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It is the same doubt, hardened by the temper of the man into a colder and more mocking scepticism, that sounds in the "plaudite et valete" of the deathbed of Augustus. The Emperor had played his part well, but it was a part that he could hardly persuade himself was real. All that wisdom and power could do had been done, but Augustus had no faith in the great fabric he had reared.
Then she sat down again, with a pang of disappointment added to her grief. She could not keep her heart so much apart from him, as not to expect a little comfort from his presence. And there had been comfort in his prayers and his looks; but to hear him speak of wills and worldly affairs by her father's deathbed, as any man might have done, went to Lucy's heart.
'This is my revenge! you said to him, without waiting to hear a word from him. Your ruin was the remorse of his whole life. I knew it only when he lay upon his deathbed. Otherwise " She paused, then raised her head higher to finish her words. "Never mind!" she went on. "That which he dared not do while living, I set myself to do after his death.
Then holding himself as upright as he could, he sat in his invalid chair, and four flunkeys in full livery carried him to the deathbed of his son. All the house was astir by now. Torches burned in great sockets in the vast hall and along the massive oak stairway, and hundreds of candles flickered ghostlike in the vast apartments of the princely mansion.
But the father was no longer there, for the loss of his son had killed him; and on his deathbed he confessed to his people how he had contrived that the old wizard should carry away a peasant's child instead of the prince, wherefore this punishment had fallen upon him. The prince wept bitterly when he heard this news, for he had loved his father well, and for three days he ate and drank nothing.
Mad. de Coulanges would sometimes reply, when her daughter asked her if such or such a thing had done her good, "No, my child, nothing will do me good but your obedience, which you refuse me perhaps on my deathbed." Though Emilie did not apprehend that her mother was in any immediate danger, yet these continual fits of low spirits and nervous attacks excited much alarm.
At such times her mind would be full of pictures of her father's ministrations his talks with the shepherds on the hills, with the women at their doors, his pale dreamer's face beside some wild deathbed, shining with the Divine message, the 'visions' which to her awestruck childish sense would often seem to hold him in their silent walks among the misty hills.
They carried him back into the theatre, and there, in a side room, with the music of the opera going on upon the stage, the plaudits of the audience ringing in his ears, and ballet-girls flitting in and out in their stage dresses, the heir of France gave up his life, with kindly words upon his dying lips, reminding us of Charles II. on his deathbed.
When the vice-chancellor had finished reading, the king sat up, and glancing round upon his fair and numerous family, thus spoke: "My children, you have heard my last wishes. I have bidden you all to my deathbed, that you may see how the glory of the world passes away.
Strictly speaking, however, nothing is dramatic except that which strikes the eye as symbolic an important action which betokens one still more important. That Shakespeare could attain this height too is evidenced in the scene where the son and heir takes the crown from the side of the father slumbering on his deathbed, places it on his own head, and struts off with it.
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