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                          _CHARLES DI TOCCA_

                              _A Tragedy_

                                 _By_

                           _Cale Young Rice_


                       _McClure, Phillips & Co._
                              _New York_
                                 1903



                          COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
                            CALE YOUNG RICE

                       Published, March, 1903, R



                             _To My Wife_



                          _CHARLES DI TOCCA_




CHARLES DI TOCCA

_A Tragedy_


    CHARLES DI TOCCA      _Duke of Leucadia, Tyrant of Arta, etc._
    ANTONIO DI TOCCA      _His son._
    HAEMON                 _A Greek noble._
    BARDAS                _His friend._
    CARDINAL JULIAN       _The Pope's Legate._
    AGABUS                _A mad monk._
    CECCO                 _Seneschal of the Castle._
    FULVIA COLONNA        _Under the duke's protection._
    HELENA                _Sister to Haemon._
    GIULIA                _Serving Fulvia._
    PAULA                 _Serving Helena._
    LYGIA  }
    PHAON  }              _Revellers._
    ZOE    }
    BASIL  }

    NARDO, a boy, and DIOGENES, a philosopher.

    A Captain of the Guard, Soldiers, Guests, Attendants, etc.

    _Time_: _Fifteenth Century._




ACT ONE


_Scene._--_The Island Leucadia. A ruined temple of Apollo near the town
of Pharo. Broken columns and stones are strewn, or stand desolately
about. It is night--the moon rising. ANTONIO, who has been waiting
impatiently, seats himself on a stone. By a road near the ruins FULVIA
enters, cloaked._

  ANTONIO (_turning_): Helen----!

  FULVIA:           A comely name, my lord.

  ANTONIO:                                Ah, you?
  My father's unforgetting Fulvia?

  FULVIA: At least not Helena, whoe'er she be.

  ANTONIO: And did I call you so?

  FULVIA:                             Unless it is
  These stones have tongue and passion.

  ANTONIO:                          Then the night
  Recalling dreams of dim antiquity's
  Heroic bloom worked on me.--But whence are
  Your steps, so late, alone?

  FULVIA:                       From the Cardinal,
  Who has but come.

  ANTONIO:          What comfort there?

  FULVIA:                                With doom
  The moody bolt of Rome broods over us.

  ANTONIO: My father will not bind his heresy?

  FULVIA: You with him walked to-day. What said he?

  ANTONIO:          I?
  With him to-day? Ah, true. What may be done?

  FULVIA: He has been strange of late and silent, laughs,
  Seeing the Cross, but softly and almost
  As it were some sweet thing he loved.

  ANTONIO (_absently_):                 As if
  'Twere some sweet thing--he laughs--is strange--you say?

  FULVIA: Stranger than is Antonio his son,
  Who but for some expectancy is vacant.
      (_She makes to go._)

  ANTONIO: Stay, Fulvia, though I am not in poise.
  Last night I dreamed of you: in vain you hovered
  To reach me from the coil of swift Charybdis.

          (_A low cry, ANTONIO starts._)

  Fulvia: A woman's voice!
      (_Looking down the road._)
                    And hasting here!

  ANTONIO:                                  Alone?

  FULVIA: No, with another!

  ANTONIO:                       Go, then, Fulvia.
  'Tis one would speak with me.

  FULVIA:                        Ah? (_She goes._)

_Enter HELENA frightedly with PAULA._

  HELENA:                                 Antonio!

  ANTONIO: My Helena, what is it? You are wan
  And tremble as a blossom quick with fear
  Of shattering. What is it? Speak.

  HELENA: Not true!
  O, 'tis not true!

  ANTONIO:             What have you chanced upon?

  HELENA: Say no to me, say no, and no again!

  ANTONIO: Say no, and no?

  HELENA:                Yes; I am reeling, wrung,
  With one glance o'er the precipice of ill!
  Say his incanted prophecies spring from
  No power that's more than frenzied fantasy!

  ANTONIO: Who prophesies? Who now upon this isle
  More than visible and present day
  Can gather to his eye? Tell me.

  HELENA:                               The monk--
  Ah, chide me not!--mad Agabus, who can
  Unsphere dark spirits from their evil airs
  And show all things of love or death, seized me
  As hither I stole to thee. With wild looks
  And wilder lips he vented on my ear
  Boding more wild than both. "Sappho!" he cried,
  "Sappho! Sappho!" and probed my eyes as if
  Destiny moved dark-visaged in their deeps.
  Then tore his rags and moaned, "So young, to cease!"
  Gazed then out into awful vacancy;
  And whispered hotly, following his gaze,
  "The Shadow! Shadow!"

  ANTONIO:                     This is but a whim,
  A sudden gloomy surge of superstition.
  Put it from you, my Helena.

  HELENA:                          But he
 