The action takes place at Naples

Enter Capuchin, Ercole led between two.


Capuchin:
Look up, sir, you are preserv'd beyond
Natural reason; you were brought dead out a'th' field,
The surgeons ready to have embalm'd you.

Ercole:
I do look on my action with a thought of terror;
To do ill and dwell in't, is unmanly.

Capuchin:
You are divinely informed sir.

Ercole:
I fought for one, in whom I have no more right,
Thab false executors have in orphans' goods
They cozen them of; yet though my cause were naught,
I rather chose the hazard of my soul,
Than forgo the compliment of a choleric man.
I pray continue the report of my death, and give out,
'Cause the Church denied me Christian burial,
The vice-admiral of my galleys took my body,
With purpose to commit it to the earth,
Either in Sicil, or Malta.
Capuchin:
What aim you at
By this rumour of your death?

Ercole:
There is hope of life
In Contarino, and he has my prayers,
That he may live to enjoy what is his own,
The fair Jolenta: where, should it be thought
That I were breathing, happily her friends
Would oppose it still.

Capuchin:
But if you be suppos'd dead,
The law will strictly prosecute his life
For your murder.

Ercole:
That's prevented thus:
There does belong a noble privilege
To all his family, ever since his father
Bore from the worthy Emperor Charles the Fith
An answer to the French King's challenge, at such time
The two noble princes were engag'd to fight
Upon a frontier arm o'th' sea in a flat-bottomed boat,
That if any of his family should chance
To kill a man i'th' field, in a noble cause,
He should have his pardon: now, sir, for his cause,
The world may judge if it were not honest.
Pray help me in speech, 'tis very painful to me.
Capuchin:
Sir I shall.

Ercole:
The guilt of this lies in Romelio,
And as I hear, to second this good contract,
He has got a nun with child.

Capuchin:
These are crimes
That either must make work for speedy repentance,
Or for the devil.

Ercole:
I have much compassion on him,
For sin and shame are ever tied together,
With Gordian knots, of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone.

Exit.