The scene in which the high priest, Jehoiada, for the first time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from David, and his true heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture, interpreted without violence, would make him. The lad has had his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in tears:—
What pity touches you? Is it that in a holocaust to be this day offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by my death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does not belong to his father!
The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high priest, exclaiming, "My father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What preparations, then, are these?" asks Joash. The high priest bids him prepare himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him to pay his debt to God:—
Joash. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my life.
Jehoiada. You have often heard read the history of our kings. Do you remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the crown ought to impose upon himself?
Joash. A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared, puts not his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his God, has ever before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and does not with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren.
Fénelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil, the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fénelon. How could the selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid recognizing his own portrait, suggested by contrast in that description of the good king from the lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way under him, to let him down into the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his king. This not, however, in the present play.
The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final speech in which Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. With this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from Satan in "Paradise Lost," so far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our representation of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of things that assure her of the overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes,—"O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" as follows:—
God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!
Ay, it is Joash; all without avail
Seek I to cheat myself with other thought:
I know the wound my weapon on him wrought;
I see his father Ahaziah's face;
Naught but brings back to me that hated race.
David doth triumph, Ahab only fall,—
Unpitying God, thou only hast done all!
'Tis thou that flattering me to hope in vain
For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again
Hast with myself myself embroiled anew,
Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few,
Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare,
Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.
Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil,
And, so to signalize his new-got spoil,
Let him into my bosom plunge the knife,
And take with filial hand his mother's life.
Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes—
Wish? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths,—
That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he,
Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me,
To his grandfather, to his father, like,
Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike
Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell
Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!
With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.