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To give my life and see myself repulsed ;

To be forbidden, after all my love,

To have the happiness of dying near him!

Hernani. (Hesitating.) I'm banished—I'm proscribed-my love 's fatal!
Donna Sol.
You are ungrateful.

Hernani. (Returning with ardour.) No! I will remain.

You wish it. Here I am. Come to my arms.

I will stay here as long as you desire.

Let us remain. Come, sit upon this stone.

(He places himself at her feet.)
The splendour of thy eyes shall light my own.
Speak and delight me. Is't not very sweet,

Kneeling to love and feel oneself beloved?
For two to be alone? 'Tis very sweet
To talk of love when all the night is still.
Oh, let me sleep and dream upon thy breast.
My love! my beauty! Donna Sol!

Donna Sol. (Starting up.)

Hear'st thou the tocsin ?

(Sound of bells afar.)

The tocsin !

Hernani. (Seated at her feet.) 'Tis our wedding-bell !

(The noise of bells increases.

Confused cries, torches and lights in the windows, in the streets, and on the roofs.)

Donna Sol. Arise and fly. Great God! All Saragossa

Is in a blaze.

Hernani. (Half rising.) We'll have a brilliant wedding.
Donna Sol. A wedding of the dead! a churchyard bridal!
(Clash of swords, cries.)
Hernani. (Reclining on the bench.) Come to my arms!
Enter a Mountaineer, sword in hand.
Hernani! the alcades

Mountaineer.

Donna Sol.

Are passing to the square in lengthened files.

Rouse up, my lord!

Mountaineer.

(Hernani rises.)

Ah! thou hast spoken well.

Ho! to the rescue!

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Hernani. (To the Mountaineer.) Here-your sword. ( To Donna Sol.) Farewell! Donna Sol. I have destroyed you. Whither do you fly?

Hernani.

Fly by this open door!

(Showing an open door.)

What! leave my friends!

(Shouts and tumult.)

Donna Sol. These cries will kill me. Oh! remember, love,

If you are injured, I shall die.

Hernani. (Holding her in his arms.)

Donna Sol. My husband! lord! Hernani!

Hernani. (Kissing her.)

Donna Sol. Perhaps the last.

One kiss!

'Tis the first.

(He departs. She sinks on the bench.)”

Hernani was performed no fewer than fifty-three times, while Le Roi S'Amuse (which we propose to examine), a drama but little inferior to the first, was played but once. It was withdrawn from the stage, not because the people had condemned it, but because

Don C. (Laughing scornfully.) As regards the dame
Who loves the bandit-

Hernani. (His eyes lighting up.)-Ha! I have thee still.
Do not remind me, Cæsar that would be,
That yet I have thee, caitiff, in my hand,
And can, by closing of my loyal fingers,
Crush thy imperial eagle in the egg.

Don C. Do it.

Hernani. Away! away! Fly-take my mantle.

Don C.

(He takes off his mantle, and throws it over the shoulder of the King.)
I fear some knife among our ranks may find thee.
(The King wraps himself in the mantle.)
Depart in safety now-my thirsty vengeance
Would save thee from all weapons but my own.
Look you, my prince of bandits, never think
That I will e'er forgive you. (Exit.)

Donna Sol. (Seizing the hand of Hernani.) Let us fly.
Hernani. (Repulsing her with a grave gentleness.)

My love, you think to be my partner ever,
And as my dangers close around, grow firm;
You would embrace my fortunes to the last-
A noble purpose-worthy of thyself.
But now thou seest, my God! it cannot be;
I can no longer profit by her love-
The time is past, the scaffold is too near.
What is't you say?

Donna Sol.
Hernani.

The king, whom I have braved,
Dooms me, for having dared to pardon him.
Perhaps he is already in his palace-

He calls his guards, his pages, and grandees,
His executioners

Donna Sol.

Oh God! I tremble!
Well! Let us hasten then, and fly together.
Hernani. Together! No; the hour for that is passed.
When, beauteous Donna Sol, you first appeared,
And deigned to glad me with your blessed love,
I then could offer you in poverty,

My mountain, wood, and river-for your pity
Emboldened me-an exile's bread, the half
Of the green bed the sheltering forest gave me-
But now to share the scaffold with thee-no-
The scaffold, Donna Sol, is mine alone.

Donna Sol. But yet you promised me, Hernani.
Hernani. (Falling on his knees.) Angel!
Even now, when Death approaches me, perhaps
A gloomy ending to a gloomy fate,

Here I declare, proscribed and desolate,
Born in a bloody cradle, with a pall

Of deepest gloom o'ershadowing my life,

I'm happy, and my lot is enviable;

For you have loved me, you have told me so;
For you have blessed the bandit's cursed brow.

Donna Sol. Oh! let me follow thee.
Hernani.

'Twould be a crime
To pluck the flower in falling from the cliff.
Go-I have breathed its perfume-'tis enough.
Restore in other hours the hours I've chilled.
Give the old man the hand that I release.
My night returns. Be happy, and forget.
Donna Sol. No, never-thou must share thy shroud with me,
I will not leave thee.

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Donna Sol. (In despair, Hernani on the door-sill.)
Hernani, you avoid me, and I'm mad

To give my life and see myself repulsed;
To be forbidden, after all my love,

To have the happiness of dying near him!

Hernani. (Hesitating.) I'm banished-I'm proscribed-my love 's fatal!
Donna Sol.
You are ungrateful.

Hernani. (Returning with ardour.) No! I will remain.
You wish it. Here I am. Come to my arms.

I will stay here as long as you desire.

Let us remain. Come, sit upon this stone.

(He places himself at her feet.)

The splendour of thy eyes shall light my own.
Speak and delight me. Is't not very sweet,
Kneeling to love and feel oneself beloved?
For two to be alone? 'Tis very sweet
To talk of love when all the night is still.
Oh, let me sleep and dream upon thy breast.
My love! my beauty! Donna Sol!

Donna Sol. (Starting up.)

Hear'st thou the tocsin ?

(Sound of bells afar.)

The tocsin !

Hernani. (Seated at her feet.) 'Tis our wedding-bell!

(The noise of bells increases.

Confused cries, torches and lights in the windows,

in the streets, and on the roofs.)

Donna Sol. Arise and fly. Great God! All Saragossa

Is in a blaze.

Hernani. (Half rising.) We'll have a brilliant wedding.
Donna Sol. A wedding of the dead! a churchyard bridal!
(Clash of swords, cries.)
Hernani. (Reclining on the bench.) Come to my arms!
Enter a Mountaineer, sword in hand.

Mountaineer.

Hernani! the alcades

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(Confused cries without.)

Death to the bandit.

Hernani. (To the Mountaineer.) Here-your sword. (To Donna Sol.) Farewell! Donna Sol. I have destroyed you. Whither do you fly?

[blocks in formation]

(Showing an open door.)

What! leave my friends!

(Shouts and tumult.)

Donna Sol. These cries will kill me. Oh! remember, love,

If you are injured, I shall die.

Hernani. (Holding her in his arms.)

Donna Sol.

My husband! lord! Hernani!

Hernani. (Kissing her.)

Donna Sol. Perhaps the last.

One kiss!

'Tis the first.

(He departs. She sinks on the bench.)"

Hernani was performed no fewer than fifty-three times, while Le Roi S'Amuse (which we propose to examine), a drama but little inferior to the first, was played but once. It was withdrawn from the stage, not because the people had condemned it, but because

the minister had forbidden it. He did so on account of its alleged immorality. The order of the minister for the suspension of the piece was issued on the 23d of November, 1833; on the 24th it was definitively proscribed. The rage of the author was unbounded; it was like that of Madam de Staël when the vengeance of the emperor suppressed her "Germany," and drove her into exile. There is no indignation like that of an author deprived of the fame and profit of the fruit of his imagination. Victor Hugo could not challenge the ministry to combat like a chevalier of old, but he could seize his pen, and hurl defiance and the bitterest sarcasm upon the heads of his opponents. He styles the council of the ministry a divan, and the publication of their interdict an act of Asiatic despotism. He refers to the charter, quotes from its provisions, and thus discourses and comments :

"The French have the right of publishing.' Observe that the text does not say merely the right of printing, but, comprehensively and fully, the right of publishing. Now the stage is but a vehicle for publication; like the press, like engraving, like typography. The liberty of the theatre is then explicitly inscribed on the Charter, like every other liberty of thought. This fundamental law subjoins; The Censorship shall never be re-established.' Now the text does not say the censorship of journals, the censorship of books ; it says, the censorship, the censorship in general, all censorship, that of the theatre as well as that of writings. The theatre then could never be legally censured.

6

"Elsewhere the Charter says-- Confiscation is abolished.' Now, the suppression of a theatrical piece after its representation, is not only a monstrous and arbitrary act of censorship, but it is an actual confiscation, it is property violently taken from the theatre and the author.

"To conclude, that all may be clear and comprehensible, that the four or five great social principles which the French have cast in bronze may rest upon their granite pedestals, to prevent the common right of the French people from being secretly assailed by the forty thousand old, unworthy arms, which rust and disuse are devouring in the arsenal of our laws; the Charter, in a final article, expressly abrogates whatever there is in previous laws inimical to its letter and its spirit.

"This is official. The ministerial suppression of a dramatic piece strikes at liberty by the censorship, and at property by confiscation. All our public rights revolt against such violence.

"The author, not believing the existence of such insolence and folly, hastened to the theatre. There he was assured of the fact on all sides. The minister had actually, on his private authority, his divine ministerial right, transmitted the order in question. The minister had no reason to give. The minister had deprived him of his play, deprived him of his right, deprived him of his property; it only remained to send him (the poet) to the Bastile.

"We repeat, when in our own day an act like this blocks up your path and takes you by the throat, the first impression is profound astonishment. A thousand questions press upon your mind. Where is law? Where is justice? Are these things possible? Was there really an event they call the Revolution of July? It is evident we live no longer in Paris. In what pachalic

do we live ?"

The author next proceeds to state that the charge of immorality was the pretext for suppressing his play. "This play offended the prudery of the gendarmes, the Léotaud brigade beheld it and found it immodest, the bureau des mœurs* concealed its face, and M. Vidocq blushed." Let us proceed with our quotations.

"The piece is immoral. Do you credit it? Is its foundation so? This is the foundation. Triboulet is deformed, Triboulet is sick, Triboulet is the court fool, a triple misery which makes him wicked. Triboulet hates the king because he is the king, the lords because they are lords, and men because they are not all hunch-backed. His only pastime is for ever to embroil the lords and the king, crushing the weakest against the strongest. He depraves the king, corrupts and embrutes him; he drives him to tyranny, to ignorance, and vice; he looses him upon the families of all the gentlemen, always pointing out the wife to seduce, the sister to carry off, and the daughter to dishonour. The king in the hands of Triboulet is only an all-powerful puppet, who injures all the beings in the midst of whom the jester works him. One day, in the middle of a festival, at the moment when Triboulet is urging the king to carry off the wife of M. de Cossé, M. de St. Vallier succeeds in reaching the monarch, and loudly reproaches him with the dishonour of Diana de Poitiers. Triboulet jeers and insults the father whose daughter the king has seduced. The father lifts his hand and curses Triboulet. From this the whole story takes its rise. The true subject of the drama is the Curse of M. de St. Vallier. Listen. You are in the second act. Upon whom has the maledic. tion fallen? On Triboulet, the jester of the king? No. Upon Triboulet the man, the father, who has a heart, who has a daughter. Triboulet has a daughter-it is all there. The daughter is all that Triboulet has in the world: he conceals her from all eyes, in a desolate quarter, in a solitary house. The wider he circulates throughout the city the contagion of debauchery and vice, the closer he keeps his daughter isolated and walled up. He educates his child in innocence, in faith, and modesty. His greatest fear is lest she fall into evil, for, a sinner himself, he knows what the wicked suffer. Well the malediction of the old man will reach Triboulet in the only thing he loves in the world-his daughter. The same king whom Triboulet urges to seduction, will seduce the child of Triboulet. The jester will be smitten by Providence in the same way as M. de St. Vallier. And then, his daughter wronged

* Which licenses prostitutes.

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