We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender creature as though we also were at gaze on Fra Pandolf's picture. . . . I call _this_ piece a wonder, now! Scarce one of the monologues is so packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most "simple"--even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, hers--but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that came to her was transmuted into her own dearness--even his favour at her breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that "favour"--the high proprietary air, the loftily anticipated gratitude: Sir Willoughby Patterne by intelligent anticipation. But then, though the approving speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with his bough of cherries--and speech and blush were given again! Absurder still, the spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . . "Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling?" Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's gift"--even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted" him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made excuse) . . . even so (this must be impressed upon the envoy), it would have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop." Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the next Duchess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued upon that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is sounding in his ear-- ". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together." There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing. There she stands, _looking as if she were alive_. . . . And almost he starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a meaning-- ". . . There she stands As if alive" --the picture is a wonder! Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had just now sounded: "_Then all smiles stopped together_"? She stands there--smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause before Fra Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders. Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily in silence, taken: the next Duchess will be instructed beforehand in the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away: "Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then."