A hatred still stronger made the law for both.
I would never give him the least hope of love

Till he had assured me of vengeance for my father.
I made him swear it; he sought out his friends;
Heaven destroys the success that I had promised myself,
And I come, my lord, to offer you a victim,

Not to save his life by charging myself with crime.
After his attempt his fault is too clear,

And in a crime of state every excuse is vain.
To die in his presence and regain my sire,
'Tis that brings me here, and that is my hope.

Aug. Until when, O Heaven! and for what reason
Will you direct against me attacks in my house?
Julia I have driven from it for her debauchery;
In her place my love had made choice of Æmilia,
And her likewise I see unworthy of that rank.

The one robbed me of honor, the other thirsts for my blood,
Both took their guilty passions as their guides;

The one became wanton, the other a parricide.

O my daughter! Is this the reward of my favors?
Emil. My father's produced the like effect in you.
Aug. Think with what affection I nourished your youth.
Emil. He nourished yours with the same tenderness;

He was your tutor, and you were his assassin ;
You have already shown me the path to crime.

Mine differs from yours in this point alone,

That your ambition sacrificed my father,
And that a just wrath with which I still burn
Resolved to slay you for his innocent blood.

Livia then interrupts to declare that, by the law of Heaven, the emperor cannot be punished for crimes committed by him as a private person, that he is surrounded with an inviolable sanctity. Æmilia assents to this doctrine, and declares that she is not seeking to defend herself.

Emil. Punish then, lord, these pampered criminals
Who of your favorites make conspicuous ingrates.
Cut off my sad days to assure your own.

If I seduced Cinna, I will seduce many another.
I am more to be feared, and you are more in danger,
If love and blood together call me to avenge them.

Cin. Have I been seduced by you? Can I endure still

To be dishonored by her whom I adore?
My lord, the truth must here be fully told.
Before I loved her I had formed that plot.
To my pure desires finding her immovable,
I thought that to other feelings she would yield.
I spoke of her father and of your severity,

And the offer of my arm followed that of my heart.
How sweet is vengeance to a woman's soul!

By that means I attacked, by that I won her soul.
For my small merit she might neglect me,

She could not neglect the arm that would avenge her.
She did not conspire save by my artifice;

I was the sole author, she but an accomplice.

Emil. Cinna, what dare you say? Is it to cherish me To rob me of honor when I must die?

Cin. Die, but in dying tarnish not my glory.

Emil. Mine would wither, should Cæsar believe you.
Cin. And mine is lost, if you draw to yourself

All that follows from such powerful strokes.

Emil. Well then, take your part of it, and leave me mine;
To weaken it would be to weaken thine.

Glory and pleasure, shame and torments,
All should be common between true lovers.

(To Augustus.) The souls of both, my lord, are Roman souls;
Uniting our loves, we united our hates,

The quick desire to avenge our lost relatives
Taught us our duties at the same moment.
In that noble plot our hearts were joined,
Our generous spirits formed it together;
Together we sought the honor of a fair crime.
You wished to unite us, separate us not.

SIEUR DE SAINT AMANT.

AMONG the less important and rather disreputable poets of the beginning of the seventeenth century was Mark Antoine Gérard, Sieur de Saint Amant. He was born at Rouen in 1594, being the son of a sea-captain who had served in the English fleet and also sailed to India. The son went early to Paris, and in 1619 published a poem on "Solitude." He was employed in turn by the Duke de Retz, Admiral Count