_Ner._ And none hath loved so long: Thou wert my first delight.
_Act._ Did Cæsar send To tell me this bad news?
_Ner._ Nay, but I love to tell it: Now for the bad. Hark: thou must leave the palace: Poppæa is jealous, and the day draws near When she and I must solemnize our nuptials: Rome needs an heir.
_Act._ I am not jealous óf her, If Cæsar love me; for I know that Cæsar Cannot be bound like other men.
_Ner._ ’Tis true: And I can send thee too where they will love thee; To Silia’s house; thou wilt be happier there.
_Act._ I know that Nero Will not love Acte less, when she is away From his dislikes.
_Ner._ Ah, pretty sweet, thou know’st My secretest heart. Come, I will write a letter For thee to take to Silia. Come! (_The fire brightens._)
_Act._ (_turning_). O, Nero, 1081 The fire, the fire! I am frightened.
_Ner._ Hide thine eyes And think not of it.
_Act._ Nay, but I can hear it, And smell the smoke.
_Ner._ It shall not hurt thee, darling: And Silia’s house lies down beyond the Tiber, Far from the flames. Come, sweetest, thou shalt sit Beside me while I write the letter. Come! I treasure thee ’bove all I have. Fear not!
[_Exeunt Nero and Acte. Poppæa comes out from where she was hid. The fire rages._
_Pop._ Accursed wretch! I knew it: she is thy wife. And I thy harlot. Yet I can dissemble— I can dissemble too—I, sanctified By long devotion to the Queen of heaven, Shelter too well thy godless head. I live To reign when thou art dead. Vain, hideous fool! Whose heart not murder scathes nor fire can scare, Proof by self-evil against all outer evil: There is one mischief that thou’rt not a match for, The hate of thy bed-fellow. I shall be avenged.
(_There is at the end of this act such a tableau of fire as the stage machinery will allow of. The fire is first seen thro’ the windows when Tigellinus sends Nero to the window at line 986. At Acte’s speech, ‘Nero, the fire!’ it is very bright: and its climax is during Poppæa’s last speech._)
In these burned streets I wander like a ghost: Rome is no more: O see, my memoried Rome, My senatorial city is burned and gone! 1101 The city of Camillus, whose abrupt And tortuous streets my ancestors have threaded, Here going about a tower of Servius, Here an Etruscan temple of carved wood, Here by some patriot tribune’s gabled home: All gone, as the free spirit that made it, gone: And I, like this old beam, in vain escaped The burning, shall be cast out, nor find place In the new Rome that Cæsar promises, O’erlaid with perfected monotony, The textbook ornaments of shallow taste, Imperial gewgaws.—What poet was it said That Desolation was a beautiful thing? What parricidal spirit? To cut down And burn the gnarl’d trunk of a thousand years, And plant the trifling shoot of one gay summer Rootless in the ground. (_Cries heard._) What noise is this? Some wretched Christian, that in blind revenge The maddened people sacrifice.