the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy
from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a
connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier
rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that
nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless
art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even
now that she is dead, he does not know that it was he who killed
her--nor, if he did, could feel remorse. For it is not possible that
_he_ could have been wrong. This Duchess--it would have been idle to
"make his will clear" to such an one; the imposition, not the
exposition, of that will was all that he could show to her (or any other
lesser being) without stooping--"and I choose never to stoop." Her error
had been precisely the "depth and passion of that earnest glance" which
Fra Pandolf had so wonderfully caught. Does the envoy suppose that it
was only her husband's presence which called that "spot of joy" into her
cheek? It had _not_ been so. The mere painting-man, the mere Fra
Pandolf, may have paid her some tribute of the artist--may have said,
for instance, that her mantle hid too much of her wrist, or that the
"faint half-flush that died along her throat" was beyond the power of
paint to reproduce.

". . . Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy."

As the envoy still seems strangely unenlightened, the Duke is forced to
the "stooping" implied in a more explicit statement:

". . . She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere."

Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and
accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly
conveyed:

"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the west,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. . . ."

+ + + + +

We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to
the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quiv