University of Virginia Library

ACT I.

SCENE I.

A Gothic Castle, in a Forest.—The Ruins of a Monastery are seen at a distance.—Evening.
Enter Count Lunenberg and Colbert.
Lunenberg.
Colbert, we hail our travels' end, and reach
The aged towers of Gothic Lunenberg.

Colb.
It is a place of loneliness: and here
The noise and tumult of the distant world
Are like the fall of some far cataract.

Lunen.
I am your debtor, that you left with me
Vienna's range of high-piled palaces,
And journey hither.

Colb.
This romantic scene
Has recreative power: but you, my lord,
When Hymen's solemn rite demands your stay
At Austria's court, and e'en the emperor
Commands the union of your noble house
With her, whose fortunes and high ancestry
Of fame and sway give golden promises,
Why seek again these unfrequented domes?

Lunen.
I would be great. Ambition in my heart
Has reared her throne, with all the retinue
Of lofty thought and noble enterprize:
Glory has bent her burning eye upon me,
And woos me to her charms: but do not think so,
No other joy can nestle in my soul.
If the proud eagle soar against the sun,
Is there no down upon the eagle's breast?

Colb.
I know thee, Lunenberg; thy heaven is fame,
Thy thought is mounting fire, and shoots to heaven.
In boy-hood's budding years you were my friend,
And even then I hailed the impetuous hope,
The daring mind, and fine extravagance
Prophetic of the man: ere since that time
I have beheld you in imperial council,
Or in the fields of war pursue renown.
What other passion?

Lunen.
One of mighty power.

Colb.
Then are you changed. You are no more the man.

Lunen.
I am not changed: the torrent is the same,
But rolls along another precipice.
It is not love, for I have heard that love
Was a soft longing of the pensive soul,
A suspiration of most gentle sighs,
An eye now sadly bent upon the earth,
Now movelessly contemplative of heaven;
But if such things be love, thou well hast said
It never could be mine: for know, my friend,
That it is desperation. Adelaide!
Betray thee, Adelaide!

Colb.
What fairy charm
Hath wound the spell of woman's influence?

Lunen.
Fast by yon abbey, through whose broken arches
The purple setting of the sun is seen
Among the trees, whose whitened blossoms seem
Spring's swelling bosom, heaved by evening's breath,
A cottage rises; there, even there she dwells
Unknown, and like a beauteous star that shines
Deep in the blue infinity of heaven,
Unseen its peaceful glory.

Colb.
Say, my lord,
Whose beauty weighs against a prince's favor?

Lunen.
When winter's weight hung down the stooping woods,
It was my chance to sojourn in this castle.
The misty-day was fading, and the wind
Heaved longer sighs among the waving trees.
Sudden a knocking of the gates was heard,
And one, who travelled through the forest gloom,
Intreated refuge from the coming night.
I went to see him: shrouded o'er with snows,
Silent he stood, and when the torch's flare
Fell on his face, all bleak and desolate,
It had the grandeur of a wilderness.
Upon his breast inanimate reclined
Two female forms, whose arms were thrown around him,
But with such feeble pressure that it seemed
As death had left them in life's attitude.
Beside him stood a man of hoary years,
Sustaining with his aged feebleness
Another shrinking woman. When I spake,
He answered not, but looked upon his wife
And on his child, and stretching forth his arm,
With supplication's mournful smile to her
Who lay supported by the old man's care,
He lowly asked a refuge from the storm
For emigrants.

Colb.
And who, at such an hour,
Of those whom fortune hurled relentlessly,
Stood at your gate?

Lunen.
The Count St. Evermont.

Colb.
Whose deeds are grown familiar in the page
Of war-recording story! Human greatness,
How art thou fallen!

Lunen.
His was a tale of woe.
'Twas on the fatal day that death's decree
Fell on his only son, he fled from Paris.
At night he reached his castle, and beheld
The tumbling spires enveloped in a flame
That kindled all the sky with conflagration.
Frantic he rushed, and from the raging fire
Preserved his wife and child; then far away
With these companions of adversity
And yet another daughter of misfortune,
He journeyed forth from France's bleeding realm.
I bade him seek in yonder green abode
Forgetfulness of sorrow. If you had seen her,
With what a look she gave me gratitude,
And threw herself upon her father's bosom,
And knelt in rapture down! Oh Adelaide!

Colb.
Misfortune is a shield of sanctity.
Your plighted faith to Austria's noblest dame
Forbids the thought of marriage. Much, my lord,
It has been marvelled at Vienna's court
That you delay, with study of pretext,
An union gilded with imperial favor.
This love is hopeless; and to cherish it,
Were cradling infant ruin in your heart.

Lunen.
Colbert, I am a weak and trembling villain,
That have not in me courage to do right,
Nor am resolved in guilt. I am a man
Who reel along from virtue into crime,
And then back to virtue. If I break
The compact which my sovereign has commanded,
His frown will blast me in my bloom of honors;
And if I yield my Adelaide, I lose
All hope of that delicious happiness
That only satisfies.

Colb.
Yet think, my lord,
Should you refuse the noble lady's hand,
Whose nuptials an imperial wish decrees,
You fly the court for ever, and must seek
That recompense in love, love ne'er can yield.
Say, shall another lead our armies forth
Which you have tutored in the art of conquest,
And win the laurels planted by your hand?

Lunen.
Oh! thou hast roused me with a trumpet's sound,
And wak'st my soul to arms. It shall not be.

Colb.
Spoke like my friend—but we are interrupted.

Enter Albert St. Evermont.
Albert.
If, as your habit speaks, you are the lord
Of yon high domes, that o'er the vast expanse
Of waving woods exalt their Gothic pride,
One who amid this leafy labyrinth
Has lost his course, and whom fatigue weighs down,
Entreats your guidance.

Lunen.
'Ere the day depart,
And yonder summits hide their golden heads
In deep obscure, you cannot hope to reach
This solitary forest's boundary;
And many a lengthened travels' weariness
Has lent a toil and effort to your step.
Whate'er of soft repose and cheering fare
These antique towers can yield, are yours to-night.

Alb.
This courtesy wears all that polished truth
Desired in palaces. I take the boon,
For I am faint with countless leagues of toil,
And I have held a fellowship with care.

Lunen.
Forgive enquiry of the cause of sorrow;
It bears no common aspect.

Alb.
Ah! my lord,
'Tis not on me alone adversity
Has loosened ruin's weight, nor I alone
Have cause to ask of heaven, why is it thus?
For there is many a one whose tears are shed
O'er those who claimed the tender name of parent,
Of sister, and of wife. May I not call her
By that endearing title, from whose arms
A band of revolution's ruffian sons
Swept me away to dungeon solitude,
E'en in the hour she owned a mutual flame.
In chains they bore me to the dread tribunal,
Where death was throned in judgment: I had reached
The engine of swift-executing murder,
And almost bowed before it, when a cry
Came on mine ear, and told the tyrant's fall.
The tumult swelled: my guards abandoned me,
I saw salvation opened to my step;
I fled—why did I fly?

Colb.
Can you lament
To have preserved what the imperious call
Of nature bade you keep?

Alb.
My life! 'twere better
I had descended to the peaceful dead,
Than wandered o'er the surface of the earth,
A forlorn emigrant! When I left the town
Where murder held his revelry of blood,
I hastened to my father's distant castle.
A heap upon the blasted plain it lay,
Blackened with conflagration. All was silent,
And wild and desolate: and none was there
To speak the fate of its inhabitants.
'Twas agony to think it; but at last
I heard a rumour in the neighbouring town,
That they had been preserved, and fled their country.
That hope, that lingering hope, allures my steps:
I seek the all that fortune yet may share.
My, lord, you seem disturbed.

Lunen.
(aside)
It cannot be.
Excuse the wanderings of my wayward thought.
Colbert, lead on.
[Colbert and Albert exeunt.
These fears are idle all.
It cannot be: and if it were, by heaven
I now have gone so far, that 'tis in vain
To wish the deed recalled. Her brother? no!
Death sends him not to fright me, from the grave:
Or, let the tomb disgorge a thousand brothers,
I'll dare them all; for I have ta'en a leap
Off from a precipice. I plunge along,
And heaven itself were impotent to save.

[Exit.

SCENE II.

The outside of St. Evermont's Cottage.—Evening Scenery.
Enter Madame St. Evermont and Julia.
Mad.
This has its cause, for I of late observe
A sadness muses in her countenance,
Moves in each measured step, and to her form
Imparts its fixed and mournful attitude.
Why is it thus with Adelaide?

Julia.
In truth,
A melancholy, like the heavy air
That hangs its sickness on a budding tree,
Weighs down the rosy blossoms of her beauty.
Full oft amid the abbey's loneliness,
When evening's star ascended in the west,
I have surprised her weeping 'mid the tombs:
And when I chid the tears that trickled down,
With such a woeful smile she strove to hide them,
I too have wept. Then would we sit and think
Of times gone by and Albert.

Mad.
Oh! my Julia!

Julia.
To lose him in the hour of holy love.

Mad.
Do not, who hast decreed that we should suffer,
Do not forbid our tears, but leave us yet
That miserable comfort of the wretched.
But Julia, let those tears be secret ones:
Not in the presence of St. Evermont
Indulge those sorrows, which afflict him more
Than all his own endurance: and howe'er
There is an agony in seeming happy,
Yet let us wear the semblance of content.

Julia.
It is an art which I must learn of thee,
My gentle tutoress in resignation,
And more than mother. What though destiny
Between our luckless hearts hath interposed
Its iron hand—and I was never Albert's—
Yet have you ta'en me with parental fondness,
And saved me.

Mad.
Julia, thou art precious to me:
And had my Albert lived! You are my child;
I love you as my Adelaide, and she
Is dear, as to the pilgrim of the desert
Are the remaining drops which he has saved
From his subverted urn.

Julia.
Those fair blue eyes,
Where shines a soul most pensive and most loving,
Her soft variety of winning ways,
And all the tender witchery of her smiles
That charm each sterner grief, her studious care
In all the offices of sweet affection,
Would make the world enamoured.

Mad.
Her endearments
Have all that soft and downy consolation
That, like an Indian's breast-plate made of plumes,
Repels the arrows of adversity.
Have I not seen her, with a parent's pride,
Smoothing the wrinkled sorrows of her father,
And, with the whispers of her gentle voice,
Where care awakened in its broken sleep,
As music lulls a sick man to repose,
Persuade it to oblivion of itself.

Julia.
He is in need of comfort.

Mad.
There are few
Whom heaven hath visited with such disaster.
For know the Count St. Evermont was once
Among the great ones of this little world.

Julia.
Sorrow indeed has done its work upon him.

Mad.
Yet only leaves such clefts as does the fire
That lights upon the summit of an Alp,
And striking shakes not.

Julia.
And yet oftentimes
I have observed him mutely gaze upon us,
When we have sat together, round the hearth
That cheered the coldness of a winter's eve,
In woman's workmanship. Then would he start,
And suddenly compress us to his bosom,
While from those eyes that sent a look to God
Tears shed their trickling heat upon my breast.

Mad.
See where he comes, and moves as if the soul
Infused its nobleness o'er all his form.
That letter, if his face doth speak aught,
Is sure joy's harbinger. 'Tis very long
Since joy hath been with us.

[Enter St. Evermont with a letter.]
St. Ever.
Almighty one!
Forgive, if e'er in tribulation's hour
I rose a rebel 'gainst thy providence,
Thou who mysteriously dost arbitrate
In comfort, and in grief! my wife, my Julia,
I almost think that I am not unhappy.

Mad.
(who has snatched the letter from him)
My Adelaide! what, Holstein!

Julia.
Let me be
A partner of your comforts: I have been
The partner of your sorrows.

Mad.
Oh! my husband!
My Julia! at the dead of slumbering night,
I have knelt down and prayed that, in the hour
We should be laid beneath the earth together,
There should be one to lift her from the tomb,
To take her in his arms and to console her.
(to Julia)
Count Holstein asks the hand of Adelaide.

Julia.
She will be blest; for Holstein is a man
Whose soul was formed of heaven's own milder air.

Mad.
All, Julia, will be blest. Though we are fallen
From off the pinnacles of human life,
A quiet freshness spreads along the vale,
A tranquil green down the declivity
Where all the sweet felicities of home
Have fixed their sheltered dwelling.

St. Ever.
Oh! my country!

Mad.
Hold not such muttered converse with yourself:
Look not so very sadly: who forgets
That he was happier once is happy still.
Is she not ours? But where is Adelaide?

St. Ever.
I bade old Godfrey seek the ruined abbey
Where she is wont at such an hour to stray.

Julia.
See where they come together.

[Enter Godfrey and Adelaide.]
Mad.
Adelaide!

St. Ever.
Come to my bosom, Adelaide, my child!
And art thou left me still?

Adel.
My gentle father!
Amid the deep recesses of these woods
Where not an echo of the talking world
Hath told its pompous moral, I have learned
The precept of that sweet philosophy
Instinctive nature teaches,—to belove you.
My mother!

Mad.
I have saved thee, Adelaide,
E'en as perhaps the first of mothers bore
A little flower from Eden's holy bowers,
And loved it more than Eden, and thou art
As pure and lovely as the first fresh rose
That, in the dewy groves of Paradise,
Grew in creation's morning.

St. Ever.
Read, my child.

Julia.
She trembles, ha! she faints.

Adel.
Support me, Julia.
My life, but not my heart: oh! take my life,
And do not frown upon me: oh! my father!

St. Ever.
Thou wilt not wed Count Holstein?

Mad.
Adelaide.

St. Ever.
I must endure this too. Fond cheating hope,
Thou meteor in the evening of my life,
That from the hot affections of this heart
Exhaled a bright illusion.

Mad.
Do you love me?

Adel.
Were my heart made transparent, every thought
And each particular wish made visible,
You would behold a prayer, that, like the eye
Of an arch-angel, supplicated heaven
To pour its blessings o'er my parents' age.

St. Ever.
“Arise, and” leave me.

Julia.
(to Adelaide, as they go out together)
Ah! my weeping friend,
What sorrows yet can fortune have in store?

[Exeunt Adelaide and Julia.
St. Ever.
Suspicion is the growth of meaner spirits;
Yet does misfortune often cherish it,
And then it lurks a rank and leafless weed
Amid the ruins of a noble mind.
He is the friend of my calamity.
(To Godfrey)
You came to me with fearful hesitation,
'Tis scarce a month, and when I bade you speak,
You cried, beware Lunenberg. In wrath
I flung you off.

Godf.
Beware of him, my lord.

Mad.
Old man, you wrong her.

Godf.
Madam, I am old.

Mad.
I am a mother.

St. Ever.
Speak, I charge thee, speak.

Godf.
Upon the very evening 'ere the day
Count Lunenberg departed; o'er the hills
That from your cottage slope in woods away,
I chanced to wander: suddenly I heard
The murmurs of a voice most tremulous,
And pausing, looked through twilight's sinking veil,
When straight I saw a man, who kneeling pressed
A woman's hand: she wept and sobbed in grief,
He rose and clasped her.

Mad.
It was not my child!

Godf.
It was your daughter Adelaide.

St. Ever.
'Tis false.
I now remember me thou hadst a child,
And that she perished; thou dost envy me,
Wouldst make me wretched as thou art thyself:
Thou didst not see all this, or if thou didst
Thou shouldst not have believed thine aged eyes:
Or if thou didst, false dotard.—Look not on me,
For, when I gaze upon thy countenance,
I cannot but remember thou hast followed
Misfortune's footsteps: time has changed thy hair,
But time, nor fortune, could not change thy faith.

Mad.
Oh Adelaide! thou wert my only solace.

St. Ever.
There is a tomb, where sleep my ancestors:
None e'er hath stood upon that sepulchre
And said, Here rests a coward or a wanton.
It is a vault of glory. Adelaide.

[Enter Adelaide and Julia.]
Adel.
Is it my father's call?

St. Ever.
It is thy father:
Who tells his daughter that he keenly feels
What nature's providence has wisely willed
A father's love; yet tells his daughter too
That if a thawing breath of infamy
Drop its corruption on thy name of snow,
He would, all crimsoned with thy filial blood,
Pluck the hot dagger from thy panting breast,
And lift it, reeking o'er with life, to heaven.

Adel.
(to Julia)
Protect me, Julia, save me in thine arms.

Mad.
And shall I ever curse my travail for thee?

St. Ever.
Have I not honor still? And who shall take
What I still hold, in proud despite of fortune
And all the malice of conspiring stars?
Count Lunenberg, I'm not that thick fat root
That draws its juices from the sepulchre,
And feeds upon the dead. I will not live
On my child's shame. 'Tis done. From hence, for ever!
To-morrow's setting sun shall see me far
From thine accursed towers. Preserve me, heaven,
Save me from infamy. I do not think
That thou hast done the utmost deed of shame,
But, by the mighty power that made the world,
One impure thought, one touch.... 'Twill make me mad.

[Exit.
Mad.
This earth is all too full of misery.

[Exit weeping.
Adel.
Am I permitted still to sob upon thee?
Dost thou constrain me, Julia, to thy heart
And weep upon me.

Julia.
Here, upon my bosom,
On friendship's pillow lay your sorrows down:
From infancy we shared each little joy,
And we have conned affliction's book together.
I claim your grief, for it is all mine own.

Adel.
Heaven has abandoned me.

Julia.
Say, what has happened.

Adel.
Oh! there is not an outcast of the world
So lost, or so distracted. Julia, Julia,
What will become of me! oh! Lunenberg!

Julia.
That name, I fear, came bursting from your heart,
A load of misery. Speak, Adelaide.

Adel.
And was it not enough that he should leave me?
That after one short month of exstacy,
One little month, he tore him from my arms?
You frown; but hear me, Julia, and if e'er
Your Albert was beloved, you'll pity me.

Julia.
Yes, I will pity thee, but, Adelaide—

Adel.
Thine eyes proclaim a meaning which the lips
Would fear to utter. Dost thou, canst thou think it?
No! Though I love him with a fainting rapture,
And cling around his memory with a clasp
Of most enamoured fondness, witness heaven
That if thy minister, with holy rite,
Had not to love extended sanctity,
I never had been his.

Julia.
What! married! then
You still are innocent.

Adel.
If she can be so
Who, in despite of that high ordinance
That wills a parent's empire o'er his child,
Gave promise that she never would reveal
Her marriage to her father.

Julia.
Why demand it?

Adel.
He said, if e'er it reached the imperial ear,
His sovereign's frown would blast him, and my father
Would never brook a moment's secrecy.
And then by all our loves he did entreat
I ne'er would speak of it.

Julia.
And this you trusted?

Adel.
Is there not sweet perdition in his eyes?
Is not that face refulgent with a soul
Sublimely ardent, while his every word
Is tempered with a wooing gentleness?
And has not glory wreathed around his brow
A garland from her ever-green? Whose arm
Hurls swift destruction through the ranks of war
With might like his? Whose smile hath such a beam?
Whose lips such soft persuasive eloquence?
And has he not received my father's sorrows,
And dried my mother's tears? Who had not loved him?
I loved, and, loving, never could suspect.

Julia.
I own him all that woman's virgin wishes
In fancy's kindling vision can pourtray;
Yet high ambition swells within his heart.

Adel.
Oh! he has sworn by every sacred power,
By all heaven's host that glitter through the night,
That Adelaide was dearer than his glory;
That to one sigh, one smile of Adelaide,
He would resign the empire of the world.
If you had seen the flash of fervid soul
Suffused o'er all that burning countenance,
If you had felt the throbbing of his heart
When, in the tumult of impetuous passion,
He seized my hand and clasped it to his bosom,
Then would you say he loved. Dost thou remember
That day, when down a winter torrent's roll
He plunged precipitous? He cleft the tide,
And bore me back to life and to my father?

Julia.
Yet why demand this strange mysterious silence?

Adel.
O Julia! thou hast opened many a wound,
And bid'st them bleed afresh. Thou hast recalled
My wandering thought from scenes of happiness
To present sorrows, and to future perils.
Within my breast there is a messenger
Of shame and misery: nay, let me tell thee
That when amid the abbey's mouldering altars
I swore the nuptial vow, ('twas in the hour
Of calm and holy night, when vigilant heaven
Opes its bright eyes to watch the sleeping world)
A secret voice was whispering guilt and horror:
And, Julia, when I threw me in his arms
To hide my blushes, and to quell my fears,
He trembled too: his eye was all on fire,
And dreadful passions flared upon his face.
How soon he left me too!

Julia.
Alas, my friend,
Heaven has decreed calamity enough!

Adel.
He left me, Julia! one poor little month
Was all of bliss that I have ever known.
Yet was he still as ardent as before,
And spoke and looked all exstacy. At length
An order from the court commanded him
Back to Vienna. Julia, I have pined
E'er since that time in weeping solitude:
My heart is wasted: and the rising morn
And setting sun behold me still in tears.

Julia.
Fly to your mother, open all your bosom,
Reveal this fatal marriage.

Adel.
'Tis impossible.
E'en as he parted, and my winding arms
Detained him still within their long embrace,
E'en in the pressure of the last sad kiss,
E'en as I prayed another of his lips,
He whispered, Adelaide, the stars alone
And yonder orb be conscious of our loves.

Julia.
Your father cried that he would hence for ever;
And 'twas the look and accent of resolve.

Adel.
What! o'er the world! the cold and heartless world,
Thrown out! To have no hope, no smiling hope,
To lean on in his age! to see the night
Fast gathering o'er his head, and have no home:
Then think on better times! I will kneel down,
I will entreat him! What? It cannot be!
Then heaven have mercy! Send some pitying angel
To rescue my distraction! Oh my husband!
Where art thou, Lunenberg?

[Exeunt.