receive the reward of such
a proof of his attachment; the horror of the crime which he had
committed is sunk in his confidence of the claim he has now acquired to
her gratitude, and he triumphantly relates the circumstances of the
scene which had passed, as giving him such undeniable titles to the
reward which had been promised to his firmness.--Madame de Stael has
mentioned the effect he gives to the short and feeble reply which he
makes, when Hermione accuses him of cruelty, and throws all the guilt of
the murder on himself;--but it is in the subsequent part that he appears
so great: After Hermione leaves him, and he recovers in some degree of
the stupor which such an unexpected attack had produced, he repeats, in
a hurried manner, the circumstances of his situation, and dwells on the
perfidy of Hermione; but when he finds no palliation for his crime, and
sees how completely he has been degraded by his unmanly weakness, the
whole enormity of his guilt comes full upon his mind, and he acquires
even dignity in the opinion of the beholder, from the solemn and
emphatic manner in which he curses the folly and inhumanity of his
conduct. But a further blow awaits him; and it is not till Pylades
informs him of the death of Hermione, that the horrors of madness begin
to seize on his mind. At first he remains motionless and thunderstruck
with the dreadful issue of his enterprise; then, in a low and thrilling
tone of voice, he laments the bitterness and misery of that destiny by
which he is doomed to be for ever the victim of fate, (du malheur un
modele accompli,) till the wildness of madness comes over him: In a
voice hardly heard, he seems to ask himself, "Quelle epaisse nuit tout a
coup m'environne, de quelle cote sortir? D'ou-vient que je frissonne.
Quelle horreur me saisit?"--and at once a shriek, dreadful beyond all
description, announces the destruction of reason, and the agonies of
madness. It is vain to describe the wild, desperate, and horrifying
manner in which he represents Orestes tortured by the frightful visions
with which the furies had visited his mind, till his nature, exhausted
by such intense sufferings, sinks at once into a calm, more dreadful
even than the wildness which had preceded it.

These remarks have been extended so much beyond the limits which can be
interesting to those who have never seen this unrivalled actor, and to
whom they can convey so very inadequate a notion of his powers, that it
is imp