With physical death can come happiness if there is hope of life elsewhere; Verezzi “feel[s] like [he is] dying, but [he] feel[s] pleasure, - oh! Transporting pleasure, in that idea that [he] shall soon meet [his] Julia” (104).
Saving a physical life can mean dooming one to a spiritual death. Matilda feigns care for Verezzi’s happiness, but in supposedly saving his physical life, she takes away the happiness that he sees waiting for him in death. Matilda tells Verezzi she would “ten thousand times sacrifice [her] own” life for him; she thanks God for averting “the fatal dagger from [his] heart” (124).
A painful death is more pleasing to Matilda, who murders Julia; Matilda asks Zastrozzi if she perished “‘by the dagger’s point? Or did the torments of poison send her, writhing in agony, to the tomb?’” (132).
Verezzi tells Matilda that “‘no earthly power shall sever us’”; he believes that physical death will not separate the “congeniality of soul” which joins them (139).
Shelley, Percy B. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt.
