Ai! to the flames with them, and with all fairness!
_Rizzio._ Hey, yea! that I who fall Not on my knees to mitred villainy-- Or cringe to crosiered craft-- And yet whose life is lit for truth and freedom-- Am viler far than you Who take your pleasure and pay it with confession? Who think the Devil with faith would be no Devil?
_Osio._ I say there is one thing You shall not do!
_Rizzio._ So-ho! my lordly brother, My breaker of betrothals--if not creeds-- And that is what?
_Osio._ Porzia! from the passion of your lies!
_Rizzio_ (_stung, staring_). By ... all the saints and fiends and incubi That ever infested night and nunneries! What frenzy now is biting at your brain!
Is she your wife, so to concern your care?
_Porzia_ (_who sees, and with Bianca comes quickly, winningly down_). Heresy! heresy! truth and heresy! Are there no other words in all the world To pour as wine Upon a wedding-day!-- Are these your ways, my newly wedded lord, To leave me, an hour's bride, away from home-- From my dear uncle's home-- With but a friend or two for comforting-- And bandy words of other stars than those You swear to see when gazing in my eyes!
_Porzia._ No, no! I'll not forgive you! For is it not ill boding to our bridals You quarrel over the heavens--and not me!
My beauty, he says, this husband I have taken, Is life--and yet ere 'tis an hour his Forgets to live on it!--and Osio, The brother of him,-- E'en Osio there--
_Rizzio_ (_gay again_). Who swears he will protect you!
_Rizzio._ Against the heresy of robes Of pagan fashion--and against your husband!
_Porzia._ I do not understand--unless you jest, As oft--too oft you do! Or mean perchance Bianca ... unto whom He was betrothed And whom he would, this breath, Be wooing again, were _I_, not _words_, your bride!
[_Then winningly again, as Marina enters._
But see, here is Marina! the dance awaits!
Let us go in and give ourselves to Joy, For Misery is quick enough to take us, If first we do not wed us to her rival! Is it not so?
_Rizzio_ (_with passion_). Or sun has never shone! So in! the tarantelle! (_as Tasso enters_) And then a song From Messer Tasso, who would be divine,
Did he love Venus as he fears the Church, Apollo as he shuns the Inquisition! In!--Osio, will you come?