BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Anthony
The Barricade at Clichy
Bathilda
Caligula
The Corsican Brothers
The Count of Monte Cristo, Part One: The Betrayal of Edmond Dantès
The Count of Monte Cristo, Part Two: The Resurrection of Edmond Dantès
The Count of Monte Cristo, Part Three: The Rise of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo, Part Four: The Revenge of Monte Cristo
A Fairy Tale (with Adolphe de Leuven and Léon Lhérie)
The Gold Thieves
The Last of the Three Musketeers; or, The Prisoner of the Bastille (Musketeers #3)
Lorenzino
The Mohican’s War
Napoléon Bonaparte
Queen Margot
Richard Darlington (with Prosper Dinaux)
Sylvandire
The Three Musketeers (Musketeers #1)
The Three Musketeers—Twenty Years Later (Musketeers #2)
The Tower of Nesle (with Frédéric Gaillardet)
The Two Dianas (with Paul Meurice)
Urbain Grandier and the Devils of Loudon
The Venetian (with Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois)
The Whites and the Blues
The Widow’s Husband; and, Porthos in Search of an Outfit
Young Louix XIV
Related Dramas:
The Queen’s Necklace, by Pierre Decourcelle
The Seed of the Musketeers, by Paul de Kock & Guénée (Musketeers #5)
The San Felice, by Maurice Drack
The Son of Porthos the Musketeer, by Émile Blavet (Musketeers #4)
A Summer Night’s Dream, by Adolphe de Leuven and Joseph-Bernard Rosier
The Widow’s Husband; and, Porthos in Search of an Outfit: Two Dumasian Comedies, edited by Frank J. Morlock
PUBLISHING INFORMATION
Copyright © 2004, 2012 by Robert Reginald
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To Sami Caldwell,
my good friend in San Miguel
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The Bravo
Salfieri
Count de Bellamonte
Luigi
Maffeo
Marquis de Ruffo
A Senator
A Bailiff
A Gondolier
Theodora
Violetta
Michelemma
Two Masked Ladies
ACT I, SCENE 1
The Proscribed.
The interior of the Bravo’s house, in a secluded section of Venice. Open window giving on the gulf lit by the moon.
BRAVO
So, Milord, the visit you are paying me this evening is to speak to me of the affairs of Your Excellency and not those of the Republic.
COUNT
It’s a service that I have to ask of you, and I don’t doubt for a moment that—
BRAVO
I will be at your orders, right? As I am those of the Council of Ten.
COUNT
Of which I am one—don’t forget.
BRAVO
What can I do for Your Excellency?
COUNT
A lot.
BRAVO
I am listening.
COUNT
I’m in love.
BRAVO
With the Courtesan, Theodora, I know.
COUNT
And how’s that?
BRAVO
A week ago, at the foot of the Lion column, where I habitually hang out, I saw you pass by, as a member of a cortege which ordinarily accompanies the Venetian to church.
COUNT
Yes, it’s true. I had, like all there is noble and elegant in Venice, placed myself at the feet of this woman as strange as she is beautiful, a modern Aspasia, who intends to see at her knees all the celebrities of her century, to adorn herself with lovers as other women adorn themselves with jewels. Theodora overwhelmed me with her good graces—but this easy happiness tired me, and I’ve discovered behind the Bridge of La Paglia, facing the house of the Gondolier Luigi, a diamond.
BRAVO
There are few diamonds in Venice which are not for sale, Your Excellency, is rich and can buy the one he desires.
COUNT
She’s refused all my offers.
BRAVO
Double them.
COUNT
No use—I have to deal with an old geezer who is guarding her—who is her father or something like that—He’s made of honor, delicacy, rigid virtue.
BRAVO
(with irony)
The wretch!
COUNT
And he’s gone so far as to tell me that if I reappear in the street, although he’s old and a plebeian, and I am young and of the nobility—he will find a way to get rid of me.
BRAVO
(with irony)
The insolent.
COUNT
I cannot involve myself with this man, you understand?
BRAVO
Surely—these sorts of folks ought to be very happy when a lord of race and birth, like you, deigns to covet his wife or his daughter; that dishonors them but that ennobles them.
COUNT
Well! Now that’s what he fails to understand.
BRAVO
The beast.
COUNT
Then I thought of you to rid me of this man: arrived only a few days ago in Venice, he doesn’t know anyone and public rumor announces that he raised this delicious creature from charity, and she has, outside this old geezer, neither friends nor relatives under heaven.
Now the young girl is orphaned; the Republic, which is a good mother, adopts the abandoned child. A powerful man, a member of the Council of Ten, I, for example, I take responsibility, for the love of Humanity of placing her in a convent—I’ll pay her dowry—I’ll make a gift of a Raphael or a Titian to the Chapel of the monastery and the young