Nothing else; he only wants to be admired after his death, to have people say, looking at his statue, "What a splendid looking man he must have been, how the women must have loved him!" And they both died, and were buried in the church near where they lived; and the English poet Browning went to that church, and heard the story, and thought about it, and gives us the moral of it. It is a startling moral and needs explanation. I think you will be shocked when you first hear it, but you will not be shocked if you think about it. The following verses are the poet's own reflections: So! While these wait the trump of doom, How do their spirits pass, I wonder, Nights and days in the narrow room? Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder What a gift life was, ages ago, Six steps out of the chapel yonder. Only they see not God, I know, Nor all that chivalry of his, The soldier-saints who, row on row, Burn upward each to his point of bliss-- He condemns them. Why? Because they did not do anything. Anything? You do not mean to say that they ought to have committed adultery? I hear you reproach--"But delay was best, For their end was a crime,"--Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test, As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! Must a game be played for the sake of pelf? . . . . . . . . The true has no value beyond the sham: As well the counter as coin, I submit, When your table's a hat, and your prize, a dram. Stake your counter as boldly every whit, Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do your best, whether winning or losing it, If you choose to play!--is my principle. Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. In order to understand the full force of this strange ethical philosophy, you must remember that the word "counter" is here a gambling term; it is used for the round buttons or disks of bone or ivory, not in themselves money, but representing money to be eventually received or paid. Remembering this, we can simplify Browning; this is what he says: