He imagines her to have reproached him for his divided allegiance; and asserts, in answer, that he has been subject to her all his life.  “He could not part with his soul’s treasure.  But he has, for her sake, lavished his earthly goods, burned away his flesh.  If his sacrifice has been incomplete, it was because another power, mysterious and unnamed, but yet as absolute as she, had cast its spells about him.  He would have resisted the Enchantress, if she, the Despot, had made a sign.  But what token has he ever received, of her acceptance, her approbation?  She exacts from her servants the surrender of both body and soul; the least deficiency in the offering neutralizes its sum.  And what does she give in exchange for body and soul?  Promises?  Is a man to starve while the life-apple is withheld from him, if even husks are within his reach?  Miracles?  Will she make a finger grow on his maimed hand?  Would he not be called a madman if he expected it?”

And yet he believes.  He summons her to justify his belief.  He claims of her a genuine miracle—­a miracle of power, which will silence scepticism, and re-establish the royalty of the Church—­a miracle of mercy, which will wipe away the past; reconcile duty and love; give Clara into his hands as his pure and lawful wife.  “She is to carry him through the air to the space before her church as she was herself conveyed there....”  Then come the leap and the catastrophe.

He had by a second will bequeathed all his possessions to the Church, reserving in them a life-interest for his virtual wife; and when the cousinry swooped down on what they thought their prey, Madame Mulhausen could receive them and their condolences with the indignant scorn which their greed and cruelty deserved.  They disputed the will on the alleged plea of the testator’s insanity.  The trial was interrupted by the events of 1870, but finally settled in the lady’s favour; the verdict being uncompromising as to her moral, as well as legal claim to the inheritance.

Mr. Browning had lately stood outside the grounds of Clairvaux, and seen its lady pass.  She was insignificant in face and expression; and he was reduced to accounting for the power she had exercised, by that very fact.  She seemed a blank surface, on which a man could inscribe, or fancy he was inscribing, himself; and it is a matter of fact that, whether from strength of will, or from the absence of it, she presented such a surface to her lover’s hand.  She humoured his every inclination, complied with his every wish.  And because she did no more than this, and also no less, Mr. Browning pronounces her far from the best of women, but by no means one of the worst.  The two had, after all, up to a certain point, redeemed each other.