"Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry."

And then that other sort, "their crowning pride, with long white threads
distinct inside."

These are the things they bring, when you see them trooping to the
castle from the valley. So they trooped this morning; and when they
reached the fosse, all stopped but one:

"The oldest Gipsy then above ground."

This witch had been coming to the castle for years; the huntsman knew
her well. Every autumn she would swear must prove her last visit--yet
here she was again, with "her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes, of no
use now but to gather brine."

She sidled up to the Duke and touched his bridle, so that the horse
reared; then produced her presents, and awaited the annual
acknowledgment. But the Duke, still sulky, would scarcely speak to her;
in vain she fingered her fur-pouch. At last she said in her "level
whine," that as well as to bring the presents, she had come to pay her
duty to "the new Duchess, the youthful beauty." As she said that, an
idea came to the Duke, and the smirk returned to his sulky face.
Supposing he set _this_ old woman to teach her, as the other had failed?
What could show forth better the flower-like and delicate life his
fortunate Duchess led, than the loathsome squalor of this sordid crone?
He turned and beckoned the huntsman out of the throng, and, as he was
approaching, bent and spoke mysteriously into the Gipsy's ear. The
huntsman divined that he was telling of the frowardness and ingratitude
of the "new Duchess." And the Gipsy listened submissively. Her mouth
tightened, her brow brightened--it was as if she were promising to give
the lady a thorough frightening. The Duke just showed her a purse--and
then bade the huntsman take her to the "lady left alone in her bower,"
that she might wile away an hour for her:

"Whose mind and body craved exertion,
And yet shrank from all better diversion."

And then the Duke rode off.

+ + + + +

Now begins "the tenebrific passage of the tale." Or rather, now begins
what we can make into such a passage if we will, but need not. We can
read a thousand transcendental meanings into what now happens, or we can
simply accept and understand it--leaving the rest to the
"Browningites," of whom Browning declared that _he_ wa