es mark turning points in Sordello's development;
but thrice she appears in full colour and set in striking
circumstances--first, in the secret room of the palace at Verona with
Sordello when she expounds her policy, and afterwards leans with him
amid a gush of torch-fire over the balcony, whence the grey-haired
councillors spoke to the people surging in the square and shouting for
the battle. The second time is in the streets of Ferrara, full of
camping men and fires; and the third is when she waits with Taurello in
the vaulted room below the chamber where Sordello has been left to
decide what side he shall take, for the Emperor or the Pope. He dies
while they wait, but there is no finer passage in the poem than this of
Palma and Taurello talking in the dim corridor of the new world they
would make for North Italy with Sordello. It is not dramatic
characterisation, but magnificent individualisation of the woman and the
man.

We see Palma first as a girl at Goito, where she fills Sordello with
dreams, and Browning gives her the beauty of the Venetians Titian
painted.

How the tresses curled
Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound
About her like a glory! even the ground
Was bright as with spilt sunbeams:

Full consciousness of her beauty is with her, frank triumph in it; but
she is still a child. At the Court of Love she is a woman, not only
conscious of her loveliness, but able to use it to bind and loose,
having sensuous witchery and intellectual power, that terrible
combination. She lays her magic on Sordello.

But she is not only the woman of personal magic and beauty. Being of
high rank and mixed with great events, she naturally becomes the
political woman, a common type in the thirteenth century. And Browning
gives her the mental power to mould and direct affairs. She uses her
personal charm to lure Sordello into politics.

Her wise
And lulling words are yet about the room,
Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom
Down even to her vesture's creeping stir.
And so reclines he, saturate with her.

* * *

But when she felt she held her friend indeed
Safe, she threw back her curls, began implant
Her lessons;

Her long discourse on the state of parties, and how Sordello may, in
mastering them, complete his being, fascinates him and us by the charm
of her intelligence.

But the political woman has often left lo