“You think I should have promptlier disowned
      This deed with its strange unforeseen success,
      In favour of Luitolfo.  But the peril,
      So far from ended, hardly seems begun. 
      To-morrow, rather, when a calm succeeds,
      We easily shall make him full amends: 
      And meantime—­if we save them as they pray,
      And justify the deed by its effects?
        Eu. You would, for worlds, you had denied at once.
        Ch. I know my own intention, be assured! 
      All’s well.  Precede us, fellow-citizens!”

Thus ends act first, “being what was called the poetry of Chiappino’s life;” and act second, “its prose,” opens after a supposed interval of a month.

The second act exhibits, in very humorous prose, the gradual and inevitable deterioration which the silence and the deception have brought about.  Drawn on and on, upon his own lines of thought and conduct, by Ogniben, the Pope’s legate, who has come to put down the revolt by diplomatic measures, Chiappino denies his political principles, finding a democratic rule not at all so necessary when the provostship may perhaps fall to himself; denies his love, for his views of love are, he finds, widened; and finally, denies his friend, to the extent of arguing that the very blow which, as struck by Luitolfo, has been the factor of his fortune, was practically, because logically, his own.  Ogniben now agrees to invest him with the Provost’s office, making at the same time the stipulation that the actual assailant of the Provost shall suffer the proper penalty.  Hereupon Luitolfo comes forward and avows the deed.  Ogniben orders him to his house; Chiappino “goes aside for a time;” “and now,” concludes the legate, addressing the people, “give thanks to God, the keys of the Provost’s palace to me, and yourselves to profitable meditation at home.”

Besides Chiappino, there are three other characters, who serve to set off the main figure.  Eulalia is an observer, Luitolfo a foil, Ogniben a touchstone.  Eulalia and Luitolfo, though sufficiently worked out for their several purposes, are only sketches, the latter perhaps more distinctly outlined than the former, and serving admirably as a contrast to Chiappino.  But Ogniben, who does so much of the talking in the second act, is a really memorable figure.  His portrait is painted with more prominent effect, for his part in the play is to draw Chiappino out, and to confound him with his own weapons:  “I help men,” as he says, “to carry out their own principles; if they please to say two and two make five, I assent, so they will but go on and say, four and four make ten.”  His shrewd Socratic prose is delightfully wise and witty.  This prose, the only dramatic prose written by Browning, with the exception of that in Pippa Passes, is, in its way, almost as good as the poetry:  keen, vivacious, full-thoughted, picturesque, and singularly original.  For instance, Chiappino is expressing his longing for a woman who could understand, as he says, the whole of him, to whom he could reveal alike his strength and weakness.