onardo at one wing watches the
eagerness of Michiella. The chorus chants to a muted measure of suspense,
while Camillo dips pen in ink.

'She is away from me: she scorns me: she is lost to me. Life without
honour is the life of swine. Union without love is the yoke of savage
beasts. O me miserable! Can the heavens themselves plumb the depth of my
degradation?'

Count Orso permits a half-tone of paternal severity to point his kindly
hint that time is passing. When he was young, he says, in the broad and
benevolently frisky manner, he would have signed ere the eye of the
maiden twinkled her affirmative, or the goose had shed its quill.

Camillo still trifles. Then he dashes the pen to earth.

'Never! I have but one wife. Our marriage is irrevocable. The dishonoured
man is the everlasting outcast. What are earthly possessions to me, if
within myself shame faces me? Let all go. Though I have lost Camilla, I
will be worthy of her. Not a pen no pen; it is the sword that I must
write with. Strike, O count! I am here: I stand alone. By the edge of
this sword, I swear that never deed of mine shall rob Camilla of her
heritage; though I die the death, she shall not weep for a craven!'

The multitude break away from Camilla--veiled no more, but radiant; fresh
as a star that issues through corrupting vapours, and with her voice at a
starry pitch in its clear ascendency:

'Tear up the insufferable scroll!--
O thou, my lover and my soul!
It is the Sword that reunites;
The Pen that our perdition writes.'

She is folded in her husband's arms.

Michiella fronts them, horrid of aspect:--
'Accurst divorced one! dost thou dare
To lie in shameless fondness there?
Abandoned! on thy lying brow
Thy name shall be imprinted now.'

Camilla parts from her husband's embrace:

'My name is one I do not fear;
'Tis one that thou wouldst shrink to hear.
Go, cool thy penitential fires,
Thou creature, foul with base desires!'

CAMILLO (facing Count Orso).

'The choice is thine!'

COUNT ORSO (draws).

'The choice is made!'

CHORUS (narrowing its circle).

'Familiar is that naked blade.
Of others, of himself, the fate
How swift 'tis Provocation's mate!'

MICHIELLA (torn with jealous rage).

'Yea; I could smite her on the face.
Father, first read the