FOOTNOTES:

"Vanish—one quarter of my life, you know."

In that room in the inn they parted. They wereborne off to separate cells of the same ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome.

"Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on meThe last time in this life: not one sight more,Never another sight to be! And yetI thought I had saved her . . .It seems I simply sent her to her death.You tell me she is dying now, or dead."

But then it flashes to his mind that this may be a trick to make him confess—it would be worthy of them; and the great cry breaks forth:

"No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)That vision in the blood-red daybreak—thatLeap to life of the pale electric swordAngels go armed with—that was not the lastO' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find—Know the manœuvre! . . .Let me see for myself if it be so!"* * * * *

* * * * *

But it is true. Twenty-two dagger-thrusts—

"Two days ago, when Guido, with the right,Hacked her to pieces" . . .

Oh, should they not have seen at first? That very flight proved the innocence of the pair who thus fled: these judges should have recognised the accepted man, the exceptional conduct that rightly claims to be judged by exceptional rules. . . . Butit is all over. She is dying—dead perhaps. He has done with being judged—he is guiltless in thought, word, and deed; and she . . .

". . . For Pompilia—be advised,Build churches, go pray! You will find me there,I know, if you come—and you will come, I know.Why, there's a judge weeping! Did not I sayYou were good and true at bottom? You see the truth—I am glad I helped you: she helped me just so."

Once more he flashes forth in her defence, in rage against Guido—but the image of her, "so sweet and true and pure and beautiful," comes back to him:

"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see we areSo very pitiable, she and I,Who had conceivably been otherwise"

—and at the thought ofhow"otherwise," of what life with such a woman were for a free man, and of his life henceforth, a priest, "on earth, as good as out of it," with the memory of her, only the memory . . . for she is dying, dead perhaps . . . the whole man breaks down, and he goes from the place with one wild, anguished call to heaven:

"Oh, great, just, good God! Miserable me!"

I have chosen to reveal Pompilia chiefly through Caponsacchi's speech for two reasons. First, because there is nothing grander in our literature than thatpassionate and throbbing monologue; second, because to show this type of womanthroughanother speaker is the way in which Browning always shows her best. As I said when writing of Mildred Tresham, directly such a woman speaks for herself, in Browning's work, he forces the note, he takes from her (unconsciously) a part of the beauty which those other speakers have shown forth. So with Pompilia, though not in the same degree as with Mildred, for here the truthiswith us—Pompilia is a living soul, not a puppet of the theatre. Yet even here the same strange errors recur. She has words indeed that reach the inmost heart—poignant, overpowering in tenderness and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to delineate it; and the particular one chosen—of marriage as a coin, "a dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"—is actually inept, since the essence of her is that she does not know anything at all about the "coin," so certainly does not know that it is or may be "dirty."

Again, here is an ignorant child, whose deep insight has come to her through love alone. She feels, in the weakness of her nearing death, and the bliss of spiritual tranquillity, that all the pastwith Guido is a terrific dream: "It is the good of dreams—so soon they go!" Beautiful: but Browning could not leave it in that beautiful and true simplicity. She must philosophise:

"This is the note of evil: for good lasts" . . .

Pompilia was incapable of that: she could "say" the thing, as she says it in that image of the dream—but she would have left it alone, she would have made no maxim out of it. And the maxim, when itismade, says no more than the image had said.

Once again: her plea for Guido. That she should forgive him was essential, but the pardon should have been blind pardon. No reason can confirm it; and we should but have loved her more for seeking none. To put in her mouth the plea that Guido had been deceived in his hope of enrichment by marriage, and that his anger, thus to some extent justified, was aggravated by her "blindness," by her not knowing "whither he sought to drive" her with his charges of light conduct,

"So unaware, I only made things worse" . . .

—this is bad through and through; this is the excess of ingenuity which misled Browning so frequently. There is no loveliness of pardon here; but something that we cannot suffer for its gross humility. The aim of Guido, in these charges, was filthiest evil: it revolts to hear the victim, now fully aware—forthe plea is based on her awareness—blame herself for not "apprehending his drift" (couldshehave used that phrase?), and thus, in the madness of magnanimity, seem to lose all sense of good and evil. It is over-subtle; it is not true; it has no beauty of any kind. But Browning could not "leave things alone"; he had to analyse, to subtilise—and this, which comes so well when it is analytic and subtle minds that address us, makes the defect of his work whenever an innocent and ignorant girl is made to speak in her own person.

I shall not multiply instances; my aim is not destructive. But I think the unmeasured praise of Browning by some of his admirers has worked against, not for, him. It irritates to read of the "perfection" of this speech—which has beauties so many and so great that the faults may be confessed, and leave it still among the lovely things of our literature.

I turn now gladly to those beauties. Chief is the pride and love of the new-made mother—never more exquisitely shown, and here the more poignantly shown because she is on her death-bed, and has not seen her little son again since the "great fortnight." She thinks how well it was that he had been taken from her before that awful night at the Villa:

"He was too young to smile and save himself;"

—for she does not dream, not then remembering the "money" which was at the heart of all herwoe, thathewould have been spared for that money's sake. . . . But she had not seen him again, and now will never see him. And when he grows up and comes to be her age, he will ask what his mother was like, and people will say, "Like girls of seventeen," and he will think of some girl he knows who titters and blushes when he looks at her. . . . That is not the way for a mother!

"Therefore I wish someone will please to sayI looked already old, though I was young;"

—and she begs to be told that she looks "nearer twenty." Her name too is not a common one—that may help to keep apart

"A little the thing I am from what girls are."

But how hard for him to find out anything about her:

"No father that he ever knew at all,Nor never had—no, never had, I say!"

—and a mother who only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one;hewould not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling fast to that:

"Sheer dreaming and impossibility—Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,Not once did a suspicion visit meHow very different a lot is mineFrom any other woman's in the world.The reason must be, 'twas by step and stepIt got to grow so terrible and strange.These strange woes stole on tip-toe, as it were . . .Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay,And I was found familiarised with fear."

First there was the amazement of finding herself disowned by Pietro and Violante. Then:

"So with my husband—just such a surprise,Such a mistake, in that relationship!Everyone says that husbands love their wives,Guard them and guide them, give them happiness;'Tis duty, law, pleasure, religion: well—You see how much of this comes true with me!"

Next, "there is the friend." . . . People will not ask her about him; they smile and give him nicknames, and call him her lover. "Most surprise of all!" It is always that word: how he loves her, how she loves him . . . yet he is a priest, and she is married. It all seems unreal, like the childish game in which she and her little friend Tisbe would pretend to be the figures on the tapestry:—

"You know the figures never were ourselves.. . . Thus all my life."

Her life is like a "fairy thing that fades and fades."

"—Even to my babe! I thought when he was born,Something began for me that would not end,Nor change into a laugh at me, but stayFor evermore, eternally, quite mine."

And hers he is, but he is gone, and it is all so confused that evenhe"withdraws into a dream as the rest do." She fancies him grown big,

"Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me,Frowns with the others: 'Poor imprudent child!Why did you venture out of the safe street?Why go so far from help to that lone house?Why open at the whisper and the knock?'"* * * * *

* * * * *

That New Year's Day, when she had been allowed to get up for the first time, and they had sat round the fire and talked of him, and what he should do when he was big—

"Oh, what a happy, friendly eve was that!"

And next day, old Pietro had been packed off to church, because he was so happy and would talk so much, and Violante thought he would tire her. And then he came back, and was telling them about the Christmas altars at the churches—none was so fine as San Giovanni—

". . . When, at the door,A tap: we started up: you know the rest."

Pietro had done no harm; Violante had erred in telling the lie about her birth—certainly that was wrong, but it was done with love in it, and even the giving her to Guido had had love in it . . . and at any rate it is all over now, and Pompilia has just been absolved, and thus there "seems not so much pain":

"Being right now, I am happy and colour things.Yes, everybody that leaves life sees allSoftened and bettered; so with other sights:To me at least was never evening yetBut seemed far beautifuller than its day,[158:1]For past is past."

Then she falls to thinking of that real mother, who had sold her before she was born. Violante had told her of it when she came back from the nuns, and was waiting for her boy to come. That mother died at her birth:

"I shall believe she hoped in her poor heartThat I at least might try be good and pure . . .And oh, my mother, it all came to this?"

Now she too is dying, and leaving her little one behind. Butsheis leaving him "outright to God":

"All human plans and projects come to nought:My life, and what I know of other livesProve that: no plan nor project! God shall care!"

She will lay him with God. And her last breath, for gratitude, shall spend itself in showing, now that they will really listen and not say "he was your lover" . . . her last breath shall disperse the stain around the name of Caponsacchi.

". . . There,Strength comes already with the utterance!"* * * * *

". . . There,Strength comes already with the utterance!"

* * * * *

Now she tells what we know; some of it wehave learnt already from her lips. She goes back over the years in "that fell house of hate"; then, the seeing of him at the theatre, the persecution with the false letters, the Annunciation-morning, the summons to him, the meeting, the escape:

"No pause i' the leading and the light!* * * * *And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!"

"No pause i' the leading and the light!

* * * * *

And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!"

But once more, mother-like, she reverts to her boy:

". . . We poorWeak souls, how we endeavour to be strong!I was already using up my life—This portion, now, should do him such a good,This other go to keep off such an ill.The great life: see, a breath, and it is gone!"

Still, all will be well: "Let us leave God alone." And now she will "withdraw from earth and man to her own soul," will "compose herself for God" . . . but even as she speaks, the flood of gratitude to her one friend again sweeps back, and she exclaims,

"Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breathShall bear away my soul in being true![159:1]He is still here, not outside with the world,Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!* * * * *I feel for what I verily find—againThe face, again the eyes, again, through all,The heart and its immeasurable loveOf my one friend, my only, all my own,Who put his breast between the spears and me.Ever with Caponsacchi!*nbsp;. . .O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,No work begun shall ever pause for death!Love will be helpful to me more and moreI' the coming course, the new path I must tread—My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!* * * * *Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain?What I see, oh, he sees, and how much more!* * * * *Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God?Say—I am all in flowers from head to foot!Say—not one flower of all he said and did,But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-treeWhereof the blossoming perfumes the placeAt this supreme of moments!"

"Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breathShall bear away my soul in being true![159:1]He is still here, not outside with the world,Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!

* * * * *

I feel for what I verily find—againThe face, again the eyes, again, through all,The heart and its immeasurable loveOf my one friend, my only, all my own,Who put his breast between the spears and me.Ever with Caponsacchi!*nbsp;. . .O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,No work begun shall ever pause for death!Love will be helpful to me more and moreI' the coming course, the new path I must tread—My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!

* * * * *

Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain?What I see, oh, he sees, and how much more!

* * * * *

Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God?Say—I am all in flowers from head to foot!Say—not one flower of all he said and did,But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-treeWhereof the blossoming perfumes the placeAt this supreme of moments!"

She has recognised the truth. Thisislove—but how different from the love of the smilings and the whisperings, the "He is your lover!" He is a priest, and could not marry; but she thinks he would not have married if he could:

"Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,* * * * *In heaven we have the real and true and sure."

"Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,

* * * * *

In heaven we have the real and true and sure."

In heaven, where the angels "know themselves into one"; and are never married, no, nor given in marriage:

". . . They are man and wife at onceWhen the true time is . . .So, let him wait God's instant men call years;Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,Do out the duty! Through such souls aloneGod, stooping, shows sufficient of his lightFor us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."* * * * *

* * * * *

Who would analyse this child would tear a flower to pieces. Pompilia is no heroine, no character; but indeed a "rose gathered for the breast of God":

"Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,L'espace d'un matin."

[126:1]Introduction to the Study of Browning, 1886, p. 152.

[130:1]Abandoning for the moment intermediate events, it wasthiswhich moved Guido to the triple murder: for once the old couple and Pompilia dead, with the question of his claim to the dowry still undecided as it was, his child, the new-born babe, might inherit all.

[131:1]Guido's second speech, wherein he tells the truth, in the hope that his "impenitence" may defer his execution.

[131:2]Her dying speech.

[131:3]Browning's summary. Book I.

[137:1]Mrs. Orr, commenting on this passage, says: "The sudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and culture; it was not suggested by the facts"—for Mrs. Orr, who had read the documents from which Browning made the poem, says: "Unless my memory much deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight. . . . The real Pompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to escape from him." And, as she later adds, though for many readers this character is, in its haunting pathos, the most exquisite of Browning's creations, "for others, it fails in impressiveness because it lacks the reality which habitually marks them." But (she goes on) "it was only in an idealised Pompilia that the material for poetical creation, in this 'murder story,' could have been found." These remarks will be seen partly to agree with some of my own.

[146:1]Her dying speech.

[158:1]How wonderfully is the wistful nature of the girl summed up in these two lines!

[159:1]Caponsacchi uses almost the same words of her: he will "burn his soul out in showing you the truth."

The Great Lady

For a mind so subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning, even a "lady" could be a woman—and remain a woman, even though she be turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted from the realm of things that may be loved! Of narrowness like this our poet was incapable. He could indeed transcend the class-distinction, but that was not, with him, the same as trampling it under foot. And especially he loved to set a young girl in those regions where material cares prevail not—where, moving as in an upper air, she joys or suffers "not for bread alone."

"Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red—On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,O'er the breast's superb abundance, where a man might base his head?"

He could grant her to be "such a lady," yet grant, too, that her soul existed. True, that inA Toccata of Galuppi's,[166:1]the soulisquestioned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned."

But this is not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an entire social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm amid its folly.

"Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford—She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword,While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord."

The music trickled then through the room, as it trickles now for the listening poet: with its minor cadences, the "lesser thirds so plaintive," the "diminished sixths," the suspensions, the solutions: "Must we die?"—

"Those commiserating sevenths—'Life might last! we can but try!'"

The question of questions, even for "ladies and gentlemen"! And then come the other questions: "Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to."

"So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!'Brave Galuppi, that was music! Good alike at grave and gay!I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play.'Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun."

. . . The "cold music" has seemed to the modern listener to say thathe, learned and wise, shall not pass away like these:

". . . You know physics, something of geology,Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;Butterflies may dread extinction—you'll not die, it cannot be!As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?" . . .

Yet while it seems to say this, the saying brings him no solace. What, "creaking like a ghostly cricket," it intends, he must perceive, since he is neither deaf nor blind:

"But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! . . .'Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the goldUsed to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old."

After all, the pageant of life has value! We need notonlythe wise men. And even the wise man creeps through every nerve when he listens to that music. "Here's all the good it brings!"

None the less, there is trouble other than that of its passing in this pageant. Itself has the seed of death within it. All that beauty, riches, ease, can do, shall leave some souls unsatisfied—nay, shall kill some souls. . . . This too Browning could perceive and show; and once more, loved toshow in the person of a girl. There is something in true womanhood which transcends allmorgue: it seems almost his foible to say that, so often does he say it! In Colombe, in the Queen ofIn a Balcony(so wondrously contrasted with Constance, scarcely less noble, yet half-corroded by this very rust of state and semblance); above all, in the exquisite imagining of that "Duchess," the girl-wife who twice is given us, and in two widely different environments—yet is (to my feeling)oneloved incarnation of eager sweetness. He touched her first to life when she was dead, if one may speak so paradoxically; then, unsatisfied with that posthumous awaking, brought her resolutely back to earth—inMy Last DuchessandThe Flight of the Duchessrespectively. Let us examine the two poems, and I think we shall agree, in reading the second, that Browning, like Caponsacchi, could not have the lady dead.

First, then, comes a picture—the mere portrait, "painted on the wall," of a dead Italian girl.

"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will 't please you sit and look at her? I saidFrà Pandolf by design: for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus."

The Duke, a Duke of Ferrara, owner of "a nine-hundred-years-old name," is showing the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even now that she is dead, he does not know that it was he who killed her—nor, if he did, could feel remorse. For it is not possible thathecould have been wrong. This Duchess—it would have been idle to "make his will clear" to such an one; the imposition, not the exposition, of that will was all that he could show to her (or any other lesser being) without stooping—"and I choose never to stoop." Her error had been precisely the "depth and passion of that earnest glance" which Frà Pandolf had so wonderfully caught. Does the envoy suppose that it was only her husband's presence which called that "spot of joy" into her cheek? It hadnotbeen so. The mere painting-man, the mere Frà Pandolf, may have paid her some tribute of the artist—may have said, for instance, that her mantle hid too much of her wrist, or that the "faint half-flush that diedalong her throat" was beyond the power of paint to reproduce.

". . . Such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy."

As the envoy still seems strangely unenlightened, the Duke is forced to the "stooping" implied in a more explicit statement:

". . . She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere."

Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly conveyed:

"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the west,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. . . ."

We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender creature as though we also were at gaze on Frà Pandolf's picture. . . . I callthispiece a wonder,now! Scarce one of the monologues is so packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most "simple"—even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, hers—but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that came to her was transmuted into her own dearness—even his favour at her breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that "favour"—the high proprietary air, the loftily anticipated gratitude: Sir Willoughby Patterne by intelligent anticipation. But then, though the approving speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with his bough of cherries—and speech and blush were given again! Absurder still, the spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . .

"Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling?"

Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's gift"—even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted" him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made excuse) . . . even so (this mustbe impressed upon the envoy), it would have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop."

Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the next Duchess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued upon that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is sounding in his ear—

". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together."

There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing. There she stands,looking as if she were alive. . . . And almost he starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a meaning—

". . . There she standsAs if alive"

—the picture is a wonder!

Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had just now sounded: "Then all smiles stopped together"?

She stands there—smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause before Frà Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders. Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily in silence, taken: thenext Duchess will be instructed beforehand in the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:

"Will't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then."

The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere, as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . . Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the due deference:

". . . Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir,"

—and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about byhim) the envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor has no eyes for "wonders" now—he has seen the wonder, has heard the horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can pass these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them, however, must be pointed out:

". . . Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."

. . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.

But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands, orwas, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by flame; has been snatched fromherDuke, and borne away to joy and love—by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved herself.

The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller whom he calls his friend.

"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"

It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess all were young—if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and died there,

"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .Petticoated like a herald,In a chamber next to an ante-roomWhere he breathed the breath of page and groom,What he called stink, and they perfume."

The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took theboy to Paris, where she belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."

"And he came back the pertest little apeThat ever affronted human shape;Full of his travel, struck at himself.You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?—Not he!"

—for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one good thing left in these evil days:

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