Loe raamatut: «The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning», lehekülg 17
[The Poem.] Part of the satire of the poem is in the fictitious extract from the Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary, 1600, prefixed to it. The Bishop looks upon the matter as though he were compelling the Jews to come in and partake of the gospel feast; he flatters himself that many conversions have taken place in consequence of the enforcement of this law, and that the Church was conferring a great blessing on the Jews by permitting them to partake of the heavenly grace. What the Jews themselves thought of the business is told in the poem. The speaker describes the crowding of the church by the Israelites, packed like rats in a hamper or pigs in a stye; to the life the poet hits off the behaviour of the wretched audience, compelled to listen to that which they abhorred, and to pretend to be converted, and to affect compunction and interest in doctrines which they detested. Then the most serious part of the poem begins: the speaker complains that the hand which gutted his purse would throttle his creed, and for reward the men whom he has helped to their sins would help him to their God; then the pathos deepens, and while the pretended converts are going through the farce of acknowledging their conversion in the sacristy, the speaker meditates on Rabbi Ben Ezra’s Song of Death. The night the Jewish saint died he called his family round him and said their nation in one point only had sinned, and he invokes Christ if indeed He really were the Messiah, and they had given Him the cross when they should have bestowed the crown, to have pity on them and protect them from the followers of His teaching, whose life laughs through and spits at their creed. Perhaps, indeed, they withstood Christ then: it is at least Barabbas they withstand now! Let Rome make amends for Calvary. Let Him remember their age-long torture, the infamy, the Ghetto, the garb, the badge, the branding tool and scourge, and this summons to conversion; by withstanding this they are but trying to wrest Christ’s name from the devil’s crew.
Home, D. D.: the Spiritualist medium. See Mr. Sludge the Medium.
Home Thoughts from Abroad. (Published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, VII., 1845.) In praise of all the mighty ravishment of our English spring, and the lovely sister months April and May, —
“May flowers bloom before May comes,
To cheer, a little, April’s sadness.”
And nowhere, surely, are these months so delightful as in England! Melon-flowers do not make up “for the buttercups, the little children’s dower.” In many parts of Southern Europe the trees have all been ruthlessly cut down, lest they should harbour birds. The absence of our hedgerows does much to mar the beauty of a Continental landscape in spring.
Home Thoughts from the Sea. (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, VII., 1845.) Patriotic reflections on passing the Bay of Trafalgar by one who, remembering how here England helped the Englishmen, asks himself “How can I help England?”
House. (Pacchiarotto, with other Poems: 1876.) If we accept Shakespeare’s Sonnets in their natural sense, as the best authorities say we must, they open up to the public gaze passages in the life of the great poet which those who love an ideal Shakespeare would rather have not known. If, says Mr. Browning in the poem, Shakespeare unlocked his heart with a sonnet-key, the less Shakespeare he! For his own part, he will do nothing of the sort; and, though probably few men led purer and holier lives from youth to manhood than Mr. Browning, he declines to admit the vulgar gaze of the public into the secret chambers of his soul. In earthquakes, indeed, the fronts of houses often fall, and expose the private arrangements of the home to the impertinent observation of the passer-by. In earthquakes this cannot be helped; but a writer may keep his secrets to himself till an imprudent biographer gets hold of them to make “copy” of. As a fact, all that the world is really concerned with in Mr. Browning’s life and opinions can be gathered “by the spirit-sense” from his works. The main idea of the poem is very similar to that of At the Mermaid.
Householder, The. (Fifine at the Fair.) The Epilogue to the poem, telling how Don Juan is at last united to his wife Elvire by death.
How it strikes a Contemporary. (Men and Women: 1855.) The faculty of observation is essential both to the poet and the spy. Lavater said that “he alone is an acute observer who can observe minutely without being observed.” The poet of Valladolid was mistaken by the vulgar mob for an agent of the Government, because they were always catching him taking “such cognisance of men and things.” His picture is sketched in a very few lines; but these are sufficient to show us the very man, in his scrutinising hat, crossing the Plaza Mayor of the dull and deserted city, in which there was – one would think – as little life to interest a poet as to employ a spy. We soon get to feel that the poet-evidences in the man’s behaviour should have been sufficiently strong to save him from the reproaches of his neighbours. The dog at his heels, the note he took of any cruelty towards animals or cursing of a woman, the interest in men’s simple trades, the poring over bookstalls, reveal to us the image of his soul. However, his fellow-citizens in all these things thought they had evidence of a chief inquisitor; and in the land of Spain, which for many centuries cowered under the shadow of the most terrible weapon ever forged against the liberties of man, inquisition and espionage were in the air. Men were better judges of spies than of poets; they were more familiar with them. So it was set down in their minds that all their doings were sent by this recording prowler to the king. All the mysteries of the town were traced to his influence: A’s surprising fate, B’s disappearing, C’s mistress, all were traced to this “man about the streets.” But it was not true, says the contemporary, that if you tracked the inquisitor home you would find him revelling in luxury. On the contrary, his habits were simple and abstemious; at ten he went to bed, after a modest repast and a quiet game of cribbage with his maid. And when the poor, mysterious man came to die in the clean garret, whose sides were lined by an invisible guard who came to relieve him, there was no more need for that old coat which had seen so much service. How suddenly the angels change the fashion of our dress – and how much better they understand us than do our neighbours!
How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, 1845.) There is no actual basis in history for the incidents of this poem, though there is no doubt that in the war in the Netherlands such an adventure was likely enough. Three men go off on horseback at their hardest, at moonset, from the city of Ghent, to save their town – through Boom, and Düffeld, Mecheln, Aerschot, Hasselt, Looz, Tongres, and Dalhem, to the ancient city of Aix. The hero of the work was the good horse Roland, who was voted the last measure of wine the city had left. Two of the horses dropped dead on the road, and the noble Roland, bearing “the whole weight of the news,” with blind, distended eyes and nostrils, fell just as he reached the market-place of Aix, resting his head between the knees of his master.
Humility. (Asolando, 1889.) A flower-laden girl drops a careless bud without troubling to pick it up. She has “enough for home.” “So give your lover,” says the poet, “heaps of love,” he thinking himself happy in picking up a stray bud, “and not the worst,” which she has gladdened him by letting fall.
“I am a Painter who cannot Paint.” (Pippa Passes.) Lutwyche’s speech begins with these words.
“I go to prove my Soul.” (Paracelsus.) The words of the hero of the poem when he starts on his career.
Ibn-Ezra == the historical person who forms the subject of the poem Rabbi Ben Ezra (q. v.)
Imperante Augusto Natus Est. (Asolando, 1889.) In the reign of Augustus Octavianus Cæsar, second emperor of Rome, two Romans are entering the public bath together, and while the bath is being heated they converse in the vestibule about the great services which Octavianus has rendered to the city and the empire, and one of them refers to the panegyric on the Emperor read out in public on the previous day by Lucius Varius Rufus. He had praised the Emperor as a god, and the speaker goes on to say how he once met Octavianus as he was going about the city disguised as a beggar. At the end of the poem is the story told by Suidas, the author of a Greek lexicon, who lived before the twelfth century, and who was probably a Christian, as his work deals with Scriptural as well as pagan subjects. This myth narrates the visit of Augustus Cæsar to the oracle at Delphos. “When Augustus had sacrificed,” said Suidas, “he demanded of the Pythia who should succeed him, and the oracle replied: —
“‘A Hebrew slave, holding control over the blessed gods,
Orders me to leave this home and return to the underworld.
Depart in silence, therefore, from our altars.’”
Nicephorus relates that when Augustus returned to Rome after receiving this reply, he erected an altar in the Capitol with the inscription “Ara Primogeniti Dei.” On this spot now stands the Church of S. Maria in Aracœli, a very ancient building, mentioned in the ninth century as S. Maria de Capitolio. The present altar also incloses an ancient altar bearing the inscription Ara Primogeniti Dei, which is said to have been the one erected here by Augustus. According to the legend of the twelfth century, this was the spot where the Sibyl of Tibur appeared to the Emperor, whom the Senate proposed to elevate to the rank of a god, and revealed to him a vision of the Virgin and her Son. This was the origin of the name “Church of the Altar of Heaven.” It is historical that Augustus used to go about Rome disguised as a beggar. Jeremy Taylor’s account of events in the Roman world, as recorded in his Life of Christ, sec. iv., will serve as a good introduction to the historical matters referred to in the poem: – “For when all the world did expect that in Judæa should be born their prince, and that the incredulous world had in their observation slipped by their true prince, because He came not in pompous and secular illustrations; upon that very stock Vespasian (Sueton. In Vitâ Vesp. 4; Vide etiam Cic., De Divin.) was nursed up in hope of the Roman empire, and that hope made him great in designs; and they being prosperous, made his fortunes correspond to his hopes, and he was endeared and engaged upon that future by the prophecy which was never intended him by the prophet. But the future of the Roman monarchy was not great enough for this prince designed by the old prophets. And therefore it was not without the influence of a Divinity that his predecessor Augustus, about the time of Christ’s nativity, refused to be called “lord” (Oros. vi. 22). Possibly it was to entertain the people with some hopes of restitution of their liberties, till he had griped the monarchy with a stricter and faster hold; but the Christians were apt to believe that it was upon the prophecy of a sibyl foretelling the birth of a greater prince, to whom all the world should pay adoration; and that prince was about that time born in Judæa. (Suidas In histor. verb. “Augustus.”) The oracle, which was dumb to Augustus’ question, told him unasked, the devil having no tongue permitted him but one to proclaim that ‘an Hebrew child was his lord and enemy.’” Octavianus chose the title of Augustus on religious grounds, having assumed the exalted position of Chief Pontiff. The epithet Augustus was one which no man had borne before – a name only applied to sacred things. The rites of the gods were termed august, their temples were august, and the word itself was derived from the auguries. The cult of the Cæsar began to assume a ritual and a priesthood at the very time when the approaching birth of Christ was to destroy the empire and its religious belief. Mrs. Jameson, in her Legends of the Madonna, p. 197, says: “According to an ancient legend, the Emperor Augustus Cæsar repaired to the sibyl Tiburtina, to inquire whether he should consent to allow himself to be worshipped with divine honours, which the Senate had decreed to him. The Sibyl, after some days of meditation, took the Emperor apart and showed him an altar; and above the altar, in the opening heavens, and in a glory of light, he beheld a beautiful Virgin holding an infant in her arms, and at the same time a voice was heard saying, ‘This is the altar of the Son of the living God!’ whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be erected on the Capitoline Hill with this inscription, Ara Primogeniti Dei; and on the same spot, in later times, was built the church called the Ara Cœli– well known, with its flight of one hundred and twenty-four marble steps, to all who have visited Rome. This particular prophecy of the Tiburtine sybil to Augustus rests on some very antique traditions, pagan as well as Christian. It is supposed to have suggested the ‘Pollio’ of Virgil, which suggested the ‘Messiah’ of Pope. It is mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries. A very rude but curious bas-relief, preserved in the Church of the Ara Cœli, is perhaps the oldest representation extant. The Church legend assigns to it a fabulous antiquity; and it must be older than the twelfth century, as it is alluded to by writers of that period. Here the Emperor Augustus kneels before the Madonna and Child, and at his side is the sibyl Tiburtina pointing upwards.” Of course, such a subject became a favourite one with artists. There is a famous fresco on the subject by Baldassare Peruzzi at Siena, Fonte Giusta. There is also a picture dealing with it at Hampton Court, by Pietro da Cortona. St. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, lib. xviii., cap. 23) describes the prophecy of Sibylla Erythrea concerning Christ: – “Flaccianus, a learned and eloquent man (one that had been Consul’s deputy), being in a conference with us concerning Christ, showed us a Greek book, saying they were this sibyl’s verses; wherein, in one place, he showed us a sort of verses so composed that, the first letter of every verse being taken, they all made these words: ᾽Ιησους Χριστος, Θεου υιος σωτὴρ (Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour).” Some think this was the Cumean Sibyl. Lactantius also has prophecies of Christ out of some sybilline books, but he does not give the reference. The Latin hymn sung in the Masses for the Dead, and well known as the Dies Iræ, has this verse:
“Dies iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.”
Notes. —Publius: not historical. Lucius Varius Rufus was a tragic poet, the friend of Virgil and Horace. He wrote a panegyric on the Emperor Augustus, to which Mr. Browning refers in the opening lines of the poem. Little Flaccus was Horace, who declared that Varius was the only poet capable of singing the praises of M. Agrippa. His tragedy Thyestes is warmly praised by Quintillian. Epos: heroic poem. Etruscan kings. The Rasena or Etrusci inhabited Etruria, in that part of Italy north of Rome. The kings were elected for life. Roman families were proud to trace back their ancestry to the Etruscan kings. Mæcenas: patron of letters and learned men, the adviser of Augustus. He was descended from the ancient kings of Etruria. Quadrans: a Roman coin, worth about half a farthing of our money. The price of a bath, paid to the keeper of the public bagnio. Thermæ, the baths. Suburra: a street in Rome, where the dissolute Romans resorted. Quæstor, the office of Quæstor, under the empire, was the first step to higher positions. Ædiles, magistrates. The baths were under their superintendence. Censores, officials whose duty it was to take the place of the consuls in superintending the five-yearly census. Pol! an oath. By Pollux! Quarter-as: in Cicero’s time, the as was equal to rather less than a halfpenny. Strigil, a flesh brush. Oil-drippers, used after bathing.
In a Balcony. (Published in Men and Women: 1855.) A drama which is incomplete. Concentrated into an hour, we have the crises of three lives, which, passing through the fire, reveal a tragedy which has for its scene the balcony of a palace. A Queen has arrived at the age of fifty with her strong craving for love still unsatisfied. Constance, a cousin of the Queen and a lady of her court, is loved by Norbert, who is in the Queen’s service. He has served the State well and successfully, and the Queen has set her heart upon him. Norbert is advised by Constance to act diplomatically, and pretend that he has served the Queen only for her sake. He must not permit her to see the love which he has for the woman to whom he has pledged himself. The Queen, who is already married in form, though not in heart, offers to dissolve the union, in an interview which she has with Constance, and shows how eagerly she grasps at the prospect of a new life which opens up before her. Constance is prepared to sacrifice herself for Norbert and the Queen. She seeks Norbert, and reveals to him the real state of affairs. The Queen discovers the lovers, and hears Norbert declare his love for Constance, which she tries to divert to the Queen. At once the Queen sees all her hopes dashed to the ground. She says nothing; but having left the balcony, the music of the ball, which is proceeding within, suddenly ceases, the footsteps of the guard approach, the lovers feel their impending doom; but one passionate moment unites them in heart for ever, and they are led away to death.
In a Gondola. (Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, No. III.: 1842.) In the fourth book of Forster’s Life of Dickens is a letter which Dickens wrote to Maclise, from which we learn that Browning wrote the first verse of this poem, beginning, “I send my heart up to thee,” to express Maclise’s subject in the Academy catalogue. Dickens says, in a letter to the artist: “In a certain picture called the ‘Serenade,’ for which Browning wrote that verse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, you, O Mac, painted a sky. If you ever have occasion to paint the Mediterranean, let it be exactly of that colour.” In the poem a lover and his mistress are singing in a gondola – conscious of their danger, for the interview is a stolen one, and the three who are referred to are perhaps husband, father, and brother, or assassins hired by one of them. The chills of approaching death avail not to cool the ardour of their passion in this precious hour in the gondola. They feel they have lived, let death come when it will; and as they glide past church and palace, reality is concentrated in their boat, the shams and illusions of life are on the banks. The lover is stabbed as he hands the lady ashore. He craves one more kiss, and dies. He scorns not his murderers, for they have never lived:
“But I
Have lived indeed, and so – can die!”
Notes. —Castelfranco (born 1478) is Giorgione, one of the greatest Italian painters. His father belonged to the family of the Barbarella, of Castelfranco in the Trevisan. For his Life see Vasari. Schidone was an Italian painter of the sixteenth century. Haste-thee-Luke is the English of Luca-fà-presto (“Luke work-fast”), nickname of Luca Giordano (1632 – 1705), a Neapolitan painter. His nickname was given to him, not on account of his rapid method of working, but in consequence of his poor and greedy father urging him to increased exertions by constantly exclaiming “Luca, fà presto.” The youth obeyed his father, and would actually not leave off work for his meals, but was fed by his father’s hand while he laboured on with the brush. Giudecca: a great canal of Venice. “Lido’s wet, accursed graves.” Byron desired to be buried at Lido. Ancient Jewish tombs are there, moss-grown and half covered with sand. The place is desolate and very gloomy. Lory: a species of parrot.
Inapprehensiveness. (Asolando.) The ruin referred to in the fourth line is that of the old palace of Queen Cornaro, who, having been driven out of her kingdom of Cyprus, kept up a shadow of royalty here, with Cardinal Bembo as her secretary. It was he who told the story, in his Asolani. Mr. Browning thought that there was no view in all Italy to compare with that from the tower of the old palace. Two friends stand side by side contemplating the scene. The lady’s attention is attracted to a chance-rooted wind-sown tree on a turret, and to certain weed-growths on a wall. She is inapprehensive that by her side stands an incarnation of dormant passion, needing nothing but a look from her to burst into immense life. So little does one soul know of another. The Vernon Lee in the last line is a well-known authoress, Violet Paget, best known perhaps by her work entitled Euphorion.
In a Year. (Men and Women, 1855; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) Finely contrasts the constancy of a woman’s love with the inconstancy of man’s. Love is not love unless it be “an ever fixed mark.” In exchange for the man’s love, the woman gave health, ease, beauty, and youth, and was content to give “more life and more” till all were gone, and think the sacrifice too little. That was the woman’s “ever fixed mark.” The man asks calmly: “Can’t we touch these bubbles, then, but they break?”
Incident of the French Camp. (Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, III.: 1842.) Ratisbon (German Regensburg) is an ancient and famous city of Bavaria, on the right bank of the Danube. It has endured no less than seventeen sieges since the tenth century, accompanied by bombardments, the last of which took place in 1809, when Napoleon stormed the town, which was obstinately defended by the Austrians. Some two hundred houses and much of the suburbs were destroyed. As the Emperor was watching the storming, a rider flew from the city full gallop, saluting the Emperor. He told him they had taken the city. The chief’s eye flashed, but presently saddened as he looked on the brave youth who had brought the news. “You are wounded!” “Nay, I’m killed, sire!” and the lad fell dead.
Inn Album, The. (1875.) The chief features of this tragedy, “where every character is either mean, or weak, or vile,” are taken from real life. It is “the story of the wrecked life of a girl who loved her base seducer as a god.” This curious study in mental pathology opens with a description of the visitors’ book of a country inn, filled with the usual idiotic entries which are found in such books. The shabby-genteel parlour of the inn is occupied by two men playing at cards – a young and a middle-aged man. The elder, a cultivated and accomplished roué, has just lost to the younger man ten thousand pounds at play. The loser has hitherto been pretty uniformly the winner; but his companion, who has succeeded in plucking the pigeon, has not deceived him. He has seen through his pretences, and is fully aware that he is accompanied on this trip to the village where the inn in which they are staying is situated, purely for the chance it offered of winning money from him for the last time before his approaching marriage. The polished snob who has won is inclined to be satirical at his companion’s expense, and loftily desires him to consider the debt as cancelled: he is a millionaire, and can afford to do without it. This the elder man, with perfect politeness, declines, and assures him that it shall be paid. They leave the inn. The young man is to visit his intended bride; but he dare not introduce his companion, as his reputation has made it impossible to do so. As they walk towards the station the young man inquires how it is that his friend, with all his advantages in life, is in every way a failure. He then learns that his chances were missed four years ago, when he should have married a woman with whom he had certain relations, and who could have saved him from his aimless and wayward life. He had won the heart of a lofty-minded girl, had seduced her, and, though he had not intended marriage at first, had offered it. When she discovered that he had betrayed her without thinking of marrying her, she rejected his proposal, which had come too late to appease her wounded pride, and had settled down as the wife of an obscure country parson, old and poor. Weakly, she had neglected to secure her safety by telling her husband the story of her past, and in consequence was liable at any moment to be the victim of her seducer for the second time. The scoundrel had led the life of a woman-wrecker, and his love for his victim had turned to hate, as he told his companion, because she had disdained to save him from himself. When the elder man has unburdened himself, then the younger tells his story too. He has loved a peerless woman, who refused him, as she was vowed to another. There are points in his story which suggest to him that they have both loved the same woman, though he says that could not be, as he has heard that she married the man of whom she spoke. The young man now parts from his companion, and bids him return to the inn, there to await him for an hour, while he tries to induce his aunt to receive him as her guest. In the third part of the poem we are introduced to two women – an elder and a younger – who are talking in the parlour of the inn, just left vacant by the departure of the two card-players. The younger is the girl whom the young man of the story is to marry; and she has begged her old friend, the elder woman, to meet her, that she may see the man whom she is to marry. She has come by the train, has been met at the station by her young friend, and they adjourn to the little inn to talk matters over quietly. While the younger woman is absent from the parlour, and the elder is engaged in turning over the leaves of the visitors’ book, she is terror-stricken at seeing her old lover enter the room. The lady is the clergyman’s wife, and the man is the old roué who is waiting for his friend who has won his ten thousand pounds. She believes the whole affair is a scheme to entrap her, and bitterly reproaches the man who has ruined her life, and even now must drag her from her retirement for further persecution. He indulges in recriminations, pretending that it is his life which she has wrecked, and that she is inspired with hatred for him though he has not ceased to love her. She thanks God that she had grace to hurl contempt at the contemptible:
“Rent away
By treason from my rightful pride of place,
I was not destined to the shame below.
A cleft had caught me.”
Revealing to him the bitterness of her position, hanging, as it were, over the brink of a yawning precipice, his old love for her is reawakened, and he kneels to the injured woman. He entreats her to fly with him to
“A certain refuge, solitary home
To hide in.
······
Come with me, love, loved once, loved only, come,
Blend loves there!”
But the woman sees through him, and says:
“Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike
My crowned contempt.”
And while he is kneeling there, in bursts the young man, who has returned to say that his aunt declines to meet him. He is startled to see the lady to whom he had vainly offered his heart four years ago, and rushes to the conclusion that he too has been entrapped for some purpose. The fifth section of the poem opens with a scornful denunciation of the trick which he considers stands confessed in the scene which he beholds. “O you two base ones, male and female! Sir!” he exclaims; “half an hour ago I held your master for my best of friends, and four years since you seemed my heart’s one love!” The woman explains to him that she has been sent for simply to counsel his cousin on the question of her proposed marriage. She finds him innocent save in folly, and will so report. The elder man she bids to leave the youth, and leave unsullied the heart she rescues and would lay beside another’s. While she speaks the devil is tempting him to one more crime. He will turn affairs to his own advantage. He writes some lines in the album before him, closes the book, hands it to the indignant woman, and begs her to leave him alone with his friend while he discusses the situation. In the book which she receives he has written a note to her telling her that her young lover is still faithful to her, and threatening her that if she does not receive him on familiar terms the story of her past shame shall be exposed to her husband. Left alone with the young man, he opens out a scheme of infernal ingenuity, whereby at once he will pay his gambling debt and avenge himself for the contempt and scorn with which his unhappy victim has once more received the offer of his affection. He proposes to barter the woman who has unwittingly put herself into his power – to compel her to yield herself up to the man in exchange for the ten thousand pounds he cannot otherwise pay. He explains to him that she has deluded her parson husband – would have yielded to himself had he not determined to substitute his friend. “Make love to her; pick no phrase; prevent all misconception: there’s the fruit to pluck or let alone at pleasure!” He leaves the room, and in superb composure the intended victim enters. Captive of wickedness, she warns him: “Back, in God’s name!” “Sin no more!” she cries: “I am past sin now.” She implores him to break the fetters which have bound him to the evil influence which has destroyed her life. Her noble bearing under the terrible circumstances assures him of her innocence of any complicity in a trick. He tells her the man has told heaps of lies about her, which he had not believed. Blushing and stumbling in his speech, he contrives to let her know the use that was to be made of her. Not knowing if there were truth in what was told him of her marriage, he offers her his hand if she is free to accept it, – any way, to take him as her friend. She gives him her hand. At that moment the adversary returns. “You accept him?” he asks. “Till death us do part!” she answers. “But before death parts, read here the marriage licence which makes us one.” He then displays the awful words addressed to her in the fatal page she holds in her hand. She reads, and when she comes to the last line —
