Oh, father, father, why will you torture me?
You were too good, too good.

RIBERA.
Why, so I thought.
Since it appears the guerdon of such goodness
Is treachery, abandonment, disgrace,
I here renounce my fatherhood. No child
Will I acknowledge mine. Thou art a wife;
Thy duty is thy husband's. When Antonio
Returns from Seville, tell him that his father
Is long since dead. Henceforward I will own
No kin, no home, no tie. I will away,
To-morrow morn, and live an anchorite.
One thing ye cannot rob me of--my work.
My name shall still outsoar these low, mirk vapors--
Not the Ribera, stained with sin and shame,
As she hath left it, but the Spagnoletto.
My glory is mine own. I have done with it,
But I bequeath it to my country. Now
I will make friends with beasts--they'll prove less savage
Than she that was my daughter. I have spoken
For the last time that word. Thee I curse not;
Thou hast not set thy heel upon my heart;
But yet I will not bless thee. Go. Good-night.

ANNICCA (embracing him).
What! will you spurn me thus? Nay, I will bide,
And be to thee all that she should have been,
Soothe thy declining years, and heal the wound
Of this sharp sorrow. Thou shalt bless me still,
Father--
[RIBERA has yielded for a moment to her embrace; but, suddenly
rising, he pushes her roughly from him.]

RIBERA.
Away! I know thee. Thou art one
With her who duped me with like words last night.
Then I believed; but now my sense is closed,
My heart is dead as stone. I cast thee forth.
By heaven, I own thee not! Thou dost forget
I am the Spagnoletto. Away, I say,
Or ere I strike thee.
[He threatens her.]

ANNICCA.
Woe is me! Help, help!
[Exit.]

RIBERA.
So, the last link is snapt. Had I not steeled
My heart, I fain had kissed her farewell.
'T is better so. I leave my work unfinished.
Could I arise each day to face this spectre,
Or sleep with it at night?--to yearn for her
Even while I curse her? No! The dead remain
Sacred and sweet in our remembrance still;
They seem not to have left us; they abide
And linger nigh us in the viewless air.
The fallen, the guilty, must be rooted out
From heart and thoug