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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>III. The Other Half-Rome</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Another day that finds her living yet,<br>Little Pompilia, with the patient brow<br>And lamentable smile on those poor lips,<br>And, under the white hospital-array,<br>A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise<br>You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,<br>Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.<br>It seems that, when her husband struck her first,<br>She prayed Madonna just that she might live<br>So long as to confess and be absolved;<br>And whether it was that, all her sad life long<br>Never before successful in a prayer,<br>This prayer rose with authority too dread,—<br>Or whether, because earth was hell to her,<br>By compensation, when the blackness broke<br>She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,<br>To show her for a moment such things were,—<br>Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,<br>The friar who took confession from her lip,—<br>When a probationary soul that moved<br>From nobleness to nobleness, as she,<br>Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,<br>Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,<br>The angels love to do their work betimes,<br>Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.<br>Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,<br>She lies, with overplus of life beside<br>To speak and right herself from first to last,<br>Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,<br>Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son<br>From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,<br>And—with best smile of all reserved for him—<br>Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.<br>A miracle, so tell your Molinists!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There she lies in the long white lazar-house.<br>Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,<br>Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear<br>Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge<br>When the reluctant wicket opes at last,<br>Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,<br>Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—<br>For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first<br>Paid the due visit—justice must be done;<br>They took her witness, why the murder was.<br>Then the priests followed properly,—a soul<br>To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,<br>The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.<br>But many more, who found they were old friends,<br>Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk<br>And go forth boasting of it and to boast.<br>Old Monna Baldi chatters like a jay,<br>Swears—but that, prematurely trundled out<br>Just as she felt the benefit begin,<br>The miracle was snapped up by somebody,—<br>Her palsied limb 'gan prick and promise life<br>At touch o' the bedclothes merely,—how much more<br>Had she but brushed the body as she tried!<br>Cavalier Carlo—well, there's some excuse<br>For him—Maratta who paints Virgins so—<br>He too must fee the porter and slip by<br>With pencil cut and paper squared, and straight<br>There was he figuring away at face:<br>"A lovelier face is not in Rome," cried he,<br>"Shaped like a peacock's egg, the pure as pearl,<br>"That hatches you anon a snow-white chick."<br>Then, oh that pair of eyes, that pendent hair,<br>Black this and black the other! Mighty fine—<br>But nobody cared ask to paint the same,<br>Nor grew a poet over hair and eyes<br>Four little years ago when, ask and have,<br>The woman who wakes all this rapture leaned<br>Flower-like from out her window long enough,<br>As much uncomplimented as uncropped<br>By comers and goers in Via Vittoria: eh?<br>'T is just a flower's fate: past parterre we trip,<br>Till peradventure someone plucks our sleeve—<br>"Yon blossom at the briar's end, that's the rose<br>"Two jealous people fought for yesterday<br>"And killed each other: see, there's undisturbed<br>"A pretty pool at the root, of rival red!"<br>Then cry we "Ah, the perfect paragon!"<br>Then crave we "Just one keepsake-leaf for us!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Truth lies between: there's anyhow a child<br>Of seventeen years, whether a flower or weed,<br>Ruined: who did it shall account to Christ—<br>Having no pity on the harmless life<br>And gentle face and girlish form he found,<br>And thus flings back. Go practise if you please<br>With men and women: leave a child alone<br>For Christ's particular love's sake!—so I say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Somebody, at the bedside, said much more,<br>Took on him to explain the secret cause<br>O' the crime: quoth he, "Such crimes are very rife,<br>"Explode nor make us wonder now-a-days,<br>"Seeing that Antichrist disseminates<br>"That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin:<br>"Molinos' sect will soon make earth too hot!"<br>"Nay," groaned the Augustinian, "what's there new?<br>"Crime will not fail to flare up from men's hearts<br>"While hearts are men's and so born criminal;<br>"Which one fact, always old yet ever new,<br>"Accounts for so much crime that, for my part,<br>"Molinos may go whistle to the wind<br>"That waits outside a certain church, you know!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Though really it does seem as if she here,<br>Pompilia, living so and dying thus,<br>Has had undue experience how much crime<br>A heart can hatch. Why was she made to learn<br>—Not you, not I, not even Molinos' self—<br>What Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?<br>Thus saintship is effected probably;<br>No sparing saints the process!—which the more<br>Tends to the reconciling us, no saints,<br>To sinnership, immunity and all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For see now: Pietro and Violante's life<br>Till seventeen years ago, all Rome might note<br>And quote for happy—see the signs distinct<br>Of happiness as we yon Triton's trump.<br>What could they be but happy?—balanced so,<br>Nor low i' the social scale nor yet too high,<br>Nor poor nor richer than comports with ease,<br>Nor bright and envied, nor obscure and scorned,<br>Nor so young that their pleasures fell too thick,<br>Nor old past catching pleasure when it fell,<br>Nothing above, below the just degree,<br>All at the mean where joy's components mix.<br>So again, in the couple's very souls<br>You saw the adequate half with half to match,<br>Each having and each lacking somewhat, both<br>Making a whole that had all and lacked nought.<br>The round and sound, in whose composure just<br>The acquiescent and recipient side<br>Was Pietro's, and the stirring striving one<br>Violante's: both in union gave the due<br>Quietude, enterprise, craving and content,<br>Which go to bodily health and peace of mind.<br>But, as 't is said a body, rightly mixed,<br>Each element in equipoise, would last<br>Too long and live for ever,—accordingly<br>Holds a germ—sand-grain weight too much i' the scale—<br>Ordained to get predominance one day<br>And so bring all to ruin and release,—<br>Not otherwise a fatal germ lurked here:<br>"With mortals much must go, but something stays;<br>"Nothing will stay of our so happy selves."<br>Out of the very ripeness of life's core<br>A worm was bred—"Our life shall leave no fruit."<br>Enough of bliss, they thought, could bliss bear seed,<br>Yield its like, propagate a bliss in turn<br>And keep the kind up; not supplant themselves<br>But put in evidence, record they were,<br>Show them, when done with, i' the shape of a child.<br>"'T is in a child, man and wife grow complete,<br>"One flesh: God says so: let him do his work!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, one reminder of this gnawing want,<br>One special prick o' the maggot at the core,<br>Always befell when, as the day came round,<br>A certain yearly sum,—our Pietro being,<br>As the long name runs, an usufructuary,—<br>Dropped in the common bag as interest<br>Of money, his till death, not afterward,<br>Failing an heir: an heir would take and take,<br>A child of theirs be wealthy in their place<br>To nobody's hurt—the stranger else seized all.<br>Prosperity rolled river-like and stopped,<br>Making their mill go; but when wheel wore out,<br>The wave would find a space and sweep on free<br>And, half-a-mile off, grind some neighbour's corn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Adam-like, Pietro sighed and said no more:<br>Eve saw the apple was fair and good to taste,<br>So, plucked it, having asked the snake advice.<br>She told her husband God was merciful,<br>And his and her prayer granted at the last:<br>Let the old mill-stone moulder,—wheel unworn,<br>Quartz from the quarry, shot into the stream<br>Adroitly, as before should go bring grist—<br>Their house continued to them by an heir,<br>Their vacant heart replenished with a child.<br>We have her own confession at full length<br>Made in the first remorse: 't was Jubilee<br>Pealed in the ear o' the conscience and it woke.<br>She found she had offended God no doubt,<br>So much was plain from what had happened since,<br>Misfortune on misfortune; but she harmed<br>No one i' the world, so far as she could see.<br>The act had gladdened Pietro to the height,<br>Her spouse whom God himself must gladden so<br>Or not at all: thus much seems probable<br>From the implicit faith, or rather say<br>Stupid credulity of the foolish man<br>Who swallowed such a tale nor strained a whit<br>Even at his wife's far-over-fifty years<br>Matching his sixty-and-under. Him she blessed;<br>And as for doing any detriment<br>To the veritable heir,—why, tell her first<br>Who was he? Which of all the hands held up<br>I' the crowd, one day would gather round their gate,<br>Did she so wrong by intercepting thus<br>The ducat, spendthrift fortune thought to fling<br>For a scramble just to make the mob break shins?<br>She kept it, saved them kicks and cuffs thereby.<br>While at the least one good work had she wrought,<br>Good, clearly and incontestably! Her cheat—<br>What was it to its subject, the child's self,<br>But charity and religion? See the girl!<br>A body most like—a soul too probably—<br>Doomed to death, such a double death as waits<br>The illicit offspring of a common trull,<br>Sure to resent and forthwith rid herself<br>Of a mere interruption to sin's trade,<br>In the efficacious way old Tiber knows.<br>Was not so much proved by the ready sale<br>O' the child, glad transfer of this irksome chance?<br>Well then, she had caught up this castaway:<br>This fragile egg, some careless wild bird dropped,<br>She had picked from where it waited the foot-fall,<br>And put in her own breast till forth broke finch<br>Able to sing God praise on mornings now.<br>What so excessive harm was done?—she asked.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">To which demand the dreadful answer comes—<br>For that same deed, now at Lorenzo's church,<br>Both agents, conscious and inconscious, lie;<br>While she, the deed was done to benefit,<br>Lies also, the most lamentable of things,<br>Yonder where curious people count her breaths,<br>Calculate how long yet the little life<br>Unspilt may serve their turn nor spoil the show,<br>Give them their story, then the church its group.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, having gained Pompilia, the girl grew<br>I' the midst of Pietro here, Violante there,<br>Each, like a semicircle with stretched arms,<br>Joining the other round her preciousness—<br>Two walls that go about a garden-plot<br>Where a chance sliver, branchlet slipt from bole<br>Of some tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree,<br>Filched by two exiles and borne far away.<br>Patiently glorifies their solitude,—<br>Year by year mounting, grade by grade surmount<br>The builded brick-work, yet is compassed still,<br>Still hidden happily and shielded safe,—<br>Else why should miracle have graced the ground?<br>But on the twelfth sun that brought April there<br>What meant that laugh? The coping-stone was reached;<br>Nay, above towered a light tuft of bloom<br>To be toyed with by butterfly or bee,<br>Done good to or else harm to from outside:<br>Pompilia's root, stalk and a branch or two<br>Home enclosed still, the rest would be the world's.<br>All which was taught our couple though obtuse,<br>Since walls have ears, when one day brought a priest,<br>Smooth-mannered soft-speeched sleek-cheeked visitor,<br>The notable Abate Paolo—known<br>As younger brother of a Tuscan house<br>Whereof the actual representative,<br>Count Guido, had employed his youth and age<br>In culture of Rome's most productive plant—<br>A cardinal: but years pass and change comes,<br>In token of which, here was our Paolo brought<br>To broach a weighty business. Might he speak?<br>Yes—to Violante somehow caught alone<br>While Pietro took his after-dinner doze,<br>And the young maiden, busily as befits,<br>Minded her broider-frame three chambers off.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So—giving now his great flap-hat a gloss<br>With flat o' the hand between-whiles, soothing now<br>The silk from out its creases o'er the calf,<br>Setting the stocking clerical again,<br>But never disengaging, once engaged,<br>The thin clear grey hold of his eyes on her—<br>He dissertated on that Tuscan house,<br>Those Franceschini,—very old they were—<br>Not rich however—oh, not rich, at least,<br>As people look to be who, low i' the scale<br>One way, have reason, rising all they can<br>By favour of the money-bag! 't is fair—<br>Do all gifts go together? But don't suppose<br>That being not so rich means all so poor!<br>Say rather, well enough—i' the way, indeed,<br>Ha, ha, to fortune better than the best:<br>Since if his brother's patron-friend kept faith,<br>Put into promised play the Cardinalate,<br>Their house might wear the red cloth that keeps warm,<br>Would but the Count have patience—there's the point!<br>For he was slipping into years apace,<br>And years make men restless—they needs must spy<br>Some certainty, some sort of end assured,<br>Some sparkle, tho' from topmost beacon-tip,<br>That warrants life a harbour through the haze.<br>In short, call him fantastic as you choose,<br>Guido was home-sick, yearned for the old sights<br>And usual faces,—fain would settle himself<br>And have the patron's bounty when it fell<br>Irrigate far rather than deluge near,<br>Go fertilize Arezzo, not flood Rome.<br>Sooth to say, 't was the wiser wish: the Count<br>Proved wanting in ambition,—let us avouch,<br>Since truth is best,—in callousness of heart,<br>And winced at pin-pricks whereby honours hang<br>A ribbon o'er each puncture: his—no soul<br>Ecclesiastic (here the hat was brushed)<br>Humble but self-sustaining, calm and cold,<br>Having, as one who puts his hand to the plough,<br>Renounced the over-vivid family-feel—<br>Poor brother Guido! All too plain, he pined<br>Amid Rome's pomp and glare for dinginess<br>And that dilapidated palace-shell<br>Vast as a quarry and, very like, as bare—<br>Since to this comes old grandeur now-a-days—<br>Or that absurd wild villa in the waste<br>O' the hill side, breezy though, for who likes air,<br>Vittiano, nor unpleasant with its vines,<br>Outside the city and the summer heats.<br>And now his harping on this one tense chord<br>The villa and the palace, palace this<br>And villa the other, all day and all night<br>Creaked like the implacable cicala's cry<br>And made one's ear drum ache: nought else would serve<br>But that, to light his mother's visage up<br>With second youth, hope, gaiety again,<br>He must find straightway, woo and haply win<br>And bear away triumphant back, some wife.<br>Well now, the man was rational in his way:<br>He, the Abate,—ought he to interpose?<br>Unless by straining still his tutelage<br>(Priesthood leaps over elder-brothership)<br>Across this difficulty: then let go,<br>Leave the poor fellow in peace! Would that be wrong?<br>There was no making Guido great, it seems,<br>Spite of himself: then happy be his dole!<br>Indeed, the Abate's little interest<br>Was somewhat nearly touched i' the case, they saw:<br>Since if his simple kinsman so were bent,<br>Began his rounds in Rome to catch a wife,<br>Full soon would such unworldliness surprise<br>The rare bird, sprinkle salt on phoenix' tail,<br>And so secure the nest a sparrow-hawk.<br>No lack of mothers here in Rome,—no dread<br>Of daughters lured as larks by looking-glass!<br>The first name-pecking credit-scratching fowl<br>Would drop her unfledged cuckoo in our nest<br>To gather greyness there, give voice at length<br>And shame the brood … but it was long ago<br>When crusades were, and we sent eagles forth!<br>No, that at least the Abate could forestall.<br>He read the thought within his brother's word,<br>Knew what he purposed better than himself.<br>We want no name and fame—having our own:<br>No worldly aggrandizement—such we fly:<br>But if some wonder of a woman's-heart<br>Were yet untainted on this grimy earth,<br>Tender and true—tradition tells of such—<br>Prepared to pant in time and tune with ours—<br>If some good girl (a girl, since she must take<br>The new bent, live new life, adopt new modes)<br>Not wealthy (Guido for his rank was poor)<br>But with whatever dowry came to hand,—<br>There were the lady-love predestinate!<br>And somehow the Abate's guardian eye—<br>Scintillant, rutilant, fraternal fire,—<br>Roving round every way had seized the prize<br>—The instinct of us, we, the spiritualty!<br>Come, cards on table; was it true or false<br>That here—here in this very tenement—<br>Yea, Via Vittoria did a marvel hide,<br>Lily of a maiden, white with intact leaf<br>Guessed thro' the sheath that saved it from the sun?<br>A daughter with the mother's hands still clasped<br>Over her head for fillet virginal,<br>A wife worth Guido's house and hand and heart?<br>He came to see; had spoken, he could no less—<br>(A final cherish of the stockinged calf)<br>If harm were,—well, the matter was off his mind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then with the great air did he kiss, devout,<br>Violante's hand, and rise up his whole height<br>(A certain purple gleam about the black)<br>And go forth grandly,—as if the Pope came next.<br>And so Violante rubbed her eyes awhile,<br>Got up too, walked to wake her Pietro soon<br>And pour into his ear the mighty news<br>How somebody had somehow somewhere seen<br>Their tree-top-tuft of bloom above the wall,<br>And came now to apprize them the tree's self<br>Was no such crab-sort as should go feed swine,<br>But veritable gold, the Hesperian ball<br>Ordained for Hercules to haste and pluck,<br>And bear and give the Gods to banquet with—<br>Hercules standing ready at the door.<br>Whereon did Pietro rub his eyes in turn,<br>Look very wise, a little woeful too,<br>Then, periwig on head, and cane in hand,<br>Sally forth dignifiedly into the Square<br>Of Spain across Babbuino the six steps,<br>Toward the Boat-fountain where our idlers lounge,—<br>Ask, for form's sake, who Hercules might be,<br>And have congratulation from the world.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Heartily laughed the world in his fool's-face<br>And told him Hercules was just the heir<br>To the stubble once a corn-field, and brick-heap<br>Where used to be a dwelling-place now burned.<br>Guido and Franceschini; a Count,—ay:<br>But a cross i' the poke to bless the Countship? No!<br>All gone except sloth, pride, rapacity,<br>Humours of the imposthume incident<br>To rich blood that runs thin,—nursed to a head<br>By the rankly-salted soil—a cardinal's court<br>Where, parasite and picker-up of crumbs,<br>He had hung on long, and now, let go, said some,<br>Shaken off, said others,—but in any case<br>Tired of the trade and something worse for wear,<br>Was wanting to change town for country quick,<br>Go home again: let Pietro help him home!<br>The brother, Abate Paolo, shrewder mouse,<br>Had pricked for comfortable quarters, inched<br>Into the core of Rome, and fattened so;<br>But Guido, over-burly for rat's hole<br>Suited to clerical slimness, starved outside,<br>Must shift for himself: and so the shift was this!<br>What, was the snug retreat of Pietro tracked,<br>The little provision for his old age snuffed?<br>"Oh, make your girl a lady, an you list,<br>"But have more mercy on our wit than vaunt<br>"Your bargain as we burgesses who brag!<br>"Why, Goodman Dullard, if a friend must speak,<br>"Would the Count, think you, stoop to you and yours<br>"Were there the value of one penny-piece<br>"To rattle 'twixt his palms—or likelier laugh,<br>"Bid your Pompilia help you black his shoe?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Home again, shaking oft the puzzled pate,<br>Went Pietro to announce a change indeed,<br>Yet point Violante where some solace lay<br>Of a rueful sort,—the taper, quenched so soon,<br>Had ended merely in a snuff, not stink—<br>Congratulate there was one hope the less<br>Not misery the more: and so an end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The marriage thus impossible, the rest<br>Followed: our spokesman, Paolo, heard his fate,<br>Resignedly Count Guido bore the blow:<br>Violante wiped away the transient tear,<br>Renounced the playing Danae to gold dreams,<br>Praised much her Pietro's prompt sagaciousness,<br>Found neighbours' envy natural, lightly laughed<br>At gossips' malice, fairly wrapped herself<br>In her integrity three folds about,<br>And, letting pass a little day or two,<br>Threw, even over that integrity,<br>Another wrappage, namely one thick veil<br>That hid her, matron-wise, from head to foot,<br>And, by the hand holding a girl veiled too,<br>Stood, one dim end of a December day,<br>In Saint Lorenzo on the altar-step—<br>Just where she lies now and that girl will lie—<br>Only with fifty candles' company<br>Now, in the place of the poor winking one<br>Which saw,—doors shut and sacristan made sure,—<br>A priest—perhaps Abate Paolo—wed<br>Guido clandestinely, irrevocably<br>To his Pompilia aged thirteen years<br>And five months,—witness the church register,—<br>Pompilia, (thus become Count Guido's wife<br>Clandestinely, irrevocably his,)<br>Who all the while had borne, from first to last,<br>As brisk a part i' the bargain, as yon lamb,<br>Brought forth from basket and set out for sale,<br>Bears while they chaffer, wary market-man<br>And voluble housewife, o'er it,—each in turn<br>Patting the curly calm inconscious head,<br>With the shambles ready round the corner there,<br>When the talk's talked out and a bargain struck.<br>Transfer complete, why, Pietro was apprised.<br>Violante sobbed the sobs and prayed the prayers<br>And said the serpent tempted so she fell,<br>Till Pietro had to clear his brow apace<br>And make the best of matters: wrath at first,—<br>How else? pacification presently,<br>Why not?—could flesh withstand the impurpled one,<br>The very Cardinal, Paolo's patron-friend?<br>Who, justifiably surnamed "a hinge,"<br>Knew where the mollifying oil should drop<br>To cure the creak o' the valve,—considerate<br>For frailty, patient in a naughty world.<br>He even volunteered to supervise<br>The rough draught of those marriage-articles<br>Signed in a hurry by Pietro, since revoked:<br>Trust's politic, suspicion does the harm,<br>There is but one way to brow-beat this world,<br>Dumb-founder doubt, and repay scorn in kind,—<br>To go on trusting, namely, till faith move<br>Mountains.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And faith here made the mountains move.<br>Why, friends whose zeal cried "Caution ere too late!"—<br>Bade "Pause ere jump, with both feet joined, on slough!"—<br>Counselled "If rashness then, now temperance!"—<br>Heard for their pains that Pietro had closed eyes,<br>Jumped and was in the middle of the mire,<br>Money and all, just what should sink a man.<br>By the mere marriage, Guido gained forthwith<br>Dowry, his wife's right; no rescinding there:<br>But Pietro, why must he needs ratify<br>One gift Violante gave, pay down one doit<br>Promised in first fool's-flurry? Grasp the bag<br>Lest the son's service flag,—is reason and rhyme,<br>Above all when the son's a son-in-law.<br>Words to the wind! The parents cast their lot<br>Into the lap o' the daughter: and the son<br>Now with a right to lie there, took what fell,<br>Pietro's whole having and holding, house and field,<br>Goods, chattels and effects, his worldly worth<br>Present and in perspective, all renounced<br>In favour of Guido. As for the usufruct—<br>The interest now, the principal anon,<br>Would Guido please to wait, at Pietro's death:<br>Till when, he must support the couple's charge,<br>Bear with them, housemates, pensionaries, pawned<br>To an alien for fulfilment of their pact.<br>Guido should at discretion deal them orts,<br>Bread-bounty in Arezzo the strange place,—<br>They who had lived deliciously and rolled<br>Rome's choicest comfit 'neath the tongue before.<br>Into this quag, "jump" bade the Cardinal!<br>And neck-deep in a minute there flounced they.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But they touched bottom at Arezzo: there—<br>Four months' experience of how craft and greed<br>Quickened by penury and pretentious hate<br>Of plain truth, brutify and bestialize,—<br>Four months' taste of apportioned insolence,<br>Cruelty graduated, dose by dose<br>Of ruffianism dealt out at bed and board,<br>And lo, the work was done, success clapped hands.<br>The starved, stripped, beaten brace of stupid dupes<br>Broke at last in their desperation loose,<br>Fled away for their lives, and lucky so;<br>Found their account in casting coat afar<br>And bearing off a shred of skin at least:<br>Left Guido lord o' the prey, as the lion is,<br>And, careless what came after, carried their wrongs<br>To Rome,—I nothing doubt, with such remorse<br>As folly feels, since pain can make it wise,<br>But crime, past wisdom, which is innocence,<br>Needs not be plagued with till a later day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Pietro went back to beg from door to door,<br>In hope that memory not quite extinct<br>Of cheery days and festive nights would move<br>Friends and acquaintance—after the natural laugh,<br>And tributary "Just as we foretold—"<br>To show some bowels, give the dregs o' the cup,<br>Scraps of the trencher, to their host that was,<br>Or let him share the mat with the mastiff, he<br>Who lived large and kept open house so long.<br>Not so Violante: ever a-head i' the march,<br>Quick at the bye-road and the cut-across,<br>She went first to the best adviser, God—<br>Whose finger unmistakably was felt<br>In all this retribution of the past.<br>Here was the prize of sin, luck of a lie!<br>But here too was what Holy Year would help,<br>Bound to rid sinners of sin vulgar, sin<br>Abnormal, sin prodigious, up to sin<br>Impossible and supposed for Jubilee' sake:<br>To lift the leadenest of lies, let soar<br>The soul unhampered by a feather-weight.<br>"I will" said she "go burn out this bad hole<br>"That breeds the scorpion, baulk the plague at least<br>"Of hope to further plague by progeny:<br>"I will confess my fault, be punished, yes,<br>"But pardoned too: Saint Peter pays for all."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, with the crowd she mixed, made for the dome,<br>Through the great door new-broken for the nonce<br>Marched, muffled more than ever matron-wise,<br>Up the left nave to the formidable throne,<br>Fell into file with this the poisoner<br>And that the parricide, and reached in turn<br>The poor repugnant Penitentiary<br>Set at this gully-hole o' the world's discharge<br>To help the frightfullest of filth have vent,<br>And then knelt down and whispered in his ear<br>How she had bought Pompilia, palmed the babe<br>On Pietro, passed the girl off as their child<br>To Guido, and defrauded of his due<br>This one and that one,—more than she could name,<br>Until her solid piece of wickedness<br>Happened to split and spread woe far and wide:<br>Contritely now she brought the case for cure.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Replied the throne—"Ere God forgive the guilt,<br>"Make man some restitution! Do your part!<br>"The owners of your husband's heritage,<br>"Barred thence by this pretended birth and heir,—<br>"Tell them, the bar came so, is broken so,<br>"Theirs be the due reversion as before!<br>"Your husband who, no partner in the guilt,<br>"Suffers the penalty, led blindfold thus<br>"By love of what he thought his flesh and blood<br>"To alienate his all in her behalf,—<br>"Tell him too such contract is null and void!<br>"Last, he who personates your son-in-law,<br>"Who with sealed eyes and stopped ears, tame and mute,<br>"Took at your hand that bastard of a whore<br>"You called your daughter and he calls his wife,—<br>"Tell him, and bear the anger which is just!<br>"Then, penance so performed, may pardon be!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Who could gainsay this just and right award?<br>Nobody in the world: but, out o' the world,<br>Who knows?—might timid intervention be<br>From any makeshift of an angel-guide,<br>Substitute for celestial guardianship,<br>Pretending to take care of the girl's self:<br>"Woman, confessing crime is healthy work,<br>"And telling truth relieves a liar like you,<br>"But how of my quite unconsidered charge?<br>"No thought if, while this good befalls yourself,<br>"Aught in the way of harm may find out her?"<br>No least thought, I assure you: truth being truth,<br>Tell it and shame the devil!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Said and done:<br>Home went Violante, disbosomed all:<br>And Pietro who, six months before, had borne<br>Word after word of such a piece of news<br>Like so much cold steel inched through his breastblade,<br>Now at its entry gave a leap for joy<br>As who—what did I say of one in a quag?—<br>Should catch a hand from heaven and spring thereby<br>Out of the mud, on ten toes stand once more.<br>"What? All that used to be, may be again?<br>"My money mine again, my house, my land,<br>"My chairs and tables, all mine evermore?<br>"What, the girl's dowry never was the girl's,<br>"And, unpaid yet, is never now to pay?<br>"Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia child<br>"That used to be my own with her great eyes—<br>"He who drove us forth, why should he keep her<br>"When proved as very a pauper as himself?<br>"Will she come back, with nothing changed at all,<br>"And laugh 'But how you dreamed uneasily!<br>"'I saw the great drops stand here on your brow—<br>"'Did I do wrong to wake you with a kiss?'<br>"No, indeed, darling! No, for wide awake<br>"I see another outburst of surprise:<br>"The lout-lord, bully-beggar, braggart-sneak,<br>"Who not content with cutting purse, crops ear—<br>"Assuredly it shall be salve to mine<br>"When this great news red-letters him, the rogue!<br>"Ay, let him taste the teeth o' the trap, this fox,<br>"Give us our lamb back, golden fleece and all,<br>"Let her creep in and warm our breasts again!<br>"Why care for the past? We three are our old selves,<br>"And know now what the outside world is worth."<br>And so, he carried case before the courts;<br>And there Violante, blushing to the bone,<br>Made public declaration of her fault,<br>Renounced her motherhood, and prayed the law<br>To interpose, frustrate of its effect<br>Her folly, and redress the injury done.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Whereof was the disastrous consequence,<br>That though indisputably clear the case<br>(For thirteen years are not so large a lapse,<br>And still six witnesses survived in Rome<br>To prove the truth o' the tale)—yet, patent wrong<br>Seemed Guido's; the first cheat had chanced on him:<br>Here was the pity that, deciding right,<br>Those who began the wrong would gain the prize.<br>Guido pronounced the story one long lie<br>Lied to do robbery and take revenge:<br>Or say it were no lie at all but truth,<br>Then, it both robbed the right heirs and shamed him<br>Without revenge to humanize the deed:<br>What had he done when first they shamed him thus?<br>But that were too fantastic: losels they,<br>And leasing this world's-wonder of a lie,<br>They lied to blot him though it brand themselves.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So answered Guido through the Abate's mouth.<br>Wherefore the court, its customary way,<br>Inclined to the middle course the sage affect.<br>They held the child to be a changeling,—good:<br>But, lest the husband got no good thereby,<br>They willed the dowry, though not hers at all,<br>Should yet be his, if not by right then grace—<br>Part-payment for the plain injustice done.<br>As for that other contract, Pietro's work,<br>Renunciation of his own estate,<br>That must be cancelled—give him back his gifts,<br>He was no party to the cheat at least!<br>So ran the judgment:—whence a prompt appeal<br>On both sides, seeing right is absolute.<br>Cried Pietro "Is the child no child of mine?<br>"Why give her a child's dowry?"—"Have I right<br>"To the dowry, why not to the rest as well?"<br>Cried Guido, or cried Paolo in his name:<br>Till law said "Reinvestigate the case!"<br>And so the matter pends, to this same day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hence new disaster—here no outlet seemed;<br>Whatever the fortune of the battle-field,<br>No path whereby the fatal man might march<br>Victorious, wreath on head and spoils in hand,<br>And back turned full upon the baffled foe,—<br>Nor cranny whence, desperate and disgraced,<br>Stripped to the skin, he might be fain to crawl<br>Worm-like, and so away with his defeat<br>To other fortune and a novel prey.<br>No, he was pinned to the place there, left alone<br>With his immense hate and, the solitary<br>Subject to satisfy that hate, his wife.<br>"Cast her off? Turn her naked out of doors?<br>"Easily said! But still the action pends,<br>"Still dowry, principal and interest,<br>"Pietro's possessions, all I bargained for,—<br>"Any good day, be but my friends alert,<br>"May give them me if she continue mine.<br>"Yet, keep her? Keep the puppet of my foes—<br>"Her voice that lisps me back their curse—her eye<br>"They lend their leer of triumph to—her lip<br>"I touch and taste their very filth upon?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In short, he also took the middle course<br>Rome taught him—did at last excogitate<br>How he might keep the good and leave the bad<br>Twined in revenge, yet extricable,—nay<br>Make the very hate's eruption, very rush<br>Of the unpent sluice of cruelty relieve<br>His heart first, then go fertilize his field.<br>What if the girl-wife, tortured with due care,<br>Should take, as though spontaneously, the road<br>It were impolitic to thrust her on?<br>If, goaded, she broke out in full revolt,<br>Followed her parents i' the face o' the world,<br>Branded as runaway not castaway,<br>Self-sentenced and self-punished in the act?<br>So should the loathed form and detested face<br>Launch themselves into hell and there be lost<br>While he looked o'er the brink with folded arms;<br>So should the heaped-up shames go shuddering back<br>O' the head o' the heapers, Pietro and his wife,<br>And bury in the breakage three at once:<br>While Guido, left free, no one right renounced,<br>Gain present, gain prospective, all the gain,<br>None of the wife except her rights absorbed,<br>Should ask law what it was law paused about—<br>If law were dubious still whose word to take,<br>The husband's—dignified and derelict,<br>Or the wife's—the … what I tell you. It should be.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido's first step was to take pen, indite<br>A letter to the Abate,—not his own,<br>His wife's,—she should re-write, sign, seal and send.<br>She liberally told the household-news,<br>Rejoiced her vile progenitors were gone,<br>Revealed their malice—how they even laid<br>A last injunction on her, when they fled,<br>That she should forthwith find a paramour,<br>Complot with him to gather spoil enough,<br>Then burn the house down,—taking previous care<br>To poison all its inmates overnight,—<br>And so companioned, so provisioned too,<br>Follow to Rome and there join fortunes gay.<br>This letter, traced in pencil-characters,<br>Guido as easily got re-traced in ink<br>By his wife's pen, guided from end to end,<br>As if it had been just so much Chinese.<br>For why? That wife could broider, sing perhaps,<br>Pray certainly, but no more read than write<br>This letter "which yet write she must," he said,<br>"Being half courtesy and compliment,<br>"Half sisterliness: take the thing on trust!"<br>She had as readily re-traced the words<br>Of her own death-warrant,—in some sort 't was so.<br>This letter the Abate in due course<br>Communicated to such curious souls<br>In Rome as needs must pry into the cause<br>Of quarrel, why the Comparini fled<br>The Franceschini, whence the grievance grew,<br>What the hubbub meant: "Nay,—see the wife's own word,<br>"Authentic answer! Tell detractors too<br>"There's a plan formed, a programme figured here<br>"—Pray God no after-practice put to proof,<br>"This letter cast no light upon, one day!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So much for what should work in Rome: back now<br>To Arezzo, follow up the project there,<br>Forward the next step with as bold a foot,<br>And plague Pompilia to the height, you see!<br>Accordingly did Guido set himself<br>To worry up and down, across, around,<br>The woman, hemmed in by her household-bars,—<br>Chase her about the coop of daily life,<br>Having first stopped each outlet thence save one<br>Which, like bird with a ferret in her haunt,<br>She needs must seize as sole way of escape<br>Though there was tied and twittering a decoy<br>To seem as if it tempted,—just the plume<br>O' the popinjay, not a real respite there<br>From tooth and claw of something in the dark,—<br>Giuseppe Caponsacchi.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now begins<br>The tenebrific passage of the tale:<br>How hold a light, display the cavern's gorge?<br>How, in this phase of the affair, show truth?<br>Here is the dying wife who smiles and says<br>"So it was,—so it was not,—how it was,<br>"I never knew nor ever care to know—"<br>Till they all weep, physician, man of law,<br>Even that poor old bit of battered brass<br>Beaten out of all shape by the world's sins,<br>Common utensil of the lazar-house—<br>Confessor Celestino groans "'T is truth,<br>"All truth and only truth: there's something here,<br>"Some presence in the room beside us all,<br>"Something that every lie expires before:<br>"No question she was pure from first to last."<br>So far is well and helps us to believe:<br>But beyond, she the helpless, simple-sweet<br>Or silly-sooth, unskilled to break one blow<br>At her good fame by putting finger forth,—<br>How can she render service to the truth?<br>The bird says "So I fluttered where a springe<br>"Caught me: the springe did not contrive itself,<br>"That I know: who contrived it, God forgive!"<br>But we, who hear no voice and have dry eyes,<br>Must ask,—we cannot else, absolving her,—<br>How of the part played by that same decoy<br>I' the catching, caging? Was himself caught first?<br>We deal here with no innocent at least,<br>No witless victim,—he's a man of the age<br>And priest beside,—persuade the mocking world<br>Mere charity boiled over in this sort!<br>He whose own safety too,—(the Pope's apprised—<br>Good-natured with the secular offence,<br>The Pope looks grave on priesthood in a scrape)<br>Our priest's own safety therefore, may-be life,<br>Hangs on the issue! You will find it hard.<br>Guido is here to meet you with fixed foot,<br>Stiff like a statue—"Leave what went before!<br>"My wife fled i' the company of a priest,<br>"Spent two days and two nights alone with him:<br>"Leave what came after!" He stands hard to throw<br>Moreover priests are merely flesh and blood;<br>When we get weakness, and no guilt beside,<br>'Tis no such great ill-fortune: finding grey,<br>We gladly call that white which might be black,<br>Too used to the double-dye. So, if the priest<br>Moved by Pompilia's youth and beauty, gave<br>Way to the natural weakness… . Anyhow<br>Here be facts, charactery; what they spell<br>Determine, and thence pick what sense you may!<br>There was a certain young bold handsome priest<br>Popular in the city, far and wide<br>Famed, since Arezzo's but a little place,<br>As the best of good companions, gay and grave<br>At the decent minute; settled in his stall,<br>Or sidling, lute on lap, by lady's couch,<br>Ever the courtly Canon; see in him<br>A proper star to climb and culminate,<br>Have its due handbreadth of the heaven at Rome,<br>Though meanwhile pausing on Arezzo's edge,<br>As modest candle does 'mid mountain fog,<br>To rub off redness and rusticity<br>Ere it sweep chastened, gain the silver-sphere!<br>Whether through Guido's absence or what else,<br>This Caponsacchi, favourite of the town,<br>Was yet no friend of his nor free o' the house,<br>Though both moved in the regular magnates' march:<br>Each must observe the other's tread and halt<br>At church, saloon, theatre, house of play.<br>Who could help noticing the husband's slouch,<br>The black of his brow—or miss the news that buzzed<br>Of how the little solitary wife<br>Wept and looked out of window all day long?<br>What need of minute search into such springs<br>As start men, set o' the move?—machinery<br>Old as earth, obvious as the noonday sun.<br>Why, take men as they come,—an instance now,—<br>Of all those who have simply gone to see<br>Pompilia on her deathbed since four days,<br>Half at the least are, call it how you please,<br>In love with her—I don't except the priests<br>Nor even the old confessor whose eyes run<br>Over at what he styles his sister's voice<br>Who died so early and weaned him from the world.<br>Well, had they viewed her ere the paleness pushed<br>The last o' the red o' the rose away, while yet<br>Some hand, adventurous 'twixt the wind and her,<br>Might let shy life run back and raise the flower<br>Rich with reward up to the guardian's face,—<br>Would they have kept that hand employed all day<br>At fumbling on with prayer-book pages? No!<br>Men are men: why then need I say one word<br>More than that our mere man the Canon here<br>Saw, pitied, loved Pompilia?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This is why;<br>This startling why: that Caponsacchi's self—<br>Whom foes and friends alike avouch, for good<br>Or ill, a man of truth whate'er betide,<br>Intrepid altogether, reckless too<br>How his own fame and fortune, tossed to the winds,<br>Suffer by any turn the adventure take,<br>Nay, more—not thrusting, like a badge to hide,<br>'Twixt shirt and skin a joy which shown is shame—<br>But flirting flag-like i' the face o' the world<br>This tell-tale kerchief, this conspicuous love<br>For the lady,—oh, called innocent love, I know!<br>Only, such scarlet fiery innocence<br>As most folk would try muffle up in shade,—<br>—'T is strange then that this else abashless mouth<br>Should yet maintain, for truth's sake which is God's,<br>That it was not he made the first advance,<br>That, even ere word had passed between the two,<br>Pompilia penned him letters, passionate prayers,<br>If not love, then so simulating love<br>That he, no novice to the taste of thyme,<br>Turned from such over-luscious honey-clot<br>At end o' the flower, and would not lend his lip<br>Till … but the tale here frankly outsoars faith:<br>There must be falsehood somewhere. For her part,<br>Pompilia quietly constantly avers<br>She never penned a letter in her life<br>Nor to the Canon nor any other man,<br>Being incompetent to write and read:<br>Nor had she ever uttered word to him, nor he<br>To her till that same evening when they met,<br>She on her window-terrace, he beneath<br>I' the public street, as was their fateful chance,<br>And she adjured him in the name of God<br>To find out, bring to pass where, when and how<br>Escape with him to Rome might be contrived.<br>Means were found, plan laid, time fixed, she avers,<br>And heart assured to heart in loyalty,<br>All at an impulse! All extemporized<br>As in romance-books! Is that credible?<br>Well, yes: as she avers this with calm mouth<br>Dying, I do think "Credible!" you'd cry—<br>Did not the priest's voice come to break the spell.<br>They questioned him apart, as the custom is,<br>When first the matter made a noise at Rome,<br>And he, calm, constant then as she is now,<br>For truth's sake did assert and re-assert<br>Those letters called him to her and he came,<br>—Which damns the story credible otherwise.<br>Why should this man,—mad to devote himself,<br>Careless what comes of his own fame, the first,—<br>Be studious thus to publish and declare<br>Just what the lightest nature loves to hide,<br>So screening lady from the byword's laugh<br>"First spoke the lady, last the cavalier!"<br>—I say,—why should the man tell truth just now<br>When graceful lying meets such ready shrift?<br>Or is there a first moment for a priest<br>As for a woman, when invaded shame<br>Must have its first and last excuse to show?<br>Do both contrive love's entry in the mind<br>Shall look, i' the manner of it, a surprise,—<br>That after, once the flag o' the fort hauled down,<br>Effrontery may sink drawbridge, open gate,<br>Welcome and entertain the conqueror?<br>Or what do you say to a touch of the devil's worst?<br>Can it be that the husband, he who wrote<br>The letter to his brother I told you of,<br>I' the name of her it meant to criminate,—<br>What if he wrote those letters to the priest?<br>Further the priest says, when it first befell,<br>This folly o' the letters, that he checked the flow,<br>Put them back lightly each with its reply.<br>Here again vexes new discrepancy:<br>There never reached her eye a word from him:<br>He did write but she could not read—could just<br>Burn the offence to wifehood, womanhood,<br>So did burn: never bade him come to her,<br>Yet when it proved he must come, let him come,<br>And when he did come though uncalled,—why, spoke<br>Prompt by an inspiration: thus it chanced.<br>Will you go somewhat back to understand?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When first, pursuant to his plan, there sprang,<br>Like an uncaged beast, Guido's cruelty<br>On soul and body of his wife, she cried<br>To those whom law appoints resource for such,<br>The secular guardian,—that's the Governor,<br>And the Archbishop,—that's the spiritual guide,<br>And prayed them take the claws from out her flesh.<br>Now, this is ever the ill consequence<br>Of being noble, poor and difficult,<br>Ungainly, yet too great to disregard,—<br>This—that born peers and friends hereditary,—<br>Though disinclined to help from their own store<br>The opprobrious wight, put penny in his poke<br>From private purse or leave the door ajar<br>When he goes wistful by at dinner-time,—<br>Yet, if his needs conduct him where they sit<br>Smugly in office, judge this, bishop that,<br>Dispensers of the shine and shade o' the place—<br>And if, friend's door shut and friend's purse undrawn,<br>Still potentates may find the office-seat<br>Do as good service at no cost—give help<br>By-the-bye, pay up traditional dues at once<br>Just through a feather-weight too much i' the scale,<br>Or finger-tip forgot at the balance-tongue,—<br>Why, only churls refuse, or Molinists.<br>Thus when, in the first roughness of surprise<br>At Guido's wolf-face whence the sheepskin fell,<br>The frightened couple, all bewilderment,<br>Rushed to the Governor,—who else rights wrong?<br>Told him their tale of wrong and craved redress—<br>Why, then the Governor woke up to the fact<br>That Guido was a friend of old, poor Count!—<br>So, promptly paid his tribute, promised the pair,<br>Wholesome chastisement should soon cure their qualms<br>Next time they came, wept, prated and told lies:<br>So stopped all prating, sent them dumb to Rome.<br>Well, now it was Pompilia's turn to try:<br>The troubles pressing on her, as I said,<br>Three times she rushed, maddened by misery,<br>To the other mighty man, sobbed out her prayer<br>At footstool of the Archbishop—fast the friend<br>Of her husband also! Oh, good friends of yore!<br>So, the Archbishop, not to be outdone<br>By the Governor, break custom more than he,<br>Thrice bade the foolish woman stop her tongue,<br>Unloosed her hands from harassing his gout,<br>Coached her and carried her to the Count again,<br>—His old friend should be master in his house,<br>Rule his wife and correct her faults at need!<br>Well, driven from post to pillar in this wise,<br>She, as a last resource, betook herself<br>To one, should be no family-friend at least,<br>A simple friar o' the city; confessed to him,<br>Then told how fierce temptation of release<br>By self-dealt death was busy with her soul,<br>And urged that he put this in words, write plain<br>For one who could not write, set down her prayer<br>That Pietro and Violante, parent-like<br>If somehow not her parents, should for love<br>Come save her, pluck from out the flame the brand<br>Themselves had thoughtlessly thrust in so deep<br>To send gay-coloured sparkles up and cheer<br>Their seat at the chimney-corner. The good friar<br>Promised as much at the moment; but, alack,<br>Night brings discretion: he was no one's friend,<br>Yet presently found he could not turn about<br>Nor take a step i' the case and fail to tread<br>On someone's toe who either was a friend,<br>Or a friend's friend, or friend's friend thrice-removed,<br>And woe to friar by whom offences come!<br>So, the course being plain,—with a general sigh<br>At matrimony the profound mistake,—<br>He threw reluctantly the business up,<br>Having his other penitents to mind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">If then, all outlets thus secured save one,<br>At last she took to the open, stood and stared<br>With her wan face to see where God might wait—<br>And there found Caponsacchi wait as well<br>For the precious something at perdition's edge,<br>He only was predestinate to save,—<br>And if they recognized in a critical flash<br>From the zenith, each the other, her need of him,<br>His need of … say, a woman to perish for,<br>The regular way o' the world, yet break no vow,<br>Do no harm save to himself,—if this were thus?<br>How do you say? It were improbable;<br>So is the legend of my patron-saint.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Anyhow, whether, as Guido states the case,<br>Pompilia,—like a starving wretch i' the street<br>Who stops and rifles the first passenger<br>In the great right of an excessive wrong,—<br>Did somehow call this stranger and he came,—<br>Or whether the strange sudden interview<br>Blazed as when star and star must needs go close<br>Till each hurts each and there is loss in heaven—<br>Whatever way in this strange world it was,—<br>Pompilia and Caponsacchi met, in fine,<br>She at her window, he i' the street beneath,<br>And understood each other at first look.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All was determined and performed at once.<br>And on a certain April evening, late<br>I' the month, this girl of sixteen, bride and wife<br>Three years and over,—she who hitherto<br>Had never taken twenty steps in Rome<br>Beyond the church, pinned to her mother's gown,<br>Nor, in Arezzo, knew her way through street<br>Except what led to the Archbishop's door,—<br>Such an one rose up in the dark, laid hand<br>On what came first, clothes and a trinket or two,<br>Belongings of her own in the old day,—<br>Stole from the side o' the sleeping spouse—who knows?<br>Sleeping perhaps, silent for certain,—slid<br>Ghost-like from great dark room to great dark room<br>In through the tapestries and out again<br>And onward, unembarrassed as a fate,<br>Descended staircase, gained last door of all,<br>Sent it wide open at first push of palm,<br>And there stood, first time, last and only time,<br>At liberty, alone in the open street,—<br>Unquestioned, unmolested found herself<br>At the city gate, by Caponsacchi's side,<br>Hope there, joy there, life and all good again,<br>The carriage there, the convoy there, light there<br>Broadening ever into blaze at Rome<br>And breaking small what long miles lay between;<br>Up she sprang, in he followed, they were safe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The husband quotes this for incredible,<br>All of the story from first word to last:<br>Sees the priest's hand throughout upholding hers,<br>Traces his foot to the alcove, that night,<br>Whither and whence blindfold he knew the way,<br>Proficient in all craft and stealthiness;<br>And cites for proof a servant, eye that watched<br>And ear that opened to purse secrets up,<br>A woman-spy,—suborned to give and take<br>Letters and tokens, do the work of shame<br>The more adroitly that herself, who helped<br>Communion thus between a tainted pair,<br>Had long since been a leper thick in spot,<br>A common trull o' the town: she witnessed all,<br>Helped many meetings, partings, took her wage<br>And then told Guido the whole matter. Lies!<br>The woman's life confutes her word,—her word<br>Confutes itself: "Thus, thus and thus I lied."<br>"And thus, no question, still you lie," we say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Ay but at last, e'en have it how you will,<br>"Whatever the means, whatever the way, explodes<br>"The consummation"—the accusers shriek:<br>"Here is the wife avowedly found in flight,<br>"And the companion of her flight, a priest;<br>"She flies her husband, he the church his spouse:<br>"What is this?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Wife and priest alike reply<br>"This is the simple thing it claims to be,<br>"A course we took for life and honour's sake,<br>"Very strange, very justifiable."<br>She says, "God put it in my head to fly,<br>"As when the martin migrates: autumn claps<br>"Her hands, cries 'Winter's coming, will be here,<br>"'Off with you ere the white teeth overtake!<br>"'Flee!' So I fled: this friend was the warm day,<br>"The south wind and whatever favours flight;<br>"I took the favour, had the help, how else?<br>"And so we did fly rapidly all night,<br>"All day, all night—a longer night—again,<br>"And then another day, longest of days,<br>"And all the while, whether we fled or stopped,<br>"I scarce know how or why, one thought filled both,<br>"'Fly and arrive!' So long as I found strength<br>"I talked with my companion, told him much,<br>"Knowing that he knew more, knew me, knew God<br>"And God's disposal of me,—but the sense<br>"O' the blessed flight absorbed me in the main,<br>"And speech became mere talking through a sleep,<br>"Till at the end of that last longest night<br>"In a red daybreak, when we reached an inn<br>"And my companion whispered 'Next stage—Rome!'<br>"Sudden the weak flesh fell like piled-up cards,<br>"All the frail fabric at a finger's touch,<br>"And prostrate the poor soul too, and I said<br>"'But though Count Guido were a furlong off,<br>"'Just on me, I must stop and rest awhile!'<br>"Then something like a huge white wave o' the sea<br>"Broke o'er my brain and buried me in sleep<br>"Blessedly, till it ebbed and left me loose,<br>"And where was I found but on a strange bed<br>"In a strange room like hell, roaring with noise,<br>"Ruddy with flame, and filled with men, in front<br>"Who but the man you call my husband? ay—<br>"Count Guido once more between heaven and me,<br>"For there my heaven stood, my salvation, yes—<br>"That Caponsacchi all my heaven of help,<br>"Helpless himself, held prisoner in the hands<br>"Of men who looked up in my husband's face<br>"To take the fate thence he should signify,<br>"Just as the way was at Arezzo. Then,<br>"Not for my sake but his who had helped me—<br>"I sprang up, reached him with one bound, and seized<br>"The sword o' the felon, trembling at his side,<br>"Fit creature of a coward, unsheathed the thing<br>"And would have pinned him through the poison-bag<br>"To the wall and left him there to palpitate,<br>"As you serve scorpions, but men interposed—<br>"Disarmed me, gave his life to him again<br>"That he might take mine and the other lives,<br>"And he has done so. I submit myself!"<br>The priest says—oh, and in the main result<br>The facts asseverate, he truly says.<br>As to the very act and deed of him,<br>However you mistrust the mind o' the man—<br>The flight was just for flight's sake, no pretext<br>For aught except to set Pompilia free.<br>He says "I cite the husband's self's worst charge<br>"In proof of my best word for both of us.<br>"Be it conceded that so many times<br>"We took our pleasure in his palace: then,<br>"What need to fly at all?—or flying no less,<br>"What need to outrage the lips sick and white<br>"Of a woman, and bring ruin down beside,<br>"By halting when Rome lay one stage beyond?"<br>So does he vindicate Pompilia's fame,<br>Confirm her story in all points but one—<br>This; that, so fleeing and so breathing forth<br>Her last strength in the prayer to halt awhile,<br>She makes confusion of the reddening white<br>Which was the sunset when her strength gave way,<br>And the next sunrise and its whitening red<br>Which she revived in when her husband came:<br>She mixes both times, morn and eve, in one,<br>Having lived through a blank of night 'twixt each<br>Though dead-asleep, unaware as a corpse,<br>She on the bed above; her friend below<br>Watched in the doorway of the inn the while,<br>Stood i' the red o' the morn, that she mistakes,<br>In act to rouse and quicken the tardy crew<br>And hurry out the horses, have the stage<br>Over, the last league, reach Rome and be safe:<br>When up came Guido.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido's tale begins—<br>How he and his whole household, drunk to death<br>By some enchanted potion, poppied drugs<br>Plied by the wife, lay powerless in gross sleep<br>And left the spoilers unimpeded way,<br>Could not shake off their poison and pursue,<br>Till noontide, then made shift to get on horse<br>And did pursue: which means he took his time,<br>Pressed on no more than lingered after, step<br>By step, just making sure o' the fugitives,<br>Till at the nick of time, he saw his chance,<br>Seized it, came up with and surprised the pair.<br>How he must needs have gnawn lip and gnashed teeth,<br>Taking successively at tower and town,<br>Village and roadside, still the same report<br>"Yes, such a pair arrived an hour ago,<br>"Sat in the carriage just where now you stand,<br>"While we got horses ready,—turned deaf ear<br>"To all entreaty they would even alight;<br>"Counted the minutes and resumed their course."<br>Would they indeed escape, arrive at Rome,<br>Leave no least loop-hole to let murder through,<br>But foil him of his captured infamy,<br>Prize of guilt proved and perfect? So it seemed.<br>Till, oh the happy chance, at last stage, Rome<br>But two short hours off, Castelnuovo reached,<br>The guardian angel gave reluctant place,<br>Satan stepped forward with alacrity,<br>Pompilia's flesh and blood succumbed, perforce<br>A halt was, and her husband had his will.<br>Perdue he couched, counted out hour by hour<br>Till he should spy in the east a signal-streak—<br>Night had been, morrow was, triumph would be.<br>Do you see the plan deliciously complete?<br>The rush upon the unsuspecting sleep,<br>The easy execution, the outcry<br>Over the deed "Take notice all the world!<br>"These two dead bodies, locked still in embrace,—<br>"The man is Caponsacchi and a priest,<br>"The woman is my wife: they fled me late,<br>"Thus have I found and you behold them thus,<br>"And may judge me: do you approve or no?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Success did seem not so improbable,<br>But that already Satan's laugh was heard,<br>His black back turned on Guido—left i' the lurch<br>Or rather, baulked of suit and service now,<br>Left to improve on both by one deed more,<br>Burn up the better at no distant day,<br>Body and soul one holocaust to hell.<br>Anyhow, of this natural consequence<br>Did just the last link of the long chain snap:<br>For an eruption was o' the priest, alive<br>And alert, calm, resolute and formidable,<br>Not the least look of fear in that broad brow—<br>One not to be disposed of by surprise,<br>And armed moreover—who had guessed as much?<br>Yes, there stood he in secular costume<br>Complete from head to heel, with sword at side,<br>He seemed to know the trick of perfectly.<br>There was no prompt suppression of the man<br>As he said calmly "I have saved your wife<br>"From death; there was no other way but this;<br>"Of what do I defraud you except death?<br>"Charge any wrong beyond, I answer it."<br>Guido, the valorous, had met his match,<br>Was forced to demand help instead of fight,<br>Bid the authorities o' the place lend aid<br>And make the best of a broken matter so.<br>They soon obeyed the summons—I suppose,<br>Apprised and ready, or not far to seek—<br>Laid hands on Caponsacchi, found in fault,<br>A priest yet flagrantly accoutred thus,—<br>Then, to make good Count Guido's further charge,<br>Proceeded, prisoner made lead the way,<br>In a crowd, upstairs to the chamber-door<br>Where wax-white, dead asleep, deep beyond dream,<br>As the priest laid her, lay Pompilia yet.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And as he mounted step and step with the crowd<br>How I see Guido taking heart again!<br>He knew his wife so well and the way of her—<br>How at the outbreak she would shroud her shame<br>In hell's heart, would it mercifully yawn—<br>How, failing that, her forehead to his foot,<br>She would crouch silent till the great doom fell,<br>Leave him triumphant with the crowd to see<br>Guilt motionless or writhing like a worm!<br>No! Second misadventure, this worm turned,<br>I told you: would have slain him on the spot<br>With his own weapon, but they seized her hands:<br>Leaving her tongue free, as it tolled the knell<br>Of Guido's hope so lively late. The past<br>Took quite another shape now. She who shrieked<br>"At least and for ever I am mine and God's,<br>"Thanks to his liberating angel Death—<br>"Never again degraded to be yours<br>"The ignoble noble, the unmanly man,<br>"The beast below the beast in brutishness!"—<br>This was the froward child, "the restif lamb<br>"Used to be cherished in his breast," he groaned—<br>"Eat from his hand and drink from out his cup,<br>"The while his fingers pushed their loving way<br>"Through curl on curl of that soft coat—alas,<br>"And she all silverly baaed gratitude<br>"While meditating mischief!"—and so forth.<br>He must invent another story now!<br>The ins and outs o' the rooms were searched: he found<br>Or showed for found the abominable prize—<br>Love-letters from his wife who cannot write,<br>Love-letters in reply o' the priest—thank God!—<br>Who can write and confront his character<br>With this, and prove the false thing forged throughout:<br>Spitting whereat, he needs must spatter whom<br>But Guido's self?—that forged and falsified<br>One letter called Pompilia's, past dispute:<br>Then why not these to make sure still more sure?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So was the case concluded then and there:<br>Guido preferred his charges in due form,<br>Called on the law to adjudicate, consigned<br>The accused ones to the Prefect of the place,<br>(Oh mouse-birth of that mountain-like revenge!)<br>And so to his own place betook himself<br>After the spring that failed,—the wildcat's way.<br>The captured parties were conveyed to Rome;<br>Investigation followed here i' the court—<br>Soon to review the fruit of its own work,<br>From then to now being eight months and no more.<br>Guido kept out of sight and safe at home:<br>The Abate, brother Paolo, helped most<br>At words when deeds were out of question, pushed<br>Nearest the purple, best played deputy,<br>So, pleaded, Guido's representative<br>At the court shall soon try Guido's self,—what's more,<br>The court that also took—I told you, Sir—<br>That statement of the couple, how a cheat<br>Had been i' the birth of the babe, no child of theirs.<br>That was the prelude; this, the play's first act:<br>Whereof we wait what comes, crown, close of all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, the result was something of a shade<br>On the parties thus accused,—how otherwise?<br>Shade, but with shine as unmistakable.<br>Each had a prompt defence: Pompilia first—<br>"Earth was made hell to me who did no harm:<br>"I only could emerge one way from hell<br>"By catching at the one hand held me, so<br>"I caught at it and thereby stepped to heaven:<br>"If that be wrong, do with me what you will!"<br>Then Caponsacchi with a grave grand sweep<br>O' the arm as though his soul warned baseness off—<br>"If as a man, then much more as a priest<br>"I hold me bound to help weak innocence:<br>"If so my worldly reputation burst,<br>"Being the bubble it is, why, burst it may:<br>"Blame I can bear though not blameworthiness.<br>"But use your sense first, see if the miscreant proved,<br>"The man who tortured thus the woman, thus<br>"Have not both laid the trap and fixed the lure<br>"Over the pit should bury body and soul!<br>"His facts are lies: his letters are the fact—<br>"An infiltration flavoured with himself!<br>"As for the fancies—whether … what is it you say?<br>"The lady loves me, whether I love her<br>"In the forbidden sense of your surmise,—<br>"If, with the midday blaze of truth above,<br>"The unlidded eye of God awake, aware,<br>"You needs must pry about and trace the birth<br>"Of each stray beam of light may traverse night,<br>"To the night's sun that's Lucifer himself,<br>"Do so, at other time, in other place,<br>"Not now nor here! Enough that first to last<br>"I never touched her lip nor she my hand<br>"Nor either of us thought a thought, much less<br>"Spoke a word which the Virgin might not hear.<br>"Be such your question, thus I answer it."<br>Then the court had to make its mind up, spoke.<br>"It is a thorny question, yea, a tale<br>"Hard to believe, but not impossible:<br>"Who can be absolute for either side?<br>"A middle course is happily open yet.<br>"Here has a blot surprised the social blank,—<br>"Whether through favour, feebleness or fault,<br>"No matter, leprosy has touched our robe<br>"And we unclean must needs be purified.<br>"Here is a wife makes holiday from home,<br>"A priest caught playing truant to his church,<br>"In masquerade moreover: both allege<br>"Enough excuse to stop our lifted scourge<br>"Which else would heavily fall. On the other hand,<br>"Here is a husband, ay and man of mark,<br>"Who comes complaining here, demands redress<br>"As if he were the pattern of desert—<br>"The while those plaguy allegations frown,<br>"Forbid we grant him the redress he seeks.<br>"To all men be our moderation known!<br>"Rewarding none while compensating each,<br>"Hurting all round though harming nobody,<br>"Husband, wife, priest, scot-free not one shall 'scape,<br>"Yet priest, wife, husband, boast the unbroken head<br>"From application of our excellent oil:<br>"So that, whatever be the fact, in fine,<br>"We make no miss of justice in a sort.<br>"First, let the husband stomach as he may,<br>"His wife shall neither be returned him, no—<br>"Nor branded, whipped and caged, but just consigned<br>"To a convent and the quietude she craves;<br>"So is he rid of his domestic plague:<br>"What better thing can happen to a man?<br>"Next, let the priest retire—unshent, unshamed,<br>"Unpunished as for perpetrating crime,<br>"But relegated (not imprisoned, Sirs!)<br>"Sent for three years to clarify his youth<br>"At Civita, a rest by the way to Rome:<br>"There let his life skim off its last of lees<br>"Nor keep this dubious colour. Judged the cause:<br>"All parties may retire, content, we hope."<br>That's Rome's way, the traditional road of law;<br>Whither it leads is what remains to tell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The priest went to his relegation-place,<br>The wife to her convent, brother Paolo<br>To the arms of brother Guido with the news<br>And this beside—his charge was countercharged;<br>The Comparini, his old brace of hates,<br>Were breathed and vigilant and venomous now—<br>Had shot a second bolt where the first stuck,<br>And followed up the pending dowry-suit<br>By a procedure should release the wife<br>From so much of the marriage-bond as barred<br>Escape when Guido turned the screw too much<br>On his wife's flesh and blood, as husband may.<br>No more defence, she turned and made attack,<br>Claimed now divorce from bed and board, in short:<br>Pleaded such subtle strokes of cruelty,<br>Such slow sure siege laid to her body and soul,<br>As, proved,—and proofs seemed coming thick and fast,—<br>Would gain both freedom and the dowry back<br>Even should the first suit leave them in his grasp:<br>So urged the Comparini for the wife.<br>Guido had gained not one of the good things<br>He grasped at by his creditable plan<br>O' the flight and following and the rest: the suit<br>That smouldered late was fanned to fury new,<br>This adjunct came to help with fiercer fire,<br>While he had got himself a quite new plague—<br>Found the world's face an universal grin<br>At this last best of the Hundred Merry Tales<br>Of how a young and spritely clerk devised<br>To carry off a spouse that moped too much,<br>And cured her of the vapours in a trice:<br>And how the husband, playing Vulcan's part,<br>Told by the Sun, started in hot pursuit<br>To catch the lovers, and came halting up,<br>Cast his net and then called the Gods to see<br>The convicts in their rosy impudence—<br>Whereat said Mercury "Would that I were Mars!"<br>Oh it was rare, and naughty all the same!<br>Brief, the wife's courage and cunning,—the priest's show<br>Of chivalry and adroitness,—last not least,<br>The husband—how he ne'er showed teeth at all,<br>Whose bark had promised biting; but just sneaked<br>Back to his kennel, tail 'twixt legs, as 't were,—<br>All this was hard to gulp down and digest.<br>So pays the devil his liegeman, brass for gold.<br>But this was at Arezzo: here in Rome<br>Brave Paolo bore up against it all—<br>Battled it out, nor wanting to himself<br>Nor Guido nor the House whose weight he bore<br>Pillar-like, by no force of arm but brain.<br>He knew his Rome, what wheels to set to work;<br>Plied influential folk, pressed to the ear<br>Of the efficacious purple, pushed his way<br>To the old Pope's self,—past decency indeed,—<br>Praying him take the matter in his hands<br>Out of the regular court's incompetence.<br>But times are changed and nephews out of date<br>And favouritism unfashionable: the Pope<br>Said "Render Cæsar what is Cæsar's due!"<br>As for the Comparini's counter-plea,<br>He met that by a counter-plea again,<br>Made Guido claim divorce—with help so far<br>By the trial's issue: for, why punishment<br>However slight unless for guiltiness<br>However slender?—and a molehill serves<br>Much as a mountain of offence this way.<br>So was he gathering strength on every side<br>And growing more and more to menace—when<br>All of a terrible moment came the blow<br>That beat down Paolo's fence, ended the play<br>O' the foil and brought mannaia on the stage.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Five months had passed now since Pompilia's flight,<br>Months spent in peace among the Convert nuns.<br>This,—being, as it seemed, for Guido's sake<br>Solely, what pride might call imprisonment<br>And quote as something gained, to friends at home,—<br>This naturally was at Guido's charge:<br>Grudge it he might, but penitential fare,<br>Prayers, preachings, who but he defrayed the cost?<br>So, Paolo dropped, as proxy, doit by doit<br>Like heart's blood, till—what's here? What notice comes?<br>The convent's self makes application bland<br>That, since Pompilia's health is fast o' the wane,<br>She may have leave to go combine her cure<br>Of soul with cure of body, mend her mind<br>Together with her thin arms and sunk eyes<br>That want fresh air outside the convent-wall,<br>Say in a friendly house,—and which so fit<br>As a certain villa in the Pauline way,<br>That happens to hold Pietro and his wife,<br>The natural guardians? "Oh, and shift the care<br>"You shift the cost, too; Pietro pays in turn,<br>"And lightens Guido of a load! And then,<br>"Villa or convent, two names for one thing,<br>"Always the sojourn means imprisonment,<br>"Domus pro carcere—nowise we relax,<br>"Nothing abate: how answers Paolo?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You,<br>What would you answer? All so smooth and fair,<br>Even Paul's astuteness sniffed no harm i' the world.<br>He authorized the transfer, saw it made<br>And, two months after, reaped the fruit of the same,<br>Having to sit down, rack his brain and find<br>What phrase should serve him best to notify<br>Our Guido that by happy providence<br>A son and heir, a babe was born to him<br>I' the villa,—go tell sympathizing friends!<br>Yes, such had been Pompilia's privilege:<br>She, when she fled, was one month gone with child,<br>Known to herself or unknown, either way<br>Availing to explain (say men of art)<br>The strange and passionate precipitance<br>Of maiden startled into motherhood<br>Which changes body and soul by nature's law.<br>So when the she-dove breeds, strange yearnings come<br>For the unknown shelter by undreamed-of shores,<br>And there is born a blood-pulse in her heart<br>To fight if needs be, though with flap of wing,<br>For the wool-flock or the fur-tuft, though a hawk<br>Contest the prize,—wherefore, she knows not yet.<br>Anyhow, thus to Guido came the news.<br>"I shall have quitted Rome ere you arrive<br>"To take the one step left,"—wrote Paolo.<br>Then did the winch o' the winepress of all hate,<br>Vanity, disappointment, grudge and greed,<br>Take the last turn that screws out pure revenge<br>With a bright bubble at the brim beside—<br>By an heir's birth he was assured at once<br>O' the main prize, all the money in dispute:<br>Pompilia's dowry might revert to her<br>Or stay with him as law's caprice should point,—<br>But now—now—what was Pietro's shall be hers,<br>What was hers shall remain her own,—if hers,<br>Why then,—oh, not her husband's but—her heir's!<br>That heir being his too, all grew his at last<br>By this road or by that road, since they join.<br>Before, why, push he Pietro out o' the world,—<br>The current of the money stopped, you see,<br>Pompilia being proved no Pietro's child:<br>Or let it be Pompilia's life he quenched,<br>Again the current of the money stopped,—<br>Guido debarred his rights as husband soon,<br>So the new process threatened;—now, the chance,<br>Now, the resplendent minute! Clear the earth,<br>Cleanse the house, let the three but disappear<br>A child remains, depositary of all,<br>That Guido may enjoy his own again,<br>Repair all losses by a master-stroke,<br>Wipe out the past, all done all left undone,<br>Swell the good present to best evermore,<br>Die into new life, which let blood baptize!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, i' the blue of a sudden sulphur-blaze,<br>Both why there was one step to take at Rome,<br>And why he should not meet with Paolo there,<br>He saw—the ins and outs to the heart of hell—<br>And took the straight line thither swift and sure.<br>He rushed to Vittiano, found four sons o' the soil,<br>Brutes of his breeding, with one spark i' the clod<br>That served for a soul, the looking up to him<br>Or aught called Franceschini as life, death,<br>Heaven, hell,—lord paramount, assembled these,<br>Harangued, equipped, instructed, pressed each clod<br>With his will's imprint; then took horse, plied spur,<br>And so arrived, all five of them, at Rome<br>On Christmas-Eve, and forthwith found themselves<br>Installed i' the vacancy and solitude<br>Left them by Paolo, the considerate man<br>Who, good as his word, had disappeared at once<br>As if to leave the stage free. A whole week<br>Did Guido spend in study of his part,<br>Then played it fearless of a failure. One,<br>Struck the year's clock whereof the hours are days,<br>And off was rung o' the little wheels the chime<br>"Good will on earth and peace to man:" but, two,<br>Proceeded the same bell and, evening come,<br>The dreadful five felt finger-wise their way<br>Across the town by blind cuts and black turns<br>To the little lone suburban villa; knocked—<br>"Who may be outside?" called a well-known voice.<br>"A friend of Caponsacchi's bringing friends<br>"A letter."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That's a test, the excusers say:<br>Ay, and a test conclusive, I return.<br>What? Had that name brought touch of guilt or taste<br>Of fear with it, aught to dash the present joy<br>With memory of the sorrow just at end,—<br>She, happy in her parents' arms at length<br>With the new blessing of the two weeks' babe,—<br>How had that name's announcement moved the wife?<br>Or, as the other slanders circulate,<br>Were Caponsacchi no rare visitant<br>On nights and days whither safe harbour lured,<br>What bait had been i' the name to ope the door?<br>The promise of a letter? Stealthy guests<br>Have secret watchwords, private entrances:<br>The man's own self might have been found inside<br>And all the scheme made frustrate by a word.<br>No: but since Guido knew, none knew so well,<br>The man had never since returned to Rome<br>Nor seen the wife's face more than villa's front,<br>So, could not be at hand to warn or save,-<br>For that, he took this sure way to the end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Come in," bade poor Violante cheerfully,<br>Drawing the door-bolt: that death was the first,<br>Stabbed through and through. Pietro, close on her heels,<br>Set up a cry—"Let me confess myself!<br>"Grant but confession!" Cold steel was the grant.<br>Then came Pompilia's turn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then they escaped.<br>The noise o' the slaughter roused the neighbourhood.<br>They had forgotten just the one thing more<br>Which saves i' the circumstance, the ticket to-wit<br>Which puts post-horses at a traveller's use:<br>So, all on foot, desperate through the dark<br>Reeled they like drunkards along open road,<br>Accomplished a prodigious twenty miles<br>Homeward, and gained Baccano very near,<br>Stumbled at last, deaf, dumb, blind through the feat,<br>Into a grange and, one dead heap, slept there<br>Till the pursuers hard upon their trace<br>Reached them and took them, red from head to heel,<br>And brought them to the prison where they lie.<br>The couple were laid i' the church two days ago,<br>And the wife lives yet by miracle.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All is told.<br>You hardly need ask what Count Guido says,<br>Since something he must say. "I own the deed—"<br>(He cannot choose,—but—) "I declare the same<br>"Just and inevitable,—since no way else<br>"Was left me, but by this of taking life,<br>"To save my honour which is more than life.<br>"I exercised a husband's rights." To which<br>The answer is as prompt—"There was no fault<br>"In any one o' the three to punish thus:<br>"Neither i' the wife, who kept all faith to you,<br>"Nor in the parents, whom yourself first duped,<br>"Robbed and maltreated, then turned out of doors.<br>"You wronged and they endured wrong; yours the fault.<br>"Next, had endurance overpassed the mark<br>"And turned resentment needing remedy,—<br>"Nay, put the absurd impossible case, for once—<br>"You were all blameless of the blame alleged<br>"And they blameworthy where you fix all blame,<br>"Still, why this violation of the law?<br>"Yourself elected law should take its course,<br>"Avenge wrong, or show vengeance not your right;<br>"Why, only when the balance in law's hand<br>"Trembles against you and inclines the way<br>"O' the other party, do you make protest,<br>"Renounce arbitrament, flying out of court,<br>"And crying 'Honour's hurt the sword must cure'?<br>"Aha, and so i' the middle of each suit<br>"Trying i' the courts,—and you had three in play<br>"With an appeal to the Pope's self beside,—<br>"What, you may chop and change and right your wrongs<br>"Leaving the law to lag as she thinks fit?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116357" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That were too temptingly commodious, Count!<br>One would have still a remedy in reserve<br>Should reach the safest oldest sinner, you see!<br>One's honour forsooth? Does that take hurt alone<br>From the extreme outrage? I who have no wife,<br>Being yet sensitive in my degree<br>As Guido,—must discover hurt elsewhere<br>Which, half compounded-for in days gone by,<br>May profitably break out now afresh,<br>Need cure from my own expeditious hands.<br>The lie that was, as it were, imputed me<br>When you objected to my contract's clause,—<br>The theft as good as, one may say, alleged,<br>When you, co-heir in a will, excepted, Sir,<br>To my administration of effects,<br>—Aha, do you think law disposed of these?<br>My honour's touched and shall deal death around!<br>Count, that were too commodious, I repeat!<br>If any law be imperative on us all,<br>Of all are you the enemy: out with you<br>From the common light and air and life of man!</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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