ss.
You love me, boy?

ANTONIO: Sir, well: you cannot doubt it.

CHARLES: There has been darkness in me--and it seems
Such night as would put out a heaven of hope,
Quench an eternity of flaming joy!
I have sunk down under the world and hit
On nethermost despair: flown blind across
An infinite unrest!

ANTONIO: Forget it, now.

CHARLES: Had I drunk Lethe's all 'twould not have stilled
The crying of my desolation's want.
Within me tenderness to iron turned,
Gladness to worm and gloom.--But 'tis o'erpast.
A rift, a smile, a breath has come--blown me
From torture to an ecstasy.

ANTONIO: To----?

CHARLES: Ecstasy!
Such as surrounds Hyperion on his sun,
Or Pleiads sweeping seven-fold the night.

ANTONIO: And you--this breath----?

CHARLES: Is--you are pale!
And press your lips from trembling!

ANTONIO: No--yes--well--
This ecstasy?

CHARLES: Is love! is love that-- How?
You feign! distress and groaning tear in you!

ANTONIO: No. She you love----

CHARLES: O, Eve new-burst on Eden,
All pure with the prime beauty of God's breath,
Was not so!

ANTONIO: She is Helena?--the Greek?

CHARLES: She--Still you do not ail?--Yes, Helena,
Who--But you are not well and cannot share
This ravishment!--I will not ask it--now.
This ravishment!--Ah, she has stayed the tread
And stilled the whispering of death: has called
Echoes of youth from me! and all I feared....
I think--you are not well. Shall we go in?

CURTAIN.

ACT THREE

_Scene._--_The gardens of the castle. Paths meet under a large lime in
the centre, where seats are placed. The wall of the garden crosses the
rear, and has a postern. It is night of the same day, and behind a
convent on a near hill the moon is rising. A nightingale sings._

_Enter GIULIA, CECCO, and NALDO._

GIULIA: That bird! Always so noisy, always vain
Of gushing. Sing, and sing, sing, sing, it must!
As if nobody else would speak or sleep.

CECCO: Let the bird be, my jaunty. 'Tis no lie
The shrew and nightingale were never friends.

GIULIA: No more were shrew and serpent.

CECCO: Well what would
You scratch from me?

GIULIA: If there is anything
To be got from you, then it must be sc