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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
  Has often cleft the future with his ken,
  Seen through it to some lurking misery
  And mar of love: or the dim knell of death
  Heard and revealed.

  ANTONIO:               A witless monk who thinks
  God lives but to fulfil his prophecies!

  HELENA: You know him not. 'Tis told in youth he loved
  One treacherous, and in avenge made fierce
  Treaty with Hell that lends him sight of all
  Ills that arise from it to mated hearts!
  Yet look not so, my lord! I'll trust thine eyes
  That tell me love is master of all times,
  And thou of all love master!

  ANTONIO:                         And of thee?
  Then will the winds return unto the night
  And flute us lover songs of happiness!

  HELENA: Nor dare upon a duller note while here
  We tryst beneath the moon?

  ANTONIO:                       My perfect Greek!
  Athene looks again out of thy lids,
  And Venus trembles in thy every limb!

  HELENA: Not Venus, ah, not Venus!

  ANTONIO:                             Now; again?

  HELENA: 'Twas on this temple's ancient gate she found
  Wounded Adonis dead, and to forget,
  Like Sappho leaped, 'tis said, from yonder cliff
  Down to the waves' oblivion below.

  ANTONIO: And will you read such terror in a tale?

  HELENA: Forgive me, then.

  ANTONIO:                Surely you are unstrung,
  And yet there is----    (_Turns away from her._)

  HELENA:                        Is what? Antonio?

  ANTONIO: Nothing: I who must ebb with you and flow
  A little was moved.

  HELENA:            Not you, not you! I'll change
  My tears to laughter, if but fantasy
  May so unmettle you! Not moved, indeed!
  Not moved, Antonio?

  ANTONIO:               Well, let us off,
  My Helena, with these numb awes that wind
  About our joy.

  HELENA:           Thy kiss then, for it can
  Drive all gloom out of the world!

  ANTONIO:                      And thine, my own,
  On Fate's hard brow would shame it of all frown!

  HELENA: Yet is thine mightier, for no frown can be
  When no more gloom's in the world!

  ANTONIO:                       But 'tis thy lips
  That lend it might. If I pressed other----

  HELENA:                                   Other!
  You should not know that any other lips
  Could e'er be pressed; I'll have no kiss but his
  Who is all blind to every mouth but mine!
      (_Breaks from him._)

  ANTONIO: Oh?--Well.

  HELENA: "Oh--well?"--Then it is well I go!

  ANTONIO: Perhaps.

  HELENA:           "Perhaps!"    (_Makes to go._)

  ANTONIO:                    Good-night.

  HELENA (_returning_):               Antonio----?

  ANTONIO: Ah! still----?

  HELENA:        There's gloom in the world again.

  ANTONIO (_kissing her_):              'Tis gone?

  HELENA: Not all, I think.

  ANTONIO