University of Virginia Library

SCENE THE LAST.

Inside of a Monastery: the coffin of Julia covered with a velvet pall, and tapers burning around it.
The Marchioness de Mielcour, habited in deep mourning, bending over the coffin.
MARCHIONESS DE MIELCOUR,
(After a pause.)
YOU I renounce henceforth for ever, Love,
Pleasure, ambition! See here—what a wreck
Your sophistries have wrought, ye that would plead
For the unchecked indulgence of your passions,
Under pretence that they instinctive are,
And thence legitimate, in human breasts:—
Only since natural, legitimate!—
Myself do I abhor! 'Tis true, I cannot
A whining, canting, penitent become.
The penance of coarse garments, homely fare,
Fasting, and maceration, tedious vigils
Consumed in prayer, and solitary gloom;
Nay, that of the most rigid order which
Of discipline monastic has e'er yet
Been instituted, e'en though solitude,
And everlasting silence, it involved,
Would be to me no penance! Mine shall be
Of deeper dye! I will consent to live
To be an object for “the hand of scorn
To point her slowly moving finger at.”
Mine being yet rank, opulence, and power,
In others I may yet alleviate woe.
My future life shall now be dedicate
To this resolve, renouncing utterly
The sources e'en of virtuous sympathy,
If chance I might enjoy them; though I fear
Rather must I now lie in wait for them,
Than hope that they will come spontaneously:
And though I be fallen, yet not fallen so low
As to accept of that beneath a mask,
Which is of worth but as 'tis genuine.
(Kneeling before the coffin of Julia).
Dear saint, thou art no more! awful indeed
Hath been the sacrifice, which hath produced
This revolution in my character.
Yet deign thou, from the mansions of the blest,
Not only to attend to, but record,
The vow, (and pledge be for its strict performance)
Which now I make, to consecrate to thee,
And to thy memory, every future hour:
On earth to represent thee! Not, oh no!
In uncontaminated purity,
In native innocence, and fervent zeal
Of adoration! That can never be!
But still as a self-sacrificing spirit,
To copy thee in thy beneficence,
In thy devotedness of character!
Although no masses, no meet obsequies,
Were celebrated for thy soul's repose,
Yet, from thy ashes, in my heart shall spring
A sacrificial flame of charity,
To which (thus prostrating myself before
The narrow mansion which containeth all
That now remains of thee) I make a vow
Most solemnly to consecrate each deed,
And future thought. She is no more! No more
The vain, ambitious, proud Maria lives!—
Even as thou art, Julia, is she dead!—
And her transformed self but consents to dwell
On this earth as a delegate to thee!—
Till after years spent in the deep abasement
Of never shunned, and ever cleaving shame,
She may be fit to commune with thy spirit
In scenes where tears are wiped from every eye.

[As she is slowly rising, the Duke D'Ormond enters. Both he and the Marchioness stand for some time, without looking at each other, intently gazing on the coffin.]
MARCHIONESS DE MIELCOUR.
Words were superfluous here! were sacrilege!
Till to the earth that coffin be consigned
To endure your presence I consent: that done,
Our separation must be everlasting.

DUKE D'ORMOND.
To-morrow, I, in company with Colville,
Quit, for America, my native land;
Having long had the purpose to go thither,
He, with a portion of his patrimony,
Made change for grant of lands from government,
In the most inaccessible retreats
Which France holds in that mighty continent.
And, all preliminaries now arranged,
His scheme is ripe for final execution.
My days I mean to end with Colville there,
Distant from former scenes, in solitude,
Unsolaced, unconversing solitude:—
Or at least inasmuch so, as respects
The gay, the frivolous, the fortunate;
The multitude of the common file of men;
Those human beings whose hearts have not been
Seered by th' hot iron of calamity,
Guilt, and remorse! Let us, Maria, take
Our last farewell, kneeling once more before
The narrow mansion where poor Julia lies.

[They kneel before the coffin. As the Duke D'Ormond and the Marchioness de Mielcour, after a solemn pause, severally retire in different

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directions to remote parts of the apartment, Count Colville and Le Charier enter, unseen by, and not seeing them.]
COUNT COLVILLE,
(approaching the coffin).
And this is all that I could do for thee,
Thou ill-requited victim! This the sad,
The latest sacrifice to social ties,
That I shall pay ere I for ever quit
My native land! In all this pomp of death,
I seem to see again the obsequies
Of my beloved wife! Little thought I,
When I, but yesternight, in my own house
Conversed with her, and at the hour of noon
Promised a second interview to-day,
That such would be our meeting! Yet I have
Cause to congratulate myself that I
Knew by her means, that she in Paris was.
Thus, when I found her not, where she had fixed
To meet me, to Duke D'Ormond's house I went.
He was not there. By diligent inquiry
I traced him to the Marchioness de Mielcour's,
Just as the dire catastrophe had chanced.
So little here was Julia known; so deep,
And violent was Duke D'Ormond's agony,
And that which pierced the Marchioness, perchance,
Had it not been for me, she might have lost
Those honours, and commemorative rites
Due to her rank, and exemplary virtue,
Though they were both by poverty eclipsed.—
I interceded with this sisterhood,
To let her corse be hither borne, and now
I here repair, (while, with thy presence, thou
Dost countenance, and dost assist, to add
Meet reverence to it) when a solemn dirge
Is to be chanted o'er her mortal relics.

[As Count Colville concludes, a solemn chaunting is heard from a distance. The organ strikes up; a procession of Nuns enters, preceded by the Abbess, and the Duke D'Ormond and the Marchioness de Mielcour fall into its rear.]
COUNT COLVILLE.
But see, the sisterhood advances! Hark:
The organ's solemn peal! Take we our part
In this last act of holy reconcilement
To an untimely death: an act, as we
Would fain believe, both to the dead and living
Mutually fraught and interchangeably
With sweet forgiveness, and religious love!


The Dirge is here performed.

[The coffin is slowly borne out of the chapel, followed by the Duke D'Ormond, Count Colville, Le Charier, the Marchioness de Mielcour, and the procession of Nuns, and the curtain falls as the symphony is played which closes this dirge.]