In vain,—for what's a slave—a dastard slave?
A fool, a Brutus? [Storm increases.] Hark! the storm rides on!
Strange hopes possess my soul. My thoughts grow wild.
I'll sit awhile and ruminate."
Seating himself on a fragment of the fallen statue, in contemplative attitude, his great solitary presence, blending with the entire scene, presented a tableau of the most sombre and romantic beauty.
Valerius enters. Brutus cautiously probes his soul, and is rejoiced to find him worthy of confidence. As they commune on the degradation of their country, the crimes of the royal family, and the hopes of speedy redemption, we seem to feel the sultry smother and to hear the muffled rumble of the rising storm of an outraged people. As Valerius departs, Tarquin himself advances, and gives a new momentum to the movement for his own destruction. Still supposing Brutus to be an imbecile, with shameless garrulity he boasts of the fiendish violence he has done to Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, and the near kinswoman of Brutus himself. This woman was of such transcendent loveliness and nobility of person and soul as to have become a poetic ideal of her sex throughout the civilized world in all the ages since. While Tarquin boastfully described his deed, the effect on his auditor was terrific to see. The inward struggle was fully pictured without, in the hands convulsively clutched, the eyes starting from their sockets, the blood threatening to burst through the swollen veins of the neck and temples. Finally, the quivering earthquake of passion broke in an explosion of maniacal abandonment.
"The fiends curse you, then! Lash you with snakes!
When forth you walk, may the red flaming sun
Strike you with livid plagues!
Vipers, that die not, slowly gnaw your heart!