In the next act Wallenberg reappears at the castle, attended by Berthold and his guard, and accuses Fredolfo of the murder of his father. Fredolfo is thereupon taken to the prison of Altdorf, and Urilda suffers herself to be dragged away with her father. Adelmar has also journeyed to Altdorf, where he engages himself in preparing a rising among the citizens for the rescue of Fredolfo. Here he is seen by Berthold, who invents a ruse in order to secure him. Wallenberg enters the prison where Urilda is tending her father, and pretends to have forgiven him and determined to set him at liberty; only for the sake of appearances the place should be stormed by the people, led by some youth ‘of bold and enterprising arm,’ for which time Wallenberg promises to dismiss the guards. Urilda at once remembers Adelmar and finds opportunity of sending word to him. The following night Adelmar and his band then rush in, but are met by Wallenberg and his soldiers, who have been lying in wait for them. While the battle is raging, Wallenberg re-enters the prison and, revelling in the agony of Urilda, pronounces Fredolfo’s death-warrant. The forces of Adelmar, however, appear to be stronger then has been expected, and Fredolfo is really liberated, though Adelmar himself is disarmed and captured and remains, together with Urilda, in Wallenberg’s power.—Fredolfo is carried to a cavern in the mountains, where he observes, with horror, that Urilda is not with him. He implores his followers to go back and save her, when Berthold arrives to inform him that if he refuses to suffer his death sentence, his daughter is to suffer it instead. Fredolfo instantly prepares to go, but at the same time they are joined by Adelmar, who has escaped from the prison; he has placed Urilda by the altar of a shrine and comes now to re-gather his band. In the meantime Wallenberg and his attendants, in vain opposed by a prior, break into the church. As Fredolfo and his party enter it shortly afterwards, Wallenberg snatches Urilda up to the altar and, drawing his dagger, points it to her breast. Fredolfo, understanding her danger, dismisses his band. Adelmar also is induced to give up his sword to Wallenberg: whereupon Wallenberg stabs him with the selfsame weapon and then releases Urilda. Fredolfo now recovers himself, rushes upon Wallenberg and mortally wounds him. Urilda expires upon the body of her lover, and Fredolfo alone is left alive.—
The last three acts are not, considered as drama, quite abreast of the introduction. The development of the action is, upon the whole, made too dependent on the caprices of Wallenberg; the purely horrible elements of the play are dilated upon with too remarkable a predilection, especially the demonstrations of the diabolic natures of Wallenberg and Berthold sometimes take undue space. Before Adelmar’s attack upon the prison, for instance, there is a long scene filled with enticements on the part of Berthold to get Urilda to sign a paper in the belief that it contains an order of liberation for her father, but which paper really is the death sentence of Adelmar. Apart from the unnaturalness of this proceeding, it has no connection with the events that follow: Adelmar makes his escape, and the death warrant is no more alluded to; the sole purpose of the scene is to bring out the excruciating pain felt by Urilda when she is thus kept hovering between hope and fear, and the extraordinary wickedness of Berthold. Yet notwithstanding this and certain other awkwardnesses of a similar kind, it is undeniable that the construction is firmer and far better regulated than in Maturin’s earlier plays, and the place of the hero as the central figure is well sustained by means of the skill and moderation with which the characterization is executed. The reader has, in fact, some misgivings that he is to share the fate of Manuel, go mad and start raving; but Fredolfo retains his reason to the end, and the weary resignation that has hold of his mind lends him a dignity and a calmness very different from the fury of his enemies.
What, however, raises the first two acts so far above the rest, is the romantic glamour shed over the persons and events, much of which fades away as the play advances. The figure of Adelmar is an exceedingly poetic one. He does not—like Bertram—belong to the typically ‘Byronic’ heroes; there is nothing demoniac or criminal about him. Yet he is not bloodless or commonplace; he has an air of romance and mystery of his own, and his speech is pervaded, as it were, by an echo from his native Alps. He never assumes any pose, for he can afford to do without one. His dialogue with Urilda, in the first act, contains the best things Maturin ever wrote in verse.
Uril. — — — —
He comes! oh, God! it cannot, cannot be!—
And does he dare amid these walls to seek me?
For me he trembled—for himself he fears not.
(Rushing up to him.)
Away! away! thou must not enter here!
There is a voice from out these walls forbids thee!—