MARZIO: 
Ha! some one comes!

BEATRICE: 
Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest
Your baby hearts.  It is the iron gate, 40
Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,
That enters whistling as in scorn.  Come, follow! 
And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.

[EXEUNT.]

SCENE 4.3: 
AN APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE. 
ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA.

LUCRETIA: 
They are about it now.

BEATRICE: 
Nay, it is done.

LUCRETIA: 
I have not heard him groan.

BEATRICE: 
He will not groan.

LUCRETIA: 
What sound is that?

BEATRICE: 
List! ’tis the tread of feet
About his bed.

LUCRETIA: 
My God! 
If he be now a cold, stiff corpse...

BEATRICE: 
O, fear not 5
What may be done, but what is left undone: 
The act seals all.
[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]
Is it accomplished?

MARZIO: 
What?

OLIMPIO: 
Did you not call?

BEATRICE: 
When?

OLIMPIO: 
Now.

BEATRICE: 
I ask if all is over?

OLIMPIO: 
We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
His thin gray hair, his stern and reverend brow, 10
His veined hands crossed on his heaving breast,
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,
Quelled me.  Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.

NOTE: 
10 reverend]reverent all editions.

MARZIO: 
But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave 15
And leave me the reward.  And now my knife
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man
Stirred in his sleep, and said, ’God! hear, O, hear,
A father’s curse!  What, art Thou not our Father?’
And then he laughed.  I knew it was the ghost 20
Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
And could not kill him.

BEATRICE: 
Miserable slaves! 
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
Found ye the boldness to return to me
With such a deed undone?  Base palterers! 25
Cowards and traitors!  Why, the very conscience
Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
Is an equivocation:  it sleeps over
A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
And when a deed where mercy insults Heaven... 30
Why do I talk?
[SNATCHING A DAGGER FROM ONE OF THEM, AND RAISING IT.]
Hadst thou a tongue to say,
’She murdered her own father!’—­I must do it! 
But never dream ye shall outlive him long!

OLIMPIO: 
Stop, for God’s sake!

MARZIO: 
I will go back and kill him.

OLIMPIO: 
Give me the weapon, we must do thy will. 35