Thus, pure at heart and sound of head, a natural, true woman in her childhood, in her girlhood, and when she is tried in the fire—­by nature gay, yet steady in suffering; brave in a hell of fears and shame; clear-sighted in entanglements of villany; resolute in self-rescue; seeing and claiming the right help and directing it rightly; rejoicing in her motherhood and knowing it as her crown of glory, though the child is from her infamous husband; happy in her motherhood for one fortnight; slain like a martyr; loving the true man with immortal love; forgiving all who had injured her, even her murderer; dying in full faith and love of God, though her life had been a crucifixion; Pompilia passes away, and England’s men and women will be always grateful to Browning for her creation.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XV

BALAUSTION

Among the women whom Browning made, Balaustion is the crown.  So vivid is her presentation that she seems with us in our daily life.  And she also fills the historical imagination.

One would easily fall in love with her, like those sensitive princes in the Arabian Nights, who, hearing only of the charms of a princess, set forth to find her over the world.  Of all Browning’s women, she is the most luminous, the most at unity with herself.  She has the Greek gladness and life, the Greek intelligence and passion, and the Greek harmony.  All that was common, prattling, coarse, sensual and spluttering in the Greek, (and we know from Aristophanes how strong these lower elements were in the Athenian people), never shows a trace of its influence in Balaustion.  Made of the finest clay, exquisite and delicate in grain, she is yet strong, when the days of trouble come, to meet them nobly and to change their sorrows into spiritual powers.

And the mise-en-scene in which she is placed exalts her into a heroine, and adds to her the light, colour and humanity of Greek romance.  Born at Rhodes, but of an Athenian mother, she is fourteen when the news arrives that the Athenian fleet under Nikias, sent to subdue Syracuse, has been destroyed, and the captive Athenians driven to labour in the quarries.  All Rhodes, then in alliance with Athens, now cries, “Desert Athens, side with Sparta against Athens.”  Balaustion alone resists the traitorous cry.  “What, throw off Athens, be disloyal to the source of art and intelligence—­

                to the life and light
    Of the whole world worth calling world at all!”

And she spoke so well that her kinsfolk and others joined her and took ship for Athens.  Now, a wind drove them off their course, and behind them came a pirate ship, and in front of them loomed the land.  “Is it Crete?” they thought; “Crete, perhaps, and safety.”  But the oars flagged in the hands of the weary men, and the pirate gained.  Then Balaustion, springing to the altar by the mast, white, rosy, and uplifted, sang on high that song of AEschylus which saved at Salamis—­