In _The Return of the Druses_ Browning's native bent can be more freely studied, for history has contributed only the general situation.

His turn for curious and far-fetched incident is nowhere better illustrated than in this tangled intrigue carried on between Frankish Hospitallers, Venetians, and Druses of Lebanon in a lonely island of the Aegean where none of the three are at home.

A political revolution--the revolt of the Druses against their Frankish lords--provides the outer momentum of the action; but the central interest is concentrated upon a "Soul's tragedy," in which the conflict of races goes on within the perplexed and paralysed bosom of a single man.

Djabal, the Druse patriot brought up in Brittany, analyses his own character with the merciless self-consciousness of Browning himself: "I with my Arab instinct--thwarted ever By my Frank policy, and with in turn My Frank brain thwarted by my Arab heart-- While these remained in equipoise, I lived-- Nothing; had either been predominant, As a Frank schemer or an Arab mystic I had been something." The conflict between policy and devotion is now transferred to the arena of a single breast, where its nature is somewhat too clearly understood and formulated.

The "Frank schemer" conceives the plan of turning the Druse superstition to account by posing as an incarnation of their Founder.