Elv. Touch me not, at the peril of your souls; I am your prisoner, and will follow you. But thou, their triumphant leader, first shall hear me. Yet, first—for thee, Rolla, accept my forgiveness; even had I been the victim of thy nobleness of heart, I should have admired thee for it. But ’twas myself provoked my doom,—thou wouldst have shielded me. Let not thy contempt follow me to the grave. Didst thou but know the fiend-like arts by which this hypocrite first undermined the virtue of a guileness heart! how, even in the pious sanctuary wherein I dwelt, by corruption and by fraud he practised upon those in whom I most confided—till my distempered fancy led me, step by step, into the abyss of guilt—

Piz. Why am I not obeyed? Tear her hence!

Elv. ’Tis past—but didst thou know my story, Rolla, thou wouldst pity me.

Rol. From my soul I do pity thee!

Piz. Villains! drag her to the dungeon!—prepare the torture instantly.

Elv. Soldiers, but a moment more—’tis to applaud your general. It is to tell the astonished world that, for once, Pizarro’s sentence is an act of justice: yes, rack me with the sharpest tortures that ever agonised the human frame, it will be justice. Yes, bid the minions of thy fury wrench forth the sinews of those arms that have caressed—and even have defended thee! Bid them pour burning metal into the bleeding cases of these eyes, that so oft—oh, God!—have hung with love and homage on thy looks—then approach me bound on the abhorred wheel—there glut thy savage eyes with the convulsive spasms of that dishonoured bosom which was once thy pillow!—yet will I bear it all; for it will be justice, all! and when thou shalt bid them tear me to my death, hoping that thy unshrinking ears may at last be feasted with the music of my cries, I will not utter one shriek or groan; but to the last gasp my body’s patience shall deride thy vengeance, as my soul defies thy power.

Piz. Hearest thou the wretch whose hands were even now prepared for murder?

Rol. Yes! and, if her accusation’s false, thou wilt not shrink from hearing her; if true, thy barbarity cannot make her suffer the pangs thy conscience will inflict on thee.

Elv. And now, farewell, world!—Rolla, farewell!—farewell thou condemned of Heaven! [To Pizarro,] for repentance and remorse, I know, wilt never touch thy heart.—We shall meet again.—Ha! be it thy horror here to know that we shall meet hereafter! And when thy parting hour approaches—hark to the knell, whose dreadful beat will strike to thy despairing soul. Then will vibrate on thy ear the curses of the cloistered saint from whom thou stolest me. Then the last shrieks which burst from my mother’s breaking heart, as she died, appealing to her God against the seducer of her child! Then the blood-stifled groan of my murdered brother—murdered by thee, fell monster!—seeking atonement for his sister’s ruined honour. I hear them now! To me the recollection’s madness! At such an hour—what will it be to thee?

Piz. A moment’s more delay, and at the peril of your lives—

Elv. I have spoken—and the last mortal frailty of my heart is passed. And now with an undaunted spirit and unshaken firmness, I go to meet my destiny. That I could not live nobly, has been Pizarro’s act; that I will die nobly, shall be my own.

[Exit guarded.

Piz. Rolla, I would not thou, a warrior, valiant and renowned, shouldst credit the vile tales of this frantic woman. The cause of all this fury—oh! a wanton passion for the rebel youth, Alonzo, now my prisoner.

Rol. Alonzo is not now thy prisoner.

Piz. How!