“Fool! I can make thee nothing but a laugh.”
A sentiment to which the audience gave a most vociferous echo. The damsel is angry that she may not have the man she has chosen, and threatens to faint, but defers that operation till her lover’s arms are near enough to receive her; which they happen to be just in time, for Martinuzzi retires and Castaldo comes on. Czerina, to be quite sure, exclaims, “Are these thy arms?” (sic) and finally faints in the lover’s embrace, so as to exhibit a picturesque cuddle.
Queen Isabella is discovered, in the second scene of this act, perusing the much vaunted “papers” with intense interest. Unluckily Castaldo chooses that moment to complain, that Martinuzzi will not let him marry her rival. The queen, being by no means a temperate person, and wondering at his impudence in telling her such a tale, raves thus:—
“My soul’s on fire I’m choked, and seem to perish;
But will suppress my scream”
Probably for fear of compromising Castaldo, who is alone with her; and she ends the act by requesting the Austrian to murder Martinuzzi; to which he is so obliging as to consent, the more so, as an order comes from the Secretary of State for foreign affairs, of his own government, to “cut off” (sic) the Regent.
The fourth act is enlivened by a masquerade and a murder. The gentleman from Warsaw having abused the hospitality of his host by getting drunk, is punished by one of Martinuzzi’s attendants with a mortal stab; and having, in the agonies of death, made a careful survey of all the sofas in the apartment, suits himself with the softest, and dies in great comfort.
After this, the masquerade proceeds with spirit. Isabella mixes in the festive scene, disguised in a domino, made of black sticking-plaster. Czerina overhears that she is a usurper and a changeling, and expresses her surprise in a line most unblushingly stolen from Fitz-Ball and the other poetico-melo-dramatists:—
“Merciful Heavens! do my ears deceive me?”