Didier (wildly, as the soldiers drag him off): No! No!
My heart is breaking! Oh, Marie, Marie!
I love you. I was wrong!
Marion: You pardon me?
Didier: I ask your pardon. Think of me sometimes.
Good-bye, my darling. [He is dragged behind the wall.
An Official (catching Marion in his arms as she falls):
All hope is not lost.
Look, here is Richelieu! Go and plead with him.
[The castle guns are fired. The cloth, hiding the great breach in the wall, drops. The Cardinal comes in his gigantic scarlet litter, borne by twenty-four footguards. Scarlet curtains conceal him from the shouting mob.
Marion (dragging herself on her knees to the litter):
In the name of God, oh, my Lord Cardinal,
Pardon these two poor boys!
A Voice (from the litter): No pardon!
[The litter passes on, and the crowd surges through the wall after it. Marion is left alone.
FOOTNOTES:
[J] Victor Hugo wrote "Marion de Lorme" in 1829, three months before he composed "Hernani." King Charles X., however, refused to license the play, because of the terrible way in which his ancestor, Louis XIII., was portrayed in it. But after the Revolution of 1830, and the success of "Hernani," the forbidden drama was produced on the stage. Its original title was "A Duel Under Richelieu." The whole play is built around the frustrated duel in which two young men engage against the edict of the great cardinal. This economy of stage-craft makes "Marion de Lorme" a superior work, in point of construction, to "Hernani." And though it may be less picturesque than that more famous example of the romantic drama, it is on the whole a finer effort of genius.