ORSINO: 
See, the lamp is out.

GIACOMO: 
If no remorse is ours when the dim air
Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail
When Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits
See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever? 45
No, I am hardened.

ORSINO: 
Why, what need of this? 
Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse
In a just deed?  Although our first plan failed,
Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. 
But light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark. 50

GIACOMO [LIGHTING THE LAMP]: 
And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume
My father’s life:  do you not think his ghost
Might plead that argument with God?

ORSINO: 
Once gone
You cannot now recall your sister’s peace;
Your own extinguished years of youth and hope; 55
Nor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts
Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;
Nor your dead mother; nor...

GIACOMO: 
O, speak no more! 
I am resolved, although this very hand
Must quench the life that animated it. 60

ORSINO: 
There is no need of that.  Listen:  you know
Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella
In old Colonna’s time; him whom your father
Degraded from his post?  And Marzio,
That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year 65
Of a reward of blood, well earned and due?

GIACOMO: 
I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated
Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage
His lips grew white only to see him pass. 
Of Marzio I know nothing.

ORSINO: 
Marzio’s hate 70
Matches Olimpio’s.  I have sent these men,
But in your name, and as at your request,
To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia.

GIACOMO: 
Only to talk?

ORSINO: 
The moments which even now
Pass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour 75
May memorize their flight with death:  ere then
They must have talked, and may perhaps have done,
And made an end...

GIACOMO: 
Listen!  What sound is that?

ORSINO: 
The house-dog moans, and the beams crack:  nought else.

GIACOMO: 
It is my wife complaining in her sleep:  80
I doubt not she is saying bitter things
Of me; and all my children round her dreaming
That I deny them sustenance.

ORSINO: 
Whilst he
Who truly took it from them, and who fills
Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps 85
Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly
Mocks thee in visions of successful hate
Too like the truth of day.

GIACOMO: 
If e’er he wakes
Again, I will not trust to hireling hands...