"Ah, is that true, you loved and still love? Then contempt perishes, and hate takes its place. Write your confession, and die by my hand. Vengeance is foreign to contempt, you have risen to the level at which hate can act. I pardon you, for as I slay hate departs--and now, sir," and he turns to the monk-- She sleeps, as erst Beloved, in this your church: ay, yours! and drives the poisoned dagger through the grate of the confessional into the heart of her lover. This is Browning's closest study of hate, contempt, and revenge. But bitter and close as it is, what is left with us is pity for humanity, pity for the woman, pity for the lover, pity for the husband. Again, in the case of Sebald and Ottima in _Pippa Passes_, pity also rules. Love passing into lust has led to hate, and these two have slaked their hate and murdered Luca, Ottima's husband. They lean out of the window of the shrub-house as the morning breaks. For the moment their false love is supreme. Their crime only creeps like a snake, half asleep, about the bottom of their hearts; they recall their early passion and try to brazen it forth in the face of their murder, which now rises, dreadful and more dreadful, into threatening life in their soul. They reanimate their hate of Luca to lower their remorse, but at every instant his blood stains their speech. At last, while Ottima loves on, Sebald's dark horror turns to hatred of her he loved, till she lures him back into desire of her again. The momentary lust cannot last, but Browning shoots it into prominence that the outburst of horror and repentance may be the greater. I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now! This way? Will you forgive me--be once more My great queen? At that moment Pippa passes by, singing: The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world! Something in it smites Sebald's heart like a hammer of God. He repents, but in the cowardice of repentance curses her. That baseness I do not think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phrases which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual passion of repentance. But his fury with her passes away into the passion of despair-- My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go--whirls from a black fiery sea! lines which must have been suggested to Browning by verses, briefer and more intense, in Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_. Even Ottima, lifted by her love, which purifies itself in wishing to die for her lover, repents. Not me,--to him, O God, be merciful! Thus into this cauldron of sin Browning steals the pity of God. We know they will be saved, so as by fire.