!
By and by.
I hope it is some pardon or reprieve
For the most gentle Claudio.
Welcome father.
The best and wholesomest spirts of the night
Envelope you, good Provost! Who call'd here of late?
None, since the curfew rung.
Not Isabel?
No.
They will, then, ere't be long.
What comfort is for Claudio?
There's some in hope.
It is a bitter deputy.
Not so, not so; his life is parallel'd
Even with the stroke and line of his great justice:
He doth with holy abstinence subdue
That in himself which he spurs on his power
To qualify in others: were he meal'd with that
Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;
But this being so, he's just.
Now are they come.
This is a gentle provost: seldom when
The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.
How now! what noise? That spirit's possessed with haste
That wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes.
There he must stay until the officer
Arise to let him in: he is call'd up.
Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,
But he must die to-morrow?
None, sir, none.
As near the dawning, provost, as it is,
You shall hear more ere morning.
Happily
You something know; yet I believe there comes
No countermand; no such example have we:
Besides, upon the very siege of justice
Lord Angelo hath to the public ear
Profess'd the contrary.
This is his lordship's man.
And here comes Claudio's pardon.
My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this
further charge, that you swerve not from the
smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or
other circumstance. Good morrow; for, as I take it,
it is almost day.
I shall obey him.
This is his pardon, purchased by such sin
For which the pardoner himself is in.
Hence hath offence his quick celerity,
When it is born in high authority:
When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended,
That for the fault's love is the offender friended.
Now, sir, what news?
I told you. Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss
in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted
putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before.
Pray you, let's hear.
'Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let
Claudio be executed by four of the clock; and in the
afternoon Barnardine: for my better satisfaction,
let me have Claudio's head sent me by five. Let
this be duly performed; with a thought that more
depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail
not to