Another stroke well worthy of Shakespeare is the redeeming touch of
grace in this brutal and cold-blooded ruffian which gives him in his
agony a thought of tender care for the accomplice of his atrocities:

Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee.

Few instances of Webster's genius are so well known as the brief but
magnificent passage which follows; yet it may not be impertinent to cite
it once again:

_Brachiano_. O thou soft natural death, that art joint twin
To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion; pity winds thy corpse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.

_Vittoria_. I am lost forever.

_Brachiano_. How miserable a thing it is to die
'Mongst women howling!--What are those?

_Flamineo_. Franciscans:
They have brought the extreme unction.

_Brachiano_. On pain of death, let no man name death to me;
It is a word [? most] infinitely terrible.

The very tremor of moral and physical abjection from nervous defiance
into prostrate fear which seems to pant and bluster and quail and