It is not through spiritualism so-called that Sludge has received his little grain of truth; that has only darkened the glimmer of true light which was in him.

Yet liar and cheat and coward, he is saved from a purely phantasmal existence by this fibre of reality which was part of his original structure.

The epilogue--Sludge's outbreak against his corrupter and tormentor--stands as evidence of the fact that no purifying, no cleansing, no really illuminating power remains in what is now only a putrescent luminosity within him.

His rage is natural and dramatically true; a noble rage would be to his honour.

This is a base and poisonous passion with no virtue in it, and the passion, flaring for a moment, sinks idly into as base a fingering of Sludge's disgraceful gains.
[Illustration: THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED.
_From a photograph._] The summer and early autumn of 1853 were spent by Browning and his wife, as they had spent the same season four years previously, at the Baths of Lucca.