(Half aside) If e'er we cast our eyes upon the past!-- Of Carlos lov'd thee; and for this, in turn, Hugo. (In a hollow voice) To-day ?--Ay, ay! Elv. Anxiously) To-day !———What mean'st Hugo. Was it not the time When Carlos pe ish'd ’— Elv, (Covering her face) Oh, Almighty Powers! (The candles are gradually burnt out, and the stage becomes obscure.) Some of the finest scenes in the tragedy occur in the third act. The suspicions of Don Valeros are alternately lulled asleep and awakened again by the favourable representation he receives of Hugo's character from the lips of the boy Otto, and the native nobility of Hugo's dispositions as manifested in many of his own words, on the one hand; and by hints of the truth darker and darker every moment which fall from Hugo himself on the other-till Hugo, Remember'st thou how, in the chapel then, his anxiety is at last wrought up to a Surrounded by the coffins of thy fathers, We met in secret, 'mid the mouldering graves. How then and there Elv. Hold--hold! or thou wilt kill me. Hugo. [After a considerable pause, and at last with If now he were to come, at this dark hour, Elv (Shuddering) O horrible! (A short stillness; afterwards knocking at each other. This last exclamation is called out pitch of anguish. Val. Are you quite sure? Otto. Nay, there was ample proof. Count Hugo once in publie risqued his life Val. Was it so? Orto. Most certain. Val. But bow--and where ? Otto. Now only hear my story.--- The ladies fled; and in their consternation Where are the dogs ?-Unkennel them!" This ery Val. (Interrupting him.) Aye-that was brave, — Who raging turned; but that first stab was mortal; He fell down with an hideous roar, convulsed, And stretch'd ere long his stiffening limbs in death. by the entrance of the Spanish guest-Lock'd up my father with the raging beast ~ Then with loud shouts of wonder and applause Val. But didst thou behold Otto. Yes, I was there. Again, when Hugo and Valeros con- VOL. 6.] Guilt; or, the Anniversary. Hugo. You are a father-and you weep the loss Struck to the ground both visors, and with horror, Val. Such discourse to me Is most obscure; and yet thou paint'st in riddles Hugo. (Starting.) How so?-What mean'st thou? Val. In truth, my lord, I mean that one of you, I know not which, has been unjust to Carlos. Hugo. Indeed! then fix the crime on me alone, Because on me thou canst avenge the wrong With sword in hand. Val. All voices plead for thee That I have heard in Spain. All styled you there, The Friends. 297 Whose residence was there, until the king Val. (Affected.) Excellent man! No-he who thus had loved Could not so fall! Hugo. (Startled.) How ?-not? Val. Let me not utter That which even to have thought I am ashamed! Hugo. (fixing his eyes on him.) To you?-Aye-you may venture it, You have no tempting wife. Val. (With horror, stepping back.) My lord! Hugo. (suddenly, and in a deprest tone) Judge'not! That in the gloom of an enchanted wood Hugo. (Recollecting himself.) Yes-all that I dare tell Of the sad history. Val. [after a pause.] Spirits blest, in heaven, They only can be pure. I do lament Hugo. (Much moved.) Aye, so we were.-Take not, Thy sufferings, Count. May heaven in mercy judge I pray, The words in ordinary acceptation. Our lives resembled, then, two mountain streams, Val. If this comparison is just, you were Hugo. Bereft of parents-by no brother aided— To none allied-I came to Talavera, The abode of many a noble family, Where courteously I was received. Don Carlos, Q ATHENBUM VOL. 6. thee!- Hugo. (half aside.) Amen. Val. Your ladies come. Hugo. (suddenly.) Receive Elvira 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 al ready 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. Fal. Ah! there is no doubt,- 'Tis she! And, Oerindur, thy name is Otto. Thou art my son! (He wishes to embrace him. Hugo resists him with outstretched arm, and turns away his face.) Ber. My lord, compose yourself. Hugo. (in a hollow voice.) Clear!----Aye, indeed,--- Val. Count Oerindur! I stand perplexed before thee- Explain what moves thee thus? Hugo. Oh, it would kill thee. Such knowledge to contain, no mortal breast Ber. Nay, speak--it must be told. Hugo. By dreams and gipsey prophecies, to those Must fall a share of this foul crime. Elv (Suspecting.) Oh Heaven! Val. (also with suspicion.) Otto--- Cain, the accursed.By this hand Carlos fell. 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 dies. Val. (Raising himself up with difficulty.) Cursed be the day whose light Thou first beheld'st--the womb that brought thee forth The breasts that fed thee---Monster! whom the north Rear'd up for murder, and the southern heat Hugo. Aye, this at last is consolation. Mark me! the fierce flames Broke forth into the day-light with the words Bertha? why wilt thou not in mercy 'let 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 termin ates. I am a Christian and a man. Toa well I know that words alone may not efface Hugo. (Approaching Valeros slowly, with Than aught that Rome can boast! And this to all Who trust in God, whatever be their creed, VOL. 6.] Guilt; or, the Anniversary. Pictures, with sparkling diamonds surrounded. An altar for a sacrifice. Then come Name it a Scaffold! 299 Throughout, the boy's character and behaviour are made to furnish a Dew 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 personifi (All are visibly startled. He concludes cation of the loveliness of those infant firm and rapidly.) It is in this third act that the whole burning interest of the tragedy is concentrated. Here 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-remorsevengeance 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 gathered 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 in spired by the other agents of the piece. 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, bright serenity of the faith of youthwithout obscuring for a moment the that 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; 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 than he, is a part of him; it is impossible to dream of those whose union has been bought at so dear a price being separa ted 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 interwined inex❤ tricably 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 otherwise 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 issue and 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 scaf fold; 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 enemy-there 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, Ber. (With dignity) To destruction !-- That are desir'd...possess'd...and turn'd to dust... Elv. (With increasing vehemence.) Seems indivisible. Whey I embrace 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!.......... (TO BERTHA, with more vivacity.} on thine own shoulders by thyself imposed. At every step thy burden; till at last Then comes the proposal; it is thus that he receives it : Ha! gentle Dove! Where hast thou learn'd so well What fits the ravenous vulture ? This indeed Affords the cure. I thank thee, mild physician! 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, Whose flames are thereby nurtured, [With increasing effect] With mankind I will have bloody reckoming, even for this, That I was born a man, and like to man From innocence have fail'n, No longer now Devote their peaceful homes to raging flames, (More slowly.)-Then when the day |
