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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>II. Half-Rome</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)<br>Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:<br>This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:<br>I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.<br>Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?<br>Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church<br>To hold a crowd at need, accommodate<br>All comers from the Corso! If this crush<br>Make not its priests ashamed of what they show<br>For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse<br>And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out<br>The beggarly transept with its bit of apse<br>Into a decent space for Christian ease,<br>Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.<br>Listen and estimate the luck they've had!<br>(The right man, and I hold him.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sir, do you see,<br>They laid both bodies in the church, this morn<br>The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,<br>Behind the little marble balustrade;<br>Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool<br>To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife<br>On the other side. In trying to count stabs,<br>People supposed Violante showed the most,<br>Till somebody explained us that mistake;<br>His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,<br>But she took all her stabbings in the face,<br>Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,<br>Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.<br>A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,<br>When you avenge your honour and only then,<br>That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,<br>Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.<br>It was Violante gave the first offence,<br>Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:<br>While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death<br>Answered the purpose, so his face went free.<br>We fancied even, free as you please, that face<br>Showed itself still intolerably wronged;<br>Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,<br>Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,<br>Once the worst ended: an indignant air<br>O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned<br>Round and away, rolled from Violante's side<br>Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.<br>If so, if corpses can be sensitive,<br>Why did not he roll right down altar-step,<br>Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,<br>Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,<br>Pay back thus the succession of affronts<br>Whereto this church had served as theatre?<br>For see: at that same altar where he lies,<br>To that same inch of step, was brought the babe<br>For blessing after baptism, and there styled<br>Pompilia, and a string of names beside,<br>By his bad wife, some seventeen years ago,<br>Who purchased her simply to palm on him,<br>Flatter his dotage and defraud the heirs.<br>Wait awhile! Also to this very step<br>Did this Violante, twelve years afterward,<br>Bring, the mock-mother, that child-cheat full-grown,<br>Pompilia, in pursuance of her plot,<br>And there brave God and man a second time<br>By linking a new victim to the lie.<br>There, having made a match unknown to him,<br>She, still unknown to Pietro, tied the knot<br>Which nothing cuts except this kind of knife;<br>Yes, made her daughter, as the girl was held,<br>Marry a man, and honest man beside,<br>And man of birth to boot,—clandestinely<br>Because of this, because of that, because<br>O' the devil's will to work his worst for once,—<br>Confident she could top her part at need<br>And, when her husband must be told in turn,<br>Ply the wife's trade, play off the sex's trick<br>And, alternating worry with quiet qualms,<br>Bravado with submissiveness, prettily fool<br>Her Pietro into patience: so it proved.<br>Ay, 't is four years since man and wife they grew,<br>This Guido Franceschini and this same<br>Pompilia, foolishly thought, falsely declared<br>A Comparini and the couple's child:<br>Just at this altar where, beneath the piece<br>Of Master Guido Reni, Christ on cross,<br>Second to nought observable in Rome,<br>That couple lie now, murdered yestereve.<br>Even the blind can see a providence here.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From dawn till now that it is growing dusk,<br>A multitude has flocked and filled the church,<br>Coming and going, coming back again,<br>Till to count crazed one. Rome was at the show.<br>People climbed up the columns, fought for spikes<br>O' the chapel-rail to perch themselves upon,<br>Jumped over and so broke the wooden work<br>Painted like porphyry to deceive the eye;<br>Serve the priests right! The organ-loft was crammed,<br>Women were fainting, no few fights ensued,<br>In short, it was a show repaid your pains:<br>For, though their room was scant undoubtedly,<br>Yet they did manage matters, to be just,<br>A little at this Lorenzo. Body o' me!<br>I saw a body exposed once … never mind!<br>Enough that here the bodies had their due.<br>No stinginess in wax, a row all round,<br>And one big taper at each head and foot.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, people pushed their way, and took their turn,<br>Saw, threw their eyes up, crossed themselves, gave place<br>To pressure from behind, since all the world<br>Knew the old pair, could talk the tragedy<br>Over from first to last: Pompilia too,<br>Those who had known her—what 't was worth to them!<br>Guido's acquaintance was in less request;<br>The Count had lounged somewhat too long in Rome,<br>Made himself cheap; with him were hand and glove<br>Barbers and blear-eyed, as the ancient sings.<br>Also he is alive and like to be:<br>Had he considerately died,—aha!<br>I jostled Luca Cini on his staff,<br>Mute in the midst, the whole man one amaze,<br>Staring amain and crossing brow and breast.<br>"How now?" asked I. "'T is seventy years," quoth he,<br>"Since I first saw, holding my father's hand,<br>"Bodies set forth: a many have I seen,<br>"Yet all was poor to this I live and see.<br>"Here the world's wickedness seals up the sum:<br>"What with Molinos' doctrine and this deed,<br>"Antichrist surely comes and doomsday's near.<br>"May I depart in peace, I have seen my see."<br>"Depart then," I advised, "nor block the road<br>"For youngsters still behindhand with such sights!"<br>"Why no," rejoins the venerable sire,<br>"I know it's horrid, hideous past belief,<br>"Burdensome far beyond what eye can bear;<br>"But they do promise, when Pompilia dies<br>"I' the course o' the day,—and she can't outlive night,—<br>"They'll bring her body also to expose<br>"Beside the parents, one, two, three a-breast;<br>"That were indeed a sight, which might I see,<br>"I trust I should not last to see the like!"<br>Whereat I bade the senior spare his shanks,<br>Since doctors give her till to-night to live,<br>And tell us how the butchery happened. "Ah,<br>"But you can't know!" sighs he, "I'll not despair:<br>"Beside I'm useful at explaining things—<br>"As, how the dagger laid there at the feet,<br>"Caused the peculiar cuts; I mind its make,<br>"Triangular i' the blade, a Genoese,<br>"Armed with those little hook-teeth on the edge<br>"To open in the flesh nor shut again:<br>"I like to teach a novice: I shall stay!"<br>And stay he did, and stay be sure he will.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A personage came by the private door<br>At noon to have his look: I name no names:<br>Well then, His Eminence the Cardinal,<br>Whose servitor in honourable sort<br>Guido was once, the same who made the match,<br>(Will you have the truth?) whereof we see effect.<br>No sooner whisper ran he was arrived<br>Than up pops Curate Carlo, a brisk lad,<br>Who never lets a good occasion slip,<br>And volunteers improving the event.<br>We looked he'd give the history's self some help,<br>Treat us to how the wife's confession went<br>(This morning she confessed her crime, we know)<br>And, may-be, throw in something of the Priest—<br>If he's not ordered back, punished anew,<br>The gallant, Caponsacchi, Lucifer<br>I' the garden where Pompilia, Eve-like, lured<br>Her Adam Guido to his fault and fall.<br>Think you we got a sprig of speech akin<br>To this from Carlo, with the Cardinal there?<br>Too wary he was, too widely awake, I trow.<br>He did the murder in a dozen words;<br>Then said that all such outrages crop forth<br>I' the course of nature when Molinos' tares<br>Are sown for wheat, flourish and choke the Church:<br>So slid on to the abominable sect<br>And the philosophic sin—we've heard all that,<br>And the Cardinal too, (who book-made on the same)<br>But, for the murder, left it where he found.<br>Oh but he's quick, the Curate, minds his game!<br>And, after all, we have the main o' the fact:<br>Case could not well be simpler,—mapped, as it were,<br>We follow the murder's maze from source to sea,<br>By the red line, past mistake: one sees indeed<br>Not only how all was and must have been,<br>But cannot other than be to the end of time.<br>Turn out here by the Ruspoli! Do you hold<br>Guido was so prodigiously to blame?<br>A certain cousin of yours has told you so?<br>Exactly! Here's a friend shall set you right,<br>Let him but have the handsel of your ear.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">These wretched Comparini were once gay<br>And galliard, of the modest middle class:<br>Born in this quarter seventy years ago<br>And married young, they lived the accustomed life,<br>Citizens as they were of good repute:<br>And, childless, naturally took their ease<br>With only their two selves to care about<br>And use the wealth for: wealthy is the word,<br>Since Pietro was possessed of house and land—<br>And specially one house, when good days smiled,<br>In Via Vittoria, the aspectable street<br>Where he lived mainly; but another house<br>Of less pretension did he buy betimes,<br>The villa, meant for jaunts and jollity,<br>I' the Pauline district, to be private there—<br>Just what puts murder in an enemy's head.<br>Moreover,—here's the worm i' the core, the germ<br>O' the rottenness and ruin which arrived,—<br>He owned some usufruct, had moneys' use<br>Lifelong, but to determine with his life<br>In heirs' default: so, Pietro craved an heir,<br>(The story always old and always new)<br>Shut his fool's-eyes fast on the visible good<br>And wealth for certain, opened them owl-wide<br>On fortune's sole piece of forgetfulness,<br>The child that should have been and would not be.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hence, seventeen years ago, conceive his glee<br>When first Violante, 'twixt a smile and blush,<br>With touch of agitation proper too,<br>Announced that, spite of her unpromising age,<br>The miracle would in time be manifest,<br>An heir's birth was to happen: and it did.<br>Somehow or other,—how, all in good time!<br>By a trick, a sleight of hand you are to hear,—<br>A child was born, Pompilia, for his joy,<br>Plaything at once and prop, a fairy-gift,<br>A saints' grace or, say, grant of the good God,—<br>A fiddle-pin's end! What imbeciles are we!<br>Look now: if some one could have prophesied,<br>"For love of you, for liking to your wife,<br>"I undertake to crush a snake I spy<br>"Settling itself i' the soft of both your breasts.<br>"Give me yon babe to strangle painlessly!<br>"She'll soar to the safe: you'll have your crying out,<br>"Then sleep, then wake, then sleep, then end your days<br>"In peace and plenty, mixed with mild regret,<br>"Thirty years hence when Christmas takes old folk"—<br>How had old Pietro sprung up, crossed himself,<br>And kicked the conjuror! Whereas you and I,<br>Being wise with after-wit, had clapped our hands;<br>Nay, added, in the old fool's interest,<br>"Strangle the black-eyed babe, so far so good,<br>"But on condition you relieve the man<br>"O' the wife and throttle him Violante too—<br>"She is the mischief!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">We had hit the mark.<br>She, whose trick brought the babe into the world,<br>She it was, when the babe was grown a girl,<br>Judged a new trick should reinforce the old,<br>Send vigour to the lie now somewhat spent<br>By twelve years' service; lest Eve's rule decline<br>Over this Adam of hers, whose cabbage-plot<br>Throve dubiously since turned fools' paradise,<br>Spite of a nightingale on every stump.<br>Pietro's estate was dwindling day by day,<br>While he, rapt far above such mundane care,<br>Crawled all-fours with his baby pick-a-back,<br>Sat at serene cats'-cradle with his child,<br>Or took the measured tallness, top to toe,<br>Of what was grown a great girl twelve years old:<br>Till sudden at the door a tap discreet,<br>A visitor's premonitory cough,<br>And poverty had reached him in her rounds.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This came when he was past the working-time,<br>Had learned to dandle and forgot to dig,<br>And who must but Violante cast about,<br>Contrive and task that head of hers again?<br>She who had caught one fish, could make that catch<br>A bigger still, in angler's policy:<br>So, with an angler's mercy for the bait,<br>Her minnow was set wriggling on its barb<br>And tossed to mid-stream; which means, this grown girl<br>With the great eyes and bounty of black hair<br>And first crisp youth that tempts a jaded taste,<br>Was whisked i' the way of a certain man, who snapped.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine<br>Was head of an old noble house enough,<br>Not over-rich, you can't have everything,<br>But such a man as riches rub against,<br>Readily stick to,—one with a right to them<br>Born in the blood: 't was in his very brow<br>Always to knit itself against the world,<br>Beforehand so, when that world stinted due<br>Service and suit: the world ducks and defers.<br>As such folks do, he had come up to Rome<br>To better his fortune, and, since many years,<br>Was friend and follower of a cardinal;<br>Waiting the rather thus on providence<br>That a shrewd younger poorer brother yet,<br>The Abate Paolo, a regular priest,<br>Had long since tried his powers and found he swam<br>With the deftest on the Galilean pool:<br>But then he was a web-foot, free o' the wave,<br>And no ambiguous dab-chick hatched to strut,<br>Humbled by any fond attempt to swim<br>When fiercer fowl usurped his dunghill top—<br>A whole priest, Paolo, no mere piece of one<br>Like Guido tacked thus to the Church's tail!<br>Guido moreover, as the head o' the house,<br>Claiming the main prize, not the lesser luck,<br>The centre lily, no mere chickweed fringe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He waited and learned waiting, thirty years;<br>Got promise, missed performance—what would you have?<br>No petty post rewards a nobleman<br>For spending youth in splendid lackey-work,<br>And there's concurrence for each rarer prize;<br>When that falls, rougher hand and readier foot<br>Push aside Guido spite of his black looks.<br>The end was, Guido, when the warning showed,<br>The first white hair i' the glass, gave up the game,<br>Determined on returning to his town,<br>Making the best of bad incurable,<br>Patching the old palace up and lingering there<br>The customary life out with his kin,<br>Where honour helps to spice the scanty bread.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Just as he trimmed his lamp and girt his loins<br>To go his journey and be wise at home,<br>In the right mood of disappointed worth,<br>Who but Violante sudden spied her prey<br>(Where was I with that angler-simile?)<br>And threw her bait, Pompilia, where he sulked—<br>A gleam i' the gloom!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What if he gained thus much,<br>Wrung out this sweet drop from the bitter Past,<br>Bore off this rose-bud from the prickly brake<br>To justify such torn clothes and scratched hands,<br>And, after all, brought something back from Rome?<br>Would not a wife serve at Arezzo well<br>To light the dark house, lend a look of youth<br>To the mother's face grown meagre, left alone<br>And famished with the emptiness of hope,<br>Old Donna Beatrice? Wife you want<br>Would you play family-representative,<br>Carry you elder-brotherly, high and right<br>O'er what may prove the natural petulance<br>Of the third brother, younger, greedier still,<br>Girolamo, also a fledgeling priest,<br>Beginning life in turn with callow beak<br>Agape for luck, no luck had stopped and stilled.<br>Such were the pinks and greys about the bait<br>Persuaded Guido gulp down hook and all.<br>What constituted him so choice a catch,<br>You question? Past his prime and poor beside!<br>Ask that of any she who knows the trade.<br>Why first, here was a nobleman with friends,<br>A palace one might run to and be safe<br>When presently the threatened fate should fall,<br>A big-browed master to block door-way up,<br>Parley with people bent on pushing by<br>And praying the mild Pietro quick clear scores:<br>Is birth a privilege and power or no?<br>Also,—but judge of the result desired,<br>By the price paid and manner of the sale.<br>The Count was made woo, win and wed at once:<br>Asked, and was haled for answer, lest the heat<br>Should cool, to San Lorenzo, one blind eve,<br>And had Pompilia put into his arms<br>O' the sly there, by a hasty candle-blink,<br>With sanction of some priest-confederate<br>Properly paid to make short work and sure.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So did old Pietro's daughter change her style<br>For Guido Franceschini's lady-wife<br>Ere Guido knew it well; and why this haste<br>And scramble and indecent secrecy?<br>"Lest Pietro, all the while in ignorance,<br>"Should get to learn, gainsay and break the match:<br>"His peevishness had promptly put aside<br>"Such honour and refused the proffered boon,<br>"Pleased to become authoritative once.<br>"She remedied the wilful man's mistake—"<br>Did our discreet Violante. Rather say,<br>Thus did she, lest the object of her game,<br>Guido the gulled one, give him but a chance,<br>A moment's respite, time for thinking twice,<br>Might count the cost before he sold himself,<br>And try the clink of coin they paid him with.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But coin paid, bargain struck and business done,<br>Once the clandestine marriage over thus,<br>All parties made perforce the best o' the fact;<br>Pietro could play vast indignation off,<br>Be ignorant and astounded, dupe, poor soul,<br>Please you, of daughter, wife and son-in-law,<br>While Guido found himself in flagrant fault,<br>Must e'en do suit and service, soothe, subdue<br>A father not unreasonably chafed,<br>Bring him to terms by paying son's devoir.<br>Pleasant initiation!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The end, this:<br>Guido's broad back was saddled to bear all—<br>Pietro, Violante, and Pompilia too,—<br>Three lots cast confidently in one lap,<br>Three dead-weights with one arm to lift the three<br>Out of their limbo up to life again.<br>The Roman household was to strike fresh root<br>In a new soil, graced with a novel name,<br>Gilt with an alien glory, Aretine<br>Henceforth and never Roman any more,<br>By treaty and engagement; thus it ran:<br>Pompilia's dowry for Pompilia's self<br>As a thing of course,—she paid her own expense;<br>No loss nor gain there: but the couple, you see,<br>They, for their part, turned over first of all<br>Their fortune in its rags and rottenness<br>To Guido, fusion and confusion, he<br>And his with them and theirs,—whatever rag<br>With coin residuary fell on floor<br>When Brother Paolo's energetic shake<br>Should do the relics justice: since 't was thought,<br>Once vulnerable Pietro out of reach,<br>That, left at Rome as representative,<br>The Abate, backed by a potent patron here,<br>And otherwise with purple flushing him,<br>Might play a good game with the creditor,<br>Make up a moiety which, great or small,<br>Should go to the common stock—if anything,<br>Guido's, so far repayment of the cost<br>About to be,—and if, as looked more like,<br>Nothing,—why, all the nobler cost were his<br>Who guaranteed, for better or for worse,<br>To Pietro and Violante, house and home,<br>Kith and kin, with the pick of company<br>And life o' the fat o' the land while life should last.<br>How say you to the bargain at first blush?<br>Why did a middle-aged not-silly man<br>Show himself thus besotted all at once?<br>Quoth Solomon, one black eye does it all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They went to Arezzo,—Pietro and his spouse,<br>With just the dusk o' the day of life to spend,<br>Eager to use the twilight, taste a treat,<br>Enjoy for once with neither stay nor stint<br>The luxury of lord-and-lady-ship,<br>And realize the stuff and nonsense long<br>A-simmer in their noddles; vent the fume<br>Born there and bred, the citizen's conceit<br>How fares nobility while crossing earth,<br>What rampart or invisible body-guard<br>Keeps off the taint of common life from such.<br>They had not fed for nothing on the tales<br>Of grandees who give banquets worthy Jove,<br>Spending gold as if Plutus paid a whim,<br>Served with obeisances as when … what God?<br>I'm at the end of my tether; 't is enough<br>You understand what they came primed to see:<br>While Guido who should minister the sight,<br>Stay all this qualmish greediness of soul<br>With apples and with flagons—for his part,<br>Was set on life diverse as pole from pole:<br>Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye,—what else<br>Was he just now awake from, sick and sage,<br>After the very debauch they would begin?—<br>Suppose such stuff and nonsense really were.<br>That bubble, they were bent on blowing big,<br>He had blown already till he burst his cheeks,<br>And hence found soapsuds bitter to the tongue.<br>He hoped now to walk softly all his days<br>In soberness of spirit, if haply so,<br>Pinching and paring he might furnish forth<br>A frugal board, bare sustenance, no more,<br>Till times, that could not well grow worse, should mend.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus minded then, two parties mean to meet<br>And make each other happy. The first week,<br>And fancy strikes fact and explodes in full.<br>"This," shrieked the Comparini, "this the Count,<br>"The palace, the signorial privilege,<br>"The pomp and pageantry were promised us?<br>"For this have we exchanged our liberty,<br>"Our competence, our darling of a child?<br>"To house as spectres in a sepulchre<br>"Under this black stone-heap, the street's disgrace,<br>"Grimmest as that is of the gruesome town,<br>"And here pick garbage on a pewter plate<br>"Or cough at verjuice dripped from earthenware?<br>"Oh Via Vittoria, oh the other place<br>"I' the Pauline, did we give you up for this?<br>"Where's the foregone housekeeping good and gay,<br>"The neighbourliness, the companionship,<br>"The treat and feast when holidays came round,<br>"The daily feast that seemed no treat at all,<br>"Called common by the uncommon fools we were!<br>"Even the sun that used to shine at Rome,<br>"Where is it? Robbed and starved and frozen too,<br>"We will have justice, justice if there be!"<br>Did not they shout, did not the town resound!<br>Guido's old lady-mother Beatrice,<br>Who since her husband, Count Tommaso's death,<br>Had held sole sway i' the house,—the doited crone<br>Slow to acknowledge, curtsey and abdicate,—<br>Was recognized of true novercal type,<br>Dragon and devil. His brother Girolamo<br>Came next in order: priest was he? The worse!<br>No way of winning him to leave his mumps<br>And help the laugh against old ancestry<br>And formal habits long since out of date,<br>Letting his youth be patterned on the mode<br>Approved of where Violante laid down law.<br>Or did he brighten up by way of change,<br>Dispose himself for affability?<br>The malapert, too complaisant by half<br>To the alarmed young novice of a bride!<br>Let him go buzz, betake himself elsewhere<br>Nor singe his fly-wings in the candle-flame!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Four months' probation of this purgatory,<br>Dog-snap and cat-claw, curse and counterblast,<br>The devil's self were sick of his own din;<br>And Pietro, after trumpeting huge wrongs<br>At church and market-place, pillar and post,<br>Square's corner, street's end, now the palace-step<br>And now the wine-house bench—while, on her side,<br>Violante up and down was voluble<br>In whatsoever pair of ears would perk<br>From goody, gossip, cater-cousin and sib,<br>Curious to peep at the inside of things<br>And catch in the act pretentious poverty<br>At its wits' end to keep appearance up,<br>Make both ends meet,—nothing the vulgar loves<br>Like what this couple pitched them right and left.<br>Then, their worst done that way, both struck tent, marched:<br>—Renounced their share o' the bargain, flung what dues<br>Guido was bound to pay, in Guido's face,<br>Left their hearts'-darling, treasure of the twain<br>And so forth, the poor inexperienced bride,<br>To her own devices, bade Arezzo rot,<br>Cursed life signorial, and sought Rome once more.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I see the comment ready on your lip,<br>"The better fortune, Guido's—free at least<br>"By this defection of the foolish pair,<br>"He could begin make profit in some sort<br>"Of the young bride and the new quietness,<br>"Lead his own life now, henceforth breathe unplagued."<br>Could he? You know the sex like Guido's self.<br>Learn the Violante-nature!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Once in Rome,<br>By way of helping Guido lead such life,<br>Her first act to inaugurate return<br>Was, she got pricked in conscience: Jubilee<br>Gave her the hint. Our Pope, as kind as just,<br>Attained his eighty years, announced a boon<br>Should make us bless the fact, held Jubilee—<br>Short shrift, prompt pardon for the light offence<br>And no rough dealing with the regular crime<br>So this occasion were not suffered slip—<br>Otherwise, sins commuted as before,<br>Without the least abatement in the price.<br>Now, who had thought it? All this while, it seems,<br>Our sage Violante had a sin of a sort<br>She must compound for now or not at all.<br>Now be the ready riddance! She confessed<br>Pompilia was a fable not a fact:<br>She never bore a child in her whole life.<br>Had this child been a changeling, that were grace<br>In some degree, exchange is hardly theft,<br>You take your stand on truth ere leap your lie:<br>Here was all lie, no touch of truth at all,<br>All the lie hers—not even Pietro guessed<br>He was as childless still as twelve years since.<br>The babe had been a find i' the filth-heap, Sir,<br>Catch from the kennel! There was found at Rome,<br>Down in the deepest of our social dregs,<br>A woman who professed the wanton's trade<br>Under the requisite thin coverture,<br>Communis meretrix and washer-wife:<br>The creature thus conditioned found by chance<br>Motherhood like a jewel in the muck,<br>And straightway either trafficked with her prize<br>Or listened to the tempter and let be,—<br>Made pact abolishing her place and part<br>In womankind, beast-fellowship indeed.<br>She sold this babe eight months before its birth<br>To our Violante, Pietro's honest spouse,<br>Well-famed and widely-instanced as that crown<br>To the husband, virtue in a woman's shape.<br>She it was, bought, paid for, passed off the thing<br>As very flesh and blood and child of her<br>Despite the flagrant fifty years,—and why?<br>Partly to please old Pietro, fill his cup<br>With wine at the late hour when lees are left,<br>And send him from life's feast rejoicingly,—<br>Partly to cheat the rightful heirs, agape,<br>Each uncle's cousin's brother's son of him,<br>For that same principal of the usufruct<br>It vext him he must die and leave behind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such was the sin had come to be confessed.<br>Which of the tales, the first or last, was true?<br>Did she so sin once, or, confessing now,<br>Sin for the first time? Either way you will.<br>One sees a reason for the cheat: one sees<br>A reason for a cheat in owning cheat<br>Where no cheat had been. What of the revenge?<br>What prompted the contrition all at once,<br>Made the avowal easy, the shame slight?<br>Why, prove they but Pompilia not their child,<br>No child, no dowry! this, supposed their child,<br>Had claimed what this, shown alien to their blood,<br>Claimed nowise: Guido's claim was through his wife,<br>Null then and void with hers. The biter bit,<br>Do you see! For such repayment of the past,<br>One might conceive the penitential pair<br>Ready to bring their case before the courts,<br>Publish their infamy to all the world<br>And, arm in arm, go chuckling thence content.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Is this your view? 'T was Guido's anyhow<br>And colourable: he came forward then,<br>Protested in his very bride's behalf<br>Against this lie and all it led to, least<br>Of all the loss o' the dowry; no! From her<br>And him alike he would expunge the blot,<br>Erase the brand of such a bestial birth,<br>Participate in no hideous heritage<br>Gathered from the gutter to be garnered up<br>And glorified in a palace. Peter and Paul!<br>But that who likes may look upon the pair<br>Exposed in yonder church, and show his skill<br>By saying which is eye and which is mouth<br>Thro' those stabs thick and threefold,—but for that—<br>A strong word on the liars and their lie<br>Might crave expression and obtain it, Sir!<br>—Though prematurely, since there's more to come,<br>More that will shake your confidence in things<br>Your cousin tells you,—may I be so bold?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This makes the first act of the farce,—anon<br>The sombre element comes stealing in<br>Till all is black or blood-red in the piece.<br>Guido, thus made a laughing-stock abroad,<br>A proverb for the market-place at home,<br>Left alone with Pompilia now, this graft<br>So reputable on his ancient stock,<br>This plague-seed set to fester his sound flesh,<br>What does the Count? Revenge him on his wife?<br>Unfasten at all risks to rid himself<br>The noisome lazar-badge, fall foul of fate,<br>And, careless whether the poor rag was ware<br>O' the part it played, or helped unwittingly,<br>Bid it go burn and leave his frayed flesh free?<br>Plainly, did Guido open both doors wide,<br>Spurn thence the cur-cast creature and clear scores<br>As man might, tempted in extreme like this?<br>No, birth and breeding, and compassion too<br>Saved her such scandal. She was young, he thought,<br>Not privy to the treason, punished most<br>I' the proclamation of it; why make her<br>A party to the crime she suffered by?<br>Then the black eyes were now her very own,<br>Not any more Violante's: let her live,<br>Lose in a new air, under a new sun,<br>The taint of the imputed parentage<br>Truly or falsely, take no more the touch<br>Of Pietro and his partner anyhow!<br>All might go well yet.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So she thought, herself,<br>It seems, since what was her first act and deed<br>When news came how these kindly ones at Rome<br>Had stripped her naked to amuse the world<br>With spots here, spots there and spots everywhere?<br>—For I should tell you that they noised abroad<br>Not merely the main scandal of her birth,<br>But slanders written, printed, published wide,<br>Pamphlets which set forth all the pleasantry<br>Of how the promised glory was a dream,<br>The power a bubble, and the wealth—why, dust.<br>There was a picture, painted to the life,<br>Of those rare doings, that superlative<br>Initiation in magnificence<br>Conferred on a poor Roman family<br>By favour of Arezzo and her first<br>And famousest, the Franceschini there.<br>You had the Countship holding head aloft<br>Bravely although bespattered, shifts and straits<br>In keeping out o' the way o' the wheels o' the world,<br>The comic of those home-contrivances<br>When the old lady-mother's with was taxed<br>To find six clamorous mouths in food more real<br>Than fruit plucked off the cobwebbed family-tree,<br>Or acorns shed from its gilt mouldered frame—<br>Cold glories served up with stale fame for sauce.<br>What, I ask,—when the drunkenness of hate<br>Hiccuped return for hospitality,<br>Befouled the table they had feasted on,<br>Or say,—God knows I'll not prejudge the case,—<br>Grievances thus distorted, magnified,<br>Coloured by quarrel into calumny,—<br>What side did our Pompilia first espouse?<br>Her first deliberate measure was—she wrote,<br>Pricked by some loyal impulse, straight to Rome<br>And her husband's brother the Abate there,<br>Who, having managed to effect the match,<br>Might take men's censure for its ill success.<br>She made a clean breast also in her turn,<br>And qualified the couple properly,<br>Since whose departure, hell, she said, was heaven,<br>And the house, late distracted by their peals,<br>Quiet as Carmel where the lilies live.<br>Herself had oftentimes complained: but why?<br>All her complaints had been their prompting, tales<br>Trumped up, devices to this very end.<br>Their game had been to thwart her husband's love<br>And cross his will, malign his words and ways,<br>To reach this issue, furnish this pretence<br>For impudent withdrawal from their bond,—<br>Theft, indeed murder, since they meant no less<br>Whose last injunction to her simple self<br>Had been—what parents'-precept do you think?<br>That she should follow after with all speed,<br>Fly from her husband's house clandestinely,<br>Join them at Rome again, but first of all<br>Pick up a fresh companion in her flight,<br>So putting youth and beauty to fit use,—<br>Some gay dare-devil cloak-and-rapier spark<br>Capable of adventure,—helped by whom<br>She, some fine eve when lutes were in the air,<br>Having put poison in the posset-cup,<br>Laid hands on money, jewels and the like,<br>And, to conceal the thing with more effect,<br>By way of parting benediction too,<br>Fired the house,—one would finish famously<br>I' the tumult, slip out, scurry off and away<br>And turn up merrily at home once more.<br>Fact this, and not a dream o' the devil, Sir!<br>And more than this, a fact none dare dispute,<br>Word for word, such a letter did she write,<br>And such the Abate read, nor simply read<br>But gave all Rome to ruminate upon,<br>In answer to such charges as, I say,<br>The couple sought to be beforehand with.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The cause thus carried to the courts at Rome,<br>Guido away, the Abate had no choice<br>But stand forth, take his absent brother's part,<br>Defend the honour of himself beside.<br>He made what head he might against the pair,<br>Maintained Pompilia's birth legitimate<br>And all her rights intact—hers, Guido's now:<br>And so far by his policy turned their flank,<br>(The enemy being beforehand in the place)<br>That,—though the courts allowed the cheat for fact,<br>Suffered Violante to parade her shame,<br>Publish her infamy to heart's content,<br>And let the tale o' the feigned birth pass for proved,—<br>Yet they stopped there, refused to intervene<br>And dispossess the innocents, befooled<br>By gifts o' the guilty, at guilt's new caprice.<br>They would not take away the dowry now<br>Wrongfully given at first, nor bar at all<br>Succession to the aforesaid usufruct,<br>Established on a fraud, nor play the game<br>Of Pietro's child and now not Pietro's child<br>As it might suit the gamester's purpose. Thus<br>Was justice ever ridiculed in Rome:<br>Such be the double verdicts favoured here<br>Which send away both parties to a suit<br>Nor puffed up nor cast down,—for each a crumb<br>Of right, for neither of them the whole loaf.<br>Whence, on the Comparini's part, appeal—<br>Counter-appeal on Guido's,—that's the game:<br>And so the matter stands, even to this hour,<br>Bandied as balls are in a tennis-court,<br>And so might stand, unless some heart broke first,<br>Till doomsday.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Leave it thus, and now revert<br>To the old Arezzo whence we moved to Rome.<br>We've had enough o' the parents, false or true,<br>Now for a touch o' the daughter's quality.<br>The start's fair henceforth, every obstacle<br>Out of the young wife's footpath, she's alone,<br>Left to walk warily now: how does she walk?<br>Why, once a dwelling's threshold marked and crossed<br>In rubric by the enemy on his rounds<br>As eligible, as fit place of prey,<br>Baffle him henceforth, keep him out who can!<br>Stop up the door at the first hint of hoof,<br>Presently at the window taps a horn,<br>And Satan's by your fireside, never fear!<br>Pompilia, left alone now, found herself;<br>Found herself young too, sprightly, fair enough,<br>Matched with a husband old beyond his age<br>(Though that was something like four times her own)<br>Because of cares past, present and to come:<br>Found too the house dull and its inmates dead,<br>So, looked outside for light and life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And love<br>Did in a trice turn up with life and light,—<br>The man with the aureole, sympathy made flesh,<br>The all-consoling Caponsacchi, Sir!<br>A priest—what else should the consoler be?<br>With goodly shoulderblade and proper leg,<br>A portly make and a symmetric shape,<br>And curls that clustered to the tonsure quite.<br>This was a bishop in the bud, and now<br>A canon full-blown so far: priest, and priest<br>Nowise exorbitantly overworked,<br>The courtly Christian, not so much Saint Paul<br>As a saint of Cæsar's household: there posed he<br>Sending his god-glance after his shot shaft,<br>Apollos turned Apollo, while the snake<br>Pompilia writhed transfixed through all her spires.<br>He, not a visitor at Guido's house,<br>Scarce an acquaintance, but in prime request<br>With the magnates of Arezzo, was seen here,<br>Heard there, felt everywhere in Guido's path<br>If Guido's wife's path be her husband's too.<br>Now he threw comfits at the theatre<br>Into her lap,—what harm in Carnival?<br>Now he pressed close till his foot touched her gown,<br>His hand brushed hers,—how help on promenade?<br>And, ever on weighty business, found his steps<br>Incline to a certain haunt of doubtful fame<br>Which fronted Guido's palace by mere chance;<br>While—how do accidents sometimes combine!—<br>Pompilia chose to cloister up her charms<br>Just in a chamber that o'erlooked the street,<br>Sat there to pray, or peep thence at mankind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This passage of arms and wits amused the town.<br>At last the husband lifted eyebrow,—bent<br>On day-book and the study how to wring<br>Half the due vintage from the worn-out vines<br>At the villa, tease a quarter the old rent<br>From the farmstead, tenants swore would tumble soon,—<br>Pricked up his ear a-singing day and night<br>With "ruin, ruin;"—and so surprised at last—<br>Why, what else but a titter? Up he jumps.<br>Back to mind come those scratchings at the grange,<br>Prints of the paw about the outhouse; rife<br>In his head at once again are word and wink,<br>Mum here and budget there, the smell o' the fox,<br>The must o' the gallant. "Friends, there's falseness here!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The proper help of friends in such a strait<br>Is waggery, the world over. Laugh him free<br>O' the regular jealous-fit that's incident<br>To all old husbands that wed brisk young wives,<br>And he'll go duly docile all his days.<br>"Somebody courts your wife, Count? Where and when?<br>"How and why? Mere horn-madness: have a care!<br>"Your lady loves her own room, sticks to it,<br>"Locks herself in for hours, you say yourself.<br>"And—what, it's Caponsacchi means you harm?<br>"The Canon? We caress him, he's the world's,<br>"A man of such acceptance—never dream,<br>"Though he were fifty times the fox you fear,<br>"He'd risk his brush for your particular chick,<br>"When the wide town's his hen-roost! Fie o' the fool!"<br>So they dispensed their comfort of a kind.<br>Guido at last cried "Something is in the air,<br>"Under the earth, some plot against my peace.<br>"The trouble of eclipse hangs overheard;<br>"How it should come of that officious orb<br>"Your Canon in my system, you must say:<br>"I say—that from the pressure of this spring<br>"Began the chime and interchange of bells,<br>"Ever one whisper, and one whisper more,<br>"And just one whisper for the silvery last,<br>"Till all at once a-row the bronze-throats burst<br>"Into a larum both significant<br>"And sinister: stop it I must and will.<br>"Let Caponsacchi take his hand away<br>"From the wire!—disport himself in other paths<br>"Than lead precisely to my palace-gate,—<br>"Look where he likes except one window's way<br>"Where, cheek on hand, and elbow set on sill,<br>"Happens to lean and say her litanies<br>"Every day and all day long, just my wife—<br>"Or wife and Caponsacchi may fare the worse!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Admire the man's simplicity, "I'll do this,<br>"I'll not have that, I'll punish and prevent!"—<br>'T is easy saying. But to a fray, you see,<br>Two parties go. The badger shows his teeth:<br>The fox nor lies down sheep-like nor dares fight.<br>Oh, the wife knew the appropriate warfare well,<br>The way to put suspicion to the blush!<br>At first hint of remonstrance, up and out<br>I' the face of the world, you found her: she could speak,<br>State her case,—Franceschini was a name,<br>Guido had his full share of foes and friends—<br>Why should not she call these to arbitrate?<br>She bade the Governor do governance,<br>Cried out on the Archbishop,—why, there now,<br>Take him for sample! Three successive times,<br>Had he to reconduct her by main-force<br>From where she took her station opposite<br>His shut door,—on the public steps thereto,<br>Wringing her hands, when he came out to see,<br>And shrieking all her wrongs forth at his foot,—<br>Back to the husband and the house she fled:<br>Judge if that husband warmed him in the face<br>Of friends or frowned on foes as heretofore!<br>Judge if he missed the natural grin of folk,<br>Or lacked the customary compliment<br>Of cap and bells, the luckless husband's fit!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So it went on and on till—who was right?<br>One merry April morning, Guido woke<br>After the cuckoo, so late, near noonday,<br>With an inordinate yawning of the jaws,<br>Ears plugged, eyes gummed together, palate, tongue<br>And teeth one mud-paste made of poppy-milk;<br>And found his wife flown, his scritoire the worse<br>For a rummage,—jewelry that was, was not,<br>Some money there had made itself wings too,—<br>The door lay wide and yet the servants slept<br>Sound as the dead, or dosed which does as well.<br>In short, Pompilia, she who, candid soul,<br>Had not so much as spoken all her life<br>To the Canon, nay, so much as peeped at him<br>Between her fingers while she prayed in church,—<br>This lamb-like innocent of fifteen years<br>(Such she was grown to by this time of day)<br>Had simply put an opiate in the drink<br>Of the whole household overnight, and then<br>Got up and gone about her work secure,<br>Laid hand on this waif and the other stray,<br>Spoiled the Philistine and marched out of doors<br>In company of the Canon who, Lord's love,<br>What with his daily duty at the church,<br>Nightly devoir where ladies congregate,<br>Had something else to mind, assure yourself,<br>Beside Pompilia, paragon though she be,<br>Or notice if her nose were sharp or blunt!<br>Well, anyhow, albeit impossible,<br>Both of them were together jollily<br>Jaunting it Rome-ward, half-way there by this,<br>While Guido was left go and get undrugged,<br>Gather his wits up, groaningly give thanks<br>When neighbours crowded round him to condole.<br>"Ah," quoth a gossip, "well I mind me now,<br>"The Count did always say he thought he felt<br>"He feared as if this very chance might fall!<br>"And when a man of fifty finds his corns<br>"Ache and his joints throb, and foresees a storm,<br>"Though neighbours laugh and say the sky is clear,<br>"Let us henceforth believe him weatherwise!"<br>Then was the story told, I'll cut you short:<br>All neighbours knew: no mystery in the world.<br>The lovers left at nightfall—over night<br>Had Caponsacchi come to carry off<br>Pompilia,—not alone, a friend of his,<br>One Guillichini, the more conversant<br>With Guido's housekeeping that he was just<br>A cousin of Guido's and might play a prank—<br>(Have not you too a cousin that's a wag?)<br>—Lord and a Canon also,—what would you have?<br>Such are the red-clothed milk-swollen poppy-heads<br>That stand and stiffen 'mid the wheat o' the Church!—<br>This worthy came to aid, abet his best.<br>And so the house was ransacked, booty bagged,<br>The lady led downstairs and out of doors<br>Guided and guarded till, the city passed,<br>A carriage lay convenient at the gate.<br>Good-bye to the friendly Canon; the loving one<br>Could peradventure do the rest himself.<br>In jumps Pompilia, after her the priest,<br>"Whip, driver! Money makes the mare to go,<br>"And we've a bagful. Take the Roman road!"<br>So said the neighbours. This was eight hours since.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido heard all, swore the befitting oaths,<br>Shook off the relics of his poison-drench,<br>Got horse, was fairly started in pursuit<br>With never a friend to follow, found the track<br>Fast enough, 't was the straight Perugia way,<br>Trod soon upon their very heels, too late<br>By a minute only at Camoscia, reached<br>Chiusi, Foligno, ever the fugitives<br>Just ahead, just out as he galloped in,<br>Getting the good news ever fresh and fresh,<br>Till, lo, at the last stage of all, last post<br>Before Rome,—as we say, in sight of Rome<br>And safety (there's impunity at Rome<br>For priests, you know) at—what's the little place?—<br>What some call Castelnuovo, some just call<br>The Osteria, because o' the post-house inn,<br>There, at the journey's all but end, it seems,<br>Triumph deceived them and undid them both,<br>Secure they might foretaste felicity<br>Nor fear surprisal: so, they were surprised.<br>There did they halt at early evening, there<br>Did Guido overtake them: 't was day-break;<br>He came in time enough, not time too much,<br>Since in the courtyard stood the Canon's self<br>Urging the drowsy stable-grooms to haste<br>Harness the horses, have the journey end,<br>The trifling four-hours'-running, so reach Rome.<br>And the other runaway, the wife? Upstairs,<br>Still on the couch where she had spent the night,<br>One couch in one room, and one room for both.<br>So gained they six hours, so were lost thereby.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sir, what's the sequel? Lover and beloved<br>Fall on their knees? No impudence serves here?<br>They beat their breasts and beg for easy death,<br>Confess this, that and the other?—anyhow<br>Confess there wanted not some likelihood<br>To the supposition so preposterous,<br>That, O Pompilia, thy sequestered eyes<br>Had noticed, straying o'er the prayerbook's edge,<br>More of the Canon than that black his coat,<br>Buckled his shoes were, broad his hat of brim:<br>And that, O Canon, thy religious care<br>Had breathed too soft a benedicite<br>To banish trouble from a lady's breast<br>So lonely and so lovely, nor so lean!<br>This you expect? Indeed, then, much you err.<br>Not to such ordinary end as this<br>Had Caponsacchi flung the cassock far,<br>Doffed the priest, donned the perfect cavalier.<br>The die was cast: over shoes over boots:<br>And just as she, I presently shall show,<br>Pompilia, soon looked Helen to the life,<br>Recumbent upstairs in her pink and white,<br>So, in the inn-yard, bold as 't were Troy-town,<br>There strutted Paris in correct costume,<br>Cloak, cap and feather, no appointment missed,<br>Even to a wicked-looking sword at side,<br>He seemed to find and feel familiar at.<br>Nor wanted words as ready and as big<br>As the part he played, the bold abashless one.<br>"I interposed to save your wife from death,<br>"Yourself from shame, the true and only shame:<br>"Ask your own conscience else!—or, failing that,<br>"What I have done I answer, anywhere,<br>"Here, if you will; you see I have a sword:<br>"Or, since I have a tonsure as you taunt,<br>"At Rome, by all means,—priests to try a priest.<br>"Only, speak where your wife's voice can reply!"<br>And then he fingered at the sword again.<br>So, Guido called, in aid and witness both,<br>The Public Force. The Commissary came,<br>Officers also; they secured the priest;<br>Then, for his more confusion, mounted up<br>With him, a guard on either side, the stair<br>To the bed-room where still slept or feigned a sleep<br>His paramour and Guido's wife: in burst<br>The company and bade her wake and rise.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Her defence? This. She woke, saw, sprang upright<br>I' the midst and stood as terrible as truth,<br>Sprang to her husband's side, caught at the sword<br>That hung there useless,—since they held each hand<br>O' the lover, had disarmed him properly,—<br>And in a moment out flew the bright thing<br>Full in the face of Guido: but for help<br>O' the guards who held her back and pinioned her<br>With pains enough, she had finished you my tale<br>With a flourish of red all round it, pinked her man<br>Prettily; but she fought them one to six.<br>They stopped that,—but her tongue continued free:<br>She spat forth such invective at her spouse,<br>O'erfrothed him with such foam of murderer,<br>Thief, pandar—that the popular tide soon turned,<br>The favour of the very sbirri, straight<br>Ebbed from the husband, set toward his wife,<br>People cried "Hands off, pay a priest respect!"<br>And "persecuting fiend" and "martyred saint"<br>Began to lead a measure from lip to lip.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But facts are facts and flinch not; stubborn things,<br>And the question "Prithee, friend, how comes my purse<br>"I' the poke of you?"—admits of no reply.<br>Here was a priest found out in masquerade,<br>A wife caught playing truant if no more;<br>While the Count, mortified in mien enough,<br>And, nose to face, an added palm in length,<br>Was plain writ "husband" every piece of him:<br>Capture once made, release could hardly be.<br>Beside, the prisoners both made appeal,<br>"Take us to Rome!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Taken to Rome they were;<br>The husband trooping after, piteously,<br>Tail between legs, no talk of triumph now—<br>No honour set firm on its feet once more<br>On two dead bodies of the guilty,—nay,<br>No dubious salve to honour's broken pate<br>From chance that, after all, the hurt might seem<br>A skin-deep matter, scratch that leaves no scar:<br>For Guido's first search,—ferreting, poor soul,<br>Here, there and everywhere in the vile place<br>Abandoned to him when their backs were turned,<br>Found,—furnishing a last and best regale,—<br>All the love-letters bandied 'twixt the pair<br>Since the first timid trembling into life<br>O' the love-star till its stand at fiery full.<br>Mad prose, mad verse, fears, hopes, triumph, despair,<br>Avowal, disclaimer, plans, dates, names,—was nought<br>Wanting to prove, if proof consoles at all,<br>That this had been but the fifth act o' the piece<br>Whereof the due proemium, months ago<br>These playwrights had put forth, and ever since<br>Matured the middle, added 'neath his nose.<br>He might go cross himself: the case was clear.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Therefore to Rome with the clear case; there plead<br>Each party its best, and leave law do each right,<br>Let law shine forth and show, as God in heaven,<br>Vice prostrate, virtue pedestalled at last,<br>The triumph of truth! What else shall glad our gaze<br>When once authority has knit the brow<br>And set the brain behind it to decide<br>Between the wolf and sheep turned litigants?<br>"This is indeed a business!" law shook head:<br>"A husband charges hard things on a wife,<br>"The wife as hard o' the husband: whose fault here?<br>"A wife that flies her husband's house, does wrong:<br>"The male friend's interference looks amiss,<br>"Lends a suspicion: but suppose the wife,<br>"On the other hand, be jeopardized at home—<br>"Nay, that she simply hold, ill-groundedly,<br>"An apprehension she is jeopardized,—<br>"And further, if the friend partake the fear,<br>"And, in a commendable charity<br>"Which trusteth all, trust her that she mistrusts,—<br>"What do they but obey law—natural law?<br>"Pretence may this be and a cloak for sin,<br>"And circumstances that concur i' the close<br>"Hint as much, loudly—yet scarce loud enough<br>"To drown the answer 'strange may yet be true:'<br>"Innocence often looks like guiltiness.<br>"The accused declare that in thought, word and deed,<br>"Innocent were they both from first to last<br>"As male-babe haply laid by female-babe<br>"At church on edge of the baptismal font<br>"Together for a minute, perfect-pure.<br>"Difficult to believe, yet possible,<br>"As witness Joseph, the friend's patron-saint.<br>"The night at the inn—there charity nigh chokes<br>"Ere swallow what they both asseverate;<br>"Though down the gullet faith may feel it go,<br>"When mindful of what flight fatigued the flesh<br>"Out of its faculty and fleshliness,<br>"Subdued it to the soul, as saints assure:<br>"So long a flight necessitates a fall<br>"On the first bed, though in a lion's den,<br>"And the first pillow, though the lion's back:<br>"Difficult to believe, yet possible.<br>"Last come the letters' bundled beastliness—<br>"Authority repugns give glance to—nay,<br>"Turns head, and almost lets her whip-lash fall;<br>"Yet here a voice cries 'Respite!' from the clouds—<br>"the accused, both in a tale, protest, disclaim,<br>"Abominate the horror: 'Not my hand'<br>"Asserts the friend—'Nor mine' chimes in the wife,<br>"'Seeing I have no hand, nor write at all.'<br>"Illiterate—for she goes on to ask,<br>"What if the friend did pen now verse now prose,<br>"Commend it to her notice now and then?<br>"'T was pearls to swine: she read no more than wrote,<br>"And kept no more than read, for as they fell<br>"She ever brushed the burr-like things away,<br>"Or, better, burned them, quenched the fire in smoke.<br>"As for this fardel, filth and foolishness,<br>"She sees it now the first time: burn it too!<br>"While for his part the friend vows ignorance<br>"Alike of what bears his name and bears here:<br>"'T is forgery, a felon's masterpiece,<br>"And, as 't is said the fox still finds the stench,<br>"Home-manufacture and the husband's work.<br>"Though he confesses, the ingenuous friend,<br>"That certain missives, letters of a sort,<br>"Flighty and feeble, which assigned themselves<br>"To the wife, no less have fallen, far too oft,<br>"In his path: wherefrom he understood just this—<br>"That were they verily the lady's own.<br>"Why, she who penned them, since he never saw<br>"Save for one minute the mere face of her,<br>"Since never had there been the interchange<br>"Of word with word between them all their life,<br>"Why, she must be the fondest of the frail,<br>"And fit, she for the 'apage' he flung,<br>"Her letters for the flame they went to feed!<br>"But, now he sees her face and hears her speech,<br>"Much he repents him if, in fancy-freak<br>"For a moment the minutest measurable,<br>"He coupled her with the first flimsy word<br>"O' the self-spun fabric some mean spider-soul<br>"Furnished forth: stop his films and stamp on him!<br>"Never was such a tangled knottiness,<br>"But thus authority cuts the Gordian through,<br>"And mark how her decision suits the need!<br>"Here's troublesomeness, scandal on both sides,<br>"Plenty of fault to find, no absolute crime:<br>"Let each side own its fault and make amends!<br>"What does a priest in cavalier's attire<br>"Consorting publicly with vagrant wives<br>"In quarters close as the confessional,<br>"Though innocent of harm? 'T is harm enough:<br>"Let him pay it,—say, be relegate a good<br>"Three years, to spend in some place not too far<br>"Nor yet too near, midway 'twixt near and far,<br>"Rome and Arezzo,—Civita we choose,<br>"Where he may lounge away time, live at large,<br>"Find out the proper function of a priest,<br>"Nowise an exile,—that were punishment,—<br>"But one our love thus keeps out of harm's way<br>"Not more from the husband's anger than, mayhap<br>"His own … say, indiscretion, waywardness,<br>"And wanderings when Easter eves grow warm.<br>"For the wife,—well, our best step to take with her,<br>"On her own showing, were to shift her root<br>"From the old cold shade and unhappy soil<br>"Into a generous ground that fronts the south<br>"Where, since her callow soul, a-shiver late,<br>"Craved simply warmth and called mere passers-by<br>"To the rescue, she should have her fill of shine.<br>"Do house and husband hinder and not help?<br>"Why then, forget both and stay here at peace,<br>"Come into our community, enroll<br>"Herself along with those good Convertites,<br>"Those sinners saved, those Magdalens re-made,<br>"Accept their ministration, well bestow<br>"Her body and patiently possess her soul,<br>"Until we see what better can be done.<br>"Last for the husband: if his tale prove true,<br>"Well is he rid of two domestic plagues—<br>"Both wife that ailed, do whatsoever he would,<br>"And friend of hers that undertook the cure.<br>"See, what a double load we lift from breast!<br>"Off he may go, return, resume old life,<br>"Laugh at the priest here and Pompilia there<br>"In limbo each and punished for their pains,<br>"And grateful tell the inquiring neighbourhood—<br>"In Rome, no wrong but has its remedy."<br>The case was closed. Now, am I fair or no<br>In what I utter? Do I state the facts,<br>Having forechosen a side? I promised you!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Canon Caponsacchi, then, was sent<br>To change his garb, re-trim his tonsure, tie<br>The clerkly silk round, every plait correct,<br>Make the impressive entry on his place<br>Of relegation, thrill his Civita,<br>As Ovid, a like sufferer in the cause,<br>Planted a primrose-patch by Pontus: where,—<br>What with much culture of the sonnet-stave<br>And converse with the aborigines,<br>Soft savagery of eyes unused to roll<br>And hearts that all awry went pit-a-pat<br>And wanted setting right in charity,—<br>What were a couple of years to while away?<br>Pompilia, as enjoined, betook herself<br>To the aforesaid Convertites, soft sisterhood<br>In Via Lungara, where the light ones live,<br>Spin, pray, then sing like linnets o'er the flax.<br>"Anywhere, anyhow, out of my husband's house<br>"Is heaven," cried she,—was therefore suited so.<br>But for Count Guido Franceschini, he-<br>The injured man thus righted—found no heaven<br>I' the house when he returned there, I engage,<br>Was welcomed by the city turned upside down<br>In a chorus of inquiry. "What, back—you?<br>"And no wife? Left her with the Penitents?<br>"Ah, being young and pretty, 't were a shame<br>"To have her whipped in public: leave the job<br>"To the priests who understand! Such priests as yours—<br>"(Pontifex Maximus whipped Vestals once)<br>"Our madcap Caponsacchi: think of him!<br>"So, he fired up, showed fight and skill of fence?<br>"Ay, you drew also, but you did not fight!<br>"The wiser, 't is a word and a blow with him,<br>"True Caponsacchi, of old Head-i'-the-Sack<br>"That fought at Fiesole ere Florence was:<br>"He had done enough, to firk you were too much.<br>"And did the little lady menace you,<br>"Make at your breast with your own harmless sword?<br>"The spitfire! Well, thank God you're safe and sound,<br>"Have kept the sixth commandment whether or no<br>"The lady broke the seventh: I only wish<br>"I were as saint-like, could contain me so.<br>"I, the poor sinner, fear I should have left<br>"Sir Priest no nose-tip to turn up at me!"<br>You, Sir, who listen but interpose no word,<br>Ask yourself, had you borne a baiting thus?<br>Was it enough to make a wise man mad?<br>Oh, but I'll have your verdict at the end!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, not enough, it seems: such mere hurt falls,<br>Frets awhile, aches long, then grows less and less,<br>And so gets done with. Such was not the scheme<br>O' the pleasant Comparini: on Guido's wound<br>Ever in due succession, drop by drop,<br>Came slow distilment from the alembic here<br>Set on to simmer by Canidian hate,<br>Corrosives keeping the man's misery raw.<br>First fire-drop,—when he thought to make the best<br>O' the bad, to wring from out the sentence passed,<br>Poor, pitiful, absurd although it were,<br>Yet what might eke him out result enough<br>And make it worth while to have had the right<br>And not the wrong i' the matter judged at Rome.<br>Inadequate her punishment, no less<br>Punished in some slight sort his wife had been;<br>Then, punished for adultery, what else?<br>On such admitted crime he thought to seize,<br>And institute procedure in the courts<br>Which cut corruption of this kind from man,<br>Cast loose a wife proved loose and castaway:<br>He claimed in due form a divorce at least.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This claim was met now by a counterclaim:<br>Pompilia sought divorce from bed and board<br>Of Guido, whose outrageous cruelty,<br>Whose mother's malice and whose brother's hate<br>Were just the white o' the charge, such dreadful depths<br>Blackened its centre,—hints of worse than hate,<br>Love from that brother, by that Guido's guile,<br>That mother's prompting. Such reply was made,<br>So was the engine loaded, wound up, sprung<br>On Guido, who received bolt full in breast;<br>But no less bore up, giddily perhaps.<br>He had the Abate Paolo still in Rome,<br>Brother and friend and fighter on his side:<br>They rallied in a measure, met the foe<br>Manlike, joined battle in the public courts,<br>As if to shame supine law from her sloth:<br>And waiting her award, let beat the while<br>Arezzo's banter, Rome's buffoonery,<br>On this ear and on that ear, deaf alike,<br>Safe from worse outrage. Let a scorpion nip,<br>And never mind till he contorts his tail!<br>But there was sting i' the creature; thus it struck.<br>Guido had thought in his simplicity—<br>That lying declaration of remorse,<br>That story of the child which was no child<br>And motherhood no motherhood at all,<br>—That even this sin might have its sort of good<br>Inasmuch as no question more could be,—<br>Call it false, call the story true,—no claim<br>Of further parentage pretended now:<br>The parents had abjured all right, at least,<br>I' the woman owned his wife: to plead right still<br>Were to declare the abjuration false:<br>He was relieved from any fear henceforth<br>Their hands might touch, their breath defile again<br>Pompilia with his name upon her yet.<br>Well, no: the next news was, Pompilia's health<br>Demanded change after full three long weeks<br>Spent in devotion with the Sisterhood,—<br>Which rendered sojourn,—so the court opined,—<br>Too irksome, since the convent's walls were high<br>And windows narrow, now was air enough<br>Nor light enough, but all looked prison-like,<br>The last thing which had come in the court's head.<br>Propose a new expedient therefore,—this!<br>She had demanded—had obtained indeed,<br>By intervention of her pitying friends<br>Or perhaps lovers—(beauty in distress,<br>Beauty whose tale is the town-talk beside,<br>Never lacks friendship's arm about her neck)—<br>Obtained remission of the penalty,<br>Permitted transfer to some private place<br>Where better air, more light, new food might soothe—<br>Incarcerated (call it, all the same)<br>At some sure friend's house she must keep inside,<br>Be found in at requirement fast enough,—<br>Domus pro carcere, in Roman style.<br>You keep the house i' the main, as most men do<br>And all good women: but free otherwise,<br>Should friends arrive, to lodge them and what not?<br>And such a domum, such a dwelling-place,<br>Having all Rome to choose from, where chose she?<br>What house obtained Pompilia's preference?<br>Why, just the Comparini's—just, do you mark,<br>Theirs who renounced all part and lot in her<br>So long as Guido could be robbed thereby,<br>And only fell back on relationship<br>And found their daughter safe and sound again<br>When that might surelier stab him: yes, the pair<br>Who, as I told you, first had baited hook<br>With this poor gilded fly Pompilia-thing,<br>Then caught the fish, pulled Guido to the shore<br>And gutted him,—not found a further use<br>For the bait, would trail the gauze wings yet again<br>I' the way of what new swimmer passed their stand.<br>They took Pompilia to their hiding-place—<br>Not in the heart of Rome as formerly,<br>Under observance, subject to control—<br>But out o' the way,—or in the way, who knows?<br>That blind mute villa lurking by the gate<br>At Via Paulina, not so hard to miss<br>By the honest eye, easy enough to find<br>In twilight by marauders: where perchance<br>Some muffled Caponsacchi might repair,<br>Employ odd moments when he too tried change,<br>Found that a friend's abode was pleasanter<br>Than relegation, penance and the rest.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Come, here's the last drop does its worst to wound<br>Here's Guido poisoned to the bone, you say<br>Your boasted still's full strain and strength: not so!<br>One master-squeeze from screw shall bring to birth<br>The hoard i' the heart o' the toad, hell's quintessence.<br>He learned the true convenience of the change,<br>And why a convent lacks the cheerful hearts<br>And helpful hands which female straits require,<br>When, in the blind mute villa by the gate,<br>Pompilia—what? sang, danced, saw company?<br>—Gave birth, Sir, to a child, his son and heir,<br>Or Guido's heir and Caponsacchi's son.<br>I want your word now: what do you say to this?<br>What would say little Arezzo and great Rome,<br>And what did God say and the devil say<br>One at each ear o' the man, the husband, now<br>The father? Why, the overburdened mind<br>Broke down, what was a brain became a blaze.<br>In fury of the moment—(that first news<br>Fell on the Count among his vines, it seems,<br>Doing his farm-work,)—why, he summoned steward,<br>Called in the first four hard hands and stout hearts<br>From field and furrow, poured forth his appeal,<br>Not to Rome's law and gospel any more,<br>But this clown with a mother or a wife,<br>That clodpole with a sister or a son:<br>And, whereas law and gospel held their peace,<br>What wonder if the sticks and stones cried out?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All five soon somehow found themselves at Rome,<br>At the villa door: there was the warmth and light—<br>The sense of life so just an inch inside—<br>Some angel must have whispered "One more chance!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Knocked at the door,—"Who is it knocks?" cried one.<br>"I will make," surely Guido's angel urged,<br>"One final essay, last experiment,<br>"Speak the word, name the name from out all names<br>"Which, if,—as doubtless strong illusions are,<br>"And strange disguisings whereby truth seems false,<br>"And, since I am but man, I dare not do<br>"God's work until assured I see with God,—<br>"If I should bring my lips to breathe that name<br>"And they be innocent,—nay, by one mere touch<br>"Of innocence redeemed from utter guilt,-<br>"That name will bar the door and bid fate pass.<br>"I will not say 'It is a messenger,<br>"'A neighbour, even a belated man,<br>"'Much less your husband's friend, your husband's self:'<br>"At such appeal the door is bound to ope.<br>"But I will say"—here's rhetoric and to spare!<br>Why, Sir, the stumbling-block is cursed and kicked,<br>Block though it be; the name that brought offence<br>Will bring offence: the burnt child dreads the fire<br>Although that fire feed on some taper-wick<br>Which never left the altar nor singed a fly:<br>And had a harmless man tripped you by chance,<br>How would you wait him, stand or step aside,<br>When next you heard he rolled your way? Enough.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>"Giuseppe Caponsacchi!" Guido cried;<br>And open flew the door: enough again.<br>Vengeance, you know, burst, like a mountain-wave<br>That holds a monster in it, over the house,<br>And wiped its filthy four walls free at last<br>With a wash of hell-fire,—father, mother, wife,<br>Killed them all, bathed his name clean in their blood,<br>And, reeking so, was caught, his friends and he,<br>Haled hither and imprisoned yesternight<br>O' the day all this was.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, Sir, tale is told,<br>Of how the old couple come to lie in state<br>Though hacked to pieces,—never, the expert say,<br>So thorough a study of stabbing—while the wife<br>(Viper-like, very difficult to slay)<br>Writhes still through every ring of her, poor wretch,<br>At the Hospital hard by—survives, we'll hope,<br>To somewhat purify her putrid soul<br>By full confession, make so much amends<br>While time lasts; since at day's end die she must.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For Caponsacchi,—why, they'll have him here,<br>As hero of the adventure, who so fit<br>To figure in the coming Carnival?<br>'T will make the fortune of whate'er saloon<br>Hears him recount, with helpful cheek, and eye<br>Hotly indignant now, now dewy-dimmed,<br>The incidents of flight, pursuit, surprise,<br>Capture, with hints of kisses all between—<br>While Guido, wholly unromantic spouse,<br>No longer fit to laugh at since the blood<br>Gave the broad farce an all too brutal air,<br>Why, he and those four luckless friends of his<br>May tumble in the straw this bitter day—<br>Laid by the heels i' the New Prison, I hear,<br>To bide their trial, since trial, and for the life,<br>Follows if but for form's sake: yes, indeed!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But with a certain issue: no dispute,<br>"Try him," bids law: formalities oblige:<br>But as to the issue,—look me in the face!—<br>If the law thinks to find them guilty, Sir,<br>Master or men—touch one hair of the five,<br>Then I say in the name of all that's left<br>Of honour in Rome, civility i' the world<br>Whereof Rome boasts herself the central source,—<br>There's an end to all hope of justice more.<br>Astræa's gone indeed, let hope go too!<br>Who is it dares impugn the natural law,<br>Deny God's word "the faithless wife shall die"?<br>What, are we blind? How can we fail to learn<br>This crowd of miseries make the man a mark,<br>Accumulate on one devoted head<br>For our example?—yours and mine who read<br>Its lesson thus—"Henceforward let none dare<br>"Stand, like a natural in the public way,<br>"Letting the very urchins twitch his beard<br>"And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so,<br>"Be styled male-Grissel or else modern Job!"<br>Had Guido, in the twinkling of an eye,<br>Summed up the reckoning, promptly paid himself,<br>That morning when he came up with the pair<br>At the wayside inn,—exacted his just debt<br>By aid of what first mattock, pitchfork, axe<br>Came to hand in the helpful stable-yard,<br>And with that axe, if providence so pleased,<br>Cloven each head, by some Rolando-stroke,<br>In one clean cut from crown to clavicle,<br>—Slain the priest-gallant, the wife-paramour,<br>Sticking, for all defence, in each skull's cleft<br>The rhyme and reason of the stroke thus dealt,<br>To-wit, those letters and last evidence<br>Of shame, each package in its proper place,—<br>Bidding, who pitied, undistend the skulls,—<br>I say, the world had praised the man. But no!<br>That were too plain, too straight; too simply just!<br>He hesitates, calls law forsooth to help.<br>And law, distasteful to who calls in law<br>When honour is beforehand and would serve,<br>What wonder if law hesitate in turn,<br>Plead her disuse to calls o' the kind, reply<br>(Smiling a little) "'T is yourself assess<br>"The worth of what's lost, sum of damage done.<br>"What you touched with so light a finger-tip,<br>"You whose concern it was to grasp the thing,<br>"Why must law gird herself and grapple with?<br>"Law, alien to the actor whose warm blood<br>"Asks heat from law whose veins run lukewarm milk,—<br>"What you dealt lightly with, shall law make out<br>"Heinous forsooth?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116356" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sir, what's the good of law<br>In a case o'the kind? None, as she all but says.<br>Call in law when a neighbour breaks your fence,<br>Cribs from your field, tampers with rent or lease,<br>Touches the purse or pocket,—but wooes your wife?<br>No: take the old way trod when men were men!<br>Guido preferred the new path,—for his pains,<br>Stuck in a quagmire, floundered worse and worse<br>Until he managed somehow scramble back<br>Into the safe sure rutted road once more,<br>Revenged his own wrong like a gentleman.<br>Once back 'mid the familiar prints, no doubt<br>He made too rash amends for his first fault,<br>Vaulted too loftily over what barred him late,<br>And lit i' the mire again,—the common chance,<br>The natural over-energy: the deed<br>Maladroit yields three deaths instead of one,<br>And one life left: for where's the Canon's corpse?<br>All which is the worse for Guido, but, be frank—<br>The better for you and me and all the world,<br>Husbands of wives, especially in Rome.<br>The thing is put right, in the old place,—ay,<br>The rod hangs on its nail behind the door,<br>Fresh from the brine: a matter I commend<br>To the notice, during Carnival that's near,<br>Of a certain what's-his-name and jackanapes<br>Somewhat too civil of eves with lute and song<br>About a house here, where I keep a wife.<br>(You, being his cousin, may go tell him so.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Robert+Browning&d=The+Ring+and+the+Book">The Ring and the Book</a></em></div>

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