Chapter XVIII: Book THE SIXTH (8)

David's song has poured forth the full cup of material existence; he has yet to infuse into it that draught of "Soul Wine" which shall make it desirable. In a fresh burst of inspiration, he challenges his hearer to follow him beyond the grave. "The tree is known by its fruits; life by its results. Life, like the palm fruit, must be crushed before its wine can flow. Saul will die. But his passion and his power will thrill the generations to come. His achievements will live in the hearts of his people; for whom their record, though covering the whole face of a rock, will still seem incomplete." And as the "Soul Wine" works, as the vision of this earthly immortality unfolds itself before the sufferer's sight, he becomes a king again. The old attitude and expression assert themselves. The hand is gently laid on the young singer's forehead; the eyes fix themselves in grave scrutiny upon him.

Then the heart of David goes out to the suffering monarch in filial, pitying tenderness; and he yearns to give him more than this present life--a new life equal to it in goodness, and which shall be everlasting.

And the yearning converts itself into prophecy. What he, as man, can desire for his fellow-man, God will surely give. What he would suffer for those he loves, surely God would suffer. Human nature in its power of love would otherwise outstrip the Divine. He cries for the weakness to be engrafted upon strength, the human to be manifested in the Divine. And exulting in the consciousness that his cry is answered, he hails the advent of Christ. He bids Saul "see" that a Face like his who now speaks to him awaits him at the threshold of an eternal life; that a Hand like his hand opens to him its gates.

David's prophecy has rung through the universe; and as he seeks his home in the darkness, unseen "cohorts" press everywhere upon him. A tumultuous expectation is filling earth and hell and heaven. The Hand guides him through the tumult. He sees it die out in the birth of the young day. But the hushed voices of nature attest the new dispensation. The seal of the new promise is on the face of the earth.

The EPILOGUE is spoken by three different persons, and embodies as many phases of the religious life. The "FIRST SPEAKER, _as David_," represents the old Testament Theism, with its solemn celebrations, its pompous worship, and the strong material faith which bowed down the thousands as one man, before the visible glory of the Lord.

The "SECOND SPEAKER, _as Renan_" represents nineteenth-century scepticism, and the longing of the heart for the old belief which scientific reason has dispelled. This belief is symbolized by a "Face" which once looked down from heights of glory upon men; by a star which shone down upon them in responsive life and love. The face has vanished into darkness. The star, gradually receding, has lost itself in the multitude of the lesser lights of heaven. And centuries roll past while the forsaken watchers vainly question the heavenly vault for the sign of love no longer visible there.

This lament assumes that Theism, having grown into Christianity, must disappear with it; and the pathetic sense of bereavement gives way to shuddering awe, as the farther significance of the sceptical position reveals itself. _Man_ becomes the summit of creation; the sole successor to the vacant throne of God.

The "THIRD SPEAKER," Mr. Browning himself, corrects both the material faith of the Old Testament, and the scientific doubt of the nineteenth century, by the idea of a more mystical and individual intercourse between God and man. Observers have noted in the Arctic Seas that the whole field of waters seem constantly hastening towards some central point of rock, to envelope it in their playfulness and their force; in the blackness they have borrowed from the nether world, or the radiance they have caught from heaven; then tearing it up by the roots, to sweep onwards towards another peak, and make _it_ their centre for the time being. So do the forces of life and nature circle round the individual man, doing in each the work of experience, reproducing for each the Divine Face which is inspired by the spirit of creation. And, as the speaker declares, he needs no "Temple," because the world is that. Nor, as he implies, needs he look beyond the range of his own being for the lost Divinity.

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows!" (vol. vii. p. 255.)

"FEARS AND SCRUPLES" illustrates this personal religion in an opposite manner. It is the expression of a tender and very simple religious feeling, saddened by the obscurity which surrounds its object, and still more by the impossibility of proving to other minds that this object is a real one. It is described as the devotion to an unseen friend, known only by his letters and reported deeds, but whom one loves as by instinct, believes in without testimony, and trusts to as accepting the allegiance of the smaller being, and sure sooner or later to acknowledge it In the present case the days are going by. No sign of acknowledgment has been given. Sceptics assure the believer that his faith rests on letters which were forged, on actions which others equally have performed; he can only yearn for some word or token which would enable him to shut their mouth. But when some one hints that the friend is only concealing himself to test his power of vision, and will punish him if he does not see; and another objects that this would prove the friend a monster; he crushes the objector with a word: "and what if the friend be GOD?"

The next group is fuller and still more characteristic: for it displays the love of Art in its special conditions, and, at the same time, in its union with all the general human instincts in which artistic emotion can be merged. We find it in its relation to the general love of life in

"Fra Lippo Lippi." ("Men and Women." 1855.)

In its relation to the spiritual sense of existence in

"Abt Vogler." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

As a transformation of human tenderness in

"Pictor Ignotus." ("Men and Women." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

In its directly sensuous effects in

"The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church." ("Men
and Women." Published as "The Tomb at Saint Praxed's" in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[72]

In its associative power in

"A Toccata of Galuppi's." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in
"Men and Women." 1855.)

In its representative power in

"The Guardian-Angel: a Picture at Fano." ("Dramatic Lyrics."
Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Eurydice to Orpheus: a Picture by Leighton." ("Dramatis
Personæ." 1864.)

"A Face." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"FRA LIPPO LIPPI" is a lively monologue, supposed to be uttered by that friar himself, on the occasion of a night frolic in which he has been surprised. Cosmo dei Medici had locked him up in one room of the palace till some pictures he was painting for him should be finished;[73] and on this particular night he has found the confinement intolerable. He has whipped his bed clothes into a rope, scrambled down from his window, and run after a girlish face which laughingly invited him from the street; and was about to return from the equivocal neighbourhood into which the fun had led him, when his monkish dress caught the attention of the guard, and he was captured and called to account. He proceeds to give a sketch of his life and opinions, which supplies a fair excuse for the escapade. The facts he relates are, including this one, historical.

Fra Lippo Lippi had no vocation for the priesthood. He was enticed into a Carmelite convent when a half-starved orphan of eight years old, ready to subscribe to any arrangement which promised him enough to eat. There he developed an extraordinary talent for drawing; and the Prior, glad to turn it to account, gave him the cloisters and the church to paint. But the rising artist had received his earliest inspirations in the streets. His first practice had been gained in scrawling faces in his copybooks, and expanding the notes of his musical texts into figures with arms and legs. His conceptions were not sufficiently spiritual to satisfy the Prior's ideal of Christian art. The men and women he painted were all true to life. The simpler brethren were delighted as they recognized each familar type. But the authorities looked grave at so much obtruding of the flesh; and the Prior clearly laid down his theory that painting was meant to inspire religious thoughts, and not to stifle them; and must therefore show no more of the human body than was needed to image forth the soul.

Fra Lippo Lippi comments freely and quaintly on the absurdity of showing soul by means of bodies so ill-painted that no one can bear to dwell upon them, as on the fallacy involved in all contempt for the earthly life. "He will never believe that the world, with all its life and beauty, is an unmeaning blank. He is sure, 'it means intensely and means good.' He is sure, too, that to reproduce what is beautiful in it is the mission of Art. If anyone objects, that the world being God's work, Art cannot improve on it, and the painter will best leave it alone: he answers that some things are the better for being painted; because, as we are made, we love them best when we see them so. The artist has lent his mind for us to see with. That is what Art means; what God wills in giving it to us."

Nevertheless (he continues) he rubbed out his men and women; and though now, with a Medici for his patron, he may paint as he likes, the old schooling sticks to him.[74] And he works away at his saints, till something comes to remind him that life is not a dream, and he kicks the traces, as he has done now. He ends with a half-joking promise to make the Church a gainer through his misconduct (supposing that the secret has been kept from her), by a beautiful picture which he will paint by way of atonement.

This picture, which he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" at Florence.[75]

ABT VOGLER is depicted at the moment when this composer of the last century has "been extemporizing on the musical instrument of his invention." His emotion has not yet subsided; and it is that of the inspired musician, to whom harmonized sound is as the opening of a heavenly world. His touch upon the keys has been as potent to charm, as the utterance of that NAME which summoned into Solomon's presence the creatures of Earth, Heaven, and Hell, and made them subservient to his will. And the "slaves of the sound," whom he has conjured up, have built him a palace more evanescent than Solomon's, but, as he describes it, far more beautiful. They have laid its foundations below the earth. They have carried its transparent walls up to the sky. They have tipped each summit with meteoric fire. As earth strove upwards towards Heaven, Heaven, in this enchanted structure, has yearned downwards towards the earth. The great Dead came back; and those conceived for a happier future walked before their time. New births of life and splendour united far and near; the past, the present, and the to-come.

The vision has disappeared with the sounds which called it forth, and the musician feels sorrowfully that it cannot be recalled: for the effect was incommensurate with the cause; they had nothing in common with each other. We can trace the processes of painting and verse; we can explain their results. Art, however triumphant, is subject to natural laws. But that which frames out of three notes of music "not a fourth sound, but a star" is the Will, which is above law.

And, therefore, so Abt Vogler consoles himself, the music persists, though it has passed from the sense of him who called it forth: for it is an echo of the eternal life; a pledge of the reality of every imagined good--of the continuance of whatever good has existed. Human passion and aspiration are music sent up to Heaven, to be continued and completed there. The secret of the scheme of creation is in the musician's hands.

Having recognized this, Abt Vogler can subside, proudly and patiently, on the common chord--the commonplace realities, of life.

"PICTOR IGNOTUS" (Florence, 15--), is the answer of an unknown painter to the praise which he hears lavished on another man. He admits its justice, but declares that he too could have deserved it; and his words have all the bitterness of a suppressed longing which an unexpected touch has set free. He, too, has dreamed of fame; and felt no limits to his power of attaining it. But he saw, by some flash of intuition, that it must be bought by the dishonour of his works; that, in order to bring him fame, they must descend into the market, they must pass from hand to hand; they must endure the shallowness of their purchasers' comments, share in the pettiness of their lives. He has remained obscure, that his creations might be guarded against this sacrilege. "He paints Madonnas and saints in the twilight stillness of the cloister and the aisle; and if his heart saddens at the endless repetition of the one heavenward gaze, at least no merchant traffics in what he loves. There, where his pictures have been born, mouldering in the dampness of the wall, blackening in the smoke of the altar, amidst a silence broken only by prayer, they may 'gently' and 'surely' die." He asks himself, as he again subsides into mournful resignation, whether the applause of men may not be neutralized at its best by the ignoble circumstances which it entails.

"THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH" (Rome, 15--) displays the artistic emotion in its least moral form: the love of the merely beautiful as such; and it shows also how this may be degraded: by connecting it in the mind of the given person, with the passion for luxury, and the pride and jealousies of possession. The Bishop is at the point of death. His sons (nominally nephews) are about him; and he is urging on them anxious and minute directions for the tomb they are to place for him in St. Praxed's church.

This tomb, as the Bishop has planned it, is a miracle of costliness and beauty; for it is to secure him a double end: the indulgence of his own tastes, and the humiliation of a former rival who lies modestly buried in the same church. In the delirium of his weakness, these motives, which we imagine always prominent, assume the strength of mania. His limbs are already stiff; he feels himself growing into his own monument; and his fancy revels in the sensations which will combine the calm of death with the consciousness of sepulchral magnificence. He pleads, as for dear life, with those who are to inherit his wealth, and who may at their pleasure fulfil his last wishes or disregard them: that he may have jasper for his tomb--basalt (black antique) for its slab--the rosiest marble for its columns--the richest design for its bronze frieze! A certain ball of lapis-lazuli (such as never yet was seen) is to "poise" between his knees; and he gasps forth the secret of how he saved this from the burning of his church, and buried it out of sight in a vineyard, as if he were staking his very life on the revelation.

But in his heart he knows that his entreaties are useless: that his sons will keep all they can; and the tone of entreaty is dashed with all the petulance of foreseen disappointment. Weakness prevails at last. He resigns himself to the inevitable; blesses his undutiful sons; and dismisses them.

Other strongly dramatic details complete the picture.[76]

"A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S" is a fantastic little vision of bygone Venice, evoked by the music of an old Venetian master, and filling us with the sense of a joyous ephemeral existence, in which the glow of life is already struck by the shuddering chill of annihilation. This sense is created by the sounds, as Mr. Browning describes them: and their directly expressive power must stand for what it is worth. Still, the supposed effect is mainly that of association; and the listener's fancy the medium through which it acts.

"A FACE" describes a beautiful head and throat in its pictorial details--those which painting might reproduce.

"THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL" and "EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS" describe each an actual picture in the emotions it expresses or conveys.

The former represents an angel, standing with outstretched wings by a little child. The child is half kneeling on a kind of pedestal, while the angel joins its hands in prayer: its gaze directed upward towards the sky, from which cherubs are looking down. The picture was painted by Guercino, and is now in the church of St. Augustine, at Fano, on the Italian coast. Mr. Browning relates to an absent friend (who appears in the "Dramatic Romances" as Waring) how he saw it in the company of his own "angel;" and how it occurred to him to develop into a poem one of the thoughts which the picture had "struck out." The thought resolves itself into a feeling: the yearning for guidance and protection. The poet dreams himself in the place of that praying child. The angel wings cover his head: the angel hands upon his eyes press back the excess of thought which has made his brain too big. He feels how thankfully those eyes would rest on the "gracious face" instead of looking to the opening sky beyond it; and how purely beautiful the world would seem when that healing touch had been upon them.

The second was painted by F. Leighton. It represents Orpheus leading Eurydice away from the infernal regions, but with an implied variation on the story of her subsequent return to them. She was restored to Orpheus on the condition of his not looking at her till they had reached the upper world; and, as the legend goes, the condition proved too hard for him to fulfil. But the face of Leighton's Eurydice wears an intensity of longing which seems to challenge the forbidden look, and make her responsible for it. The poem thus interprets the expression, and translates it into words.

"ANDREA DEL SARTO" ("Men and Women," 1855) lays down the principle, asserted by Mr. Browning as far back as in "Sordello," that the soul of the true artist must exceed his technical powers; that in art, as in all else, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp." And on this ground the poem might be classed as critical. But it is still more an expression of feeling; the lament of an artist who has fallen short of his ideal--of a man who feels himself the slave of circumstance--of a lover who is sacrificing his moral, and in some degree his artistic, conscience to a woman who does not return his love. It is the harmonious utterance of a many-sided sadness which has become identified with even the pleasures of the man's life; and is hopeless, because he is resigned to it.

Andrea del Sarto was called the "faultless painter." His execution was as easy as it was perfect; and Michael Angelo is reported to have said to Raphael, of the insignificant little personage Andrea then was: that he would bring the sweat to his (Raphael's) brow, if urged on in like manner by popes and kings. But he lacked strength and loftiness of purpose; and as Mr. Browning depicts him, is painfully conscious of these deficiencies. He feels that even an ill-drawn picture of Raphael's--and he has such a one before him--has qualities of strength and inspiration which he cannot attain. His wife might have incited him to nobler work; but Lucrezia is not the woman from whom such incentives proceed; she values her husband's art for what it brings her. Remorse has added itself in his soul to the sense of artistic failure. He has not only abandoned the French Court, and, for Lucrezia's sake, broken his promise to return to it; he has cheated his kind friend and patron, Francis I., of the money with which he was entrusted by him for the purchase of works of art. He has allowed his parents to die of want. All this, and more, reflects itself in the monologue he is addressing to his wife, but no conscious reproach is conveyed by it. She has consented to sit by him at their window, with her hand in his, while he drinks in her beauty, and finds in it rest and inspiration at the same time. She will leave him presently for one she cares for more; but the spell is deepening upon him. The Fiesole hills are melting away in the twilight; the evening stillness is invading his whole soul. He scarcely even desires to fight against the inevitable. Yet there might be despair in his concluding words: "another chance may be given to him in heaven, with Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. But he will still have Lucrezia, and therefore they will still conquer him."

The facts adduced are all matter of history; though a later chronicle than that which Mr. Browning has used, is more favourable in its verdict on Andrea's wife.

The fiercer emotions also play a part, though seldom an exclusive one, in Mr. Browning's work. Jealousy forms the subject of

"THE LABORATORY." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[77]

"MY LAST DUCHESS." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "Italy"
in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

The first of these shows the passion as distorted love: the frenzy of a woman who has been supplanted. The jealous wife (if wife she is) has come to the laboratory to obtain a dose of poison, which she means to administer to her rival; and she watches its preparation with an eager, ferocious joy, dashed only by the fear of its being inadequate. The quantity is minute; and it is (as we guess) the "magnificent" strength of that other one which has won _him_ away.

In the second we find a jealousy which has no love in it; which means the exactingness of self-love, and the tyranny of possession. A widowed Duke of Ferrara is exhibiting the portrait of his former wife, to the envoy of some nobleman whose daughter he proposes to marry; and his comments on the countenance of his last Duchess plainly state what he will expect of her successor. "That earnest, impassioned, and yet smiling glance went alike to everyone. She who sent it, knew no distinction of things or persons. Everything pleased her: everyone could arouse her gratitude. And it seemed to her husband, from her manner of showing it, that she ranked his gift, the 'gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name,' with that of everyone else. It was below his dignity to complain of this state of things, so he put an end to it. He: 'gave commands;' and the smiles, too evenly dispensed, stopped all together." He does not fear to admit, as he does parenthetically, that there may have been some right on her side. This was below his concern. The Duke touches, in conclusion, on the dowry which he will expect with his second wife; and, with a suggestive carelessness, bids his guest remark--as they are about to descend the staircase--a rare work in bronze, which a noted sculptor has cast for him.

Hatred, born of jealousy, has its fullest expression in the "SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER" ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Bells and Pomegranates." 1842 to 1845): a venomous outbreak of jealous hatred, directed by one monk against another whom he is watching at some innocent occupation. The speaker has no ground of complaint against Brother Lawrence, except that his life _is_ innocent: that he is orderly and clean, that he loves his garden, is free from debasing superstitions, and keeps his passions, if he has any, in check. But that, precisely, is a rebuke and an exasperation to the fierce, coarse nature of this other man; and he declares to himself, that if hate could kill, Brother Lawrence would not live long. Meanwhile, as we also hear, he spites him when he can, and fondly dreams of tripping him up somewhere, or somehow, on his way to the better world. He is turning over some pithy expedients, when the vesper bell cuts short his meditations.

WRATH, as inspired by a desperate sense of wrong, finds utterance in "THE CONFESSIONAL." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Bells and Pomegranates." 1842 to 1845.) A loved and loving girl has been made the instrument of her lover's destruction. He held a treasonable secret, which the Church was anxious to possess; and her priest has assured her that if this is fully revealed to him, he will, by prayer and fasting, purge its guilt from the young man's soul. She obtains the desired knowledge, reveals it, and joyfully anticipates the result. When next she sees her lover, he is on the scaffold. They have stifled her denunciations in a prison-cell. Her body is wrenched with torture, as her soul with anguish. She is scarcely human any more. But she hurls at them unceasingly a cry which will yet reach the world. "Their Pope and their saints, their heaven and their hell, their--everything they teach, and everything they say, is lies, and again lies."

"A FORGIVENESS" ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," 1876) might serve equally as a study for jealousy, self-reproach, contempt, and revenge; the love which is made to underlie these feelings, and the forgiveness with which it will be crowned.

It is a story told in confession. He who tells it had once a wife, who was dearer to him than anything else in the world. He had also public duties, which he discharged with diligence and with success; but it was the thought of the wife's love which nerved him to the fulfilment of these duties, and which rewarded it.

One day he discovered that she was unfaithful to him. A man (whose face was but imperfectly concealed) was stealing away from his house as he returned to it; and the wife, confronting him at the same moment, bade him kill her, but spare the man she loved. He did not kill her--then: for she had turned his love into contempt. He despised her too much to inflict even a lesser punishment, which should compromise the dignity, or disturb the outward calmness, of his life. But from that moment their union was a form; and while he worked as those do who have something to forget, and she shared the position which his labours procured for him, an impassable, if unseen, gulf lay between them.

Three years had passed, when suddenly, one night, the wife begged to speak with her husband alone. Her request was granted; and then the truth broke forth. She loved--had loved--no one but him; but she was jealous of his devotion to the State. She imagined herself second to it in his affections; and it was the jealousy in her which had made her strive to arouse it in him. That other man had been nothing to her but a tool. Her secret, she now knew, was killing her. Conscience forbade her to elude her punishment by death. She therefore spoke.

"Would she write this?" he asked; and he dictated to her the confession she had just made, in the terms most humiliating to him who was intended to hear it.

"Could she but write it in her blood!" This, too, was possible. He put into her hand a dainty Eastern weapon, one prick of which, he said, would draw so much blood as was required. It did more than this, for it was poisoned. But, before she died, she knew that her explanation had raised her husband's contempt into hatred, and that the revenge of which she was now found worthy had quenched the hatred in forgiveness.

"She lies as erst beloved" (the narrative concludes) "in the church of him who hears this confession; whom his grate conceals as little as that cloak once did--whom vengeance overtakes at last."

The poisoned dagger, which was the instrument of revenge--the pledge of forgiveness--is spoken of as part of a collection preserved in the so-called study, which was the scene of the interview; and the speaker dwells at some length on the impression of deadly purpose combined with loving artistic care, which their varied form and fantastic richness convey. This collection is actually in Mr. Browning's possession; and he values it, perhaps, for the reason he imputes to its imagined owner: that those who are accustomed to the slower processes of thought, like to play with the suggestions of prompt (if murderous) action; as the soldier, tired of wielding the sword, will play with paper and pen.

HISTORICAL POEMS, OR POEMS FOUNDED ON FACT.

Many of Mr. Browning's poems are founded on fact, whether historical, or merely of known occurrence; but few of them can be classed by their historic quality, because it is seldom their most important. In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," for instance, we have a chapter in recent history: but we only read it as an abstract discussion, to which a chapter in history has given rise; and in "Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper," and "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial" (published in the same volume), we find two incidents, each of them true, and each full of historic significance; but which owe all their vitality to the critical and humorous spirit, in which Mr. Browning has described them. The small list of poems which are historical more than anything else, might be recruited from the Dramatic Idyls; but, for various reasons, this publication must stand alone; and even here, it is often difficult to disengage the actual fact, from the imaginary conditions in which it appears. Our present group is therefore reduced to--

"Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers." (1873.)
"The Inn Album." (1875.)
"The Two Poets of Croisic." (1878.)
"Cenciaja." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)

We may also place here, as it is historical in character, "The Heretic's Tragedy; a Middle Age Interlude" ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

The real-life drama which Mr. Browning has reproduced under the title of "Red Cotton Night-cap Country," was enacted partly in Paris, partly in a retired corner of Normandy, where he spent the late summer of 1872; and ended in a trial which had been only a fortnight closed, when he supposes himself to be relating it. His whole story is true, except that in it which reality itself must have left to the imagination. Only the names of persons and places are fictitious.[78]

The principal actor in this drama, Léonce Miranda, was son and heir to a wealthy Spanish jeweller in the Place Vendôme. He was southern by temperament as by descent; but a dash of the more mercantile Parisian spirit had come to him from his French mother; and while keenly susceptible to the incitements of both religious and earthly passion, he began life with the deliberate purpose of striking a compromise between them. At an early age he determined to live for this world now, and for the other when he was older; and in the meantime to be moderate in his enjoyments. In conformity with this plan he ran riot on Sunday; but worked diligently during the rest of the week. He bestowed his fancy on five women at once; but represented himself, when in their company, as a poor artist or musician, and wasted no money upon them.

One day, however, he fell in love. The object of his affections, Clara Mulhausen, or, as she first calls herself, "de Millefleurs," was an adventuress; but she did not at first allow him to find this out; and when he did so, her hold upon him had become too strong to be affected by the discovery. A succession of circumstances, which Mr. Browning describes, first cemented the bond, then destroyed its secrecy; and since Clara had a husband, and the position could not be legalized, Léonce Miranda had no choice but to accept the social interdict, and with her retire from Paris. He placed a substitute in the business, which had devolved on him through his father's death; and the pair took up their abode at Clairvaux, an ancient priory, which the father had bought. Here Miranda built and improved; indulged his amateur propensities for painting and music; remained devoted to his love, and was rewarded by her devotion. For five years they were very happy.

The first interruption to their happiness was a summons to Miranda, from his mother in Paris, to come and answer for his excessive expenditure. The immorality of his life she had condoned (a curious proof of this is given), for she hoped it would be its own cure. But "his architectural freaks, above all, a Belvedere which he had constructed in his grounds, were a reckless waste of substance which she could not witness without displeasure." She had immense influence with her son; and he took her rebuke so much to heart, that he only left her to fling himself into the Seine. He was brought out alive; but lay for a month at death's door, and made no progress towards recovery till he had been restored to Clara's care; and Clara was painfully winning him back to health, when the telegraphic wires flashed a second summons upon him. His presence was again demanded in the maternal home. "The business was urgent. Its nature he would learn on arrival."

He hastened to his mother's house, to find her a corpse--laid out with all the ghastly ceremonial which Catholic fancy could devise--and to be told that his misconduct had killed her. The tribe of cousins, who had planned the _coup de théâtre_, were there to enjoy its result. This did not fail them. Miranda fainted away. As soon as consciousness returned, he made his act of atonement. He foreswore the illegal bond. He willed away his fortune to his kinsfolk; and would retain of it, from that moment, only a pittance for himself, and the means of honourable subsistence for Clara. They were to meet in the same house a week later, to arrange in what manner that sinful woman should be acquainted with the facts.

The day came. The cousins arrived. Miranda did not appear. He had broken down at the funeral in a fresh outburst of frenzied grief; but from this he had had time to recover. Someone peeped into his room. There he stood, by a blazing fire, a small empty coffer by his side, engaged in reading some letters which he had taken from it. Whose they were, and what the reading had told him, was quickly shown. He replaced them in the box, plunged this in the fire; and reiterating the words, "Burn, burn and purify my past!" held it there till both his hands had been consumed; no sign of pain escaping him. He was dragged away by main force, protesting against this hindrance to his salvation. "He was not yet purified. SHE was not yet burned out of him." In his bed he raved and struggled against the image which again rose before his eyes, which again grew and formed itself in his flesh.

The delirium was followed by three months of exhaustion. The moment the sick man could "totter" out of his room, he found his way to her whom he had abjured, and who was in Paris calmly awaiting his return to her. She came back with him. He introduced her to his kinsmen. "It was all right," he said; "Clara would henceforth be--his brother; he would still fulfil his bond." From this, however, he departed, in so far as not to content himself with a pittance. He sold his business to the "cousinry," and, as they considered, on hard terms. He and Clara then returned to Clairvaux.

And now, as Mr. Browning interprets the situation, his experience had entered on a new phase. He had tested the equal strength of the earthly and the heavenly powers, and he knew that he could elude neither, and that neither could be postponed to the other. He no longer strove to compromise between these opposing realities, but threw his whole being into the struggle to unite them. He adhered to his unlawful love. His acts of piety and charity became grotesque in their excessiveness. (Of these again particulars are given.) Two years went by; and then, one April morning, Miranda climbed his Belvedere, and was found, soon after, dead, on the turf below. There seemed no question of accident. The third attempt at suicide had succeeded.

On this fact, however, Mr. Browning puts a construction of his own. He asserts the poet's privilege of seeing into the man's mind; and makes him think before us in a long and impassioned soliloquy, which sets forth the hidden motive of his deed. As Mr. Browning conceives him, he did not mean to kill himself. He did so in a final, irresistible impulse to manifest his faith, and to test the foundations of it. It has had for its object, not the spiritual truths of Christianity, but its miraculous powers; and these powers have of late been symbolized to his mind by the Virgin of the Ravissante.[79] The conflict of despotisms has thus been waged between the natural woman and the supernatural: each a monarch in her way. As he looks from his tower towards the Church of the Ravissante, he apostrophizes her who is enthroned there.

He imagines her to have reproached him for his divided allegiance; and asserts, in answer, that he has been subject to her all his life. "He could not part with his soul's treasure. But he has, for her sake, lavished his earthly goods, burned away his flesh. If his sacrifice has been incomplete, it was because another power, mysterious and unnamed, but yet as absolute as she, had cast its spells about him. He would have resisted the Enchantress, if she, the Despot, had made a sign. But what token has he ever received, of her acceptance, her approbation? She exacts from her servants the surrender of both body and soul; the least deficiency in the offering neutralizes its sum. And what does she give in exchange for body and soul? Promises? Is a man to starve while the life-apple is withheld from him, if even husks are within his reach? Miracles? Will she make a finger grow on his maimed hand? Would he not be called a madman if he expected it?"

And yet he believes. He summons her to justify his belief. He claims of her a genuine miracle--a miracle of power, which will silence scepticism, and re-establish the royalty of the Church--a miracle of mercy, which will wipe away the past; reconcile duty and love; give Clara into his hands as his pure and lawful wife. "She is to carry him through the air to the space before her church as she was herself conveyed there...." Then come the leap and the catastrophe.

He had by a second will bequeathed all his possessions to the Church, reserving in them a life-interest for his virtual wife; and when the cousinry swooped down on what they thought their prey, Madame Mulhausen could receive them and their condolences with the indignant scorn which their greed and cruelty deserved. They disputed the will on the alleged plea of the testator's insanity. The trial was interrupted by the events of 1870, but finally settled in the lady's favour; the verdict being uncompromising as to her moral, as well as legal claim to the inheritance.

Mr. Browning had lately stood outside the grounds of Clairvaux, and seen its lady pass. She was insignificant in face and expression; and he was reduced to accounting for the power she had exercised, by that very fact. She seemed a blank surface, on which a man could inscribe, or fancy he was inscribing, himself; and it is a matter of fact that, whether from strength of will, or from the absence of it, she presented such a surface to her lover's hand. She humoured his every inclination, complied with his every wish. And because she did no more than this, and also no less, Mr. Browning pronounces her far from the best of women, but by no means one of the worst. The two had, after all, up to a certain point, redeemed each other.

The title of the book arose as follows. The narrative is addressed (as the volume is dedicated) to Miss Annie Thackeray; and its supposed occasion is that of a meeting which took place at St. Rambert--actually St. Aubin--between her and Mr. Browning, in the summer of 1872. She had laughingly called the district "White Cotton Night-Cap Country," from its sleepy appearance, and the universal white cap of even its male inhabitants. Mr. Browning, being acquainted with the tragedy of Clairvaux, thought "_Red_ Cotton Night-Cap Country" would be a more appropriate name; and adopted it for his story, as Miss Thackeray had adopted hers for one which she promised to write. But he represents himself as playing at first with the idea; and as leading the listener's mind, from the suggestions of white night-caps to those of the red one: and null the outward calmness of the neighbouring country, to the tragic possibilities which that calmness conceals.

The supplementary heading, "Turf and Towers," must have been inspired by the literal facts of the case; but it supplies an analogy for the contrasted influences which fought for Miranda's soul. The "tower" represents the militant or religious life. The "turf," the self-indulgent; and the figure appears and reappears at every stage of the man's career. The attempt at compromise is symbolized by a pavilion: a structure aping solidity, but only planted on the turf. The final attempt at union is spoken of as an underground passage connecting the two, and by which the fortress may be entered instead of scaled. The difficulty of making one's way through life amidst the ruins of old beliefs and the fanciful overgrowth in which time has clothed them; the equal danger of destroying too much and clearing away too little; also find their place in the allegory.

The possible friend and adviser, to whom Miranda is referred at vol. xii. p. 122, was M. Joseph Milsand, who always at that time passed the bathing season at St. Aubin.[80]

"THE INN ALBUM" is a tragedy in eight parts or scenes: the dialogue interspersed with description; and carried on by four persons not named. It is chiefly enacted in the parlour of a country inn; and the Inn "Album," in spite of its grotesque or prosaic character, becomes an important instrument in it.

Four years before the tragedy occurred--so we learn from the dialogue--a gentlemanly adventurer of uncertain age had won and abused the affections of a motherless girl, whom he thought too simple to resent the treachery. He was mistaken in this; for her nature was as proud as it was confiding; and her indignation when she learned that he had not intended marriage was such as to surprise him into offering it. She rejected the offer with contempt. He went his way, mortified and embittered. A month later she had buried herself in a secluded and squalid village, as wife of the old, poor, overworked, and hopelessly narrow-minded clergyman, whose cure it was. She abstained, however, for his own sake, from making any painful disclosures to her husband; and the daily and hourly expiation brought no peace with it; for she remained in her deceiver's power.

Three years went by. The elderly adventurer then fell in with a young, wealthy, and inexperienced man, who had loved the same woman, and whose honourable addresses had been declined for his sake; and he acquired over this youth an influence almost as strong as that which he had exercised over the young girl. He found him grieving over his disappointment, and undertook to teach him how to forget it; became his master in the art of dissipation; helped to empty his pockets while he filled his own; and finally induced him to form a mercenary engagement to a cousin whom he did not love. When the story opens, the young man has come to visit his bride-elect in her country home; and his Mephistopheles has followed him, under a transparent pretext, to secure a last chance of winning money from him at cards. The presence of the latter is to be a secret, because he is too ill-famed a personage to be admitted into the lady's house; so they have arrived on the eve of the appointed day, and put up at a village inn on the outskirts of the cousin's estate. There they have spent the night in play. There also the luck has turned; and the usual winner has lost ten thousand pounds. His friend insists on cancelling the debt. He affects to scout the idea. "The money shall, by some means or other, be paid."

The discussion is renewed with the same result, as they loiter near the station, at which the younger will presently make a feint of arriving; and for the first time he asks the elder why, with such abilities as his, he has made no mark in life. The latter replies that he found and lost his opportunity four years ago, in a woman, who, he feels more and more, would have quickened his energies to better ends. He then, with tolerable frankness, relates his story. The younger follows with his own. But, for a reason which explains itself at the time, the connection between the two escapes them.

The woman herself next appears on the scene, and with her, the girl cousin. They are friends of old; and the married one has emerged from her seclusion at the entreaty of the betrothed, to pass judgment on her intended husband. The young girl is not satisfied with her own feeling towards him whom she has promised to marry; though she has no misgiving as to his sentiments towards her. She is to bring him for inspection to the inn. And the friend, entering its parlour alone, is confronted by her former lover, who has temporarily returned there.

A stormy dialogue ensues. She denounces him as the destroyer, ever lying in wait for her soul. He taunts her with the malignant hatred with which for years past from the height of her own prosperity she has been weighing down his. She retorts in a powerful description of the love with which he once inspired her, of the living death in which she has been expiating her mistake. And as he listens, the old feeling in him revives, and he kneels to her, imploring that she will break her bonds, and secure their joint happiness by flying with him. She sees nothing, however, in this, but a second attempt to ensnare her; and is repulsing the entreaty with the scorn which she believes it to deserve, when the younger man bursts merrily into the room. A wave of angry pain passes over him as he recognizes the heroine of his own romance, and hastily infers from the circumstances in which he finds her, that he has been the victim of a double deception. The truth gradually shapes itself in his mind; but meanwhile the older man has grasped the situation, and determined to make capital of it--to avenge his rebuff and to rid himself of his debt at the same time. He begs the lady to leave the room for a few moments, handing her, for her entertainment, the inn "album," over which he and his friend were exchanging jokes a few hours ago; and in which he has, at this moment, inscribed some lines. The purport of these is that this young man loves her; and that unless she responds to his advances, the secret of her past life shall be revealed to her husband.

Alone with the younger man, he exhausts himself in coarse libels against the woman, of whom that morning only he was speaking, as the lost opportunity of his life; bids him ask of her what he desires, and have it; and calls on him to admit, that in preserving him from marrying her, and placing her nevertheless at his disposal, he will have earned his gratitude, and paid the value of the ten thousand pounds.

When the woman returns, the album in her hand, the calm of death is upon her. She has lived prepared for this emergency, provided also with the means of escaping from it. But she will not die without entreating her young admirer to shake off, before it is too late, the evil influence to which both, though in different ways, have succumbed; and her dignity, her kindness, the instinctive reverence, and now chivalrous pity, with which she has inspired him carry all before them. He renews his declaration; implores her to accept him as her husband, if she is free--her friend if she is not; her husband even if the relation she is living in be something less than marriage; to exact any delay, to impose any probation, so that in the end she accepts him.

She replies by putting her hand into his, _to remain there_, as she says, _till death shall part them_. The older man, who has just re-entered the room, congratulates them on having arrived at so sensible an understanding. The woman, now very pale, contrives to point to the fatal entry in the album which she still grasps; and asks her friend--after quoting the writer's words--how, but in her own way, the mouth of such a one could have been stopped.

"So," exclaims the youth. And he flies at the man's throat, and strangles him.

She has only time to thank her deliverer; to tell him why his devotion is unavailing--to provide for his safety by writing in the album from which he has torn the fatal page, that he has slain a man who would have outraged her: and that her last breath is spent in blessing him.

A merry voice is heard; and the young, light-hearted girl comes all unconscious to the scene of the tragedy. The curtain falls before she has entered upon it.

The betrayal of the lady, the transaction of which she becomes the subject, and her consequent suicide, are taken from an episode in English high life, which occurred in the present century.

"THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC" is an extract from the history of two writers of verse, whose respective works obtained from circumstances a brilliant but short-lived renown. It forms part of a reminiscence, supposed to be conjured up by a wood fire near which the narrator, with his wife, is sitting. The fire, as he describes it, is made of ship-wood: for it burns in all the beautiful colours which denote the presence of metallic substances and salts; and as his fancy reconstructs the ship, it also raises the vision of a distant coast well known to his companion and to himself. He sees Le Croisic--the little town it is--the poor village it was[81]--with its storm-tossed sea--its sandy strip of land, good only for the production of salt--its solitary Menhir, which recalls, and in some degree perpetuates, the wild life and the barbarous Druid worship of old Breton times.[82] And in the bright-hued flames, which leap up and vanish before his bodily eyes, he sees also the two ephemeral reputations which flashed forth and expired there.

René Gentilhomme, born 1610, was a rhymer, as his father had been before him. He became page to the Prince of Condé, and occupied his spare time by writing complimentary verse. One day, as he was hammering at an ode, a violent storm broke out; and the lightning shattered a ducal crown in marble which stood on a pedestal in the room in which he sat. Condé was regarded as future King of France: for Louis XIII. was childless, and his brother Gaston believed to be so; in consideration of this fact, men called him "Duke." René took the incident as an omen, and turned his ode into a prophecy which he delivered to his master as the utterance of God. "The Prince's hopes were at an end: a Dauphin would be born in the ensuing year." A Dauphin was born; and René, who had at first been terrified at his own boldness, received the title of Royal Poet, and the honours due to a seer. But he wrote little or no more; and he and the tiny volume which composed his works soon disappeared from sight.