A groan comes from the DUKE’S chamber.

Ah! What is that?
Do you not hear? ’Twas nothing.

So I think
That it is woman’s mission by their love
To save the souls of men: and loving her,
My Lady, my white Beatrice, I begin
To see a nobler and a holier vengeance
In letting this man live, than doth reside
In bloody deeds o’ night, stabs in the dark,
And young hands clutching at a palsied throat.
It was, I think, for love’s sake that Lord Christ,
Who was indeed himself incarnate Love,
Bade every man forgive his enemy.

MORANZONE (sneeringly): That was in Palestine, not Padua;
And said for saints: I have to do with men.

GUIDO: It was for all time said.

MORANZONE: And your white Duchess,
What will she do to thank you? Will she not come,
And put her cheek to yours, and fondle you,
For having left her lord to plague her life?

GUIDO: Alas, I will not see her face again.
’Tis but twelve hours since I parted from her,
So suddenly, and with such violent passion,
That she has shut her heart against me now;
No, I will never see her.

MORANZONE: What will you do?

GUIDO: After that I have laid the dagger there,
Get hence to-night from Padua.

MORANZONE: And then?

GUIDO: I will take service with the Doge at Venice,
And bid him pack me straightway to the wars,
In Holy Land against the Infidel;
And there I will, being now sick of life,
Throw that poor life against some desperate spear.

A groan from the DUKE’S chamber again.

Did you not hear a voice?

MORANZONE: I always hear,
From the dim confines of some sepulchre,
A voice that cries for vengeance: We waste time,
It will be morning soon; are you resolved
You will not kill the Duke?

GUIDO: I am resolved.

MORANZONE: Guido Ferranti, in that chamber yonder
There lies the man who sold your father’s life,
And gave him to the hangman’s murderous hands.
There does he sleep: you have your father’s dagger;
Will you not kill him?

GUIDO: No, I will not kill him.

MORANZONE: O wretched father, lying unavenged.

GUIDO: More wretched were thy son a murderer.

MORANZONE: Why, what is life?

GUIDO: I do not know, my lord,
I did not give it, and I dare not take it.

MORANZONE: I do not thank God often; but I think
I thank him now that I have got no son!
And you, what bastard blood flows in your veins
That when you have your enemy in your grasp
You let him go! I would that I had left you
With the dull hinds that reared you.

GUIDO: Better perhaps
That you had done so! May be better still
I’d not been born to this distressful world.

MORANZONE: Farewell!

GUIDO: Farewell! Some day, Lord Moranzone,
You will understand my vengeance.

MORANZONE: Never, boy.

Gets out of window and exit by rope ladder.