Corneille's characters are not to be laid hold of in their full and corporate being. It is but rarely that they allow us a glimpse of their human countenance, or permit us to catch some cry of scorn, and then rapidly withdraw themselves into the abstract so completely that we do not succeed in taking hold of even a fold of their fleeting robes, although a long-enduring echo of their lightning-like speech remains in the soul. The old father of the Horatii strengthens his sons in their conflict between family affection and their imperious duty to their country, with the maxim: _"Faites votre devoir et laissez faire aux Dieux."_ The youthful Curiace murmurs with tears in his voice, to the youthful Horace, his friend and brother-in-law _"Je vous connais encore et c'est ce qui: me tue,"_ but Horace is as inflexible as a syllogism, having arrived at the conclusion that the posts assigned to them in the feud between Rome and Alba have made enemies of them, and therefore that they must not know one another in future. Curiace, when at last he has become bitterly resigned to their irremediable separation and hostility, exclaims: _"Telle est nôtre misère_ ..."--Emilia, another being with nerves like steel springs, reveals her proud soul in a single phrase; when Maximus suggests flight to her, she exclaims as she faces him, in a cry that is like a blow: _"Tu oses m'aimer et tu n' oses mourir!"_ She is perhaps more deeply wounded here in her pride as a woman, who fails to receive the tribute of heroism, which she expects, than in her moral sentiment. The noble Suréna holds it an easy thing, a thing of small moment, to give his life for his lady: he wishes "_toujours aimer, toujours souffrir, toujours mourir!_"; and Antiochus, in _Rodogune,_ when he discovers that he is surrounded with ambushes, decides to die and in doing so directs his thought to the sad shade of his brother, who has been slain in a like manner: "_Cher frère, c'est pour moi le chemin du trépas_..."; and Titus feels himself penetrated with the melancholy of the fleeting hour, the sense of human fragility: Oui, Flavian, c'est affaire à mourir. La vie est pen de chose; et tôt ou tard qu'importe Qu'un traître me l'arrache, ou que l'âge l'emporte? Nous mourrons a toute heure; et dans le plus doux sort Chaque instant de la vie est un pas vers la mort. Words expressive of death are always those whose accent is clearest and whose resonance is the most profound with Corneille. It is perhaps as well to leave the _Moi_ of Medea and the _Qu'il mourrait_ of the old Horace to the admirative raptures of the rhetoricians; but let us repeat to ourselves those words of the sister of Heraclius (in the _Heraclius_), mortified by fate, ever at the point of death and ever ready to die: Mais à d'autres pensers il me faut recourir: Il n'est plus temps d'aimer alors qu'il faut mourir.... $/ And again: