Count Alarcos; a Tragedy by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804-1881

SCENE 4.

The KING; the INFANTA.

I:4:1 KING. I see my daughter?

I:4:2 SOL. Sir, your duteous child.

I:4:3 KING. Art thou indeed my child? I had some doubt I was a father.

I:4:4 SOL. These are bitter words.

I:4:5 KING. Even as thy conduct.

I:4:6 SOL. Then it would appear My conduct and my life are but the same.

I:4:7 KING. I thought thou wert the Infanta of Castille, Heir to our realm, the paragon of Spain The Princess for whose smiles crowned Christendom Sends forth its sceptred rivals. Is that bitter? Or bitter is it with such privilege, And standing on life's vantage ground, to cross A nation's hope, that on thy nice career Has gaged its heart?

I:4:8 SOL. Have I no heart to gage? A sacrificial virgin, must I bind My life to the altar, to redeem a state, Or heal some doomed People?

I:4:9 KING. Is it so? Is this an office alien to thy sex? Or what thy youth repudiates? We but ask What nature sanctions.

I:4:10 SOL. Nature sanctions Love; Your charter is more liberal. Let that pass. I am no stranger to my duty, sir, And read it thus. The blood that shares my sceptre Should be august as mine. A woman loses In love what she may gain in rank, who tops Her husband's place; though throned, I would exchange An equal glance. His name should be a spell ? To rally soldiers. Politic he should be; And skilled in climes and tongues; that stranger knights Should bruit on, high Castillian courtesies. Such chief might please a state?

I:4:11 KING. Fortunate realm!

I:4:12 SOL. And shall I own less niceness than my realm? No! I would have him handsome a god; Hyperion in his splendor, or the mien Of conquering Bacchus, one whose very step Should guide a limner, and whose common words Are caught by Troubadours to frame their songs! And O, my father, what if this bright prince Should I have a heart as tender as his soul Was high and peerless? If with this same heart He loved thy daughter?

I:4:13 KING. Close the airy page Of thy romance; such princes are not found Except in lays and legends! yet a man Who would become a throne, I found thee, girl; The princely Hungary.

I:4:14 SOL. A more princely fate, Than an unwilling wife, he did deserve.

I:4:15 KING. Yet wherefore didst thou pledge thy troth to him?