Life Is A Dream | Page 7

(Enter Soldiers with black vizors and torches)
FIFE.
Here's a pleasant masquerade!
CLO.
Whosever watch this was
Will have to pay head-reckoning.
Meanwhile,
This weapon had a wearer. Bring him here,
Alive or
dead.
SEG.
Clotaldo! good Clotaldo!--

CLO. (to Soldiers who enclose Segismund; others searching the rocks).
You know your duty.
SOLDIERS (bringing in Rosaura and Fife).
Here are two of them,

Whoever more to follow--
CLO.
Who are you,
That in defiance of known proclamation
Are
found, at night-fall too, about this place?
FIFE.
Oh, my Lord, she--I mean he--
ROS.
Silence, Fife,
And let me speak for both.--Two foreign men,

To whom your country and its proclamations
Are equally unknown;
and had we known,
Ourselves not masters of our lawless beasts

That, terrified by the storm among your rocks,
Flung us upon them to
our cost.
FIFE.
My mule--
CLO.
Foreigners? Of what country?
ROS.
Muscovy.
CLO.
And whither bound?
ROS.
Hither--if this be Poland;
But with no ill design on her, and
therefore
Taking it ill that we should thus be stopt
Upon her
threshold so uncivilly.
CLO.
Whither in Poland?
ROS.
To the capital.
CLO.
And on what errand?
ROS.
Set me on the road,
And you shall be the nearer to my
answer.

CLO. (aside).
So resolute and ready to reply,
And yet so
young--and--
(Aloud.)
Well,--
Your business was not surely with
the man
We found you with?
ROS.
He was the first we saw,--
And strangers and benighted, as
we were,
As you too would have done in a like case,
Accosted him
at once.
CLO.
Ay, but this sword?
ROS.
I flung it toward him.
CLO.
Well, and why?
ROS.
And why? But to revenge himself on those who thus

Injuriously misuse him.
CLO.
So--so--so!
'Tis well such resolution wants a beard
And, I
suppose, is never to attain one.
Well, I must take you both, you and
your sword,
Prisoners.
FIFE. (offering a cudgel).
Pray take mine, and welcome, sir;
I'm
sure I gave it to that mule of mine
To mighty little purpose.
ROS.
Mine you have;
And may it win us some more kindliness

Than we have met with yet.
CLO (examining the sword).
More mystery!
How came you by this
weapon?
ROS.
From my father.
CLO.
And do you know whence he?
ROS.
Oh, very well:
From one of this same Polish realm of yours,

Who promised a return, should come the chance,
Of courtesies that

he received himself
In Muscovy, and left this pledge of it--
Not
likely yet, it seems, to be redeem'd.
CLO (aside).
Oh, wondrous chance--or wondrous Providence!
The
sword that I myself in Muscovy,
When these white hairs were black,
for keepsake left
Of obligation for a like return
To him who saved
me wounded as I lay
Fighting against his country; took me home;

Tended me like a brother till recover'd,
Perchance to fight against him
once again
And now my sword put back into my hand
By his--if
not his son--still, as so seeming,
By me, as first devoir of gratitude,

To seem believing, till the wearer's self
See fit to drop the
ill-dissembling mask.
(Aloud.)
Well, a strange turn of fortune has
arrested
The sharp and sudden penalty that else
Had visited your
rashness or mischance:
In part, your tender youth too--pardon me,

And touch not where your sword is not to answer--
Commends you to
my care; not your life only,
Else by this misadventure forfeited;
But
ev'n your errand, which, by happy chance,
Chimes with the very
business I am on,
And calls me to the very point you aim at.
ROS.
The capital?
CLO.
Ay, the capital; and ev'n
That capital of capitals, the Court:

Where you may plead, and, I may promise, win
Pardon for this, you
say unwilling, trespass,
And prosecute what else you have at heart,

With me to help you forward all I can;
Provided all in loyalty to those

To whom by natural allegiance
I first am bound to.
ROS.
As you make, I take
Your offer: with like promise on my side

Of loyalty to you and those you serve,
Under like reservation for
regards
Nearer and dearer still.
CLO.
Enough, enough;
Your hand; a bargain on both sides.
Meanwhile,
Here shall you rest to-night. The break of day
Shall see
us both together on the way.

ROS.
Thus then what I for misadventure blamed,
Directly draws
me where my wishes aim'd.
(Exeunt.)
SCENE II.
The Palace at Warsaw
Enter on one side Astolfo, Duke of Muscovy, with his train: and, on the
other, the Princess Estrella, with hers.
ASTOLFO.
My royal cousin, if so near in blood,
Till this
auspicious meeting scarcely known,
Till all that beauty promised in
the bud
Is now to its consummate blossom blown,
Well met at last;
and may--
ESTRELLA.
Enough, my Lord,
Of compliment devised for you by
some
Court tailor, and, believe me, still too short
To cover the
designful heart below.
AST.
Nay, but indeed, fair cousin--
EST.
Ay, let Deed
Measure your words, indeed your flowers of
speech
Ill with your iron equipage atone;
Irony indeed, and wordy
compliment.
AST.
Indeed, indeed, you wrong me, royal cousin,
And fair as royal,
misinterpreting
What, even for the end you think I aim at,
If false to
you, were fatal to myself.
EST.
Why, what else means the glittering steel, my Lord,
That
bristles in the rear of these fine words?
What can it mean, but, failing
to cajole,
To fight or force me from my just pretension?
AST.
Nay, might I not ask ev'n the same of you,
The nodding
helmets of whose