Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror!  My own liberator is the assassin of my son.  Zamore!...  Yes, it is to thee that I owe this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal gift....  I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy fury, in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance from my agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy benefactions.  And thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our misery I yet call by a name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how far is it from thy father’s wishes to add to the agony which he already feels the horrible pleasure of vengeance.  I must lose, by an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my liberator, my daughter, and my son.  The Council has sentenced you to death.

Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the culprits were to be spared—­that of Zamore’s conversion to Christianity.  What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for a moment?  ‘Death, rather than dishonour!’ exclaimed Zamore, while Alzire added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by hypocritical conversion.  Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor of death upon his features, was carried into the room.  The implacable Governor was about to utter his last words.  Alzire was resigned; Alvarez was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last.  But lo! when the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change had come over his mind.  He was no longer proud, he was no longer cruel, he was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, he had repented.  Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the truth of Christianity.  And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in the arms of Don Alvarez.  For thus were the guilty punished, and the virtuous rewarded.  The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her lover to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards.  That they were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave.

Such is the tragedy of Alzire, which, it may be well to repeat, was in its day one of the most applauded of its author’s productions.  It was upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries recognised Voltaire’s right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and Racine.  With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and it is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of Alzire was a worthy successor of the author of Athalie.  At first sight, indeed, the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be spanned by any superficial likeness.