th Valence, his rough home-truths with the parasitical courtiers, and
his frank confidence with Melchior, are admirably discriminated.
Melchior himself, little as he speaks, is a fine sketch of the
contemplative, bookish man who finds no more congenial companion and
study than a successful man of action. His attitude of detachment, a
mere spectator in the background, is well in keeping with the calm and
thoughtful character of the play. Valence, the true hero of the piece,
the "pale fiery man" who can speak with so moving an eloquence, whether
he is pleading the wrongs of his townsmen or of Colombe, the rights of
Berthold or of himself, is no less masterly a portrait than the Prince,
though perhaps less wholly unconventional a character. His grave
earnestness, his honour as a man and passion as a lover, move our
instinctive sympathy, and he never forfeits it. Were it for nothing
else, he would deserve remembrance from the fact that he is one of the
speakers in that most delightful of love-duets, the incomparable scene
at the close of the fourth act. "I remember well to have seen," wrote
Moncure D. Conway in 1854, "a vast miscellaneous crowd in an American
theatre hanging with breathless attention upon every word of this
interview, down to the splendid climax when, in obedience to the
Duchess's direction to Valence how he should reveal his love to the lady
she so little suspects herself to be herself, he kneels--every heart
evidently feeling each word as an electric touch, and all giving vent at
last to their emotion in round after round of hearty applause."

All the minor characters are good and life-like, particularly Guibert,
the shrewd, hesitating, talkative, cynical, really good-hearted old
courtier, whom not even a court had deprived of a heart, though the
dangerous influence of the conscienceless Gaucelme, his fellow, has in
its time played sad pranks with it. He is one of the best of Browning's
minor characters.

The performance, in 1885, of _Colombe's Birthday_, under the direction
of the Browning Society, has brought to light unsuspected acting
qualities in what is certainly not the most "dramatic" of Browning's
plays. "_Colombe's Birthday_," it was said on the occasion, "is charming
on the boards, clearer, more direct in action, more full of delicate
surprises than one imagines it in print. With a very little cutting it
could be made an excellent acting play."[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: A. Mary F. Robi