24.
Mrs. Nardi
Your Highness, she knows no one, but the trades people who
llve in our noighborhood, their wives and children. All
quite harmless, good people — There is one, for instance.
named Capponi, and another — but how can I name them all?
And the lived like all the young girls of our position. She
- she was a good child! She
was a good child — by heavens
never went out alone.
Rosina
That is not truc! Ine often want out alone.
Mrs. Nardi
Well, and if she went alone? Hever elsewhere than before
the gate, on tho medows, for a walk, and when we sought
her, we never had to go further, than to the hill where
the Convent St. Luke stands. Thore she lay in the grass
in front of the wall, and often fast asleep. And when we
wakod her
Duke
Don't talk so much that’s useless! You know more, Rosina.
Rosina
Oh, Siro, I Ewear to you – if I knew where she was to be
kounen
I would bring her here myself; That the insult,
She has done you, should be punished as it deserves!
Duke
What I think of doing,
keep I to myself.
If she were only here:
I must have her again!
What drove her forth? And what power was it controlled her?
(Inter Guidotti from the garden)
Guidotti
My Prince, your comnands have been donfilled!
Duke
(looks at him without answering; then continues)
Had I but known her! Had I used the
One hour vouelisafed me, so had I known her
And could now devine, where she is,and what entieed her;
Thether she was yet a child, whether she was versed
In blandishments and deceit, whether she was etc.
Thether guileless. Yet those questions, which would
Deprive a man of his sober senses in the morai
Why puzzle over them on such a night as this?
And yet I thirst so far.
answor, it is as 1
An endless number of daysenehed out before me;