JEPPO.

Incestuous in every degree-incestuous with her two brothers, one of whom slew the other for her love.

DONA LUCRECE.

Pity!

ASCANIO.

Incestuous with her father, who is pope.

OLOFERNO.

A monster, who would be incestuous with her children, if children she had; but Heaven refuses issue to such creatures.

DONA LUCRECE.

Enough! enough!

MAFFIO.

Would you know her name, Gennaro?

DONA LUCRECE.

Pity-pity, my lords!

MAFFIO.

Gennaro, would'st thou know her name?

LUCRECE (dragging herself to the knees of Gennaro).

Soon after this, Maffio, Jeppo, Ascanio, Olo

ferno, Don Apostolo, are sent by Venice on a special embassy to Ferrara, where Lucrèce Borgia holds her court, and Gennaro accompanies them, being the sworn brother in arms of Maffio D'Orsini.

The passions in action are-the affection of Lucrèce for Gennaro-the jealous indignation of the Duke of Ferrara against Gennaro, whom he supposes, from what he saw at the mask of Venice, to be a lover-and the vengeance of Lucrèce, who has determined to punish the young Venetian nobles who had insulted her.

Gennaro lays himself open to the Duke's plans by the historical outrage of erasing the B from the front of the ducal palace, which left 'orgia' engraved upon that part which Lucrèce inhabited.

The first act ends with a meeting between the two emissaries of the Duke and the Duchess, the one seeking, as he supposes, a lover for Lucrèce, the other a victim for the Duke. In the difficulty of reconciling the two missions, the bravos decide by tossing up, whether Gennaro shall be adored or murdered. The Duke's bravo gains.

The second act contains a most spirited scene between Lucrèce Borgia and her husband. Lu

crèce, having first passionately demanded vengeance on the person who had outraged her palace, as passionately demands the offender's pardon, on discovering the insult to have been offered her by the young Gennaro. The Duke, however, more and more confirmed in his jealousy, persists in his determination that death shall be inflicted on the culprit, and only allows his wife to choose whether her supposed paramour shall be stabbed or poisoned: on Lucrèce preferring the latter, the famous Borgia poison is administered to Gennaro, who, however, believes himself pardoned—and the Duke then, quitting the room, tells his wife that he gives her her lover's last quarter of an hour.

Lucrèce, on finding herself alone with Gennaro, offers him an antidote for the poison that he has taken-and there is a fine moment where he doubts whether the Duke de Ferrara has really poisoned him, or whether it is Lucrèce herself who wishes to do so. Finally, however, he swallows the antidote, and is warned by Lucrèce to quit Ferrara without delay.

But I pass by the second act, which, however, is fully worthy of the reader's attention, in order to arrive at the third act, which closes the play, that opened with the insult given to Dona Lucrèce, at the masked ball in Venice, by

the vengeance she takes for that insult at a supper at Ferrara. The five young Venetian nobleman have been invited by Lucrèce's order to an entertainment at the Negroni Palace, and Gennaro, whom she supposes distant from Ferrara, accompanies them thither.

ACT III.

OLOFERNO (his glass in his hand).

What wine like that of Xerès ?-Xerès of Frontera is a city of Paradise?

MAFFIO (his glass in his hand).

The wine that we drink, Jeppo, is better than any your stories.

ASCANIO.

of

Jeppo has the misfortune to be a great teller of tales when he has drunk a little.

DON APOSTOLO.

The other day it was at Venice, at his serene highness's the Doge Barbarigo's: to-day it is at Ferrara, at the divine Princess Negroni's.

JEPPO.

The other day it was a mournful tale; to-day it's a merry one.

MAFFIO.

A merry tale, Jeppo!-How happened it that Don Siliceo, a fine cavalier not more than thirty, after having gambled away his patrimony, married that rich Mar

quesa Calpurnia, who has counted forty-eight springs, to say the least of it? By the body of Bacchus, do you call that a gay story?

GUBETTA.

It's sad and trite-a man ruined, who marries a woman in ruins; one sees it every day.

(He turns to the table. Some get up and come to the front of the scene during the continuance of the orgie.)

THE PRINCESS NEGRONI (to Maffio, pointing to

Gennaro).

You seem, D'Orsini, to have but a melancholy friend there.

MAFFIO.

He is always so, madam. You must pardon me for having brought him without an invitation; he is my brother in arms-he saved my life in an assault at Rimini; I received a thrust intended for him in the attack of the bridge of Vicenza: we never quit one another. A gipsy predicted we should die the same day.

THE NEGRONI (smiling).

Did the gipsy say that it was to be in the night, or the morning?

MAFFIO.

He said that it should be in the morning.

THE NEGRONI.

Your Bohemian did not know what he was saying.

And you are friends with that young man?

MAFFIO.

As much as one man can be with another.