Severine. Indeed, nothing. And she came to the train at what hour?
Rosalie. At twenty-five minutes past nine.
Severine. So, in twenty-five minutes—
Rosalie. She went home; she changed her dress (she arrived all in black); she went to the St. Lazare Station. It is true that only your garden and hers separate her house from yours; that she has the best horses in Paris; and that she is accustomed to doing this sort of thing, if I may believe what I have heard.
Severine. To what a pass we have come! My most intimate friend! Did they speak to each other?[10]
This scene wins our attention because it reveals in Severine a mental state which in itself interests and moves us far more than the mere physical action.
What has been said of La Princesse Georges is even more true of the ending of Marlowe’s Faustus.
Faustus. Ah, Faustus:
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus will be damn’d.
.......... All beasts are happy,
For when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell.
Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
(The clock strikes twelve.)
O, it strikes, it strikes! Now body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!