_St. Just._--Much like myself. I think you were no saint even when a child. _Robes._--Such is the common blunder of the world To think me, like the demon they believe in, From the beginning, "murderer and liar;" So let it be--I would not change their thoughts. But I, St. Just, strange as it seems to you, Even I, whose name, even in this age of crime, Must stand aloft alone a blood-red beacon And warning to posterity, was once Young, warm, enthusiastic, generous, Candid, affectionate, a son and brother, But proud and sensitive. I lov'd a maid-- Yes, if entire and all-absorbed devotion Of life and soul and being to her, were love-- If to be willing to lay down my life, My hopes of fame and honorable notice, And all the world holds dear, for her dear sake, May be call'd love, then I most truly lov'd her. I was a thriving lawyer, and could raise My voice without reward to shield the oppress'd, I lov'd my kind and bore a stainless name. (_a funeral crosses the street_.) _St. Just_ (_to the officer_.) Whose obsequies are these, That look as if the dead one had _not_ perished By trying our Republican proscription, The guillotine? _Officer._--'Tis Madame de la Harpe. Your worthy friend there sent his satellites To bring her to the bar of your tribunal, The high-soul'd lady sooner than be made A gaze for all the outcasts in the city, As you are now, hurl'd herself from a window. _Robes._--How strange a meeting this! Ah! foolish woman, Had she but dar'd to live another day, She might have died at ninety in her bed, And I, who sought to escape her threatened doom, Baffled of self-destruction, could not die. (_they pass on_.) (_to St. Just_.) How small a thing may sometimes change the stream Of a man's life even to its source, to poison! A trifle scarcely worthy of a name, The sarcasms of a brute, while I was pleading An orphan's cause, convulsed the court with mirth, Marr'd all my rhetoric, and snatch'd the palm Of truth and justice from my eager grasp-- My wrath boil'd forth--with loud and fierce reproach I brav'd the judge, and thunder'd imprecations On all around. This passion ruin'd me. And she too laugh'd among that idiot throng-- Oh, tell not me of jealousy or hate Or hunger for revenge--no sting so fierce, So all tormenting to a proud man's soul As public ridicule from lips belov'd. Have they not rued it? Let yon engine tell: (_pointing to the scaffold in the distance_.) What I have been since then mankind have seen, But could they see the scorpion that hath fed Where once a heart beat in this breast of mine, They would not marvel at my past career. I quit the world with only one regret, {309} I would have shown them how the scrivener, Who with his tongue and pen hath rack'd this land, Could plague it with a sword. Had yonder cowards