"We reached Verona one evening in May. I was devoured by anxiety. I clasped close to my heart the book in which I had copied the lines of Juliet, and continually repeated to myself the words of my first entrance: 'How now? Who calls? I am here. What is your will?' My imagination was excited by a strange coincidence: on that very day I was fourteen years old--the age of Juliet. The Nurse's gossip sounded in my ears; and, little by little, my own destiny seemed mingled with that of the Veronese. At the corner of every street I thought I could see a throng approaching me, accompanying a coffin covered with white roses. When I saw the Arche degli Scaligeri behind its iron bars, I cried to my mother, 'Here is Juliet's tomb!' And I burst into sobs, and had a desperate desire to love and to die. 'O thou too early seen unknown, and known too late!'"
Her voice, repeating the immortal words, penetrated the heart of her lover like a heart-rending melody. She paused a moment, then repeated:
They were the ominous words spoken by her lover, which she herself had repeated in the garden, when both were on the brink of being swept away on the flood of their passion: "It is late; too late!" The woman that was no longer young now faced the former image of herself, in her maidenhood, throbbing in the form of Juliet before her first dream of love. Having reached the limit of experience, had she not at the same time preserved the dream intact--but to what purpose? If to-day she looked at the image of her far-distant youth, it was only to trample upon it in leading her beloved to the other woman, to her who lived and waited.
With her smile of inimitable sadness, she said:
"I _was_ Juliet! One Sunday in May, in the immense arena in the amphitheater under the open sky, before an audience that had breathed in the legend of love and death, I was Juliet herself. No thrill from the most responsive audience, no applause, no triumph, ever has had from me the fulness and intoxication of that unique hour. Actually, when I heard Romeo say: 'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright,' my whole being kindled. With great economy, I had managed to buy a large bunch of roses, and these were my only ornament. I mingled the roses with my words, my gestures, with every attitude. I dropped one at Romeo's feet when we first met; I strewed the petals of another on his head, as I stood on the balcony; and I covered his body with them as he lay in the tomb. The words came with the strangest ease, almost involuntarily, as in delirium, and I could feel the throbbing in my veins accompanying them.