In the fifth act, Romeo, who believes Juliet dead, lifts her from the tomb before she awakes and presses her to his heart. Corinne was clad in white, her black hair dishevelled, and her head inclined upon Romeo with a grace, and nevertheless an appearance of death, so affecting and so gloomy, that Oswald felt himself shaken with the most opposite impressions. He could not bear to see Corinne in the arms of another, and he shuddered at beholding the image of her whom he loved, apparently deprived of life; so that in fact he felt, like Romeo, that cruel combination of despair and love, of death and pleasure, which makes this scene the most agonising that ever was represented on a stage. At length, when Juliet awakes in this tomb, at the foot of which her lover has just immolated himself, when her first words in her coffin, beneath these funeral vaults, are not inspired by the terror which they ought to cause, when she exclaims:
Lord Nelville replied by deep groans, and did not return to himself till Mr Edgermond conducted him out of the theatre.
The piece being finished, Corinne felt indisposed from emotion and fatigue. Oswald entered first into her apartment, where he saw her alone with her women, still in the costume of Juliet, and, like Juliet, almost swooning in their arms. In the excess of his trouble he could not distinguish whether it was truth or fiction, and throwing himself at the feet of Corinne, exclaimed, in English:
"Eyes look your last! Arms take your last embrace."
Corinne, still wandering, cried: "Good God! what do you say? are you going to leave me?"--"No;" interrupted Oswald, "I swear--" At that instant the crowd of Corinne's friends and admirers forced the door in order to see her. Her eyes were fixed upon Oswald, listening with anxiety for what he was about to answer; but there was no opportunity for further conversation between them during the whole evening, for they were not left alone a single instant.
Never had the performance of a tragedy produced such an effect in Italy. The Romans extolled with transport the talents of Corinne, both as the representative of Juliet, and the translator of the piece. They said that this was truly the species of tragedy which suited the Italians, which painted their manners, moved the soul by captivating the imagination, and gave effect to their beautiful language, in a style alternately eloquent and lyrical, inspired and natural. Corinne received all these praises with the sweetest air imaginable; but her soul remained suspended on the words "_I swear_,"--which Oswald had pronounced when he was prevented by the entrance of the company from concluding his sentence: this word might in truth contain the secret of her destiny.