Clive is supposed to relate this experience, a week before his self-inflicted death, to a friend who is dining with him; and who, struck by his depressed mental state, strives to arouse him from it by the question:  which of his past achievements constitutes, in his own judgment, the greatest proof of courage.  He gives the moment in which the pistol was levelled at his head, as that in which he felt, not most courage, but most fear.  But, as he explains to his astonished listener, it was not the almost certainty of death, which, for one awful minute, made a coward of him; it was the bare possibility of a reprieve, which would have left no appeal from its dishonour.  His opponent refused to fire.  He might have done so with words like these: 

     “Keep your life, calumniator!—­worthless life I freely spare: 
     Mine you freely would have taken—­murdered me and my good fame
     Both at once—­and all the better!  Go, and thank your own bad aim
     Which permits me to forgive you!...” (vol. xv. p. 105.)

What course would have remained to him but to seize the pistol, and himself send the bullet into his brain?  This tremendous mental situation is, we need hardly say, Mr. Browning’s addition to the episode.

The poem contains also some striking reflections on the risks and responsibilities of power; and concludes with an expression of reverent pity for the “great unhappy hero” for whom they proved too great.

“MULEYKEH” is an old Arabian story.  The name which heads it is that of a swift, beautiful mare, who was Hoseyn—­her owner’s, “Pearl.”  He loved her so dearly, that, though a very poor man, no price would tempt him to sell her; and in his fear of her being stolen, he slept always with her head-stall thrice wound round his wrist:  and Buheyseh, her sister, saddled for instantaneous pursuit.  One night she was stolen; and Duhl, the thief, galloped away on her and felt himself secure:  for the Pearl’s speed was such that even her sister had never overtaken her.  She chafed, however, under the strange rider, and slackened her pace.  Buheyseh, bearing Hoseyn, gained fast upon them; the two mares were already “neck by croup.”  Then the thought of his darling’s humiliation flashed on Hoseyn’s mind.  He shouted angrily to Duhl in what manner he ought to urge her.  And the Pearl, obeying her master’s voice, no less than the familiar signal prescribed by him, bounded forward, and was lost to him forever.  Hoseyn returned home, weeping sorely, and the neighbours told him he had been a fool.  Why not have kept silence and got his treasure back?

“‘And—­beaten in speed!’ wept Hoseyn:  ’You never have loved
my Pearl.’”
(vol. xv. p. 116.)

The man who gives his name to “PIETRO OF ABANO” was the greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[106] He was also an astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr. Browning relates.  But the special story he tells of him has been told of others also.