Marco Venier:
I'm getting married Veronica. Congratulate me.
Veronica Franco:
Felicitations on your grand match.
Domenico Venier:
If I didn't know you better I'd think you have the feigned indifference of a man in love. Go on son. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Beatrice Venier:
Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her today? "In a girl's voice lies temptation - a known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body." She doesn't believe it yet, but she will. She'll grow up just like her mother. Marry, raise children and honor her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl. And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country for no biblical hell could ever be worse than a state of perpetual inconsequence.
Veronica Franco:
There's not a man in Venice I can't have.
Marco Venier:
And there's not a woman in Venice I can't have.
Veronica Franco:
You cannot have me.
Veronica Franco:
I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience. I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips. His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, this is mine. If this had not been mine-if I had lived any other way-a child to her husband's will, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love... I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out. You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give yet cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift-ourselves, our yearning, our need to love-you call it filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.
Maffio Venier:
It must be interesting to be in a room full of men, most of whom you've seen with their pants down.
Veronica Franco:
Puts it all in some kind of perspective.
Paola Franco:
Desire begins in the mind.
Paola Franco:
It's the wanting that keeps us alive.
2e
Veronica Franco
dd3
:
You... all of you... you who hunger so for what I give, but cannot bear to see such power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift... ourselves, our yearning, our need to love... you call it filth and sin and heresy.
Marco Venier:
What God and greed have joined together, let no love put asunder.
Veronica Franco:
My people are true citizens 700 years back.
Marco Venier:
A coat of arms does not an inheritance make.
Marco Venier:
[Marco has just told Veronica that it will be impossible for them to ever marry due to his duty to state and family] My family's bloodline traces farther back than most aristocrats in this city.
Veronica Franco:
A coat of arms does not an inheritance make.