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 full 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.

[Note: 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?

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