and thou smilest still!" They smiled,--those pale lips,--and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the horror vanished.With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal sunshine.Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a thing not of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and "Welcome!" in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye People of the Skies,--"welcome! Opurified by sacrifice, and immortal only through the grave,--this it is to die." And radiant amidst the radiant, the IMAGEstretched forth its arms, and murmured to the sleeper:
"Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!"...
"Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops?
Wherefore gather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks the tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is there hope for us at last?"So gasp out the prisoners, each to each.Day wanes--evening closes; still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--the waving signals! "Hurrah!" at last,--"Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terror is no more! God hath permitted us to live!"Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas, Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory sabre on the floor."All is lost!""Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!" yelled the fierce Coffinhal, as he hurled the coward from the window.