they could not understand. So they hurried in wondering groups to Santa
Maria, that they might gaze at the dead lovers, and thus perhaps come to
understand.

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of the
Capulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came. And their
presence-chamber was bright with candles and flowers, and sweet with
the sweet smell of death. The air that had drunk in their wild words
and their last long looks of heavenly love still hung about the dark
corners, as the air where a rose has been holds a little while the
memory of its breath. Yes! that morning, in that dank but shining
tomb, you might draw into you the very breath of love. The air you
breathed had passed through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had been
etherealised with her holy passion, and washed clean with her lovely
words. And now, for a little while yet, it feasted on the fair peace
of their glad young faces. To-morrow, or the next day, or the next
week, they would belong to the unvisited treasure-house of the past,
but now this morning of all mornings, this day that could never come
again, they still belonged to the real and radiant present.

Flowers there are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here in
this tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom but
once throughout eternity. Poets and kings in after-times, O men of
Verona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to-day. For you, you
thick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold this
beauty. There were once in the world thousands of men and women who had
heard the very words of Christ as they fell from His lips, words that we
may only read. There have been men, actual living, foolish men, who have
looked on at the valour of Horatius, men who from the crowded banks of
the Nile have watched the living body of Cleopatra step into her gilded