In ancient tales they tell of golden castles, Where harps are sounding, lovely ladies dance, And gay attendants gleam, and jessamine, Myrtle, and roses spread their soft perfume-- And yet a single word of sad enchantment Sweeps all the glory of the scene to naught, And there remain but ruins old and grey, And screaming birds of night and foul morass. Even so have I, with but a single word, Enchanted Nature’s blooming loveliness. There lies she now, lifeless, cold, and pale, Just like a monarch’s corse laid out in state, The royal deathly cheeks fresh stained with rouge, And in his hand the kingly sceptre laid, Yet still his lips are yellow, and most changed, For they forgot to dye them, as they should, And mice are jumping o’er the monarch’s nose, And mock the golden sceptre in his grasp. It is everywhere agreed, Madam, that one should deliver a soliloquy before shooting himself. Most men on such occasions use Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be.” It is an excellent passage, and I would gladly have quoted it--but charity begins at home, and when a man has written tragedies himself, in which such farewell-to-life speeches occur as, for instance, in my immortal _Almansor_, it is very natural that one should prefer his own words even to Shakespeare’s. At any rate, the delivery of such speeches is a very useful custom; one gains at least a little time. And so it came to pass that I remained a rather long time standing at the corner Strada San Giovanni--and as I stood there like a condemned criminal awaiting death, I raised my eyes and suddenly beheld her. She wore her blue silk dress and rose-red hat, and her eyes looked at me so mildly, so death-conqueringly, so life-givingly--Madam, you well know, out of Roman history, that when the vestals in ancient Rome met on their way a malefactor led to death they had the right to pardon him, and the poor rogue lived. With a single glance she saved me from death, and I stood before her revived, and dazzled by the sunbeams of her beauty, and she passed on--and left me alive. And she left me alive, and I live, which is the main point.