NOTE: 
77 makes Truth edition 1821; makes the truth editions 1819, 1839.

GIACOMO: 
Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
Imagination with such fantasies
As the tongue dares not fashion into words, 85
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
To the mind’s eye.—­My heart denies itself
To think what you demand.

ORSINO: 
But a friend’s bosom
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, 90
And from the all-communicating air. 
You look what I suspected—­

GIACOMO: 
Spare me now! 
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
The path across the wilderness, lest he, 95
As my thoughts are, should be—­a murderer. 
I know you are my friend, and all I dare
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. 
But now my heart is heavy, and would take
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. 100
Pardon me, that I say farewell—­farewell! 
I would that to my own suspected self
I could address a word so full of peace.

ORSINO: 
Farewell!—­Be your thoughts better or more bold.
[EXIT GIACOMO.]
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo 105
To feed his hope with cold encouragement: 
It fortunately serves my close designs
That ’tis a trick of this same family
To analyse their own and other minds. 
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 110
Dangerous secrets:  for it tempts our powers,
Knowing what must be thought, and may be done. 
Into the depth of darkest purposes: 
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, 115
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
To which I grow half reconciled.  I’ll do
As little mischief as I can; that thought
Shall fee the accuser conscience.
[AFTER A PAUSE.]
Now what harm 120
If Cenci should be murdered?—­Yet, if murdered,
Wherefore by me?  And what if I could take
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
In such an action?  Of all earthly things