ering, glad, tender
creature as though we also were at gaze on Fra Pandolf's picture. . . .
I call _this_ piece 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 blame
This 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 must be 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 without
Much 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 stands
As 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 sta