ame to fetch her in the morning, he
would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as the
manner in that country was, uncovered on a bier, to be buried in the
family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent to
this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid
(such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from a
dream; and before she should awake, he would let her husband know their
drift, and he should come in the night, and bear her thence to Mantua.
Love, and the dread of marrying Paris, gave young Juliet strength to
undertake this horrible adventure; and she took the phial of the friar,
promising to observe his directions.

Going from the monastery, she met the young Count Paris, and modestly
dissembling, promised to become his bride. This was joyful news to the
Lord Capulet and his wife. It seemed to put youth into the old man; and
Juliet, who had displeased him exceedingly, by her refusal of the count,
was his darling again, now she promised to be obedient. All things in
the house were in a bustle against the approaching nuptials. No cost was
spared to prepare such festival rejoicings as Verona had never before
witnessed.

On the Wednesday night Juliet drank off the potion. She had many
misgivings lest the friar, to avoid the blame which might be imputed to
him for marrying her to Romeo, had given her poison; but then he was
always known for a holy man: then lest she should awake before the time
that Romeo was to come for her; whether the terror of the place, a vault
full of dead Capulets' bones, and where Tybalt, all bloody, lay
festering in his shroud, would not be enough to drive her distracted:
again she thought of all the stories she had heard of spirits haunting
the places where their bodies were bestowed. But then her love for
Romeo, and her aversion for Paris returned, and she desperately
swallowed the draught, and became insensible.

When young Paris came early in the morning with music to awaken his
bride, instead of a living Juliet, her chamber presented the dreary
spectacle of a lifeless corse. What death to his hopes! What confusion
then reigned through the whole house! Poor Paris lamenting his bride,
whom most detestable death had beguiled him of, had divorced from him
even before their hands were joined. But still more piteous it was to
hear the mournings of the old Lord and Lady Capulet, who having but this
one, one poor lov