Juliet in the third act becomes privately, the wife of Romeo.  In the fourth, her parents wishing to force her to marry another, she determines to take the opiate which she receives from the hand of a friar, and which is to give her the appearance of death.  All the motions of Corinne, her disturbed gait, her altered accent, her looks, sometimes animated and sometimes dejected, painted the cruel conflict of fear and love, the terrible images which pursued her at the idea of being transported alive to the tomb of her ancestors, and the enthusiasm of passion, which enabled a soul, so young, to triumph over so natural a terror.  Oswald felt an almost irresistible impulse to fly to her aid.  At one time she lifted her eyes towards heaven, with an ardour which deeply expressed that need of divine protection, from which no human being was ever free.  At another time, Lord Nelville thought he saw her stretch her arms towards him to ask his assistance—­he rose up in a transport of delirium, and then sat down immediately, brought to his senses by the astonished looks of those about him; but his emotion became so strong that it could no longer be concealed.

In the fifth act, Romeo, who believes Juliet dead, lifts her from the tomb before she awakes and presses her to his heart.  Corinne was clad in white, her black hair dishevelled, and her head inclined upon Romeo with a grace, and nevertheless an appearance of death, so affecting and so gloomy, that Oswald felt himself shaken with the most opposite impressions.  He could not bear to see Corinne in the arms of another, and he shuddered at beholding the image of her whom he loved, apparently deprived of life; so that in fact he felt, like Romeo, that cruel combination of despair and love, of death and pleasure, which makes this scene the most agonising that ever was represented on a stage.  At length, when Juliet awakes in this tomb, at the foot of which her lover has just immolated himself, when her first words in her coffin, beneath these funeral vaults, are not inspired by the terror which they ought to cause, when she exclaims: 

     “Where is my lord?  Where is my Romeo?”

Lord Nelville replied by deep groans, and did not return to himself till Mr Edgermond conducted him out of the theatre.

The piece being finished, Corinne felt indisposed from emotion and fatigue.  Oswald entered first into her apartment, where he saw her alone with her women, still in the costume of Juliet, and, like Juliet, almost swooning in their arms.  In the excess of his trouble he could not distinguish whether it was truth or fiction, and throwing himself at the feet of Corinne, exclaimed, in English: 

     “Eyes look your last!  Arms take your last embrace.”

Corinne, still wandering, cried:  “Good God! what do you say? are you going to leave me?”—­“No;” interrupted Oswald, “I swear—­” At that instant the crowd of Corinne’s friends and admirers forced the door in order to see her.  Her eyes were fixed upon Oswald, listening with anxiety for what he was about to answer; but there was no opportunity for further conversation between them during the whole evening, for they were not left alone a single instant.