BEATRICE: 
See now, thou mak’st me weep: 
How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,
If I were dead.  Say what thou hast to say.

BERNARDO: 
They have confessed; they could endure no more 20
The tortures...

BEATRICE: 
Ha!  What was there to confess? 
They must have told some weak and wicked lie
To flatter their tormentors.  Have they said
That they were guilty?  O white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide 25
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!
[ENTER JUDGE WITH LUCRETIA AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]
Ignoble hearts! 
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust? 30
And that eternal honour which should live
Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,
Changed to a mockery and a byword?  What! 
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
At horses’ heels, so that our hair should sweep 35
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,
Who, that they may make our calamity
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
The churches and the theatres as void
As their own hearts?  Shall the light multitude 40
Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity,
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,
Upon us as we pass to pass away,
And leave...what memory of our having been? 
Infamy, blood, terror, despair?  O thou, 45
Who wert a mother to the parentless,
Kill not thy child!  Let not her wrongs kill thee! 
Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
And let us each be silent as a corpse;
It soon will be as soft as any grave. 50
’Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear
Makes the rack cruel.

GIACOMO: 
They will tear the truth
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains: 
For pity’s sake say thou art guilty now.

LUCRETIA: 
Oh, speak the truth!  Let us all quickly die; 55
And after death, God is our judge, not they;
He will have mercy on us.

BERNARDO: 
If indeed
It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;
And then the Pope will surely pardon you,
And all be well.

JUDGE: 
Confess, or I will warp 60
Your limbs with such keen tortures...

BEATRICE: 
Tortures!  Turn
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel! 
Torture your dog, that he may tell when last
He lapped the blood his master shed...not me! 
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, 65
And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall