Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/168

Rh its laurels and applause, she sickened (Margaret had said she could not live long), and fled far, far eastward, to hear in ancient Egypt the death-psalms of her people. With a smile, the last change of that expressive countenance, its lovely light expired.

Of the woman, Margaret says nothing. Of the artist, she says that she found her worthy of Greece, and fit to be made immortal in its marble, She did not, it is true, find in her the most tender pathos, nor yet the sublime of sweetness:—

“Her range, even in high tragedy, is limited. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her." Had Margaret seen her in Les Horaces? One would think so.

“On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I saw her. The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was expressed with a force and terrible naturalness that almost suffocated the beholder."

Margaret had heard much about the power which Rachel could throw into a single look, and speaks of it as indeed magnificent. Yet she admired most in her “the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part, and the sustained purity with which she represented it."

In seeing other notabilities, Margaret was indeed fortunate. She went one day to call upon Lamennais, to whom she brought a letter of introduction. To her disappointment, she found him not alone. But the "citizen-looking, vivacious, elderly man," whom she was at first sorry to see with him, turned out to be the poet Béranger, and Margaret says that she was