extant between the Marquis Albert Malespina and Rambaud de Vaqueiras, two of the most powerful lords and valiant captains at the commencement of the thirteenth century, in which they mutually accuse one another of having robbed on the highway and deceived their allies by false oaths. We must charitably suppose that the perplexities of versification and the heat of their poetical inspiration compelled them to overlook sarcasms which they could never have suffered to pass in plain prose. Many of the ladies who sat in the Courts of Love were able to reply to the verses which they inspired. A few of their compositions only remain, but they have always the advantage over those of the Troubadours. Poetry, at that time, aspired neither to creative energy nor to sublimity of thought, nor to variety. Those powerful conceptions of genius which, at a later period, have given birth to the drama and the epic, were yet unknown; and, in the expression of sentiment, a tenderer and more delicate inspiration naturally endowed the productions of these poetesses with a more lyrical character.” (Sismondi, Lit. Mod. Europe, vol. i., pp. 106-7.)
Cristina (or Christina). Dramatic Lyrics (Bells and Pomegranates No. III.), 1842. – Maria Christina of Naples is the lady of the poem. She was born in 1806, and in 1829 became the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII., King of Spain. She became Regent of Spain on the death of her husband, in 1833. Her daughter was Queen Isabella II. She was the dissolute mother of a still more dissolute daughter. Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, 1884, vol. i., p. 30, have the following reference to the Christina of the poem: “Mr. Hill presented me at Court before I left Naples [in 1829]… The Queen [Maria Isabella, second wife of Francis I., King of the Two Sicilies] and the young and handsome Princess Christina, afterwards Queen of Spain, were present. The latter was said at the time to be the cause of more than one inflammable victim languishing in prison for having too openly admired this royal coquette, whose manners with men foretold her future life after her marriage to old Ferdinand [VII., King of Spain]. When she came up to me in the circle, walking behind her mother, she stopped, and took hold of one of the buttons of my uniform – to see, as she said, the inscription upon it, the Queen indignantly calling to her to come on.” The passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning’s works, is treated as the most sacred thing in the human soul. We are here for the chance of loving and of being loved; nothing on earth is dearer than this; to trifle with love is, in Browning’s eyes, the sin against that Divine Emanation which sanctifies the heart of man. The man or woman who dissipates the capacity for love is the destroyer of his or her own soul; the flirt and the coquette are the losers, – the forsaken one has saved his own soul and gained the other’s as well.
Cristina and Monaldeschi. (Jocoseria, 1883.) – I am indebted to the valuable paper which Mrs. Alexander Ireland contributed to the Browning Society on Feb. 27th, 1891, for the facts relating to the subject of this poem. Queen Cristina of Sweden was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She was born in 1626, and came to the throne on the death of her father, in 1632. She was highly educated and brilliantly accomplished. She was perfectly acquainted with Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. In due time she had batches of royal suitors, but she refused to bind herself by the marriage tie; rather than marry, she decided to abdicate, choosing as her successor her cousin Charles Gustavus. The formal and unusual ceremony of abdication took place in the cathedral of Upsala, in June 1654. Proceeding to Rome, she renounced the Protestant religion, and publicly embraced that of the Catholic Church. The officers of her household were exclusively Italian. Among these was the Marquis Monaldeschi, nominated “Master of the Horse,” described by Cristina in her own memoirs as “a gentleman of most handsome person and fine manners, who from the first moment reigned exclusively over my heart.” Cristina abandoned herself to this man, who proved a traitor and a scoundrel. He took every advantage of his position as favourite, and having reaped honour and riches, Monaldeschi wearied of his royal mistress and sought new attractions. The closing scene of Queen Cristina’s liaison with the Grand Equerry inspired Mr. Browning’s poem. He has chosen the moment when all the treachery of Monaldeschi has revealed itself to the Queen. The scene is at Fontainebleau, whither Cristina has removed from Rome; here the letters came into her hands which broke her life. A Cardinal Azzolino had obtained possession of a wretched and dangerous correspondence. The packet included the Queen’s own letters to her lover – letters written in the fulness of perfect trust, telling much that the unhappy lady could have told to no other living being. Monaldeschi’s letters to his young Roman beauty made a jest, a mockery of the Queen’s exceeding fondness for him. They were letters of unsparing and wounding ridicule; and, while acting thus, Monaldeschi had steadily adhered to the show of unaltered attachment to the Queen and deep respect for his royal mistress. Cristina’s emotions on seeing the whole hateful, cowardly treachery laid bare were doubtless maddening. She arranged an interview with the Marquis in the picture gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau. She was accompanied by an official of her Court, and had at hand a priest from the neighbouring convent of the Maturins, armed with copies of the letters which were to serve as the death-warrant of the Marquis. They had been placed by Cardinal Azzolino in Cristina’s hands through the medium of her “Major-Domo,” with the knowledge that the Cardinal had already seen their infamous contents. The originals she had on her own person. Added to this, she had in the background her Captain of the Guard, Sentinelli, with two other officers. In the Galerie des Cerfs hung a picture of François I. and Diane de Poictiers. To this picture the Queen now led the Marquis, pointing out the motto on the frame – “Quis separabit?” The Queen reminds her lover how they were vowed to each other. The Marquis had vowed, at a tomb in the park of Fontainebleau, that, as the grave kept a silence over the corpse beneath, so would his love and trust hold fast the secret of Cristina’s love to all eternity. Now the woman’s spirit was wounded to death. She was scorned, her pride outraged; but she was a queen, and the man a subject, and she felt she must assert her dignity at least once more. The Marquis doubtless tottered as he stood. “Kneel,” she says. This was the final scene of the tragedy. Cristina now calls forth the priest and the assassins, having granted herself the bitter pleasure of such personal revenge as was possible for her, poor woman!
“Friends, my four! You, Priest, confess him!
I have judged the culprit there:
my sentence! Care
For no mail such cowards wear!
Done, Priest? Then, absolve and bless him!
Now – you three, stab thick and fast,
Deep and deeper! Dead at last?”
In October 1657 Cristina already felt suspicious of Monaldeschi. Keenly watching his actions, she had found him guilty of a double perfidy, and had led him on to a conversation touching a similar unfaithfulness. “What,” the Queen had said, “does the man deserve who should so have betrayed a woman?” “Instant death,” said Monaldeschi; “’twould be an act of justice.” “It is well,” said she; “I will remember your words.” As to the right of the Queen to execute Monaldeschi, it must be remembered that, by a special clause in the Act of Abdication, she retained absolute and sovereign jurisdiction over her servants of all kinds. The only objection made by the French Court was, that she ought not to have permitted the murder to take place at Fontainebleau. After this crime Cristina was compelled to leave France, and finally retired to Rome, giving herself up to her artistic tastes, science, chemistry and idleness. She died on April 19th, 1689; her epitaph on her tomb in St. Peter’s at Rome was chosen by herself – “Cristina lived sixty-three years.”
Notes. – “Quis separabit?” who shall separate? King Francis– François I. The gallery of this king is the most striking one in the palace. Diane, the gallery of Diana, the goddess. Primatice == Primaticcio, who designed some of the decorations of the Galerie de François I. Salamander sign: the emblem of Francis I., often repeated in the decorations. Florentine Le Roux == Rossi, the Florentine artist. Fontainebleau: its Château Royal is very famous. “Juno strikes Ixion,” who attempted to seduce her. Avon, a village near Fontainebleau.
Croisic. The scene of the Two Poets of Croisic. Le Croisic is a seaport on the southern coast of Brittany, with about 2500 inhabitants, and
