Guards rush in at every door. A magistrate appears.
Sarpi.
Sarpi
Do your duty!
The Magistrate (to Fontanares)
In the name of the king, I arrest you.
Fontanares
The hour of death has come at last! Yet happily I carry my secret with
me to God, and love shall be my winding sheet.
SCENE FIFTEENTH
The same persons, Marie and Lothundiaz.
Marie
I was not, then, deceived; you have fallen into the hands of your
enemies! And what is left to me, dearest Alfonso, but to die for you
--and yet, by what a frightful death! O beloved! Heaven is jealous of
a perfect love, and thus would teach us by those cruel disasters,
which we call the chances of life, that there is no true happiness
save in the presence of God. What! You here?
Sarpi
Senorita!
Lothundiaz
My daughter!
Marie
For one moment you have left me free, for the last time in my life! I
shall keep my promise, you must not be unfaithful to yours. O sublime
discoverer, you will have to discharge the obligations that belong to
greatness, and to fight the battle of your lawful ambition! This
struggle will be the great interest of your life; while the Countess
Sarpi will die by inches and in obscurity, imprisoned in the four
walls of her house. And now let me remind you, father, and you, count,
that it was clearly agreed, as the condition of my obedience, that
Senor Fontanares should be granted by the viceroy of Catalonia a
further extension of time, for the completion of his experiment.
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