FRANCESCA. Thou canst forsake me, then, To spare thyself a little bashful pain? Paolo, dost thou know what 'tis for me, A woman--nay, a dame of highest rank-- To lose my purity? to walk a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou art exempt. Thou shalt not go! Thou dost not love me!
PAOLO. Love thee! Standing here, With countless miseries upon my head, I say, my love for thee grows day by day. It palters with my conscience, blurs my thoughts Of duty, and confuses my ideas Of right and wrong. Ere long, it will persuade My shaking manhood that all this is just.
FRANCESCA. Let it! I'll blazon it to all the world, Ere I will lose thee. Nay, if I had choice, Between our love and my lost innocence, I tell thee calmly, I would dare again The deed which we have done. O! thou art cruel To fly me, like a coward, for thy ease. When thou art gone, thou'lt flatter thy weak heart With hopes and speculations; and thou'lt swear I suffer naught, because thou dost not see. I will not live to bear it!
PAOLO. Die,--'twere best; Tis the last desperate comfort of our sin.
PAOLO. And so would I, with joy; But crime has made a craven of me. O! For some good cause to perish in! Something A man might die for, looking in God's face; Not slinking out of life with guilt like mine Piled on the shoulders of a suicide!
PAOLO. I care not; anywhere Out of this Rimini. The very things That made the pleasures of my innocence Have turned against me. There is not a tree, Nor house, nor church, nor monument, whose face Took hold upon my thoughts, that does not frown Balefully on me. From their marble tombs My ancestors scowl at me; and the night Thickens to hear their hisses. I would pray, But heaven jeers at it. Turn where'er I will, A curse pursues me.
FRANCESCA. Heavens! O, say not so! I never cursed thee, love; I never moved My little finger, ere I looked to thee For my instruction.
PAOLO. But my gentleness Seems to reproach me; and, instead of joy, It whispers horror!