eclares that her
sympathies are all with the Good. But a chance (?) movement on her part
jostles the hand of Solomon; and the ring it bears slips round, so that
the truth-compelling Name is turned outwards instead of in. Then he
confesses that he loves the Wise just so long as he is the object of
their appreciation; she that she loves the Good so long as they bear the
form of young and handsome men.

He acknowledges, with a sigh, that the soul, which will soar in heaven,
must crawl while confined to earth; she owns, with a laugh and a blush,
that she has not travelled thus far to hold mental communion with
him.[110]

"CRISTINA[111] AND MONALDESCHI" gives the closing scene of the life of
Monaldeschi, in what might be Cristina's own words. She is addressing
the man whom she has convicted of betraying her, and at whose murder she
is about to assist; and the monologue reflects the outward circumstance
of this murder, as well as the queen's deliberate cruelty, and her
victim's cowardice. They are in the palace of Fontainebleau. Its
internal decorations record the loves of Diane de Poitiers and the
French king, in their frequent repetition of the crescent and the
salamander,[112] and of the accompanying motto, "Quis separabit;" and
Cristina, with ghastly irony, calls her listener's attention to the
appropriateness of these emblems to their own case. Then she plays with
the idea that his symbol is the changing moon, hers the fire-fed
salamander, dangerous to those only who come too close. Changing the
metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen
to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary
of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her
half-playful words assume a still more sinister import, as she depicts
the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's
giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him. She bids
him cure the dizziness, ward off the danger, by kneeling, even
crouching, at her feet; act the lover, though he no longer is one. And
all the while she is drawing him towards the door of that "Gallery of
the Deer," where the priest who is to confess, the soldiers who are to
slay, are waiting for him.

Cristina's last words are addressed, in vindication of her deed, to the
priest (Lebel), who is aghast at its ferocity. He, she says, has
received the culprit's confession, and would not divulge it for a crown.
T