The story might have been a trifle more gripping
(as modern reviewers have it) to have made him fall
in love with the girl, deeply, maddeningly; but in this
case Browning did not break a heart needlessly. It's
much more comfortable to be told that he had no
thought of love. He considered his offer of marriage
to Colombe as the last word in generosity; and when
it was declined, though he was a bit put out about it,
it was only because he was not accustomed to having
any favor of his slighted.
Colombe had almost, at first, recognized Valance as
her soul's mate. His poverty and her own were not
considered. She was romantic; and the girl who is
not, the girl of marriageable age, who does not know
instinctively that

"There's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream,"

is a mistake of Nature. She is the reincarnation of
her own grandmother, with a seventy-year-old brain —
the brain of a worldly-wise woman. So she cannot be
expected to take the same view of the matter as does
Berthold, when he answers the question of Valance :

"I am to say you love her?"



BROWNING CRITIQUES 57

"Love has no great concernment, thinks the
World, with a Duke's marriage.
Say, I have been arrested suddenly
In my ambition's course, its rocky course.
By this sweet flower : I fain would gather it
And then proceed:"

The conversation between Colombe and Valance
when he gives her the Duke's message is most ingenu-
ous. Yet, now quite sure of her humble lover, she must
hear what the royal one has to say for himself. To
her question :

"You love me then?"

he answers :

"Your lineage I revere.
Honor your virtue, in your truth believe.
