Ast.
     My Lord, I waive your insult to myself
     In recognition of the dignity
     You yet are new to, and that greater still
     You look in time to wear.  But for this lady—­
     Whom, if my cousin now, I hope to claim
     Henceforth by yet a nearer, dearer name—­

     Seg. 
     And what care I?  She is my cousin too: 
     And if you be a Prince—­well, am not I
     Lord of the very soil you stand upon? 
     By that, and by that right beside of blood
     That like a fiery fountain hitherto
     Pent in the rock leaps toward her at her touch,
     Mine, before all the cousins in Muscovy! 
     You call me Prince of Poland, and yourselves
     My subjects—­traitors therefore to this hour,
     Who let me perish all my youth away
     Chain’d there among the mountains; till, forsooth,
     Terrified at your treachery foregone,
     You spirit me up here, I know not how,
     Popinjay-like invest me like yourselves,
     Choke me with scent and music that I loathe,
     And, worse than all the music and the scent,
     With false, long-winded, fulsome compliment,
     That ‘Oh, you are my subjects!’ and in word
     Reiterating still obedience,
     Thwart me in deed at every step I take: 
     When just about to wreak a just revenge
     Upon that old arch-traitor of you all,
     Filch from my vengeance him I hate; and him
     I loved—­the first and only face—­till this—­
     I cared to look on in your ugly court—­
     And now when palpably I grasp at last
     What hitherto but shadow’d in my dreams—­
     Affiances and interferences,
     The first who dares to meddle with me more—­
     Princes and chamberlains and counsellors,
     Touch her who dares!—­

     Ast.
     That dare I—­

     Seg. (seizing him by the throat). 
     You dare!

     CHAMB. 
     My Lord!—­

     A lord. 
     His strength’s a lion’s—­

     (Voices within.  The King!  The King!—­)

     (Enter King.)

     A lord. 
     And on a sudden how he stands at gaze
     As might a wolf just fasten’d on his prey,
     Glaring at a suddenly encounter’d lion.

     King. 
     And I that hither flew with open arms
     To fold them round my son, must now return
     To press them to an empty heart again! 
     (He sits on the throne.)

     Seg. 
     That is the King?—­My father? 
     (After a long pause.)
     I have heard
     That sometimes some blind instinct has been known
     To draw to mutual recognition those
     Of the same blood, beyond all memory
     Divided, or ev’n never met before. 
     I know not how this is—­perhaps in brutes
     That live by kindlier