_Bellini._ Never! never! Only your unrelenting brain would think it. For this I know of her, that tho she has Deserted you for what must seem to be Only a new-found passion-- Yet is she womanly, and did you give her, As now you mean, to avid lusting eyes, Life would be smitten from her.
_Bellini._ And then from you, repentant of her fate? No, no, my son, I have not seen you rise, A planet from the sea, the world's first painter, To set in this: You owe my fathering more. And listen, I have brought to you a way Of laurels for forgetting. I have come With a commission from the Signoria,
Which names you the chief glory of this city And votes you proud permission to adorn San Marco's highest altar with perfection.
_Giorgione._ And which I spurn, an insult in its pity!
As they shall learn--these silk and velvet Signors, Whose condescending ducats buy the dreams Of the immortal! Or no!... I meant not that--to wound a kindness.
_Bellini._ Your ways have ever been the ways of wounding.
_Giorgione._ And to the end must be. (_Brokenly_) For now my hand Is palsied! I can never paint again. Colour and shaping light turn in my soul To chaos and to blindness--to despair! The brush I lift, to sterile pain more loth! I yearn and impotence alone arises. That picture has dried beauty's vein within me And left me ... Ah!... She shall atone it! (_calls_) Gigia! Shameless she is and shall be seen it!--Gigia!--
Aretino, who is the tongue of lewdness, And Titian, who trips to it, may gloat,
_Bellini._ Giorgione! you have sent for them?
_Giorgione (_to GIGIA_). Whoever seeks my door is bidden--all!
_Gigia._ How can I tell you, if I may Not speak? And you should hear ... (_Crossing herself_) It is the plague. A whisper is about That it has broken out at last in Venice.
[_GIORGIONE staring at her, trembles and seems slowly stricken--while his eyes fill as with some evil irrecoverable remembrance._
_Bellini_ (_fearing for him_). Giorgione!
_Giorgione._ Oh!... and yet ... nothing ... a dream That came to me last night--as if from death.
_Bellini._ Then, O my son, it is a premonition, A pall against this purpose! that you may Not let these ribald two-- Aretino, this poet and depraver, And Titian snared within his pagan senses, Enter and gaze upon.... O boy, you will not! Despoil the picture, Scatter it to the seas, And vow never again to paint another, Tho that would break my heart, but promise me----