Measure for Measure 4

Isabel hastened to the palace, and threw herself on her knees before Angelo, saying: “I am a woeful suitor to your honour, if it will please your honour to hear me.”—”Well, what is your suit?” said Angelo. She then made her petition in the most moving terms for her brother’s life. But Angelo said: “Maiden, there is no remedy; your brother is sentenced, and he must die.”—”O just, but severe law,”said Isabel: “I had a brother then—Heaven keep your honour!”and she was about to depart. But Lucio, who had accompanied her, said: “Give it not over so; return to him again, entreat him, kneel down before him, hang upon his gown. You are too cold; if you should need a pin, you could not with a more tame tongue desire it.” Then again Isabel on her knees implored for mercy. “He is sentenced,” said Angelo: “it is too late.”—”Too late!” said Isabel: “Why, no: I that do speak a word may call it back again. Believe this, my lord, no ceremony that to great ones belongs, not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword, the marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe, becomes them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.”—”Pray you begone,” said Angelo. But still Isabel entreated, and she said: “If my brother had been as you, and you as he, you might have slipped like him, but he, like you, would not have been so stern. I would to heaven I had your power, and you were Isabel. Should it then be thus? No. I would tell you what it were to be a judge, and what a prisoner.”—”Be content, fair maid!” said Angelo: “it is the law, not I, condemns your brother. Were he my kinsman, my brother, or my son, it should be thus with him. He must die to-morrow.”—”To-morrow?” said Isabel; “Oh, that is sudden: spare him, spare him; he is not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens we kill the fowl in season; shall we serve Heaven with less respect than we minister to our gross selves? Good, good, my lord, bethink you, none have died for my brother’s offence, though many have committed it. So you would be the first that gives this sentence, and he the first that suffers it. Go to your own bosom, my lord; knock there, and ask your heart what it does know that is like my brother’s fault; if it confess a natural guiltiness such as his is, let it not sound a thought against my brother’s life!” Her last words more moved Angelo than all she had before said, for the beauty of Isabel had raised a guilty passion in his heart, and he began to form thoughts of dishonourable love, such as Claudio’s crime had been; and the conflict in his mind made him to turn away from Isabel; but she called him back, saying: “Gentle my lord, turn back; hark, how I will bribe you. Good my lord, turn back!”—”How, bribe me!”said Angelo, astonished that she should think of offering him a bribe. “Ay,” said Isabel, “with such gifts that Heaven itself shall share with you; not with golden treasures, or those glittering stones, whose price is either rich or poor as fancy values them, but with true prayers that shall be up to Heaven before sunrise,—prayers from preserved souls, from fasting maids whose minds are dedicated to nothing temporal.”—”Well, come to me to-morrow,” said Angelo. And for this short respite of her brother’s life, and for this permission that she might be heard again, she left him with the joyful hope that she should at last prevail over his stern nature: and as she went away she said: “Heaven keep your honour safe! Heaven save your honour!” Which when Angelo heard, he said within his heart: “Amen, I would be saved from thee and from thy virtues”: and then, affrighted at his own evil thoughts, he said: “What is this? What is this? Do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes? What is it I dream on? The cunning enemy of mankind, to catch a saint, with saints does bait the hook. Never could an immodest woman once stir my temper, but this virtuous woman subdues me quite. Even till now, when men were found, I smiled and wondered at them.”