At once she is a completely realised human creature, uttering herself in such abandonment of all pretence as never fails to compass majesty. Into the soul of this woman in _The Laboratory_, Browning has penetrated till he seems to breathe with her breath. I question if there is another fictive utterance to surpass this one in authenticity. It bears the Great Seal. Not Shakespeare has outdone it in power and concentration. Every word counts, almost every comma--for, like Browning, we too seem to breathe with this woman's panting breath, our hearts to beat with the very pain and rage of hers, and every pause she comes to in her speech is _our_ pause, so intense is the evocation, so unerring the expression of an impulse which, whether or no it be atrophied in our more hesitant and civilised consciousness, is at any rate effectively inhibited. + + + + + She is a Court lady of the _ancien regime_, in the great Brinvilliers poisoning-period, and she is buying from an old alchemist in his laboratory the draught which is to kill her triumphant rival. Small, gorgeous, and intense, she sits in the strange den and watches the old wizard set about his work. She is due to dance at the King's, but there is no hurry: he may take as long as he chooses. . . . Now she must put on a glass mask like his, the old man tells her, for these "faint smokes that curl whitely" are themselves poisonous--and she submits, and with all her intensity at work, ties it on "tightly"; then sits again, to peer through the fumes of the devil's-smithy. But she cannot be silent; even to him--and after all, is such an one as he quite truly a man!--she must pour forth the anguish of her soul. Questions relieve her now and then: "Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?" --but not long can she be merely curious; every minute there breaks out a cry: "He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do . . ." --the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps through lovers in their bliss. They could not forget _me_, she thinks, as all her sister-sufferers think. . . . Yet even in this hell, there is some solace. They must be remembering her, and ". . . they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!--I am here." Yes, here--where the old man works for her: grinding, moistening, and mashing his paste, pounding at his powder. It is better to sit here and watch him than go dance at the King's; and she looks round in her restless, nervous anguish--the dagger in her heart, but this way, _this_ way, to stanch the wound it makes!