THE DRAMA IN RELATION TO TRUTH 367 
Queen will produce. As she cries, “See the Queen!” Norbert 
notices that the Queen is grasping the balcony. He addresses 
her: “Madam — why grasp you thus the balcony? Have I 
done ill? Have I not spoken truth? How could I other?” 
At the end he says, “I am love and cannot change: love’s self 
is at your feet!” As death is nearing, he reassures Constance, 
“Sweet, never fear what she can do! We are past harm now. 
. . . Men have died trying to find this place, which we have 
found.” 
Here was the mutual recognition of the high abstractions 
of love and truth: indestructible ideals which even death could 
not shatter. 
Many quotations might be made from the dramas of Brown¬ 
ing in illustration of the necessity to be through and through 
a seeker of truth. One more illustration will suffice. The 
scene is after the murder of Henry Mertoun. Mildred asks, — 
“You let him try to give 
The story of our love and ignorance, 
And the brief madness and the long despair — 
You let him plead all this, because your code 
Of honor bids you hear before you strike.” 
And Tresham answers,— 
“No! No! 
Had I but heard him — had I let him speak 
Half the truth — less — had I looked long on him — 
I had desisted! Why, as he lay there, 
The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all 
The story ere he told it: I saw through 
The troubled surface of his crime and yours 
A depth of purity immovable; 
Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest 
Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath; 
I would not glance: my punishment ’s at hand — 
There, Mildred, is the truth!” 
There are probably few things society at large is less will¬ 
ing to do than to hear and accept the truth. Public opinion 
and conventionality more often than not serve as veneering 
to right and direct vision. This state of affairs is taken up by 
