art mine as man is misfortune's (seizing her in his arms.) Thou must live for me. I carry thee away.-Evil be on the head of him who would prevent me! Oh! oh! ADELE. ANTONY. Cries, tears, it matters not! Adele. My daughter! my daughter! ANTONY. She's a child, and will laugh to-morrow. (They are just on the point of going out, when a double knock is heard at the street door. ADELE (bursting from Antony's arms). Oh! it's he. . . Oh! my God! my God! Have pity on me! pardon, pardon! Come, it is over now! ANTONY. ADELE. Somebody's coming up stairs . . . somebody rings(It must be remembered this is a French house, and the knock was at the outer door.)-It's my husband-fly, fly! A death that would save thy reputation, that of thy child? ADELE. I'll beg for it on my knees. 66 (A voice from without; " Open, open! break open the door!”) ANTONY. And in thy last breath thou wilt not curse thy assassin? Fear nothing! death shall be here before any one. But reflect on it well-death! ADELE. I beg it--wish it—implore it (throwing herself into his arms)--I come to seek it. Well then, die ! Ah! ANTONY (kissing her). (He stabs her with a poniard. ADELE (falling into a fauteuil). (At the same moment the door is forced open. Col. d'Hervey rushes on to the stage. SCENE IV. Col. d'Hervey, Antony, Adèle, and different servants. COL. D'HERVEY. Wretch-What do I see ?-Adèle ! ANTONY. Dead, yes, dead!-she resisted me, and I assassinated her. (He throws his dagger at the Colonel's feet. CHAPTER V. The merits of M. Dumas-" Angèle"-" Darlington"-" Teresa”"Tour de Nesle"-Description of the effect produced by "Tour de Nesle"-The characters of a time should be in the character of the time-M. Dumas dresses up the nineteenth century in a livery of heroism, turned up with assassination and incest. THERE is enough, I think, even in the short and imperfect translation I have just given from Antony, to show considerable energy and talent, and that kind of passion and movement which hurries away an audience. Indeed, the productions of M. Dumas, which lose much of their effect in reading, afford, in acting, a thousand proofs of this author's having taken every pains to study and to succeed in the arts of the stage. There is a line in "Angèle," wonderful in its exemplification of his knowledge and his study of these arts. * Angèle, a young lady, unhappily seduced, is desirous of confessing her misfortune to her mother--she says she has something to say-the mother inquires tenderly what it is-Angèle weeps-the mother takes her hand, endeavours to sooth and encourage her; Angèle still weeps. "Is it something so very bad, then?" says the mother, not suspecting her daughter's innocence. The daughter fixes her eyes upon her *Angèle is a young lady, seduced by an adventurer who intends marrying her on a speculation, but on finding the mother a better affai, he engages himself to her. Angèle, however, after being confined (which she is, one may say, on the stage), confesses the story to her mamma just before the marriage takes place. D'Alvimar, the adventurer, is for making off, but is stopped by a Doctor Muller, a young physician, who, having long loved Angèle, had accidentally delivered her of her child, and now delivers her of her false-hearted lover, whom (by a most unmedical mode of destruction) he shoots, then marries Angèle, adopts her child, and (in order to make her quite happy and comfortable, I suppose) assures her he must die within the year of a pulmonary complaint. mother, sobs, struggles to speak-the audience is all But how make the confession? attention. Ah, si j'avais mon enfant je-le mettrais à vos pieds." A more enthusiastic burst than followed this exclamation (I saw the piece the first night of the representation) it is impossible to describe.* M. Dumas has written Henry III., Antony, Angèle, Darlington, Teresa,‡ and also claims a share in the Tour de Nesle. The Tour de Nesle is the most powerful of these performances, and, thrown back into a dark century, is excusable in its ghastly accumulation of midnight horrors. This tower, the Tour de Nesle, built in the twelfth century, on the site now occupied by the college "Mazarin," tall, round, and casting its gloomy shadow on the Seine, was the spot sacred to many of the old popular superstitions, * I remember another instance, in the "Tour de Nesle:" immediately after the murder of Philippe Daulnay and all the abominations of Marguerite and her sisters, the guardian of the night is heard without-"Il est trois heures; tout est tranquille-Parisians, dormez !" † Darlington is the illegitimate son of a hangman (this is in England),. who is determined to make his fortune. To do this, nothing is so easy (N.B.these were the days of unreformed parliaments) as to be returned M.P. for the County of Northumberland and the Borough of Darlington (both meaning the same thing). Darlington, then, is soon an M. P.; and he now makes a good speech, on which he is instantly sent for by the minister, and offered at once, by the king in person, a secretaryship of state, an earldom, and an immense estate, with the only condition of his forsaking his principles and marrying a second wife, his own wife being yet living; this he of course complies with. But his wife is more difficult to be got rid of than his principles, and in his ́attempt to carry the good lady abroad, he is stopped by his moral, and virtuous, and indignant father, the hangman. Here ends the piecefinis coronat apus. Teresa is married to an officer older than herself, and who, indeed, has a daughter, Amelia, of nearly her age. Teresa is in love with a young man, Arthur, who marries Amelia and then intrigues with Teresa. Amelia gets possession of Teresa's letters, without knowing whose letters they are, but suspecting some intrigue, places them in her father's hands, and her father finds his wife and his sonin-law to be little better than they should be. He satisfies himself, however, with hurrying daughter and son-in-law off on a foreign mission (in all M. Dumas's plays there is a foreign mission-no one has such interest in the diplomacy), and Teresa thereupon destroys herself, as will be seen in a note a little further on. See note on page 203. among which was a kind of Blue-beard story of a Queen of France, who, according to Brantôme, se tenait là d'ordinaire, laquelle fesant le guet aux passants et ceux qui lui revenaient et a gréaient le plus, de quelque sorte de gens que ce fussent, les fesait appeler et venir à soy et après avoir tiré ce qu'elle en voulait les fesait précipiter du haut de la tour en bas en l'eau, et les fesait noyer. The name of this queen seems a matter much disputed, but Marguerite de Bourgoyne, wife of Louis X., who, together with her two sisters, was convicted of practices something similar, furnishes the author of the piece with his heroine, and the plot turns on her intrigue with two brothers, whose parentage she was ignorant of, but who prove to be her own sons, by an adventurer " Buridan.” ́One of these sons is murdered by the mother's order, another by the father's contrivance-there is hardly any crime to be found in the "causes celébres" which is not ingeniously crowded into the five acts of this drama.* There is hardly any horrible or terrible po The main plot (for there are several other minor intrigues) of the "Tour de Nesle" is this. There are two brothers, orphans and ignorant of their parents, Philippe Daulnay and Gaultier Daulnay. Gaultier Daulnay is in the queen's guard, and is beloved by the queen. Philippe Daulnay, coming to see him, is seduced to the Tour de Nesle, and after having partaken of the queen's revels, is murdered, according to her usual orders. Buridan, who as page to the Duc de Burgoyne had formerly been the lover of Marguerite in early youth, before her marriage, and at her suggestion had murdered her father, Robert II., visits Paris, in order to take advantage of this secret, and finally insists on being made prime minister, and governing France in conjunction with the queen. Marguerite apparently consents, but determines to contrive his death; while Buridan also begins to think her death necessary for the security of his fortunes. They make a love-appointment at the Tour de Nesle, each intending that it should end in the death of the other. Marguerite posts assassins in the chamber through which Buridan is to pass, and gives them orders to despatch the first man who enters. Buridan informs Gaultier Daulnay of his rendezvous, excites his jealousy, and gives him the key that will admit him into the tower in his (Buridan's) place, while in the mean time he gives the captain of the guard an order in the king's own hand to enter the Tour de Nesle at the hour when he expected Marguerite and Gaultier would be there, and to seize whomsoever, without exception, he might find, as perpetrators of the horrid murders for which the place was famous. Hardly, however, has Gaultier left Buridan, before the latter learns that Philippe Daulnay, |