offend!
She shall----

FULVIA: Ah cease, infatuate man! Will you
Build kingdoms on the wind, and empires on
A girl's ungiven heart?

CHARLES (_slowly_): Unto such love
As mine all things are given.

FULVIA: All things but love.

CHARLES: Stood she not as in pleading? Yes--and to
Her cheeks came hurried roses from her heart.
And her large eyes, did they not drift to mine
Caressing?--yet as if in them they found
The likeness of some visitant dear dream.

FULVIA: The likeness of some dream?

CHARLES: Question no more.
She is set in the centre of my need
As youth and fiercest passion could not set her.
Supernally as May she has burst on
My barren age. Pain, envious decay,
And doubt that mystery wounds us with, and wrong,
Flee from the gleam and whisper of her name.

FULVIA: And if your coronet and heat avail
Not with her as might charm of equal years
And beauty?

CHARLES: Then--why then--why there may slip
An avalanche of raging and despair
Out of me! Hope of her once taken, all
The thwarted thunders of my want would rush
Into the void with lightnings for revenge!

_Enter ANTONIO._

ANTONIO: Sir, I'm returned.

CHARLES: With lightnings that shall--(_Sees him._) You?
Antonio? My eyes had other thought.
Open your news--but mind 'tis not of failure.

ANTONIO: We seized the murderous robbers in their cove
And o'er the cliff, as our just law commands,
To death flung them.

CHARLES: So with all traitors be it.

ANTONIO: So should it.

CHARLES: Well, 'twas swift. In you there is
More than your mother's gentleness.

ANTONIO: Else were
My name di Tocca, sir, and not myself.

CHARLES: You have my love.--But as you came met you
The cardinal?

ANTONIO: So close he should by this
Be at our gates.

CHARLES: He'll miss no welcome, and--
Perhaps--we shall-- (_Smiles on them._) Give me that cross you wear,
My Fulvia. It may----

ANTONIO: Sir, this is good!
We earnestly beseech of you to hear
The Pope's embassador with yielding.

CHARLES: Ah?--
But you, boy, draw out of this solitude
And musing moodiness. You should think but
On silly sighs and kisses, rhymes and trysts!
Must I yet teach your coldness youth?
(_A trumpet, and sound of o