The Duke is showing, with the weak pride of the mere virtuoso,
a portrait of his last Duchess, to some one who has been sent
to negotiate another marriage. We see that he is having
an entertainment or reception of some kind in his palace,
and that he has withdrawn from the company with the envoy
to the picture-gallery on an upper floor. He has pulled aside
the curtain from before the portrait, and in remarking on
the expression which the artist, Fra Pandolf,
has given to the face, he is made to reveal a fiendish jealousy
on his part, occasioned by the sweetness and joyousness of
his late Duchess, who, he thought, should show interest in nothing
but his own fossilized self. "She had," he says, "a heart --
how shall I say? -- too soon made glad, too easily impressed;
she liked whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, the dropping of
the daylight in the West, the bough of cherries some officious fool
broke in the orchard for her, the white mule she rode with
round the terrace -- all and each would draw from her alike
the approving speech, or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good!
but thanked somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked my gift
of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody's gift."

Her fresh interest in things, and the sweet smile she had for all,
due to a generous soul-life, proved fatal to the lovely Duchess:
"Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, whene'er I passed her; but who passed
without much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
then all smiles stopped together."

He succeeded, and he seems to be proud of it, in shutting off