Valerius enters. Brutus cautiously probes his soul, and is rejoiced to find him worthy of confidence. As they commune on the degradation of their country, the crimes of the royal family, and the hopes of speedy redemption, we seem to feel the sultry smother and to hear the muffled rumble of the rising storm of an outraged people. As Valerius departs, Tarquin himself advances, and gives a new momentum to the movement for his own destruction. Still supposing Brutus to be an imbecile, with shameless garrulity he boasts of the fiendish violence he has done to Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, and the near kinswoman of Brutus himself. This woman was of such transcendent loveliness and nobility of person and soul as to have become a poetic ideal of her sex throughout the civilized world in all the ages since. While Tarquin boastfully described his deed, the effect on his auditor was terrific to see. The inward struggle was fully pictured without, in the hands convulsively clutched, the eyes starting from their sockets, the blood threatening to burst through the swollen veins of the neck and temples. Finally, the quivering earthquake of passion broke in an explosion of maniacal abandonment. "The fiends curse you, then! Lash you with snakes! When forth you walk, may the red flaming sun Strike you with livid plagues! Vipers, that die not, slowly gnaw your heart! May earth be to you but one wilderness! May you hate yourself,-- For death pray hourly, yet be in tortures, Millions of years expiring!" He shrieked this fearful curse upon the shrinking criminal with a frenzied energy which so amazed and stirred the audience that sometimes they gave vent to their excitement in a simultaneous shout of applause, sometimes by looking at one another in silence or whispering, "Wonderful!" Lucretia, unwilling to survive the purity of her name, has stabbed herself. Collatinus rushes wildly in with the bloody steel in his hand, and tells the tale of horror: "She's dead! Lucretia's dead! This is her blood! Howl, howl, ye men of Rome. Ye mighty gods, where are your thunders now?" Brutus, the full gale of oratoric fire and splendor swelling his frame and lighting his features, seizes the dagger, lifts it aloft, and exclaims: "Heroic matron! Now, now, the hour is come! By this one blow Her name's immortal, and her country saved! Hail, dawn of glory! Hail, thou sacred weapon! Virtue's deliverer, hail! This fatal steel, Empurpled with the purest blood on earth, Shall cut your chains of slavery asunder. Hear, Romans, hear! did not the Sibyl tell you A fool should set Rome free? I am that fool: Brutus bids Rome be free! _Valerius._ What can this mean? _Brutus._ It means that Lucius Junius has thrown off The mask of madness, and his soul rides forth On the destroying whirlwind, to avenge The wrongs of that bright excellence and Rome. [_Sinks on his knees._]