Page:The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness; two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch (IA greatgaleotofoll00echerich).djvu/20

 . Over your body.

. Then see. You must embrace my inert body. Do not cease weeping—so that—thus we drop into the bosom of death.

Death on his Lips takes us into quite another atmosphere. We are in foreign lands, on the distant shore of Lake Geneva, in the heart of the Calvinist Inquisition. The Don is introduced, but only as an exile, in the person of Miguel Servet, a famous Aragonese doctor who was martyred at Geneva in 1553. The Calvinists are painted in befitting blackness by a Spaniard, naturally glad of an opportunity to show that other lands had their Inquisition as well as Spain, and cruelty in those days was to be found as fierce elsewhere. It is a gloomy, a powerful, but not a very interesting play. Servet is well contrasted with the Genevese, the heaviness of the one race being dexterously made to appear so much less amiable and well-mannered than that of the other. The heroine, Margarita (naturally), is the usual heroine of Echegaray's choice—all heart, devotion, generosity, sincerity, and a certain broad intelligence. He may be trusted not to choose a fool, though he may never aspire to striking originality in his portrayal of what he evidently regards as the angelic sex.

On the Sword's Point attains a higher level of dramatic thought. Doña Violante is married to Don Rodrigo—the inevitable Velasquez, in plumes and black velvet. In the first bloom of youth, a titled blackguard had surprised and dishonoured her, and Fernando, her son, is the unsuspected offspring of this shame. He is a fine-spirited xvi