_Claudius._ She is mine, then: Do I not look at you? _Virginius._ Your eye does, truly, But not your soul.--I see it, through your eye, Shifting and shrinking,--turning every way To shun me. You surprise me, that your eye, So long the bully of its master, knows not To put a proper face upon a lie, But gives the port of impudence to falsehood When it would pass it off for truth. Your soul Dares as soon show its face to me!" Now the interest grows yet intenser and the influence of the actor yet more penetrating in its simplicity and terrible beauty. Virginius finds that nothing can save his daughter from the last profanation of the tyrant except her immediate immolation by himself. For a moment he is lost in a reverie, striving to think what he can do. By chance he perceives a knife lying on the stall of a butcher. At the sight of this providential instrument an electric change passes over his face, revealing all his purpose with a grim joy, like the lightning-flash at night illumining the murky sky and giving an instantaneous outline of the clouds loaded with the coming storm. He moves gradually towards the stall, smiling on Virginia a tender smile, full of the consolation he sees in the prospect of her deliverance even by death. He pats her lovingly on the shoulder while changing her from his left arm, that with it he may reach the knife. He stealthily seizes it and passes it behind him from the left hand to the right. With deep fondness he breathes, "My dear Virginia," and gives her quick and fervent kisses, which he appears striving to press into her very soul. Tears seem to moisten his words,-- "There is one only way to save thine honor,-- 'Tis this!" And, swift as motion of the human arm can make it, the knife pierces her heart. The storm has burst, the lightning has wreathed its folds around the consecrated instrument of the work, and now the thunder-tones of his voice crash through the theatre in the awful exclamation,-- "Lo, Appius! with this innocent blood I do devote thee to the infernal gods! Make way there! If they dare To tempt the desperate weapon that is maddened With drinking my daughter's blood, why, let them. Thus, thus it rushes in amongst them. Way, there!" His exit here used to excite the wildest huzzas, the men in the pit standing with their hats in their uplifted hands, and the women in the boxes waving their handkerchiefs. Virginius heads the revolution, in which the revolted troops and the commons join. The tyranny is hurled to the dust, the people freed, and Appius lodged in prison. But the wronged and wretched father is broken down by the preternatural horror and excitement he has undergone, and loses his reason. He is next seen in his own desolate home, with a pale and haggard face, and a look half wild, half dreamy, talking to himself: