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AUTHOR OF A NIGHT IN AVIGNON, YOLANDA OF CYPRUS, CHARLES DI TOCCA, DAVID, MANY GODS, NOWANA DAYS, ETC.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMXI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CALE YOUNG RICE PUBLISHED, FEBRUARY, 1911
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
----infinite passion and pain Of finite hearts that yearn
GIORGIONE _A Young Painter_ ARETINO _A Dissolute Poet_ TITIAN _Another Painter_ BELLINI _The Former Master of Giorgione and Titian_ GIGIA _An old woman serving Giorgione_ and ISOTTA
SCENE: _A work-room of GIORGIONE on the edge of the Lagoon in which lie the Campo Santo and Murano. It is littered with brushes, canvases, casts, etc., and its walls are frescoed indiscriminately with saints and bacchantes, satyrs and Madonnas, on backgrounds religious or woodland. A door is on the right back; and foliate Gothic windows, in the rear, reveal the magic water with its gliding gondolas. On a support toward the centre of the room is a picture--covered, and not far from it, a couch._
_GIORGIONE, who has been sitting anguished on the couch, rises with determined bitterness. As he does so, BELLINI enters anxiously._
_Bellini._ Your word came to me, In San Lazzario where I labored late, And shakes my troubled heart. You will not do this!
_Bellini._ How my son! her picture! as a wanton's!
_Giorgione._ Tho it has been till now my adoration! The fairest of my dreams and the most holy! Yes, by the virtue of all honest women, If such there be in Venice, I swear it shall be borne by ribald hands Thro the very streets.
Fit for the most lascivious! who now Shall gaze on what I had beheld alone, On what was purer to me than the Virgin! The very pimps and panders of the Piazza Shall if they will whet appetite upon it, And smack their losel lips.
_Bellini._ The deeds of wounded pride and love Work not so, but fall back upon the doer-- Or on some other.
_Bellini._ Nor have, Ever, to heed me! as Aretino, Who turns your praise to Titian, has told. For your wild will runs ever without curb, And I who reared you, as my very own, Must pay the fall.