Then with loud shouts of wonder and applause The place resounded! Val. But did'st thou behold That noble feat? Otto. Yes, I was there. Val. (Aside.) Aye-this Has overpower'd my horrible suspicions; Of such a noble Spanish deed, I thank you. Again, when Hugo and Valeros converse alone ;-nothing can be finer than this dialogue: Hugo. -You are a father-and you weep the loss Of a loved son.-I LOST MYSELF IN Like an enchanter did that man divide me Till, mutually, a furious encounter Each combatant, by supernatural light, thereafter, When the light faded, the blind influences So, since my wandering steps within the house Of Carlos brought me, I have fall'n asunder Val. Such discourse to me Is most obscure; and yet thou paint'st in riddles A not unfit resemblance of what I Hugo. So have I also felt towards thee. Then must I follow ? Hugo. (After a short silence, in a severe tone.) Hate me! Val. This to avert, Hugo. (Much moved.) Aye, so we were.— The words in ordinary acceptation. That, singly, when they wind around the cliffs Can scarce a fisherman's light bark sustain; waves, Triumphant, bearing loaded ships along. Val. If this comparison is just, you were In truth most enviable. Where, and how, United were the streams? Hugo. Bereft of parents-by no brother aided To none allied-I came to Talavera, Carlos, Don Could not so fall! Hugo. (Startled.) How ?-not ? Val. Let me not utter That which even to have thought I am ashamed! What you were to my son, be now to me→→→ Hugo. (fixing his eyes on him.) To You? You have no tempting wife. Val. (With horror, stepping back.) My lord! R Hugo. (Suddenly, and in a deprest tone.) Thou art a man, composed of soul and One day, may be Heaven's denizen ;-to morrow, The slave of hell! (Freely, and more quickly.) For the lost golden joys of Innocence- That in the gloom of an enchanted wood sion For him who loved his friend with heart sin cere, Yet loved his friend's wife more? Or sympathy With anguish such as mine, when I em- The widow of Don Carlos, and behold Is this then ALL? Hugo. (Recollecting himself.) Yes-all that I dare tell Of the sad history. Val. Ah! there is no doubt,-'Tis she! And, Oerindur! thy name is Otto ! THOU ART MY SON! (He wishes to embrace him. Hugo Ber. My lord, compose yourself. Hugo. (In a hollow voice.) Clear!-Aye, Clear as the lurid flames of yawning hell, Val. Count Oerindur! I stand perplex'd before thee- Explain what moves thee thus? Hugo. Oh, it would kill thee! Ber. Nay, speak-it must be told! Who listen and believe, hell threatens dan- Thereby the light of reason is obscured- Even through the stratagems employed to Val. (After a pause.) Spirits blest, in (Solemnly.) Mother! before the judgment heaven, They only can be pure. I do lament Thy sufferings, Count.-May Heaven in mercy judge thee! Hugo. (Half aside.) Amen!- Hugo. (Suddenly.) Receive Elvira As one who merits friendship.-She is guiltless. In the same act the secret of Hugo's real parentage is first disclosed to him in the course of a very skilfully conducted conversation, in which he and Valeros, and Elvira, and Bertha, all bear a part-each contributing some separate item of knowledge, the aggregate of which, as our readers may already have suspected, amounts to nothing less than a complete proof that the Spanish lady who gave away Hugo to the northern countess, was the wife of Don Valeros, and that consequently he has married the widow of his brother. The other, and the far more fearful truth which is thus forced upon the guilty mind of Count Hugo, is already, in like manner, suspected by our readers; but nothing can surpass the manner in which the disclosure of that truth is wrung from the remorseful fratricide himself in the anguish of his ungovernable spirit. seat, on thee Must fall a share of this foul crime!— Elv. (Suspecting.) Oh Heaven !— Val. (Also with suspicion) Otto!-- Cain, the accurs'd!-By this hand Carlos (Valeros staggers, and falls into a chair. Bertha starts back with horror. Elv. (Who turns herself away; her hands folded and reversed upon her forehead, and cries out, thinking of her dream,) Tiger! (She faints.) Ber. (Hastening to her.) Oh God! She Burnt out at last, and tranquil stands the ruin! El. (Who has raised herself up in the arms of Bertha.) Bertha? why wilt thou not in mercy let My bonds of life be broken ?-Staring forwar d.) Carlos' Ghost, Blood-stain'd, is pointing to his wound,and now, His threatening arm is rais'd against my husband. Val. Ah! 'tis too true-all direfully confirm'd! The obscure presentiments that led me on Were but the longing and the natural horror To meet, thus face to face, the murderer !HE IS MY SON! The struggle of the father's feelings at last ends in his commanding his son to repair to Rome, and seek from the common father of the faithful that pardon which he only, as the vicar of God upon earth, is supposed to have the power of granting. But Bertha, who is a protestant, conjures Hugo to adhere to the faith in which he had been bred, and not by apostacy add new guilt to his overburdened soul. Hugo exclaims as follows, and with this the act terminates. I am a Christian and a man. Too well I know that words alone may not efface The stain of fratricide.-(Disturbed and earnestly.) But to the sinner Remains another dome; a prouder vault Than aught that Rome can boast! And this to all Who trust in God, whatever be their creed, Is open. Proudly arch'd, and sapphire blue, Rises this vault magnificent on high!- And there, even at the dark hour, you behold Pictures, with sparkling diamonds surrounded. Five of those look down on me, and pre sent Of my own life the portraiture; for there (Sovereign in charms) an ARCHER and a SCORPION In morning's early beams, those symbols fade, And in a wide area there is risen Name it a SCAFFOLD! (All are visibly startled. He concludes firmly and rapidly.) There, and only there, A blessing can be gain'd. The axe alone Can reconcile me with myself-or Heaven! (Exit suddenly.) centrated. It is in this third act that the whole burning interest of the tragedy is conHere every thing is pressed together and conglomerated to bring out the full measure of Hugo's guilt, and to prepare us for the consummation of his fearful destiny. Nor can any thing be to our mind more admirable than the deep and pathetic and unfailing power with which the poet has extricated himself from the difficulty of drawing out of so few persons, each of them in part ignorant, a secret made up of so many minute circumstances, and yet, presenting, when once revealed, such an easy and satisfactory fulness of effect. Above all, it appears to us that there is masterly beauty in the episodic character of the child Otto. The boy moves among things of horror without suspecting the least of that which has heaped so much misery on the halls of Oerindur. His pure spirit walks uncontaminated even by the dread of guilt, amidst all the glowing embers of guilt-passion-repentance-remorse - vengeance · and desired death. With a true poetical reverence for the dignity of his innocence, the tragedian has continued to keep the boy clear, and removed from all his most violent spectacles of struggling passion; and yet he has made a part, and that, too, a great part of the fatal story, to be ga thered from the lips of the innocent; and besides has introduced him ever and anon to increase, by the contrast of his unsuspecting simplicity, the terror inspired by the other agents of the piece. Throughout, the boy's character and behaviour are made to furnish a new point of view from which the whole scene is viewed with emotions of a nature much opposite to the principal one-and yet harmonizing in most delicate union with it-tempering it and us by its tenderness-without in the least distracting our conceptions or our interest of terror. He is a beautiful personification of the loveliness of those infant years-when the world, and all that it inhabit, are seen through the medium of joy and confidence, and reposing love, and the convulsions of intellect, and the storms of passion rave all around, without obscuring for a moment the bright serenity of the faith of youth Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark-substantial blackAn Ebon mass-methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge. But when I look again, There is thine own calm home, thy chrystal shrine Thy habitation from eternity! At the close of this act the reader feels irresistibly that he stands on the threshold of some scene of visible horror-and that in blood alone can all these fierce flames of polluted love and guilty conscience be quenched. It is clear that the moment of earthly expiation is at hand for the sinner; that if the world could bear him, he can no more bear the world; and that to die is all that remains for Hugo. Elvira also, though far less guilty then he, is a part of him; it is impossible to dream of those whose union has been bought at so dear a price being separated from each other. They live but in each other's existence; they have dared all the scorns of the world to be united-a dark necessity has intertwined inextricably all their hopes and wishes-and imperfect pleasures-and ill-concealed miseries: they are one in life-and we feel, that, without a sin against nature, they cannot be represented as other wise than one in their death. Clearly, however, as the catastrophe is foreseen, we have no conception by what means it is to be brought about. And great is the art which the poet has exhibited in bringing it about -preparing the persons themselves gradually and surely for the issueand leading us also step by step to the only position from which we could see an entire and perfect termination to all the earthly darkness of their destinies. The first idea of Hugo, as we have seen, is to deliver himself up to justice, and expiate his guilt upon the scaffold; but the Spanish pride of Valeros rejects this idea with horror. Bertha proposes that her brother should offer himself to take the command of an armament about to proceed against an invading enemythere to meet an honourable death; or, if he survives, to wash out by his heroism the remembrance of his sins. She mentions this first to Elvira, who shudders at the notion of being separated from him-even now in his despair.-In her first emotion, she says to Bertha Cruel woman !— Because he cannot wholly be thine own, Thou doom'st him to destruction !— Ber. (With dignity.) To destruction !The polar star that guides the mariner, Dies only with the world. He whom I love, Dies but with me. Still cherish'd in my soul As in the artist's gifted mind exists The beautiful IDEAL! He partakes not The fate of perishable mortal frames That are desir'd-possess'd-and turn'd to dust Only the stains, that on the picture still Ay-thus proud woman! even on earth be low, Thou can'st belong to heaven, and contemplate The soul abstract from its corporeal frame,— Renown from life. I cannot !-What I love Seems indivisible. When I embrace My husband, he is all the world to me,And Bertha shall not rob me of mine empire. Ber. Let him decide. I hear him now approaching. Hugo comes in pale and disordered; and having heard the proposal of Bertha, accepts it with eagerness, but with far different views from what she had contemplated, Before this, however, he bursts into a passionate lamentation over the conduct of his mother-to whose charge a part at least of his guilt should be ascribed. Bertha says, Ber. May God forgive her errors! Not told the secret, I had not been lost !— 'Twas this that drove me from the peaceful north Into the burning clime where love is rage, And heated blood to murder instigates. (Half aside.) Crimes whilst they but exist in thought, are nothing; And when in silent darkness perpetrated, They still are nothing while the heart and lips Can guard the secret. (To BERTHA, with more vivacity.) M 2 you!-these are snares That hell employs. Because man has the power In sinful thoughts to revel uncontroll'd, Is the last rampart storm'd. The gates are shatter❜d. The troops, to madness, rous'd up by the blood Of their fall'n comrades, rush with shouts of triumph Amid the lamentations; merciless, With female blood pollute the sacred altar : Or, by the white hair, tender children drag And whelm them in the flames. (More slowly.) Then when the day Of glory is concluded, and the victor Binds up his tigers;-when the cries of death Have pass'd away, and night's obscurity Conceals the ruin'd town, then lamps are kindled, To veil his actions, as he veil'd his And from the half-burnt churches thou shalt evil Then comes the proposal; it is thus Those frightful images were but the game he receives it: Ha! gentle Dove! Where hast thou learn'd so well What fits the ravenous vulture? This indeed Of fantasy. I know what thou intend'st- Ber. (Leaning on him, and weeping.) Oh, Affords the cure. I thank thee, mild phy- Think'st thou I fear to die?— Hugo. (Moved.) See now-thou weep'st; sician! Who heal'st with fire and sword! (With inflamed looks.) BLOOD WILL HAVE BLOOD! Ber. (Agitated, and turning from him.) Oh, Heaven! Hugo, A man, were it a brother murder'd Shot by a coward and insidious aim,-'tis nothing! Too much indeed for conscience, but too little To satisfy the cravings of an Hell, No longer now The bloody fields with mangled carcases. Towns fortified the firebrand will assail, And though the pious should implore for mercy, Devote their peaceful homes to raging flames, That crackling flash on high, and fill the streets With heat and horror. O'er the piled up dead DEATH HAS FAR LESS OF TERROR THAN REPENTANCE! The dead perchance are happy. Yet even here his soul makes manifest its pollution, and a new thought of guilt enters his mind. Hugo. It shall by Heaven it shall! Dispatch that letter. The lost provinces Shall be re-captured ;-but not for the king: They shall belong unto the conqueror.. I will exalt the injur'd exil'd son High on the throne of power;-will sow with diamonds Elvira's rich dark tresses; till like stars, Then to my heart the lovely woman press, And die of pleasure-Haste !-It shall be done. Ber. Ay, true, indeed! Hell will not let escape Whom it has once o'ercome. Even as the needle, Touch'd by the magnet, ever seeks the north, Hugo. What hast thou |