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You must have music through these restless nights.

How lost you look!

You startled me. How lost!

[He closes his eyes.

[Stealing away to Adriana.] He is dreaming; he has quite forgotten me. Come, Adriana, soft! As an astronomer He must not be disturbed: he is quite lost.

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The Pope’s Bedroom in the Borgia Apartments at the Vatican.

The Lord Alexander VI. is extended asleep on the bed.

The Lord Cardinal Bartolomeo of Segovia and Monsignore Gaspare Poto.

I thank God for this sleep. Those fearful days

I knelt against his door! The raving wildness

I heard at times—inhospitable sorrow,

Aloof from our Creator! Then, dashed down,

The heavy frame wept like a haunted child’s.

Then silence

Too perilous to spread! I beat the door.

We stood and watched and prayed you might prevail.

And when he opened—Jesu, he was faded

As a dead fish; slack chin, and Arab eyes

Glassy in fever, with a vengeful thirst.

If only he had known the murderer,