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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>IV. Tertium Quid</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">True, Excellency—as his Highness says,<br>Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched<br>Symmetrical beside the other two;<br>Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,<br>So do the facts abound and superabound:<br>And nothing hinders that we lift the case<br>Out of the shade into the shine, allow<br>Qualified persons to pronounce at last,<br>Nay, edge in an authoritative word<br>Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools<br>Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.<br>"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test<br>"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike<br>"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"<br>Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,<br>Truth the divinity must needs descend<br>And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!<br>Hammer into their noddles who was who<br>And what was what. I tell the simpletons<br>"Could law be competent to such a feat<br>"'T were done already: what begins next week<br>"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain<br>"Whereof the first was forged three years ago<br>"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,<br>"And proved so slow in taking the first step<br>"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,<br>"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,<br>"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death<br>"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat<br>"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?<br>"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!<br>"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."<br>Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.<br>To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case<br>Fused and confused past human finding out.<br>One calls the square round, t' other the round square—<br>And pardonably in that first surprise<br>O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:<br>But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue<br>Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?<br>It makes a man despair of history,<br>Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!<br>Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away<br>With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—<br>One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli<br>And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope<br>Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,<br>Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!<br>Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here<br>Would settle the matter as sufficiently<br>As ever will Advocate This and Fiscal That<br>And Judge the Other, with even—a word and a wink—<br>We well know who for ultimate arbiter.<br>Let us beware o' the basset-table—lest<br>We jog the elbow of Her Eminence,<br>Jostle his cards,—he'll rap you out a … st!<br>By the window-seat! And here's the Marquis too!<br>Indulge me but a moment: if I fail<br>—Favoured with such an audience, understand!—<br>To set things right, why, class me with the mob<br>As understander of the mind of man!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The mob,—now, that's just how the error comes!<br>Bethink you that you have to deal with plebs,<br>The commonalty; this is an episode<br>In burgess-life,—why seek to aggrandize,<br>Idealize, denaturalize the class?<br>People talk just as if they had to do<br>With a noble pair that … Excellency, your ear!<br>Stoop to me, Highness,—listen and look yourselves!<br>This Pietro, this Violante, live their life<br>At Rome in the easy way that's far from worst<br>Even for their betters,—themselves love themselves,<br>Spend their own oil in feeding their own lamp<br>That their own faces may grow bright thereby.<br>They get to fifty and over: how's the lamp?<br>Full to the depth o' the wick,—moneys so much;<br>And also with a remnant,—so much more<br>Of moneys,—which there's no consuming now,<br>But, when the wick shall moulder out some day,<br>Failing fresh twist of tow to use up dregs,<br>Will lie a prize for the passer-by,—to-wit<br>Anyone that can prove himself the heir,<br>Seeing, the couple are wanting in a child:<br>Meantime their wick swims in the safe broad bowl<br>O' the middle rank,—not raised a beacon's height<br>For wind to ravage, nor dropped till lamp graze ground<br>Like cresset, mudlarks poke now here now there,<br>Going their rounds to probe the ruts i' the road<br>Or fish the luck o' the puddle. Pietro's soul<br>Was satisfied when cronies smirked, "No wine<br>"Like Pietro's, and he drinks it every day!"<br>His wife's heart swelled her boddice, joyed its fill<br>When neighbours turned heads wistfully at church,<br>Sighed at the load of lace that came to pray.<br>Well, having got through fifty years of flare,<br>They burn out so, indulge so their dear selves,<br>That Pietro finds himself in debt at last,<br>As he were any lordling of us all:<br>And, now that dark begins to creep on day,<br>Creditors grow uneasy, talk aside,<br>Take counsel, then importune all at once.<br>For if the good fat rosy careless man,<br>Who has not laid a ducat by, decease—<br>Let the lamp fall, no heir at hand to catch—<br>Why, being childless, there's a spilth i' the street<br>O' the remnant, there's a scramble for the dregs<br>By the stranger: so, they grant him no long day<br>But come in a body, clamour to be paid.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What's his resource? He asks and straight obtains<br>The customary largess, dole dealt out<br>To, what we call our "poor dear shame-faced ones,"<br>In secret once a month to spare the shame<br>O' the slothful and the spendthrift,—pauper-saints<br>The Pope puts meat i' the mouth of, ravens they,<br>And providence he—just what the mob admires!<br>That is, instead of putting a prompt foot<br>On selfish worthless human slugs whose slime<br>Has failed to lubricate their path in life,<br>Why, the Pope picks the first ripe fruit that falls<br>And gracious puts it in the vermin's way.<br>Pietro could never save a dollar? Straight<br>He must be subsidized at our expense:<br>And for his wife—the harmless household sheep<br>One ought not to see harassed in her age—<br>Judge, by the way she bore adversity,<br>O' the patient nature you ask pity for!<br>How long, now, would the roughest marketman,<br>Handling the creatures huddled to the knife,<br>Harass a mutton ere she made a mouth<br>Or menaced biting? Yet the poor sheep here,<br>Violante, the old innocent burgess-wife,<br>In her first difficulty showed great teeth<br>Fit to crunch up and swallow a good round crime.<br>She meditates the tenure of the Trust,<br>Fidei commissum is the lawyer-phrase,<br>These funds that only want an heir to take—<br>Goes o'er the gamut o' the creditor's cry<br>By semitones from whine to snarl high up<br>And growl down low, one scale in sundry keys,—<br>Pauses with a little compunction for the face<br>Of Pietro frustrate of its ancient cheer,—<br>Never a bottle now for friend at need,—<br>Comes to a stop on her own frittered lace<br>And neighbourly condolences thereat,<br>Then makes her mind up, sees the thing to do:<br>And so, deliberate, snaps house-book clasp,<br>Posts off to vespers, missal beneath arm,<br>Passes the proper San Lorenzo by,<br>Dives down a little lane to the left, is lost<br>In a labyrinth of dwellings best unnamed,<br>Selects a certain blind one, black at base,<br>Blinking at top,—the sign of we know what,—<br>One candle in a casement set to wink<br>Streetward, do service to no shrine inside,—<br>Mounts thither by the filthy flight of stairs,<br>Holding the cord by the wall, to the tip-top,<br>Gropes for the door i' the dark, ajar of course,<br>Raps, opens, enters in: up starts a thing<br>Naked as needs be—"What, you rogue, 't is you?<br>"Back,—how can I have taken a farthing yet?<br>"Mercy on me, poor sinner that I am!<br>"Here's … why, I took you for Madonna's self<br>"With all that sudden swirl of silk i' the place!<br>"What may your pleasure be, my bonny dame?"<br>Your Excellency supplies aught left obscure?<br>One of those women that abound in Rome,<br>Whose needs oblige them eke out one poor trade<br>By another vile one: her ostensible work<br>Was washing clothes, out in the open air<br>At the cistern by Citorio; her true trade—<br>Whispering to idlers, when they stopped and praised<br>The ankles she let liberally shine<br>In kneeling at the slab by the fountain-side,<br>That there was plenty more to criticize<br>At home, that eve, i' the house where candle blinked<br>Decorously above, and all was done<br>I' the holy fear of God and cheap beside.<br>Violante, now, had seen this woman wash,<br>Noticed and envied her propitious shape,<br>Tracked her home to her house-top, noted too,<br>And now was come to tempt her and propose<br>A bargain far more shameful than the first<br>Which trafficked her virginity away<br>For a melon and three pauls at twelve years old.<br>Five minutes' talk with this poor child of Eve,<br>Struck was the bargain, business at an end—<br>"Then, six months hence, that person whom you trust,<br>"Comes, fetches whatsoever babe it be;<br>"I keep the price and secret, you the babe,<br>"Paying beside for mass to make all straight:<br>"Meantime, I pouch the earnest-money-piece."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Down stairs again goes fumbling by the rope<br>Violante, triumphing in a flourish of fire<br>From her own brain, self-lit by such success,—<br>Gains church in time for the "Magnificat"<br>And gives forth "My reproof is taken away,<br>"And blessed shall mankind proclaim me now,"<br>So that the officiating priest turns round<br>To see who proffers the obstreperous praise:<br>Then home to Pietro, the enraptured-much<br>But puzzled-more when told the wondrous news—<br>How orisons and works of charity,<br>(Beside that pair of pinners and a coif,<br>Birth-day surprise last Wednesday was five weeks)<br>Had borne fruit in the autumn of his life,—<br>They, or the Orvieto in a double dose.<br>Anyhow, she must keep house next six months,<br>Lie on the settle, avoid the three-legged stool,<br>And, chiefly, not be crossed in wish or whim,<br>And the result was like to be an heir.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Accordingly, when time was come about,<br>He found himself the sire indeed of this<br>Francesca Vittoria Pompilia and the rest<br>O' the names whereby he sealed her his, next day.<br>A crime complete in its way is here, I hope?<br>Lies to God, lies to man, every way lies<br>To nature and civility and the mode:<br>Flat robbery of the proper heirs thus foiled<br>O' the due succession,—and, what followed thence,<br>Robbery of God, through the confessor's ear<br>Debarred the most note-worthy incident<br>When all else done and undone twelve-month through<br>Was put in evidence at Easter-time.<br>All other peccadillos!—but this one<br>To the priest who comes next day to dine with us?<br>'T were inexpedient; decency forbade.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Is so far clear? You know Violante now,<br>Compute her capability of crime<br>By this authentic instance? Black hard cold<br>Crime like a stone you kick up with your foot<br>I' the middle of a field?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I thought as much.<br>But now, a question,—how long does it lie,<br>The bad and barren bit of stuff you kick,<br>Before encroached on and encompassed round<br>With minute moss, weed, wild-flower—made alive<br>By worm, and fly, and foot of the free bird?<br>Your Highness,—healthy minds let bygones be,<br>Leave old crimes to grow young and virtuous-like<br>I' the sun and air; so time treats ugly deeds:<br>They take the natural blessing of all change.<br>There was the joy o' the husband silly-sooth,<br>The softening of the wife's old wicked heart,<br>Virtues to right and left, profusely paid<br>If so they might compensate the saved sin.<br>And then the sudden existence, dewy-dear,<br>O' the rose above the dungheap, the pure child<br>As good as new created, since withdrawn<br>From the horror of the pre-appointed lot<br>With the unknown father and the mother known<br>Too well,—some fourteen years of squalid youth,<br>And then libertinage, disease, the grave—<br>Hell in life here, hereafter life in hell:<br>Look at that horror and this soft repose!<br>Why, moralist, the sin has saved a soul!<br>Then, even the palpable grievance to the heirs—<br>'Faith, this was no frank setting hand to throat<br>And robbing a man, but … Excellency, by your leave,<br>How did you get that marvel of a gem,<br>The sapphire with the Graces grand and Greek?<br>The story is, stooping to pick a stone<br>From the pathway through a vineyard—no-man's-land—<br>To pelt a sparrow with, you chanced on this:<br>Why now, do those five clowns o' the family<br>O' the vinedresser digest their porridge worse<br>That not one keeps it in his goatskin pouch<br>To do flint's-service with the tinder-box?<br>Don't cheat me, don't cheat you, don't cheat a friend<br>But are you so hard on who jostles just<br>A stranger with no natural sort of claim<br>To the havings and the holdings (here's the point)<br>Unless by misadventure, and defect<br>Of that which ought to be—nay, which there's none<br>Would dare so much as wish to profit by—<br>Since who dares put in just so many words<br>"May Pietro fail to have a child, please God!<br>"So shall his house and goods belong to me,<br>"The sooner that his heart will pine betimes"?<br>Well then, God doesn't please, nor heart shall pine!<br>Because he has a child at last, you see,<br>Or selfsame thing as though a child it were,<br>He thinks, whose sole concern it is to think:<br>If he accepts it why should you demur?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Moreover, say that certain sin there seem,<br>The proper process of unsinning sin<br>Is to begin well-doing somehow else.<br>Pietro,—remember, with no sin at all<br>I' the substitution,—why, this gift of God<br>Flung in his lap from over Paradise<br>Steadied him in a moment, set him straight<br>On the good path he had been straying from.<br>Henceforward no more wilfulness and waste,<br>Cuppings, carousings,—these a sponge wiped out.<br>All sort of self-denial was easy now<br>For the child's sake, the chatelaine to be,<br>Who must want much and might want who knows what?<br>And so, the debts were paid, habits reformed,<br>Expense curtailed, the dowry set to grow.<br>As for the wife,—I said, hers the whole sin:<br>So, hers the exemplary penance. 'T was a text<br>Whereon folk preached and praised, the district through:<br>"Oh, make us happy and you make us good!<br>"It all comes of God giving her a child:<br>"Such graces follow God's best earthly gift!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Here you put by my guard, pass to my heart<br>By the home-thrust—"There's a lie at base of all."<br>Why, thou exact Prince, is it a pearl or no,<br>Yon globe upon the Principessa's neck?<br>That great round glory of pellucid stuff,<br>A fish secreted round a grain of grit!<br>Do you call it worthless for the worthless core?<br>(She doesn't, who well knows what she changed for it.)<br>So, to our brace of burgesses again!<br>You see so far i' the story, who was right,<br>Who wrong, who neither, don't you? What, you don't?<br>Eh? Well, admit there's somewhat dark i' the case,<br>Let's on—the rest shall clear, I promise you.<br>Leap over a dozen years: you find, these past,<br>An old good easy creditable sire,<br>A careful housewife's beaming bustling face,<br>Both wrapped up in the love of their one child,<br>The strange tall pale beautiful creature grown<br>Lily-like out o' the cleft i' the sun-smit rock<br>To bow its white miraculous birth of buds<br>I' the way of wandering Joseph and his spouse,—<br>So painters fancy: here it was a fact.<br>And this their lily,—could they but transplant<br>And set in vase to stand by Solomon's porch<br>'T wixt lion and lion!—this Pompilia of theirs,<br>Could they see worthily married, well bestowed,<br>In house and home! And why despair of this<br>With Rome to choose from, save the topmost rank?<br>Themselves would help the choice with heart and soul,<br>Throw their late savings in a common heap<br>To go with the dowry, and be followed in time<br>By the heritage legitimately hers:<br>And when such paragon was found and fixed,<br>Why, they might chant their "Nunc dimittis" straight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Indeed the prize was simply full to a fault,<br>Exorbitant for the suitor they should seek,<br>And social class should choose among, these cits.<br>Yet there's a latitude: exceptional white<br>Amid the general brown o' the species, lurks<br>A burgess nearly an aristocrat,<br>Legitimately in reach: look out for him!<br>What banker, merchant, has seen better days,<br>What second-rate painter a-pushing up,<br>Poet a-slipping down, shall bid the best<br>For this young beauty with the thumping purse?<br>Alack, were it but one of such as these<br>So like the real thing that they pass for it,<br>All had gone well! Unluckily, poor souls,<br>It proved to be the impossible thing itself,<br>Truth and not sham: hence ruin to them all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For, Guido Franceschini was the head<br>Of an old family in Arezzo, old<br>To that degree they could afford be poor<br>Better than most: the case is common too.<br>Out of the vast door 'scutcheoned overhead,<br>Creeps out a serving-man on Saturdays<br>To cater for the week,—turns up anon<br>I' the market, chaffering for the lamb's least leg,<br>Or the quarter-fowl, less entrails, claws and comb<br>Then back again with prize,—a liver begged<br>Into the bargain, gizzard overlooked.<br>He's mincing these to give the beans a taste,<br>When, at your knock, he leaves the simmering soup,<br>Waits on the curious stranger-visitant,<br>Napkin in half-wiped hand, to show the rooms,<br>Point pictures out have hung their hundred years,<br>"Priceless," he tells you,—puts in his place at once<br>The man of money: yes, you're banker-king<br>Or merchant-kaiser, wallow in your wealth<br>While patron, the house-master, can't afford<br>To stop our ceiling-hole that rain so rots:<br>But he's the man of mark, and there's his shield,<br>And yonder's the famed Rafael, first in kind,<br>The painter painted for his grandfather,<br>And you have paid to see: "Good morning, Sir!<br>Such is the law of compensation. Still<br>The poverty was getting nigh acute;<br>There gaped so many noble mouths to feed,<br>Beans must suffice unflavoured of the fowl.<br>The mother,—hers would be a spun-out life<br>I' the nature of things; the sisters had done well<br>And married men of reasonable rank:<br>But that sort of illumination stops,<br>Throws back no heat upon the parent-hearth.<br>The family instinct felt out for its fire<br>To the Church,—the Church traditionally helps<br>A second son: and such was Paolo,<br>Established here at Rome these thirty years,<br>Who played the regular game,—priest and Abate,<br>Made friends, owned house and land, became of use<br>To a personage: his course lay clear enough.<br>The youngest caught the sympathetic flame,<br>And, though unfledged wings kept him still i' the cage,<br>Yet he shot up to be a Canon, so<br>Clung to the higher perch and crowed in hope.<br>Even our Guido, eldest brother, went<br>As far i' the way o' the Church as safety seemed,<br>He being Head o' the House, ordained to wive,—<br>So, could but dally with an Order or two<br>And testify good-will i' the cause: he clipped<br>His top-hair and thus far affected Christ.<br>But main promotion must fall otherwise,<br>Though still from the side o' the Church: and here was he<br>At Rome, since first youth, worn threadbare of soul<br>By forty-six years' rubbing on hard life,<br>Getting fast tired o' the game whose word is—"Wait!"<br>When one day,—he too having his Cardinal<br>To serve in some ambiguous sort, as serve<br>To draw the coach the plumes o' the horses' heads,—<br>The Cardinal saw fit to dispense with him,<br>Ride with one plume the less; and off it dropped.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido thus left,—with a youth spent in vain<br>And not a penny in purse to show for it,—<br>Advised with Paolo, bent no doubt in chafe<br>The black brows somewhat formidably, growled<br>"Where is the good I came to get at Rome?<br>"Where the repayment of the servitude<br>"To a purple popinjay, whose feet I kiss,<br>"Knowing his father wiped the shoes of mine?"<br>"Patience," pats Paolo the recalcitrant—<br>"You have not had, so far, the proper luck,<br>"Nor do my gains suffice to keep us both:<br>"A modest competency is mine, not more.<br>"You are the Count however, yours the style,<br>"Heirdom and state,—you can't expect all good.<br>"Had I, now, held your hand of cards … well, well—<br>"What's yet unplayed, I'll look at, by your leave,<br>"Over your shoulder,—I who made my game,<br>"Let's see, if I can't help to handle yours.<br>"Fie on you, all the Honours in your fist,<br>"Countship, Househeadship,—how have you misdealt!<br>"Why, in the first place, these will marry a man!<br>"Notum tonsoribus! To the Tonsor then!<br>"Come, clear your looks, and choose your freshest suit,<br>"And, after function's done with, down we go<br>"To the woman-dealer in perukes, a wench<br>"I and some others settled in the shop<br>"At Place Colonna: she's an oracle. Hmm!<br>"'Dear, 't is my brother: brother 't is my dear.<br>"'Dear, give us counsel! Whom do you suggest<br>"'As properest party in the quarter round<br>"'For the Count here?—he is minded to take wife,<br>"'And further tells me he intends to slip<br>"'Twenty zecchines under the bottom-scalp<br>"'Of his old wig when he sends it to revive<br>"'For the wedding: and I add a trifle too.<br>"'You know what personage I'm potent with.'"<br>And so plumped out Pompilia's name the first.<br>She told them of the household and its ways,<br>The easy husband and the shrewder wife<br>In Via Vittoria,—how the tall young girl,<br>With hair black as yon patch and eyes as big<br>As yon pomander to make freckles fly,<br>Would have so much for certain, and so much more<br>In likelihood,—why, it suited, slipped as smooth<br>As the Pope's pantoufle does on the Pope's foot.<br>"I'll to the husband!" Guido ups and cries.<br>"Ay, so you'd play your last court-card, no doubt!"<br>Puts Paolo in with a groan—"Only, you see,<br>"'T is I, this time, that supervise your lead.<br>"Priests play with women, maids, wives, mothers—why?<br>"These play with men and take them off our hands.<br>"Did I come, counsel with some cut-beard gruff<br>"Or rather this sleek young-old barberess?<br>"Go, brother, stand you rapt in the ante-room<br>"Of Her Efficacity my Cardinal<br>"For an hour,—he likes to have lord-suitors lounge,—<br>"While I betake myself to the grey mare,<br>"The better horse,—how wise the people's word!—<br>"And wait on Madam Violante."<br>Said and done.<br>He was at Via Vittoria in three skips:<br>Proposed at once to fill up the one want<br>O' the burgess-family which, wealthy enough,<br>And comfortable to heart's desire, yet crouched<br>Outside a gate to heaven,—locked, bolted, barred,<br>Whereof Count Guido had a key he kept<br>Under his pillow, but Pompilia's hand<br>Might slide behind his neck and pilfer thence.<br>The key was fairy; its mere mention made<br>Violante feel the thing shoot one sharp ray<br>That reached the womanly heart: so—"I assent!<br>"Yours be Pompilia, hers and ours that key<br>"To all the glories of the greater life!<br>"There's Pietro to convince: leave that to me!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then was the matter broached to Pietro; then<br>Did Pietro make demand and get response<br>That in the Countship was a truth, but in<br>The counting up of the Count's cash, a lie.<br>He thereupon stroked grave his chin, looked great,<br>Declined the honour. Then the wife wiped tear,<br>Winked with the other eye turned Paolo-ward,<br>Whispered Pompilia, stole to church at eve,<br>Found Guido there and got the marriage done,<br>And finally begged pardon at the feet<br>Of her dear lord and master. Whereupon<br>Quoth Pietro—"Let us make the best of things!"<br>"I knew your love would license us," quoth she:<br>Quoth Paolo once more, "Mothers, wives and maids,<br>"These be the tools wherewith priests manage men."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, here take breath and ask,—which bird o' the brace<br>Decoyed the other into clapnet? Who<br>Was fool, who knave? Neither and both, perchance.<br>There was a bargain mentally proposed<br>On each side, straight and plain and fair enough;<br>Mind knew its own mind: but when mind must speak,<br>The bargain have expression in plain terms,<br>There came the blunder incident to words,<br>And in the clumsy process, fair turned foul.<br>The straight backbone-thought of the crooked speech<br>Were just—"I Guido truck my name and rank<br>"For so much money and youth and female charms.—<br>'We Pietro and Violante give our child<br>"And wealth to you for a rise i' the world thereby."<br>Such naked truth while chambered in the brain<br>Shocks nowise: walk it forth by way of tongue,—<br>Out on the cynical unseemliness!<br>Hence was the need, on either side, of a lie<br>To serve as decent wrappage: so, Guido gives<br>Money for money,—and they, bride for groom,<br>Having, he, not a doit, they, not a child<br>Honestly theirs, but this poor waif and stray.<br>According to the words, each cheated each;<br>But in the inexpressive barter of thoughts,<br>Each did give and did take the thing designed,<br>The rank on this side and the cash on that—<br>Attained the object of the traffic, so.<br>The way of the world, the daily bargain struck<br>In the first market! Why sells Jack his ware?<br>"For the sake of serving an old customer."<br>Why does Jill buy it? "Simply not to break<br>"A custom, pass the old stall the first time."<br>Why, you know where the gist is of the exchange:<br>Each sees a profit, throws the fine words in.<br>Don't be too hard o' the pair! Had each pretence<br>Been simultaneously discovered, stript<br>From off the body o' the transaction, just<br>As when a cook (will Excellency forgive?)<br>Strips away those long rough superfluous legs<br>From either side the crayfish, leaving folk<br>A meal all meat henceforth, no garnishry,<br>(With your respect, Prince!)—balance had been kept,<br>No party blamed the other,—so, starting fair,<br>All subsequent fence of wrong returned by wrong<br>I' the matrimonial thrust and parry, at least<br>Had followed on equal terms. But, as it chanced,<br>One party had the advantage, saw the cheat<br>Of the other first and kept its own concealed:<br>And the luck o' the first discovery fell, beside,<br>To the least adroit and self-possessed o' the pair.<br>'T was foolish Pietro and his wife saw first<br>The nobleman was penniless, and screamed<br>"We are cheated!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such unprofitable noise<br>Angers at all times: but when those who plague,<br>Do it from inside your own house and home,<br>Gnats which yourself have closed the curtain round,<br>Noise goes too near the brain and makes you mad.<br>The gnats say, Guido used the candle-flame<br>Unfairly,—worsened that first bad of his,<br>By practising all kinds of cruelty<br>To oust them and suppress the wail and whine,—<br>That speedily he so scared and bullied them,<br>Fain were they, long before five months had passed,<br>To beg him grant, from what was once their wealth,<br>Just so much as would help them back to Rome<br>Where, when they finished paying the last doit<br>O' the dowry, they might beg from door to door.<br>So say the Comparini—as if it came<br>Of pure resentment for this worse than bad,<br>That then Violante, feeling conscience prick,<br>Confessed her substitution of the child<br>Whence all the harm came,—and that Pietro first<br>Bethought him of advantage to himself<br>I' the deed, as part revenge, part remedy<br>For all miscalculation in the pact.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On the other hand "Not so!" Guido retorts—<br>"I am the wronged, solely, from first to last,<br>"Who gave the dignity I engaged to give,<br>"Which was, is, cannot but continue gain.<br>"My being poor was a bye-circumstance,<br>"Miscalculated piece of untowardness,<br>"Might end to-morrow did heaven's windows ope,<br>"Or uncle die and leave me his estate.<br>"You should have put up with the minor flaw,<br>"Getting the main prize of the jewel. If wealth,<br>"Not rank, had been prime object in your thoughts,<br>"Why not have taken the butcher's son, the boy<br>"O' the baker or candlestick-maker? In all the rest,<br>"It was yourselves broke compact and played false,<br>"And made a life in common impossible.<br>"Show me the stipulation of our bond<br>"That you should make your profit of being inside<br>"My house, to hustle and edge me out o' the same,<br>"First make a laughing-stock of mine and me,<br>"Then round us in the ears from morn to night<br>"(Because we show wry faces at your mirth)<br>"That you are robbed, starved, beaten and what not!<br>"You fled a hell of your own lighting-up,<br>"Pay for your own miscalculation too:<br>"You thought nobility, gained at any price,<br>"Would suit and satisfy,—find the mistake,<br>"And now retaliate, not on yourselves, but me.<br>"And how? By telling me, i' the face of the world,<br>"I it is have been cheated all this while,<br>"Abominably and irreparably,—my name<br>"Given to a cur-cast mongrel, a drab's brat,<br>"A beggar's bye-blow,—thus depriving me<br>"Of what yourselves allege the whole and sole<br>'Aim on my part i' the marriage,—money to-wit.<br>"This thrust I have to parry by a guard<br>"Which leaves me open to a counter-thrust<br>"On the other side,—no way but there's a pass<br>"Clean through me. If I prove, as I hope to do,<br>"There's not one truth in this your odious tale<br>"O' the buying, selling, substituting—prove<br>"Your daughter was and is your daughter,—well,<br>"And her dowry hers and therefore mine,—what then?<br>"Why, where's the appropriate punishment for this<br>"Enormous lie hatched for mere malice' sake<br>"To ruin me? Is that a wrong or no?<br>"And if I try revenge for remedy,<br>"Can I well make it strong and bitter enough?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I anticipate however—only ask,<br>Which of the two here sinned most? A nice point!<br>Which brownness is least black,—decide who can,<br>Wager-by-battle-of-cheating! What do you say,<br>Highness? Suppose, your Excellency, we leave<br>The question at this stage, proceed to the next,<br>Both parties step out, fight their prize upon,<br>In the eye o' the world?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They brandish law 'gainst law;<br>The grinding of such blades, each parry of each,<br>Throws terrible sparks off, over and above the thrusts,<br>And makes more sinister the fight, to the eye,<br>Than the very wounds that follow. Beside the tale<br>Which the Comparini have to re-assert,<br>They needs must write, print, publish all abroad<br>The straitnesses of Guido's household life—<br>The petty nothings we bear privately<br>But break down under when fools flock to jeer.<br>What is it all to the facts o' the couple's case,<br>How helps it prove Pompilia not their child,<br>If Guido's mother, brother, kith and kin<br>Fare ill, lie hard, lack clothes, lack fire, lack food?<br>That's one more wrong than needs.<br>On the other hand,<br>Guido,—whose cue is to dispute the truth<br>O' the tale, reject the shame it throws on him,—<br>He may retaliate, fight his foe in turn<br>And welcome, we allow. Ay, but he can't!<br>He's at home, only acts by proxy here:<br>Law may meet law,—but all the gibes and jeers,<br>The superfluity of naughtiness,<br>Those libels on his House,—how reach at them?<br>Two hateful faces, grinning all a-glow,<br>Not only make parade of spoil they filched,<br>But foul him from the height of a tower, you see.<br>Unluckily temptation is at hand—<br>To take revenge on a trifle overlooked,<br>A pet lamb they have left in reach outside,<br>Whose first bleat, when he plucks the wool away,<br>Will strike the grinners grave: his wife remains<br>Who, four months earlier, some thirteen years old,<br>Never a mile away from mother's house<br>And petted to the height of her desire,<br>Was told one morning that her fate had come,<br>She must be married—just as, a month before,<br>Her mother told her she must comb her hair<br>And twist her curls into one knot behind.<br>These fools forgot their pet lamb, fed with flowers,<br>Then 'ticed as usual by the bit of cake,<br>Out of the bower into the butchery.<br>Plague her, he plagues them threefold: but how plague?<br>The world may have its word to say to that:<br>You can't do some things with impunity.<br>What remains … well, it is an ugly thought …<br>But that he drive herself to plague herself—<br>Herself disgrace herself and so disgrace<br>Who seek to disgrace Guido?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There's the clue<br>To what else seems gratuitously vile,<br>If, as is said, from this time forth the rack<br>Was tried upon Pompilia: 't was to wrench<br>Her limbs into exposure that brings shame.<br>The aim o' the cruelty being so crueller still,<br>That cruelty almost grows compassion's self<br>Could one attribute it to mere return<br>O' the parents' outrage, wrong avenging wrong.<br>They see in this a deeper deadlier aim,<br>Not to vex just a body they held dear,<br>But blacken too a soul they boasted white,<br>And show the world their saint in a lover's arms,<br>No matter how driven thither,—so they say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On the other hand, so much is easily said,<br>And Guido lacks not an apologist.<br>The pair had nobody but themselves to blame,<br>Being selfish beasts throughout, no less, no more:<br>—Cared for themselves, their supposed good, nought else,<br>And brought about the marriage; good proved bad,<br>As little they cared for her its victim—nay,<br>Meant she should stay behind and take the chance,<br>If haply they might wriggle themselves free.<br>They baited their own hook to catch a fish<br>With this poor worm, failed o' the prize, and then<br>Sought how to unbait tackle, let worm float<br>Or sink, amuse the monster while they 'scaped.<br>Under the best stars Hymen brings above,<br>Had all been honesty on either side,<br>A common sincere effort to good end,<br>Still, this would prove a difficult problem, Prince!<br>—Given, a fair wife, aged thirteen years,<br>A husband poor, care-bitten, sorrow-sunk,<br>Little, long-nosed, bush-bearded, lantern-jawed,<br>Forty-six years old,—place the two grown one,<br>She, cut off sheer from every natural aid,<br>In a strange town with no familiar face—<br>He, in his own parade-ground or retreat<br>If need were, free from challenge, much less check<br>To an irritated, disappointed will—<br>How evolve happiness from such a match?<br>'T were hard to serve up a congenial dish<br>Out of these ill-agreeing morsels, Duke,<br>By the best exercise of the cook's craft,<br>Best interspersion of spice, salt and sweet!<br>But let two ghastly scullions concoct mess<br>With brimstone, pitch, vitriol and devil's-dung—<br>Throw in abuse o' the man, his body and soul,<br>Kith, kin and generation shake all slab<br>At Rome, Arezzo, for the world to nose,<br>Then end by publishing, for fiend's arch-prank,<br>That, over and above sauce to the meat's self,<br>Why, even the meat, bedevilled thus in dish,<br>Was never a pheasant but a carrion-crow—<br>Prince, what will then the natural loathing be?<br>What wonder if this?—the compound plague o' the pair<br>Pricked Guido,—not to take the course they hoped,<br>That is, submit him to their statement's truth,<br>Accept its obvious promise of relief,<br>And thrust them out of doors the girl again<br>Since the girl's dowry would not enter there,<br>—Quit of the one if baulked of the other: no!<br>Rather did rage and hate so work in him,<br>Their product proved the horrible conceit<br>That he should plot and plan and bring to pass<br>His wife might, of her own free will and deed,<br>Relieve him of her presence, get her gone,<br>And yet leave all the dowry safe behind,<br>Confirmed his own henceforward past dispute,<br>While blotting out, as by a belch of hell,<br>Their triumph in her misery and death.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You see, the man was Aretine, had touch<br>O' the subtle air that breeds the subtle wit;<br>Was noble too, of old blood thrice-refined<br>That shrinks from clownish coarseness in disgust:<br>Allow that such an one may take revenge,<br>You don't expect he'll catch up stone and fling,<br>Or try cross-buttock, or whirl quarter-staff?<br>Instead of the honest drubbing clowns bestow,<br>When out of temper at the dinner spoilt,<br>On meddling mother-in-law and tiresome wife,—<br>Substitute for the clown a nobleman,<br>And you have Guido, practising, 't is said,<br>Immitigably from the very first,<br>The finer vengeance: this, they say, the fact<br>O' the famous letter shows—the writing traced<br>At Guido's instance by the timid wife<br>Over the pencilled words himself writ first—<br>Wherein she, who could neither write nor read,<br>Was made unblushingly declare a tale<br>To the brother, the Abate then in Rome,<br>How her putative parents had impressed,<br>On their departure, their enjoinment; bade<br>"We being safely arrived here, follow, you!<br>"Poison your husband, rob, set fire to all,<br>"And then by means o' the gallant you procure<br>"With ease, by helpful eye and ready tongue,<br>"Some brave youth ready to dare, do and die,<br>"You shall run off and merrily reach Rome<br>"Where we may live like flies in honey-pot:"—<br>Such being exact the programme of the course<br>Imputed her as carried to effect.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They also say,—to keep her straight therein,<br>All sort of torture was piled, pain on pain,<br>On either side Pompilia's path of life,<br>Built round about and over against by fear,<br>Circumvallated month by month, and week<br>By week, and day by day, and hour by hour,<br>Close, closer and yet closer still with pain,<br>No outlet from the encroaching pain save just<br>Where stood one saviour like a piece of heaven,<br>Hell's arms would strain round but for this blue gap.<br>She, they say further, first tried every chink,<br>Every imaginable break i' the fire,<br>As way of escape: ran to the Commissary,<br>Who bade her not malign his friend her spouse;<br>Flung herself thrice at the Archbishop's feet,<br>Where three times the Archbishop let her lie,<br>Spend her whole sorrow and sob full heart forth,<br>And then took up the slight load from the ground<br>And bore it back for husband to chastise,—<br>Mildly of course,—but natural right is right.<br>So went she slipping ever yet catching at help,<br>Missing the high till come to lowest and last,<br>To-wit a certain friar of mean degree,<br>Who heard her story in confession, wept,<br>Crossed himself, showed the man within the monk.<br>"Then, will you save me, you the one i' the world?<br>"I cannot even write my woes, nor put<br>"My prayer for help in words a friend may read,—<br>"I no more own a coin than have an hour<br>"Free of observance,—I was watched to church,<br>"Am watched now, shall be watched back presently,—<br>"How buy the skill of scribe i' the market-place?<br>"Pray you, write down and send whatever I say<br>"O' the need I have my parents take me hence!"<br>The good man rubbed his eyes and could not choose—<br>Let her dictate her letter in such a sense<br>That parents, to save breaking down a wall,<br>Might lift her over: she went back, heaven in heart.<br>Then the good man took counsel of his couch,<br>Woke and thought twice, the second thought the best:<br>"Here am I, foolish body that I be,<br>"Caught all but pushing, teaching, who but I,<br>"My betters their plain duty,—what, I dare<br>"Help a case the Archbishop would not help,<br>"Mend matters, peradventure, God loves mar?<br>"What hath the married life but strifes and plagues<br>"For proper dispensation? So a fool<br>"Once touched the ark,—poor Uzzah that I am!<br>"Oh married ones, much rather should I bid,<br>"In patience all of ye possess your souls!<br>"This life is brief and troubles die with it:<br>"Where were the prick to soar up homeward else?"<br>So saying, he burnt the letter he had writ,<br>Said Ave for her intention, in its place,<br>Took snuff and comfort, and had done with all.<br>Then the grim arms stretched yet a little more<br>And each touched each, all but one streak i' the midst,<br>Whereat stood Caponsacchi, who cried, "This way,<br>"Out by me! Hesitate one moment more<br>"And the fire shuts out me and shuts in you!<br>"Here my hand holds you life out!" Whereupon<br>She clasped the hand, which closed on hers and drew<br>Pompilia out o' the circle now complete.<br>Whose fault or shame but Guido's?—ask her friends.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But then this is the wife's—Pompilia's tale—<br>Eve's … no, not Eve's, since Eve, to speak the truth,<br>Was hardly fallen (our candour might pronounce)<br>When simply saying in her own defence<br>"The serpent tempted me and I did eat."<br>So much of paradisal nature, Eve's!<br>Her daughters ever since prefer to urge<br>"Adam so starved me I was fain accept<br>"The apple any serpent pushed my way."<br>What an elaborate theory have we here,<br>Ingeniously nursed up, pretentiously<br>Brought forth, pushed forward amid trumpet-blast,<br>To account for the thawing of an icicle,<br>Show us there needed Ætna vomit flame<br>Ere run the crystal into dew-drops! Else,<br>How, unless hell broke loose to cause the step,<br>How could a married lady go astray?<br>Bless the fools! And 't is just this way they are blessed,<br>And the world wags still,—because fools are sure<br>—Oh, not of my wife nor your daughter! No!<br>But of their own: the case is altered quite.<br>Look now,—last week, the lady we all love,—<br>Daughter o' the couple we all venerate,<br>Wife of the husband we all cap before,<br>Mother o' the babes we all breathe blessings on,—<br>Was caught in converse with a negro page.<br>Hell thawed that icicle, else "Why was it—<br>"Why?" asked and echoed the fools. "Because, you fools,—"<br>So did the dame's self answer, she who could,<br>With that fine candour only forthcoming<br>When 't is no odds whether withheld or no—<br>"Because my husband was the saint you say,<br>"And,—with that childish goodness, absurd faith,<br>"Stupid self-satisfaction, you so praise,—<br>"Saint to you, insupportable to me.<br>"Had he,—instead of calling me fine names,<br>"Lucretia and Susanna and so forth,<br>"And curtaining Correggio carefully<br>"Lest I be taught that Leda had two legs,—<br>"—But once never so little tweaked my nose<br>"For peeping through my fan at Carnival,<br>"Confessing thereby 'I have no easy task—<br>"'I need use all my powers to hold you mine,<br>"'And then,—why 't is so doubtful if they serve,<br>"'That—take this, as an earnest of despair!'<br>"Why, we were quits: I had wiped the harm away,<br>"Thought 'The man fears me!' and foregone revenge."<br>We must not want all this elaborate work<br>To solve the problem why young Fancy-and-flesh<br>Slips from the dull side of a spouse in years,<br>Betakes it to the breast of Brisk-and-bold<br>Whose love-scrapes furnish talk for all the town!<br>Accordingly one word on the other side<br>Tips over the piled-up fabric of a tale.<br>Guido says—that is, always, his friends say—<br>It is unlikely from the wickedness,<br>That any man treat any woman so.<br>The letter in question was her very own,<br>Unprompted and unaided: she could write-<br>As able to write as ready to sin, or free,<br>When there was danger, to deny both facts.<br>He bids you mark, herself from first to last<br>Attributes all the so-styled torture just<br>To jealousy,—jealousy of whom but just<br>This very Caponsacchi! How suits here<br>This with the other alleged motive, Prince?<br>Would Guido make a terror of the man<br>He meant should tempt the woman, as they charge?<br>Do you fright your hare that you may catch your hare?<br>Consider too, the charge was made and met<br>At the proper time and place where proofs were plain—<br>Heard patiently and disposed of thoroughly<br>By the highest powers, possessors of most light,<br>The Governor for the law, and the Archbishop<br>For the gospel: which acknowledged primacies,<br>'T is impudently pleaded, he could warp<br>Into a tacit partnership with crime—<br>He being the while, believe their own account,<br>Impotent, penniless and miserable!<br>He further asks—Duke, note the knotty point!—<br>How he,—concede him skill to play such part<br>And drive his wife into a gallant's arms,—<br>Could bring the gallant to play his part too<br>And stand with arms so opportunely wide?<br>How bring this Caponsacchi,—with whom, friends<br>And foes alike agree, throughout his life<br>He never interchanged a civil word<br>Nor lifted courteous cap to—him how bend<br>To such observancy of beck and call,<br>—To undertake this strange and perilous feat<br>For the good of Guido, using, as the lure,<br>Pompilia whom, himself and she avouch,<br>He had nor spoken with nor seen, indeed,<br>Beyond sight in a public theatre,<br>When she wrote letters (she that could not write!)<br>The importunate shamelessly-protested love<br>Which brought him, though reluctant, to her feet,<br>And forced on him the plunge which, howsoe'er<br>She might swim up i' the whirl, must bury him<br>Under abysmal black: a priest contrive<br>No better, no amour to be hushed up,<br>But open flight and noon-day infamy?<br>Try and concoct defence for such revolt!<br>Take the wife's tale as true, say she was wronged,—<br>Pray, in what rubric of the breviary<br>Do you find it registered—the part of a priest<br>Is—that to right wrongs from the church he skip,<br>Go journeying with a woman that's a wife,<br>And be pursued, o'ertaken and captured … how?<br>In a lay-dress, playing the kind sentinel<br>Where the wife sleeps (says he who best should know)<br>And sleeping, sleepless, both have spent the night!<br>Could no one else be found to serve at need—<br>No woman—or if man, no safer sort<br>Than this not well-reputed turbulence?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then, look into his own account o' the case!<br>He, being the stranger and astonished one,<br>Yet received protestations of her love<br>From lady neither known nor cared about:<br>Love, so protested, bred in him disgust<br>After the wonder,—or incredulity,<br>Such impudence seeming impossible.<br>But, soon assured such impudence might be,<br>When he had seen with his own eyes at last<br>Letters thrown down to him i' the very street<br>From behind lattice where the lady lurked,<br>And read their passionate summons to her side—<br>Why then, a thousand thoughts swarmed up and in,—<br>How he had seen her once, a moment's space,<br>Observed she was both young and beautiful,<br>Heard everywhere report she suffered much<br>From a jealous husband thrice her age,—in short<br>There flashed the propriety, expediency<br>Of treating, trying might they come to terms,<br>—At all events, granting the interview<br>Prayed for, one so adapted to assist<br>Decision as to whether he advance,<br>Stand or retire, in his benevolent mood!<br>Therefore the interview befell at length;<br>And at this one and only interview,<br>He saw the sole and single course to take—<br>Bade her dispose of him, head, heart and hand,<br>Did her behest and braved the consequence,<br>Not for the natural end, the love of man<br>For woman whether love be virtue or vice,<br>But, please you, altogether for pity's sake—<br>Pity of innocence and helplessness!<br>And how did he assure himself of both?<br>Had he been the house-inmate, visitor,<br>Eye-witness of the described martyrdom,<br>So, competent to pronounce its remedy<br>Ere rush on such extreme and desperate course—<br>Involving such enormity of harm,<br>Moreover, to the husband judged thus, doomed<br>And damned without a word in his defence?<br>Not he! the truth was felt by instinct here,<br>—Process which saves a world of trouble and time.<br>There's the priest's story: what do you say to it,<br>Trying its truth by your own instinct too,<br>Since that's to be the expeditious mode?<br>"And now, do hear my version," Guido cries:<br>"I accept argument and inference both.<br>"It would indeed have been miraculous<br>"Had such a confidency sprung to birth<br>"With no more fanning from acquaintanceship<br>"Than here avowed by my wife and this priest.<br>"Only, it did not: you must substitute<br>"The old stale unromantic way of fault,<br>"The commonplace adventure, mere intrigue<br>"In prose form with the unpoetic tricks,<br>"Cheatings and lies: they used the hackney chair<br>"Satan jaunts forth with, shabby and serviceable,<br>"No gilded gimcrack-novelty from below,<br>"To bowl you along thither, swift and sure.<br>"That same officious go-between, the wench<br>"Who gave and took the letters of the two,<br>"Now offers self and service back to me:<br>"Bears testimony to visits night by night<br>"When all was safe, the husband far and away,—<br>"To many a timely slipping out at large<br>"By light o' the morning-star, ere he should wake.<br>"And when the fugitives were found at last,<br>"Why, with them were found also, to belie<br>"What protest they might make of innocence,<br>"All documents yet wanting, if need were,<br>"To establish guilt in them, disgrace in me—<br>"The chronicle o' the converse from its rise<br>"To culmination in this outrage: read!<br>"Letters from wife to priest, from priest to wife,—<br>"Here they are, read and say where they chime in<br>"With the other tale, superlative purity<br>"O' the pair of saints! I stand or fall by these."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But then on the other side again,—how say<br>The pair of saints? That not one word is theirs—<br>No syllable o' the batch or writ or sent<br>Or yet received by either of the two.<br>"Found," says the priest, "because he needed them,<br>"Failing all other proofs, to prove our fault<br>"So, here they are, just as is natural.<br>"Oh yes—we had our missives, each of us!<br>"Not these, but to the full as vile, no doubt:<br>"Hers as from me,—she could not read, so burnt,—<br>"Mine as from her,—I burnt because I read.<br>"Who forged and found them? Cui profuerint!"<br>(I take the phrase out of your Highness' mouth)<br>"He who would gain by her fault and my fall,<br>"The trickster, schemer and pretender—he<br>"Whose whole career was lie entailing lie<br>"Sought to be sealed truth by the worst lie last!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido rejoins—"Did the other end o' the tale<br>"Match this beginning! 'T is alleged I prove<br>"A murderer at the end, a man of force<br>"Prompt, indiscriminate, effectual: good!<br>"Then what need all this trifling woman's-work,<br>"Letters and embassies and weak intrigue,<br>"When will and power were mine to end at once<br>"Safely and surely? Murder had come first<br>"Not last with such a man, assure yourselves!<br>"The silent acquetta, stilling at command—<br>"A drop a day i' the wine or soup, the dose,—<br>"The shattering beam that breaks above the bed<br>"And beats out brains, with nobody to blame<br>"Except the wormy age which eats even oak,—<br>"Nay, the staunch steel or trusty cord,—who cares<br>"I' the blind old palace, a pitfall at each step,<br>"With none to see, much more to interpose<br>"O' the two, three, creeping house-dog-servant-things<br>"Born mine and bred mine? Had I willed gross death,<br>"I had found nearer paths to thrust him prey<br>"Than this that goes meandering here and there<br>"Through half the world and calls down in its course<br>"Notice and noise,—hate, vengeance, should it fail,<br>"Derision and contempt though it succeed!<br>"Moreover, what o' the future son and heir?<br>"The unborn babe about to be called mine,—<br>"What end in heaping all this shame on him,<br>"Were I indifferent to my own black share?<br>"Would I have tried these crookednesses, say,<br>"Willing and able to effect the straight?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Ay, would you!"—one may hear the priest retort,<br>"Being as you are, i' the stock, a man of guile,<br>"And ruffianism but an added graft.<br>"You, a born coward, try a coward's arms,<br>"Trick and chicane,—and only when these fail<br>"Does violence follow, and like fox you bite<br>"Caught out in stealing. Also, the disgrace<br>"You hardly shrunk at, wholly shrivelled her:<br>"You plunged her thin white delicate hand i' the flame<br>"Along with your coarse horny brutish fist,<br>"Held them a second there, then drew out both<br>"—Yours roughed a little, hers ruined through and through.<br>"Your hurt would heal forthwith at ointment's touch—<br>"Namely, succession to the inheritance<br>"Which bolder crime had lost you: let things change,<br>"The birth o' the boy warrant the bolder crime,<br>"Why, murder was determined, dared and done.<br>"For me," the priest proceeds with his reply,<br>"The look o' the thing, the chances of mistake,<br>"All were against me,—that, I knew the first:<br>"But, knowing also what my duty was,<br>"I did it: I must look to men more skilled<br>"In reading hearts than ever was the world."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Highness, decide! Pronounce, Her Excellency!<br>Or … even leave this argument in doubt,<br>Account it a fit matter, taken up<br>With all its faces, manifold enough,<br>To ponder on—what fronts us, the next stage,<br>Next legal process? Guido, in pursuit,<br>Coming up with the fugitives at the inn,<br>Caused both to be arrested then and there<br>And sent to Rome for judgment on the case—<br>Thither, with all his armoury of proofs,<br>Betook himself: 't is there we'll meet him now,<br>Waiting the further issue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Here you smile<br>"And never let him henceforth dare to plead,—<br>"Of all pleas and excuses in the world<br>"For any deed hereafter to be done,—<br>"His irrepressible wrath at honour's wound!<br>"Passion and madness irrepressible?<br>"Why, Count and cavalier, the husband comes<br>"And catches foe i' the very act of shame!<br>"There's man to man,—nature must have her way,—<br>"We look he should have cleared things on the spot.<br>"Yes, then, indeed—even tho' it prove he erred—<br>"Though the ambiguous first appearance, mount<br>"Of solid injury, melt soon to mist,<br>"Still,—had he slain the lover and the wife—<br>"Or, since she was a woman and his wife,<br>"Slain him, but stript her naked to the skin<br>"Or at best left no more of an attire<br>"Than patch sufficient to pin paper to,<br>"Some one love-letter, infamy and all,<br>"As passport to the Paphos fit for such,<br>"Safe-conduct to her natural home the stews,—<br>"Good! One had recognized the power o' the pulse.<br>"But when he stands, the stock-fish,—sticks to law—<br>"Offers the hole in his heart, all fresh and warm,<br>"For scrivener's pen to poke and play about—<br>"Can stand, can stare, can tell his beads perhaps,<br>"Oh, let us hear no syllable o' the rage!<br>"Such rage were a convenient afterthought<br>"For one who would have shown his teeth belike,<br>"Exhibited unbridled rage enough,<br>"Had but the priest been found, as was to hope,<br>"In serge, not silk, with crucifix, not sword:<br>"Whereas the grey innocuous grub, of yore,<br>"Had hatched a hornet, tickle to the touch,<br>"The priest was metamorphosed into knight.<br>"And even the timid wife, whose cue was—shriek,<br>"Bury her brow beneath his trampling foot,—<br>"She too sprang at him like a pythoness:<br>"So, gulp down rage, passion must be postponed,<br>"Calm be the word! Well, our word is—we brand<br>"This part o' the business, howsoever the rest<br>"Befall."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Nay," interpose as prompt his friends—<br>"This is the world's way! So you adjudge reward<br>"To the forbearance and legality<br>"Yourselves begin by inculcating—ay,<br>"Exacting from us all with knife at throat!<br>"This one wrong more you add to wrong's amount,—<br>"You publish all, with the kind comment here,<br>"'Its victim was too cowardly for revenge.'"<br>Make it your own case,—you who stand apart!<br>The husband wakes one morn from heavy sleep,<br>With a taste of poppy in his mouth,—rubs eyes,<br>Finds his wife flown, his strong box ransacked too,<br>Follows as he best can, overtakes i' the end.<br>You bid him use his privilege: well, it seems<br>He's scarce cool-blooded enough for the right move—<br>Does not shoot when the game were sure, but stands<br>Bewildered at the critical minute,—since<br>He has the first flash of the fact alone<br>To judge from, act with, not the steady lights<br>Of after-knowledge,—yours who stand at ease<br>To try conclusions: he's in smother and smoke,<br>You outside, with explosion at an end:<br>The sulphur may be lightning or a squib—<br>He'll know in a minute, but till then, he doubts.<br>Back from what you know to what he knew not!<br>Hear the priest's lofty "I am innocent,"<br>The wife's as resolute "You are guilty!" Come!<br>Are you not staggered?—pause, and you lose the move!<br>Nought left you but a low appeal to law,<br>"Coward" tied to your tail for compliment!<br>Another consideration: have it your way!<br>Admit the worst: his courage failed the Count,<br>He's cowardly like the best o' the burgesses<br>He's grown incorporate with,—a very cur,<br>Kick him from out your circle by all means!<br>Why, trundled down this reputable stair,<br>Still, the Church-door lies wide to take him in,<br>And the Court-porch also: in he sneaks to each,—<br>"Yes, I have lost my honour and my wife,<br>"And, being moreover an ignoble hound,<br>"I dare not jeopardize my life for them!"<br>Religion and Law lean forward from their chairs,<br>"Well done, thou good and faithful servant!" Ay,<br>Not only applaud him that he scorned the world,<br>But punish should he dare do otherwise.<br>If the case be clear or turbid,—you must say!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus, anyhow, it mounted to the stage<br>In the law-courts,—let's see clearly from this point!—<br>Where the priest tells his story true or false,<br>And the wife her story, and the husband his,<br>All with result as happy as before.<br>The courts would nor condemn nor yet acquit<br>This, that or the other, in so distinct a sense<br>As end the strife to either's absolute loss:<br>Pronounced, in place of something definite,<br>"Each of the parties, whether goat or sheep<br>"I' the main, has wool to show and hair to hide.<br>"Each has brought somehow trouble, is somehow cause<br>"Of pains enough,—even though no worse were proved.<br>"Here is a husband, cannot rule his wife<br>"Without provoking her to scream and scratch<br>"And scour the fields,—causelessly, it may be:<br>"Here is that wife,—who makes her sex our plague,<br>"Wedlock, our bugbear,—perhaps with cause enough:<br>"And here is the truant priest o' the trio, worst<br>"Or best—each quality being conceivable.<br>"Let us impose a little mulct on each.<br>"We punish youth in state of pupilage<br>"Who talk at hours when youth is bound to sleep,<br>"Whether the prattle turn upon Saint Rose<br>"Or Donna Olimpia of the Vatican:<br>"'T is talk, talked wisely or unwisely talked,<br>"I' the dormitory where to talk at all,<br>"Transgresses, and is mulct: as here we mean.<br>"For the wife,—let her betake herself, for rest,<br>"After her run, to a House of Convertites—<br>"Keep there, as good as real imprisonment:<br>"Being sick and tired, she will recover so.<br>"For the priest, spritely strayer out of bounds,<br>"Who made Arezzo hot to hold him,—Rome<br>"Profits by his withdrawal from the scene.<br>"Let him be relegate to Civita,<br>"Circumscribed by its bounds till matters mend:<br>"There he at least lies out o' the way of harm<br>"From foes—perhaps from the too friendly fair.<br>"And finally for the husband, whose rash rule<br>"Has but itself to blame for this ado,—<br>"If he be vexed that, in our judgments dealt,<br>"He fails obtain what he accounts his right,<br>"Let him go comforted with the thought, no less,<br>"That, turn each sentence howsoever he may,<br>"There's satisfaction to extract therefrom.<br>"For, does he wish his wife proved innocent?<br>"Well, she's not guilty, he may safely urge,<br>"Has missed the stripes dishonest wives endure—<br>"This being a fatherly pat o' the cheek, no more.<br>"Does he wish her guilty? Were she otherwise<br>"Would she be locked up, set to say her prayers,<br>"Prevented intercourse with the outside world,<br>"And that suspected priest in banishment,<br>"Whose portion is a further help i' the case?<br>"Oh, ay, you all of you want the other thing,<br>"The extreme of law, some verdict neat, complete,—<br>"Either, the whole o' the dowry in your poke<br>"With full release from the false wife, to boot,<br>"And heading, hanging for the priest, beside—<br>"Or, contrary, claim freedom for the wife,<br>"Repayment of each penny paid her spouse,<br>"Amends for the past, release for the future! Such<br>"Is wisdom to the children of this world;<br>"But we've no mind, we children of the light,<br>"To miss the advantage of the golden mean,<br>"And push things to the steel point." Thus the courts.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Is it settled so far? Settled or disturbed,<br>Console yourselves: 't is like … an instance, now!<br>You've seen the puppets, of Place Navona, play,—<br>Punch and his mate,—how threats pass, blows are dealt,<br>And a crisis comes: the crowd or clap or hiss<br>Accordingly as disposed for man or wife—<br>When down the actors duck awhile perdue,<br>Donning what novel rag-and-feather trim<br>Best suits the next adventure, new effect:<br>And,—by the time the mob is on the move,<br>With something like a judgment pro and con,—<br>There's a whistle, up again the actors pop<br>In t' other tatter with fresh-tinseled staves,<br>To re-engage in one last worst fight more<br>Shall show, what you thought tragedy was farce.<br>Note, that the climax and the crown of things<br>Invariably is, the devil appears himself,<br>Armed and accoutred, horns and hoofs and tail!<br>Just so, nor otherwise it proved—you'll see:<br>Move to the murder, never mind the rest!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Guido, at such a general duck-down,<br>I' the breathing-space,—of wife to convent here,<br>Priest to his relegation, and himself<br>To Arezzo,—had resigned his part perforce<br>To brother Abate, who bustled, did his best,<br>Retrieved things somewhat, managed the three suits—<br>Since, it should seem, there were three suits-at-law<br>Behoved him look to, still, lest bad grow worse:<br>First civil suit,—the one the parents brought,<br>Impugning the legitimacy of his wife,<br>Affirming thence the nullity of her rights:<br>This was before the Rota,—Molinès,<br>That's judge there, made that notable decree<br>Which partly leaned to Guido, as I said,—<br>But Pietro had appealed against the same<br>To the very court will judge what we judge now—<br>Tommati and his fellows,—Suit the first.<br>Next civil suit,—demand on the wife's part<br>Of separation from the husband's bed<br>On plea of cruelty and risk to life—<br>Claims restitution of the dowry paid,<br>Immunity from paying any more:<br>This second, the Vicegerent has to judge.<br>Third and last suit,—this time, a criminal one,—<br>Answer to, and protection from, both these,—<br>Guido's complaint of guilt against his wife<br>In the Tribunal of the Governor,<br>Venturini, also judge of the present cause.<br>Three suits of all importance plaguing him,<br>Beside a little private enterprise<br>Of Guido's,—essay at a shorter cut.<br>For Paolo, knowing the right way at Rome,<br>Had, even while superintending these three suits<br>I' the regular way, each at its proper court,<br>Ingeniously made interest with the Pope<br>To set such tedious regular forms aside,<br>And, acting the supreme and ultimate judge,<br>Declare for the husband and against the wife.<br>Well, at such crisis and extreme of straits,—<br>The man at bay, buffeted in this wise,—<br>Happened the strangest accident of all.<br>"Then," sigh friends, "the last feather broke his back,<br>"Made him forget all possible remedies<br>"Save one—he rushed to, as the sole relief<br>"From horror and the abominable thing."<br>"Or rather," laugh foes, "then did there befall<br>"The luckiest of conceivable events,<br>"Most pregnant with impunity for him,<br>"Which henceforth turned the flank of all attack,<br>"And bade him do his wickedest and worst."<br>—The wife's withdrawal from the Convertites,<br>Visit to the villa where her parents lived,<br>And birth there of his babe. Divergence here!<br>I simply take the facts, ask what they show.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">First comes this thunderclap of a surprise:<br>Then follow all the signs and silences<br>Premonitory of earthquake. Paolo first<br>Vanished, was swept off somewhere, lost to Rome:<br>(Wells dry up, while the sky is sunny and blue.)<br>Then Guido girds himself for enterprise,<br>Hies to Vittiano, counsels with his steward,<br>Comes to terms with four peasants young and bold,<br>And starts for Rome the Holy, reaches her<br>At very holiest, for 't is Christmas Eve,<br>And makes straight for the Abate's dried-up font,<br>The lodge where Paolo ceased to work the pipes.<br>And then, rest taken, observation made<br>And plan completed, all in a grim week,<br>The five proceed in a body, reach the place,<br>—Pietro's, at the Paolina, silent, lone,<br>And stupefied by the propitious snow.<br>'T is one i' the evening: knock: a voice "Who's there?"<br>"Friends with a letter from the priest your friend."<br>At the door, straight smiles old Violante's self.<br>She falls,—her son-in-law stabs through and through,<br>Reaches through her at Pietro—"With your son<br>"This is the way to settle suits, good sire!"<br>He bellows "Mercy for heaven, not for earth!<br>"Leave to confess and save my sinful soul,<br>"Then do your pleasure on the body of me!"<br>—"Nay, father, soul with body must take its chance!"<br>He presently got his portion and lay still.<br>And last, Pompilia rushes here and there<br>Like a dove among the lightnings in her brake<br>Falls also: Guido's, this last husband's-act.<br>He lifts her by the long dishevelled hair,<br>Holds her away at arm's length with one hand,<br>While the other tries if life come from the mouth-<br>Looks out his whole heart's hate on the shut eyes,<br>Draws a deep satisfied breath, "So—dead at last!"<br>Throws down the burden on dead Pietro's knees,<br>And ends all with "Let us away, my boys!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And, as they left by one door, in at the other<br>Tumbled the neighbours—for the shrieks had pierced<br>To the mill and the grange, this cottage and that shed.<br>Soon followed the Public Force; pursuit began<br>Though Guido had the start and chose the road:<br>So, that same night was he, with the other four,<br>Overtaken near Baccano,—where they sank<br>By the way-side, in some shelter meant for beasts,<br>And now lay heaped together, nuzzling swine,<br>Each wrapped in bloody cloak, each grasping still<br>His unwiped weapon, sleeping all the same<br>The sleep o' the just,—a journey of twenty miles<br>Brought just and unjust to a level, you see.<br>The only one i' the world that suffered aught<br>By the whole night's toil and trouble, flight and chase,<br>Was just the officer who took them, Head<br>O' the Public Force,—Patrizj, zealous soul,<br>Who, having but duty to sustain weak flesh,<br>Got heated, caught a fever and so died:<br>A warning to the over-vigilant,<br>—Virtue in a chafe should change her linen quick,<br>Lest pleurisy get start of providence.<br>(That's for the Cardinal, and told, I think!)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, they bring back the company to Rome.<br>Says Guido, "By your leave, I fain would ask<br>"How you found out 't was I who did the deed?<br>"What put you on my trace, a foreigner,<br>"Supposed in Arezzo,—and assuredly safe<br>"Except for an oversight: who told you, pray?"<br>"Why, naturally your wife!" Down Guido drops<br>O' the horse he rode,—they have to steady and stay,<br>At either side the brute that bore him, bound,<br>So strange it seemed his wife should live and speak!<br>She had prayed—at least so people tell you now—<br>For but one thing to the Virgin for herself,<br>Not simply, as did Pietro 'mid the stabs,—<br>Time to confess and get her own soul saved—<br>But time to make the truth apparent, truth<br>For God's sake, lest men should believe a lie:<br>Which seems to have been about the single prayer<br>She ever put up, that was granted her.<br>With this hope in her head, of telling truth,—<br>Being familiarized with pain, beside,—<br>She bore the stabbing to a certain pitch<br>Without a useless cry, was flung for dead<br>On Pietro's lap, and so attained her point.<br>Her friends subjoin this—have I done with them?—<br>And cite the miracle of continued life<br>(She was not dead when I arrived just now)<br>As attestation to her probity.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Does it strike your Excellency? Why, your Highness,<br>The self-command and even the final prayer,<br>Our candour must acknowledge explicable<br>As easily by the consciousness of guilt.<br>So, when they add that her confession runs<br>She was of wifehood one white innocence<br>In thought, word, act, from first of her short life<br>To last of it; praying, i' the face of death,<br>That God forgive her other sins—not this,<br>She is charged with and must die for, that she failed<br>Anyway to her husband: while thereon<br>Comments the old Religious—"So much good<br>"Patience beneath enormity of ill,<br>"I hear to my confusion, woe is me,<br>"Sinner that I stand, shamed in the walk and gait<br>"I have practised and grown old in, by a child!"—<br>Guido's friends shrug the shoulder, "Just this same<br>"Prodigious absolute calm in the last hour<br>"Confirms us,—being the natural result<br>"Of a life which proves consistent to the close.<br>"Having braved heaven and deceived earth throughout,<br>"She braves still and deceives still, gains thereby<br>"Two ends, she prizes beyond earth or heaven:<br>"First sets her lover free, imperilled sore<br>"By the new turn things take: he answers yet<br>"For the part he played: they have summoned him indeed:<br>"The past ripped up, he may be punished still:<br>"What better way of saving him than this?<br>"Then,—thus she dies revenged to the uttermost<br>"On Guido, drags him with her in the dark,<br>"The lower still the better, do you doubt?<br>"Thus, two ways, does she love her love to the end,<br>"And hate her hate,—death, hell is no such price<br>"To pay for these,—lovers and haters hold."<br>But there's another parry for the thrust.<br>"Confession," cry folks—"a confession, think!<br>"Confession of the moribund is true!"<br>Which of them, my wise friends? This public one,<br>Or the private other we shall never know?<br>The private may contain,—your casuists teach,-<br>The acknowledgment of, and the penitence for,<br>That other public one, so people say.<br>However it be,—we trench on delicate ground,<br>Her Eminence is peeping o'er the cards,—<br>Can one find nothing in behalf of this<br>Catastrophe? Deaf folks accuse the dumb!<br>You criticize the drunken reel, fool's speech,<br>Maniacal gesture of the man,—we grant!<br>But who poured poison in his cup, we ask?<br>Recall the list of his excessive wrongs,<br>First cheated in his wife, robbed by her kin,<br>Rendered anon the laughing-stock o' the world<br>By the story, true or false, of his wife's birth,—<br>The last seal publicly apposed to shame<br>By the open flight of wife and priest,—why, Sirs,<br>Step out of Rome a furlong, would you know<br>What anotherguess tribunal than ours here,<br>Mere worldly Court without the help of grace,<br>Thinks of just that one incident o' the flight?<br>Guido preferred the same complaint before<br>The court at Arezzo, bar of the Granduke,—<br>In virtue of it being Tuscany<br>Where the offence had rise and flight began,—<br>Self-same complaint he made in the sequel here<br>Where the offence grew to the full, the flight<br>Ended: offence and flight, one fact judged twice<br>By two distinct tribunals,—what result?<br>There was a sentence passed at the same time<br>By Arezzo and confirmed by the Granduke,<br>Which nothing baulks of swift and sure effect<br>But absence of the guilty, (flight to Rome<br>Frees them from Tuscan jurisdiction now)<br>—Condemns the wife to the opprobrious doom<br>Of all whom law just lets escape from death.<br>The Stinche, House of Punishment, for life,—<br>That's what the wife deserves in Tuscany:<br>Here, she deserves—remitting with a smile<br>To her father's house, main object of the flight!<br>The thief presented with the thing he steals!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At this discrepancy of judgments—mad,<br>The man took on himself the office, judged;<br>And the only argument against the use<br>O' the law he thus took into his own hands<br>Is … what, I ask you?—that, revenging wrong,<br>He did not revenge sooner, kill at first<br>Whom he killed last! That is the final charge.<br>Sooner? What's soon or late i' the case?—ask we.<br>A wound i' the flesh no doubt wants prompt redress;<br>It smarts a little to-day, well in a week,<br>Forgotten in a month; or never, or now, revenge!<br>But a wound to the soul? That rankles worse and worse.<br>Shall I comfort you, explaining—"Not this once<br>"But now it may be some five hundred times<br>"I called you ruffian, pandar, liar and rogue:<br>"The injury must be less by lapse of time?"<br>The wrong is a wrong, one and immortal too,<br>And that you bore it those five hundred times,<br>Let it rankle unrevenged five hundred years,<br>Is just five hundred wrongs the more and worse!<br>Men, plagued this fashion, get to explode this way,<br>If left no other.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But we left this man<br>"Many another way, and there's his fault,"<br>'T is answered—"He himself preferred our arm<br>"O' the law to fight his battle with. No doubt<br>"We did not open him an armoury<br>"To pick and choose from, use, and then reject.<br>"He tries one weapon and fails,—he tries the next<br>"And next: he flourishes wit and common sense,<br>"They fail him,—he plies logic doughtily,<br>"It fails him too,—thereon, discovers last<br>"He has been blind to the combustibles—<br>"That all the while he is a-glow with ire,<br>"Boiling with irrepressible rage, and so<br>"May try explosives and discard cold steel,—<br>"So hires assassins, plots, plans, executes!<br>"Is this the honest self-forgetting rage<br>"We are called to pardon? Does the furious bull<br>"Pick out four help-mates from the grazing herd<br>"And journey with them over hill and dale<br>"Till he find his enemy?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What rejoinder? save<br>That friends accept our bull-similitude.<br>Bull-like,—the indiscriminate slaughter, rude<br>And reckless aggravation of revenge,<br>Were all i' the way o' the brute who never once<br>Ceases, amid all provocation more,<br>To bear in mind the first tormentor, first<br>Giver o' the wound that goaded him to fight:<br>And, though a dozen follow and reinforce<br>The aggressor, wound in front and wound in flank,<br>Continues undisturbedly pursuit,<br>And only after prostrating his prize<br>Turns on the pettier, makes a general prey.<br>So Guido rushed against Violante, first<br>Author of all his wrongs, fons et origo<br>Malorum—drops first, deluge since,—which done,<br>He finished with the rest. Do you blame a bull?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In truth you look as puzzled as ere I preached!<br>How is that? There are difficulties perhaps<br>On any supposition, and either side.<br>Each party wants too much, claims sympathy<br>For its object of compassion, more than just.<br>Cry the wife's friends, "O the enormous crime<br>"Caused by no provocation in the world!"<br>"Was not the wife a little weak?"—inquire—<br>"Punished extravagantly, if you please,<br>"But meriting a little punishment?<br>"One treated inconsiderately, say,<br>"Rather than one deserving not at all<br>"Treatment and discipline o' the harsher sort?"<br>No, they must have her purity itself,<br>Quite angel,—and her parents angels too<br>Of an aged sort, immaculate, word and deed:<br>At all events, so seeming, till the fiend,<br>Even Guido, by his folly, forced from them<br>The untoward avowal of the trick o' the birth,<br>Which otherwise were safe and secret now.<br>Why, here you have the awfulest of crimes<br>For nothing! Hell broke loose on a butterfly!<br>A dragon born of rose-dew and the moon!<br>Yet here is the monster! Why he's a mere man—<br>Born, bred and brought up in the usual way.<br>His mother loves him, still his brothers stick<br>To the good fellow of the boyish games;<br>The Governor of his town knows and approves,<br>The Archbishop of the place knows and assists:<br>Here he has Cardinal This to vouch for the past,<br>Cardinal That to trust for the future,—match<br>And marriage were a Cardinal's making,—in short,<br>What if a tragedy be acted here<br>Impossible for malice to improve,<br>And innocent Guido with his innocent four<br>Be added, all five, to the guilty three,<br>That we of these last days be edified<br>With one full taste o' the justice of the world?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The long and the short is, truth seems what I show:—<br>Undoubtedly no pains ought to be spared<br>To give the mob an inkling of our lights.<br>It seems unduly harsh to put the man<br>To the torture, as I hear the court intends,<br>Though readiest way of twisting out the truth;<br>He is noble, and he may be innocent.<br>On the other hand, if they exempt the man<br>(As it is also said they hesitate<br>On the fair ground, presumptive guilt is weak<br>I' the case of nobility and privilege),—<br>What crime that ever was, ever will be,<br>Deserves the torture? Then abolish it!<br>You see the reduction ad absurdum, Sirs?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116358" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Her Excellency must pronounce, in fine!<br>What, she prefers going and joining play?<br>Her Highness finds it late, intends retire?<br>I am of their mind: only, all this talk talked,<br>'T was not for nothing that we talked, I hope?<br>Both know as much about it, now, at least,<br>As all Rome: no particular thanks, I beg!<br>(You'll see, I have not so advanced myself,<br>After my teaching the two idiots here!)</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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