ORSINO: 
I swear
To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,
My silence, and whatever else is mine, 225
To thy commands.

LUCRETIA: 
You think we should devise
His death?

BEATRICE: 
And execute what is devised,
And suddenly.  We must be brief and bold.

ORSINO: 
And yet most cautious.

LUCRETIA: 
For the jealous laws
Would punish us with death and infamy 230
For that which it became themselves to do.

BEATRICE: 
Be cautious as ye may, but prompt.  Orsino,
What are the means?

ORSINO: 
I know two dull, fierce outlaws,
Who think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they
Would trample out, for any slight caprice, 235
The meanest or the noblest life.  This mood
Is marketable here in Rome.  They sell
What we now want.

LUCRETIA: 
To-morrow before dawn,
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. 240
If he arrive there...

BEATRICE: 
He must not arrive.

ORSINO: 
Will it be dark before you reach the tower?

LUCRETIA: 
The sun will scarce be set.

BEATRICE: 
But I remember
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine; ’tis rough and narrow, 245
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulf, and with the agony 250
With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans;
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall:  beneath this crag 255
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns...below,
You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow, 260
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade
By the dark ivy’s twine.  At noonday here
’Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. 265

ORSINO: 
Before you reach that bridge make some excuse
For spurring on your mules, or loitering
Until...

BEATRICE: 
What sound is that?

LUCRETIA: 
Hark!  No, it cannot be a servant’s step
It must be Cenci, unexpectedly 270
Returned...Make some excuse for being here.

BEATRICE [TO ORSINO AS SHE GOES OUT]: 
That step we hear approach must never pass
The bridge of which we spoke.