An adept in courtly arts, and owing all his successes to courtly favour, he meets the assiduities of other courtiers with open contempt.

His ends are those of Laertes or Fortinbras, and he is quite capable of the methods of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; but he regards ends and methods alike with the sated distaste of Hamlet.

By birth and principle a man of action, he has, even more than most of Browning's men of action, the curious introspectiveness of the philosophic onlooker.

He "watches his mind," and if he does not escape illusions, recognises and exposes them with ironical candour.

Few of Browning's less right-minded persons attain final insight at less cost to dramatic propriety than Berthold when he pronounces his final verdict:-- "All is for the best.
Too costly a flower were this, I see it now, To pluck and set upon my barren helm To wither,--any garish plume will do." _Colombe's Birthday_ was published in 1844 as No.