“Live, Richelieu, if not for me, for France!”
In one instant the might of his whole idolized country passes into his withered frame.
“My own dear France, I have thee yet, I have saved thee.
All earth shall never pluck thee from my heart,
My mistress France, my wedded wife, sweet France!”
It was the colossal scale of intellect, imagination, passion, and energy exposed by Forrest in his representation of Richelieu that made the rôle to ordinary minds a new revelation of the capacities of human nature. When, with a tone and inflection whose sweet and long-drawn cadence almost made the audience hear the melody of the spheres clanging in endless space, he said,—
“No, let us own it, there is One above
Sways the harmonious mystery of the world
Even better than prime ministers,”—
he produced on the stage a religious impression of which Bossuet might have been proud in the pulpit. And to hear him declaim, with a modest pomp and solemn glow of elocution befitting the thoughts and imagery, the following passage, was to receive an influence most ennobling while most pleasurable: