The last scene takes place on the highroad leading to Havre. Cousin Lescaut meets de Grieux whom he had promised to try to save Manon from penal servitude by effecting her escape. Unfortunately the soldiers he employed had meanly deserted him, on hearing which de Grieux violently upbraids him. Lescaut pacifies the desperate nobleman by saying that he has thought of other means of rescuing Manon. Soon the waggons conveying the convicts to their destination are heard approaching. One of these waggons stops. Lescaut, accosting one of the soldiers in charge hears that Manon is inside, dying. He begs that he may be allowed to take a last farewell of his little cousin, and bribing the man with money he succeeds in getting Manon out of the waggon, promising to bring her to the nearest village in due time.
Manon sadly changed totters forward and finds herself clasped in her lover's arms. For a little while the two forget all their woes in the joy of being together; Manon deeply repents of her sins and follies and humbly craves his pardon, while he covers her wan face with kisses. Then he tries to raise her, imploring her to fly with him, but alas release has come too late, she sinks back and expires in her lover's embrace.
ODYSSEUS' DEATH.
Fourth Part of the Odyssey in three acts by AUGUST BUNGERT.
This last part of the Tetralogy bears more decided indications of Wagner's influence than the others do; and though strikingly beautiful in many ways it fails to excite quite the same interest as the others, because it reminds us too much of the Nibelungen Ring, especially of Siegfried; nevertheless it deserves attention as the conclusion of the whole series and also on account of Bungert's adopting a later version of the story of Odysseus, whom Bungert does not suffer to die peacefully in his old age, but makes him fight as a hero to the very last.
The prelude opens in Kirke's gardens. The nymphs of the spring are singing to her, while her son Telegonos, a youth of 15 is playing with a lion. Kirke has often spoken to her son of his glorious father, whom he never saw and now his curiosity is awakened, and he asks his mother, why his father never comes home to her. Kirke now thinks that the time is come when she should reveal the story of her love to her son. He hears that his father is no god, but a human hero who after a short time of bliss remembered his earthly wife Penelopeia, and returned to her, leaving the goddess alone and broken hearted.—Telegonos determines to go forth in search of the hero of Troy and hopes to bring him back to his mother's arms. Kirke presents him with the golden cup, from which Odysseus once drank the magic draught of forgetfulness; she hopes to remind him thereby of their past bliss and thus to win him back.
The first act takes place in Thesprotia. Odysseus has just returned from a victory over the friends and relations of the insolent suitors he had slain on his return home; he has conquered their country and is now greeted with acclamations of joy by his warriors. Despoina, queen of Thesprotia, and once Penelope's attendant has been made prisoner and is to be put to death, but Telemachos, Odysseus' son fascinated by her beauty, intercedes for her. Odysseus resolves to let the oracle of Dodona decide her fate and Despoina is led back to the tent, but manages on the way to whisper to Telemachos, that she will expect him during the night.
Left alone, she intoxicates the guard by means of a sleeping-draught, and so Telemachos enters the tent unobserved. At first she beguiles him with a great show of tenderness. When he asks her from whence she comes, she tells him, that she never knew father nor mother, but that her nurse revealed to her that she is the daughter of Poseidon and of Persephone. After her nurse's death she became a priestess in Poseidon's temple, where she had seen Hyperion, with whom she had fallen in love, and whom she had followed to Ithaka. There her lover having fallen under the spell of Penelope's beauty like all the others, and having met with an untimely death, Despoina had sworn vengeance on the whole house of Odysseus and to this end had married the barbarian king of Thesprotia. At this Telemachos turns shudderingly away from this mysterious woman and she makes use of the opportunity to take up his sword, with which she secretly and swiftly stabs the guard, sleeping heavily outside the tent. Then she tries again to gain ascendency over Telemachos, by assuring him of her love, but though full of pity for the unhappy and beautiful woman he turns from her and flies. A short time afterwards Odysseus enters to visit his captive, she also tries her arts on him but in vain, Odysseus hearing the shouts of his soldiers, leaves her, and all set out for Dodona.