So the nurse went to Juliet’s chamber....
How calm and restful was everything here! What a contrast to the rush and noisy confusion outside the closed door! Not a sound broke the stillness, not a rustle of movement showed that any living creature was an inmate of the room. Behind those drawn curtains the bride slept well.
But she must rouse herself now; the time for slumber is past. She must shake off the heaviness from her dreaming eyes; she must leave this peaceful haven of her childhood; her happy girlish days are over and done with. The wedding feast is set, the guests are assembling, the bridegroom is waiting. Wake, Juliet, awaken!...
Shout, nurse, wail for sorrow, and wring your hands. Call louder, the bride does not hear you. Weep, mother, for the child whom you turned from when living; mourn, father, for the daughter you rejected and disowned.
There in her bridal robes lies the bride upon her bed, pale as ashes, stiff and cold. The snowy whiteness of her wedding raiment is not more white than her face; her closed eyes smile back no greeting to the rising sun. The little phial has done its work. Here at the door stands the bridegroom, but to the mourners in that desolate chamber it seems that a mightier than he has stepped before him and claimed the bride, and the name of that bridegroom is Death.
The Palace of Dim Night
Friar Laurence had done his best for the young lovers, and he carried out his scheme with speed and vigilance. But an unfortunate accident prevented the letters he wrote to Romeo ever reaching their destination. The friar to whom he entrusted them went to find a brother friar of their order to go with him. This man was occupied in visiting the sick; the plague was then raging in Verona, and the searchers of the town, finding Friar John and his companion, and suspecting they were both in a house where the pestilence was, sealed up the doors, and refused to let them forth. Thus Friar John never got to Mantua at all, and he was even unable to forward the letter to Romeo or to return it to Friar Laurence, so fearful was everyone of infection.
On his release, two days later, he hurried back to the cell of Friar Laurence, and the latter learnt with dismay how his plan had failed. There was now only one thing to be done: he must go to the vault alone, to be there when Juliet awakened, for in three hours’ time the power of the sleeping potion would be exhausted.
Though Friar Laurence’s message never got to Romeo, other tidings of sadder import reached him. When Romeo had started for Mantua, he left his servant, Balthasar, to follow him later with all news. Balthasar, of course, like all Verona, had heard of the tragedy at the Capulets’ house, and never doubted of the truth of Juliet’s death. At the moment he reached Mantua, it happened that Romeo was in the highest spirits; an unaccustomed lightness of heart seemed that day to have taken possession of him. As he strolled through the streets of Mantua just before Balthasar’s arrival, Romeo was musing happily over a dream of good omen that he had had the night before.
“My dream foretells some joyful news at hand,” he thought.“ I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!—and breathed such life with kisses on my lips that I revived, and was an emperor. Ah me! how sweet is love itself, when but love’s shadows are so rich in joy!”