Had I but
pardoned
you--
RUY BLAS: I should have drunk the poison all the same.
RUY BLAS: I should have drunk the poison all the same.
World's Greatest Books - Volume 17 - Poetry and Drama
THE QUEEN: No!
[_Staggering to the table, he seizes the glass and
drains it. _
RUY BLAS: Well, that is over, then.
THE QUEEN (_running up to him_): What have you _done_?
RUY BLAS: Nothing. But, oh, to think you loved me once!
THE QUEEN: What was there in that glass? I love you still!
What was it? Poison? Tell me.
RUY BLAS (_as she clasps him_): Yes, my queen.
THE QUEEN: Then I have killed you! But I love you now!
More than before.
Had I but pardoned you--
RUY BLAS: I should have drunk the poison all the same.
I could not bear to live. Good-bye!
[_He falls down, and_ THE QUEEN _holds him up in her
arms. _
Fly! Fly!
No one will know. That door.
[_He tries to point to it, but sinks back in the agony
of death. _
THE QUEEN (_throwing herself on him_): Ruy Blas!
RUY BLAS (_reviving at the sound of his name_):
Thanks! Thanks! [_He dies. _
FOOTNOTES:
[K] In appearance, "Ruy Blas" is a pendant to "Hernani. "
In the earlier play, Victor Hugo gives a striking picture of the
Spanish nobility in the days of its power and splendour. In the
later drama, which he composed in 1838, he depicts in lurid light
the corruption into which that nobility afterwards fell.
