I do recall the sentence. Raise the pall,—
The dead was kindred to me, and shall know
A kinsman's sorrow.
Ores. Lift thyself the pall;
Not mine, but thine, the office to survey
That which lies mute beneath, and to salute,
Lovingly sad, the dead one.
Ægis. Be it so,—
It is well said. Go thou and call the queen.
Is she within?
Ores. Look not around for her,—
She is beside thee."—(Lord Lytton.)
Then Ægisthus lifts the veil, and recognises the body of Clytemnestra. He knows at once that it must be Orestes who stands before him, and that he is a doomed man. "Let me speak one little word," he pleads; but Electra fiercely cuts him short, and bids her brother "slay him out of hand, and cast his body to the dogs and vultures:"—
"Qu'il tombe, il en est temps, sous vos glaives vengeurs!
Que son corps soit privé des funébres honneurs!
Aux oiseaux dévorants qu'il serve de pâture,
Et trouve dans leurs flancs sa digne sépulture!"[1]
Orestes accordingly forces him within the palace, that the murderer may die by the son's hand on the same spot where the father had fallen. And thus "poetical justice elevates what on the modern stage would have been but a spectacle of physical horror into the deeper terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe; and vin-
- ↑ From the 'Electre' of M. Léon Halévy, acted on the stage at Paris in 1863 and 1865.
