And now, as Mr. Browning interprets the situation, his experience had
entered on a new phase. He had tested the equal strength of the earthly
and the heavenly powers, and he knew that he could elude neither, and
that neither could be postponed to the other. He no longer strove to
compromise between these opposing realities, but threw his whole being
into the struggle to unite them. He adhered to his unlawful love. His
acts of piety and charity became grotesque in their excessiveness. (Of
these again particulars are given.) Two years went by; and then, one
April morning, Miranda climbed his Belvedere, and was found, soon after,
dead, on the turf below. There seemed no question of accident. The third
attempt at suicide had succeeded.

On this fact, however, Mr. Browning puts a construction of his own. He
asserts the poet's privilege of seeing into the man's mind; and makes
him think before us in a long and impassioned soliloquy, which sets
forth the hidden motive of his deed. As Mr. Browning conceives him, he
did not mean to kill himself. He did so in a final, irresistible impulse
to manifest his faith, and to test the foundations of it. It has had for
its object, not the spiritual truths of Christianity, but its miraculous
powers; and these powers have of late been symbolized to his mind by the
Virgin of the Ravissante.[79] The conflict of despotisms has thus been
waged between the natural woman and the supernatural: each a monarch in
her way. As he looks from his tower towards the Church of the
Ravissante, he apostrophizes her who is enthroned there.

He imagines her to have reproached him for his divided allegiance; and
asserts, in answer, that he has been subject to her all his life. "He
could not part with his soul's treasure. But he has, for her sake,
lavished his earthly goods, burned away his flesh. If his sacrifice has
been incomplete, it was because another power, mysterious and unnamed,