See, the pathway breaks, divided! I will wander, dumb,
To the left hand.
Aurelia
(appearing, blood-stained, at the door of the tent).
Nay! the right hand! Towards Elysium.
Catiline
(greatly alarmed).
O yon pallid apparition, how it fills me with remorse.
”Tis herself! Aurelia! tell me, art thou living? not a corse?
Aurelia
Yes, I live that I may lull thy sea of sorrows, and may lie
With my bosom pressed a moment to thy bosom, and then die.
Catiline
(bewildered).
What? thou livest?
Aurelia
Death’s pale herald o’er my senses threw a pall,
But my dulled eye tracked thy footsteps, and I saw, I saw it all,
And my passion a wife’s forces to my wounded body gave;
Breast to breast, my Catiline, let us sink into our grave.[1]
He had slipped far out of the sobriety of Sallust when he floundered, in this way, in the deep waters of romanticism. In the isolation of Grim-
- ↑ In 1875 Ibsen practically rewrote the whole of this part of Catilina, without, however, improving it. Why will great authors confuse the history of literature by tampering with their early texts?
