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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>V. Count Guido Franceschini</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,<br>I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down<br>Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,<br>Fortified by the sip of … why, 't is wine,<br>Velletri,—and not vinegar and gall,<br>So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!<br>Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head<br>To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.<br>How cautious and considerate … aie, aie, aie,<br>Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart<br>An ordinary matter. Law is law.<br>Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,<br>From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,<br>I have been put to the rack: all's over now,<br>And neither wrist—what men style, out of joint:<br>If any harm be, 't is the shoulder-blade,<br>The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket,—Sirs,<br>Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,<br>Being past my prime of life, and out of health.<br>In short, I thank you,—yes, and mean the word.<br>Needs must the Court be slow to understand<br>How this quite novel form of taking pain,<br>This getting tortured merely in the flesh,<br>Amounts to almost an agreeable change<br>In my case, me fastidious, plied too much<br>With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)<br>To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,<br>And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.<br>Four years have I been operated on<br>I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—<br>My self-respect, my care for a good name,<br>Pride in an old one, love of kindred—just<br>A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,<br>That looked up to my face when days were dim,<br>And fancied they found light there—no one spot,<br>Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.<br>That, and not this you now oblige me with,<br>That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!<br>The poor old noble House that drew the rags<br>O' the Franceschini's once superb array<br>Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by,—<br>Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out<br>And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!<br>Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence<br>Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,<br>The father I have some slight feeling for,<br>Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends<br>Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe,<br>Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,<br>Properly push his child to wall one day!<br>Mimic the tetchy humour, furtive glance,<br>And brow where half was furious, half fatigued,<br>O' the same son got to be of middle age,<br>Sour, saturnine,—your humble servant here,—<br>When things go cross and the young wife, he finds<br>Take to the window at a whistle's bid,<br>And yet demurs thereon, preposterous fool!—<br>Whereat the worthies judge he wants advice<br>And beg to civilly ask what's evil here,<br>Perhaps remonstrate on the habit they deem<br>He's given unduly to, of beating her:<br>… Oh, sure he beats her—why says John so else,<br>Who is cousin to George who is sib to Tecla's self<br>Who cooks the meal and combs the lady's hair?<br>What! 'T is my wrist you merely dislocate<br>For the future when you mean me martyrdom?<br>—Let the old mother's economy alone,<br>How the brocade-strips saved o' the seamy side<br>O' the wedding-grown buy raiment for a year?<br>—How she can dress and dish up—lordly dish<br>Fit for a duke, lamb's head and purtenance—<br>With her proud hands, feast household so a week?<br>No word o' the wine rejoicing God and man<br>The less when three-parts water? Then, I say,<br>A trifle of torture to the flesh, like yours,<br>While soul is spared such foretaste of hell-fire,<br>Is naught. But I curtail the catalogue<br>Through policy,—a rhetorician's trick,—<br>Because I would reserve some choicer points<br>O' the practice, more exactly parallel<br>(Having an eye to climax) with what gift,<br>Eventual grace the Court may have in store<br>I' the way of plague—what crown of punishments.<br>When I am hanged or headed, time enough<br>To prove the tenderness of only that,<br>Mere heading, hanging,—not their counterpart,<br>Not demonstration public and precise<br>That I, having married the mongrel of a drab,<br>Am bound to grant that mongrel-brat, my wife,<br>Her mother's birthright-license as is just,—<br>Let her sleep undisturbed, i' the family style,<br>Her sleep out in the embraces of a priest,<br>Nor disallow their bastard as my heir!<br>Your sole mistake,—dare I submit so much<br>To the reverend Court?—has been in all this pains<br>To make a stone roll down hill,—rack and wrench<br>And rend a man to pieces, all for what?<br>Why—make him ope mouth in his own defence,<br>Show cause for what he has done, the irregular deed,<br>(Since that he did it, scarce dispute can be)<br>And clear his fame a little, beside the luck<br>Of stopping even yet, if possible,<br>Discomfort to his flesh from noose or axe—<br>For that, out come the implements of law!<br>May it content my lords the gracious Court<br>To listen only half so patient-long<br>As I will in that sense profusely speak,<br>And—fie, they shall not call in screws to help!<br>I killed Pompilia Franceschini, Sirs;<br>Killed too the Comparini, husband, wife,<br>Who called themselves, by a notorious lie,<br>Her father and her mother to ruin me.<br>There's the irregular deed: you want no more<br>Than right interpretation of the same,<br>And truth so far—am I to understand?<br>To that then, with convenient speed,—because<br>Now I consider,—yes, despite my boast,<br>There is an ailing in this omoplat<br>May clip my speech all too abruptly short,<br>Whatever the good-will in me. Now for truth!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I' the name of the indivisible Trinity!<br>Will my lords, in the plenitude of their light,<br>Weigh well that all this trouble has come on me<br>Through my persistent treading in the paths<br>Where I was trained to go,—wearing that yoke<br>My shoulder was predestined to receive,<br>Born to the hereditary stoop and crease?<br>Noble, I recognized my nobler still,<br>The Church, my suzerain; no mock-mistress, she;<br>The secular owned the spiritual: mates of mine<br>Have thrown their careless hoofs up at her call<br>"Forsake the clover and come drag my wain!"<br>There they go cropping: I protruded nose<br>To halter, bent my back of docile beast,<br>And now am whealed, one wide wound all of me,<br>For being found at the eleventh hour o' the day<br>Padding the mill-track, not neck-deep in grass:<br>—My one fault, I am stiffened by my work,<br>—My one reward, I help the Court to smile!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am representative of a great line,<br>One of the first of the old families<br>In Arezzo, ancientest of Tuscan towns.<br>When my worst foe is fain to challenge this,<br>His worst exception runs—not first in rank<br>But second, noble in the next degree<br>Only; not malice' self maligns me more.<br>So, my lord opposite has composed, we know,<br>A marvel of a book, sustains the point<br>That Francis boasts the primacy 'mid saints;<br>Yet not inaptly hath his argument<br>Obtained response from yon my other lord<br>In thesis published with the world's applause<br>—Rather 't is Dominic such post befits:<br>Why, at the worst, Francis stays Francis still,<br>Second in rank to Dominic it may be,<br>Still, very saintly, very like our Lord;<br>And I at least descend from Guido once<br>Homager to the Empire, nought below—<br>Of which account as proof that, none o' the line<br>Having a single gift beyond brave blood,<br>Or able to do aught but give, give, give<br>In blood and brain, in house and land and cash,<br>Not get and garner as the vulgar may,<br>We became poor as Francis or our Lord.<br>Be that as it likes you, Sirs,—whenever it chanced<br>Myself grew capable anyway of remark,<br>(Which was soon—penury makes wit premature)<br>This struck me, I was poor who should be rich<br>Or pay that fault to the world which trifles not<br>When lineage lacks the flag yet lifts the pole:<br>On, therefore, I must move forthwith, transfer<br>My stranded self, born fish with gill and fin<br>Fit for the deep sea, now left flap bare-backed<br>In slush and sand, a show to crawlers vile<br>Reared of the low-tide and aright therein.<br>The enviable youth with the old name,<br>Wide chest, stout arms, sound brow and pricking veins,<br>A heartful of desire, man's natural load,<br>A brainful of belief, the noble's lot,—<br>All this life, cramped and gasping, high and dry<br>I' the wave's retreat,—the misery, good my lords,<br>Which made you merriment at Rome of late,—<br>It made me reason, rather—muse, demand<br>—Why our bare dropping palace, in the street<br>Where such-an-one whose grandfather sold tripe<br>Was adding to his purchased pile a fourth<br>Tall tower, could hardly show a turret sound?<br>Why Countess Beatrice, whose son I am,<br>Cowered in the winter-time as she spun flax,<br>Blew on the earthen basket of live ash,<br>Instead of jaunting forth in coach and six<br>Like such-another widow who ne'er was wed?<br>I asked my fellows, how came this about?<br>"Why, Jack, the suttler's child, perhaps the camp's,<br>"Went to the wars, fought sturdily, took a town<br>"And got rewarded as was natural.<br>"She of the coach and six—excuse me there!<br>"Why, don't you know the story of her friend?<br>"A clown dressed vines on somebody's estate,<br>"His boy recoiled from muck, liked Latin more,<br>"Stuck to his pen and got to be a priest,<br>"Till one day … don't you mind that telling tract<br>"Against Molinos, the old Cardinal wrote?<br>"He penned and dropped it in the patron's desk<br>"Who, deep in thought and absent much of mind,<br>"Licensed the thing, allowed it for his own;<br>"Quick came promotion,—suum cuique, Count!<br>"Oh, he can pay for coach and six, be sure!"<br>"—Well, let me go, do likewise: war's the word—<br>"That way the Franceschini worked at first,<br>"I'll take my turn, try soldiership."—"What, you?<br>"The eldest son and heir and prop o' the house,<br>"So do you see your duty? Here's your post,<br>"Hard by the hearth and altar. (Roam from roof,<br>"This youngster, play the gipsy out of doors,<br>"And who keeps kith and kin that fall on us?)<br>"Stand fast, stick tight, conserve your gods at home!"<br>"—Well then, the quiet course, the contrary trade!<br>"We had a cousin amongst us once was Pope,<br>"And minor glories manifold. Try the Church,<br>"The tonsure, and,—since heresy's but half-slain<br>"Even by the Cardinal's tract he thought he wrote,—<br>"Have at Molinos!"—"Have at a fool's head!<br>"You a priest? How were marriage possible?<br>"There must be Franceschini till time ends—<br>"That's your vocation. Make your brothers priests,<br>"Paul shall be porporate, and Girolamo step<br>"Red-stockinged in the presence when you choose,<br>"But save one Franceschini for the age!<br>"Be not the vine but dig and dung its root,<br>"Be not a priest but gird up priesthood's loins,<br>"With one foot in Arezzo stride to Rome,<br>"Spend yourself there and bring the purchase back!<br>"Go hence to Rome, be guided!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So I was.<br>I turned alike from the hill-side zig-zag thread<br>Of way to the table-land a soldier takes,<br>Alike from the low-lying pasture-place<br>Where churchmen graze, recline and ruminate,<br>—Ventured to mount no platform like my lords<br>Who judge the world, bear brain I dare not brag—<br>But stationed me, might thus the expression serve,<br>As who should fetch and carry, come and go,<br>Meddle and make i' the cause my lords love most—<br>The public weal, which hangs to the law, which holds<br>By the Church, which happens to be through God himself.<br>Humbly I helped the Church till here I stand,—<br>Or would stand but for the omoplat, you see!<br>Bidden qualify for Rome, I, having a field,<br>Went, sold it, laid the sum at Peter's foot:<br>Which means—I settled home-accounts with speed,<br>Set apart just a modicum should suffice<br>To hold the villa's head above the waves<br>Of weed inundating its oil and wine,<br>And prop roof, stanchion wall o' the palace so<br>As to keep breath i' the body, out of heart<br>Amid the advance of neighbouring loftiness—<br>(People like building where they used to beg)—<br>Till succoured one day,—shared the residue<br>Between my mother and brothers and sisters there,<br>Black-eyed babe Donna This and Donna That,<br>As near to starving as might decently be,<br>—Left myself journey-charges, change of suit,<br>A purse to put i' the pocket of the Groom<br>O' the Chamber of the patron, and a glove<br>With a ring to it for the digits of the niece<br>Sure to be helpful in his household,—then<br>Started for Rome, and led the life prescribed.<br>Close to the Church, though clean of it, I assumed<br>Three or four orders of no consequence,<br>—They cast out evil spirits and exorcise,<br>For example; bind a man to nothing more,<br>Give clerical savour to his layman's-salt,<br>Facilitate his claim to loaf and fish<br>Should miracle leave, beyond what feeds the flock,<br>Fragments to brim the basket of a friend—<br>While, for the world's sake, I rode, danced and gamed,<br>Quitted me like a courtier, measured mine<br>With whatsoever blade had fame in fence,<br>—Ready to let the basket go its round<br>Even though my turn was come to help myself,<br>Should Dives count on me at dinner-time<br>As just the understander of a joke<br>And not immoderate in repartee.<br>Utrique sic paratus, Sirs, I said,<br>"Here," (in the fortitude of years fifteen,<br>So good a pedagogue is penury)<br>"Here wait, do service,—serving and to serve!<br>"And, in due time, I nowise doubt at all,<br>"The recognition of my service comes.<br>"Next year I'm only sixteen. I can wait."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I waited thirty years, may it please the Court:<br>Saw meanwhile many a denizen o' the dung<br>Hop, skip, jump o'er my shoulder, make him wings<br>And fly aloft,—succeed, in the usual phrase.<br>Everyone soon or late comes round by Rome:<br>Stand still here, you'll see all in turn succeed.<br>Why, look you, so and so, the physician here,<br>My father's lacquey's son we sent to school,<br>Doctored and dosed this Eminence and that,<br>Salved the last Pope his certain obstinate sore,<br>Soon bought land as became him, names it now:<br>I grasp bell at his griffin-guarded gate,<br>Traverse the half-mile avenue,—a term,<br>A cypress, and a statue, three and three,—<br>Deliver message from my Monsignor,<br>With varletry at lounge i' the vestibule<br>I'm barred from who bear mud upon my shoe.<br>My father's chaplain's nephew, Chamberlain,—<br>Nothing less, please you!—courteous all the same,<br>—He does not see me though I wait an hour<br>At his staircase-landing 'twixt the brace of busts,<br>A noseless Sylla, Marius maimed to match,<br>My father gave him for a hexastich<br>Made on my birthday,—but he sends me down,<br>To make amends, that relic I prize most—<br>The unburnt end o' the very candle, Sirs,<br>Purfled with paint so prettily round and round,<br>He carried in such state last Peter's-day,—<br>In token I, his gentleman and squire,<br>Had held the bridle, walked his managed mule<br>Without a tittup the procession through.<br>Nay, the official,—one you know, sweet lords!—<br>Who drew the warrant for my transfer late<br>To the New Prisons from Tordinona,—he<br>Graciously had remembrance—"Francesc … ha?<br>"His sire, now—how a thing shall come about!—<br>"Paid me a dozen florins above the fee,<br>"For drawing deftly up a deed of sale<br>"When troubles fell so thick on him, good heart,<br>"And I was prompt and pushing! By all means!<br>"At the New Prisons be it his son shall lie,—<br>"Anything for an old friend!" and thereat<br>Signed name with triple flourish underneath.<br>These were my fellows, such their fortunes now,<br>While I—kept fasts and feasts innumerable,<br>Matins and vespers, functions to no end<br>I' the train of Monsignor and Eminence,<br>As gentleman-squire, and for my zeal's reward<br>Have rarely missed a place at the table-foot<br>Except when some Ambassador, or such like,<br>Brought his own people. Brief, one day I felt<br>The tick of time inside me, turning-point<br>And slight sense there was now enough of this:<br>That I was near my seventh climacteric,<br>Hard upon, if not over, the middle life,<br>And, although fed by the east-wind, fulsome-fine<br>With foretaste of the Land of Promise, still<br>My gorge gave symptom it might play me false;<br>Better not press it further,—be content<br>With living and dying only a nobleman,<br>Who merely had a father great and rich,<br>Who simply had one greater and richer yet,<br>And so on back and back till first and best<br>Began i' the night; I finish in the day.<br>"The mother must be getting old," I said;<br>"The sisters are well wedded away, our name<br>"Can manage to pass a sister off, at need,<br>"And do for dowry: both my brothers thrive—<br>"Regular priests they are, nor, bat-like, 'bide<br>"'Twixt flesh and fowl with neither privilege.<br>"My spare revenue must keep me and mine.<br>"I am tired: Arezzo's air is good to breathe;<br>"Vittiano,—one limes flocks of thrushes there;<br>"A leathern coat costs little and lasts long:<br>"Let me bid hope good-bye, content at home!"<br>Thus, one day, I disbosomed me and bowed.<br>Whereat began the little buzz and thrill<br>O' the gazers round me; each face brightened up:<br>As when at your Casino, deep in dawn,<br>A gamester says at last, "I play no more,<br>"Forego gain, acquiesce in loss, withdraw<br>"Anyhow:" and the watchers of his ways,<br>A trifle struck compunctious at the word,<br>Yet sensible of relief, breathe free once more,<br>Break up the ring, venture polite advice—<br>"How, Sir? So scant of heart and hope indeed?<br>"Retire with neither cross nor pile from play?—<br>"So incurious, so short-casting?—give your chance<br>"To a younger, stronger, bolder spirit belike,<br>"Just when luck turns and the fine throw sweeps all?"<br>Such was the chorus: and its goodwill meant—<br>"See that the loser leave door handsomely!<br>"There's an ill look,—it's sinister, spoils sport,<br>"When an old bruised and battered year-by-year<br>"Fighter with fortune, not a penny in poke,<br>"Reels down the steps of our establishment<br>"And staggers on broad daylight and the world,<br>"In shagrag beard and doleful doublet, drops<br>"And breaks his heart on the outside: people prate<br>"'Such is the profit of a trip upstairs!'<br>"Contrive he sidle forth, baulked of the blow<br>"Best dealt by way of moral, bidding down<br>"No curse but blessings rather on our heads<br>"For some poor prize he bears at tattered breast,<br>"Some palpable sort of kind of good to set<br>"Over and against the grievance: give him quick!"<br>Whereon protested Paul, "Go hang yourselves!<br>"Leave him to me. Count Guido and brother of mine,<br>"A word in your ear! Take courage, since faint heart<br>"Ne'er won … aha, fair lady, don't men say?<br>"There's a sors, there's a right Virgilian dip!<br>"Do you see the happiness o' the hint? At worst,<br>"If the Church want no more of you, the Court<br>"No more, and the Camp as little, the ingrates,—come,<br>"Count you are counted: still you've coat to back,<br>"Not cloth of gold and tissue, as we hoped,<br>"But cloth with sparks and spangles on its frieze<br>"From Camp, Court, Church, enough to make a shine,<br>"Entitle you to carry home a wife<br>"With the proper dowry, let the worst betide!<br>"Why, it was just a wife you meant to take!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, Paul's advice was weighty: priests should know:<br>And Paul apprised me, ere the week was out,<br>That Pietro and Violante, the easy pair,<br>The cits enough, with stomach to be more,<br>Had just the daughter and exact the sum<br>To truck for the quality of myself: "She's young,<br>"Pretty and rich: you're noble, classic, choice.<br>"Is it to be a match?" "A match," said I.<br>Done! He proposed all, I accepted all,<br>And we performed all. So I said and did<br>Simply. As simply followed, not at first<br>But with the outbreak of misfortune, still<br>One comment on the saying and doing—"What?<br>"No blush at the avowal you dared buy<br>"A girl of age beseems your granddaughter,<br>"Like ox or ass? Are flesh and blood a ware?<br>"Are heart and soul a chattel?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Softly, Sirs!<br>Will the Court of its charity teach poor me<br>Anxious to learn, of any way i' the world,<br>Allowed by custom and convenience, save<br>This same which, taught from my youth up, I trod?<br>Take me along with you; where was the wrong step?<br>If what I gave in barter, style and state<br>And all that hangs to Franceschinihood,<br>Were worthless,—why, society goes to ground,<br>Its rules are idiot's-rambling. Honour of birth,—<br>If that thing has no value, cannot buy<br>Something with value of another sort,<br>You've no reward nor punishment to give<br>I' the giving or the taking honour; straight<br>Your social fabric, pinnacle to base,<br>Comes down a-clatter like a house of cards.<br>Get honour, and keep honour free from flaw,<br>Aim at still higher honour,—gabble o' the goose!<br>Go bid a second blockhead like myself<br>Spend fifty years in guarding bubbles of breath,<br>Soapsuds with air i' the belly, gilded brave,<br>Guarded and guided, all to break at touch<br>O' the first young girl's hand and first old fool's purse!<br>All my privation and endurance, all<br>Love, loyalty and labour dared and did,<br>Fiddle-de-dee!—why, doer and darer both,—<br>Count Guido Franceschini had hit the mark<br>Far better, spent his life with more effect,<br>As a dancer or a prizer, trades that pay!<br>On the other hand, bid this buffoonery cease,<br>Admit that honour is a privilege,<br>The question follows, privilege worth what?<br>Why, worth the market-price,—now up, now down,<br>Just so with this as with all other ware:<br>Therefore essay the market, sell your name,<br>Style and condition to who buys them best!<br>"Does my name purchase," had I dared inquire,<br>"Your niece, my lord?" there would have been rebuff<br>Though courtesy, your Lordship cannot else—<br>"Not altogether! Rank for rank may stand:<br>"But I have wealth beside, you—poverty;<br>"Your scale flies up there: bid a second bid<br>"Rank too and wealth too!" Reasoned like yourself!<br>But was it to you I went with goods to sell?<br>This time 't was my scale quietly kissed the ground,<br>Mere rank against mere wealth—some youth beside,<br>Some beauty too, thrown into the bargain, just<br>As the buyer likes or lets alone. I thought<br>To deal o' the square: others find fault, it seems:<br>The thing is, those my offer most concerned,<br>Pietro, Violante, cried they fair or foul?<br>What did they make o' the terms? Preposterous terms?<br>Why then accede so promptly, close with such<br>Nor take a minute to chaffer? Bargain struck,<br>They straight grew bilious, wished their money back,<br>Repented them, no doubt: why, so did I,<br>So did your Lordship, if town-talk be true,<br>Of paying a full farm's worth for that piece<br>By Pietro of Cortona—probably<br>His scholar Ciro Ferri may have retouched—<br>You caring more for colour than design—<br>Getting a little tired of cupids too.<br>That's incident to all the folk who buy!<br>I am charged, I know, with gilding fact by fraud;<br>I falsified and fabricated, wrote<br>Myself down roughly richer than I prove,<br>Rendered a wrong revenue,—grant it all!<br>Mere grace, mere coquetry such fraud, I say:<br>A flourish round the figures of a sum<br>For fashion's sake, that deceives nobody.<br>The veritable back-bone, understood<br>Essence of this same bargain, blank and bare,<br>Being the exchange of quality for wealth,—<br>What may such fancy-flights be? Flecks of oil<br>Flirted by chapmen where plain dealing grates.<br>I may have dripped a drop—"My name I sell;<br>"Not but that I too boast my wealth"—as they,<br>"—We bring you riches; still our ancestor<br>"Was hardly the rapscallion folk saw flogged,<br>"But heir to we know who, were rights of force!"<br>They knew and I knew where the backbone lurked<br>I' the writhings of the bargain, lords, believe!<br>I paid down all engaged for, to a doit,<br>Delivered them just that which, their life long,<br>They hungered in the hearts of them to gain—<br>Incorporation with nobility thus<br>In word and deed: for that they gave me wealth.<br>But when they came to try their gain, my gift,<br>Quit Rome and qualify for Arezzo, take<br>The tone o' the new sphere that absorbed the old,<br>Put away gossip Jack and goody Joan<br>And go become familiar with the Great,<br>Greatness to touch and taste and handle now,—<br>Why then,—they found that all was vanity,<br>Vexation, and what Solomon describes!<br>The old abundant city-fare was best,<br>The kindly warmth o' the commons, the glad clap<br>Of the equal on the shoulder, the frank grin<br>Of the underling at all so many spoons<br>Fire-new at neighbourly treat,—best, best and best<br>Beyond compare!—down to the loll itself<br>O' the pot-house settle,—better such a bench<br>Than the stiff crucifixion by my dais<br>Under the piecemeal damask canopy<br>With the coroneted coat of arms a-top!<br>Poverty and privation for pride's sake,<br>All they engaged to easily brave and bear,—<br>With the fit upon them and their brains a-work,—<br>Proved unendurable to the sobered sots.<br>A banished prince, now, will exude a juice<br>And salamander-like support the flame:<br>He dines on chestnuts, chucks the husks to help<br>The broil o' the brazier, pays the due baioc,<br>Goes off light-hearted: his grimace begins<br>At the funny humours of the christening-feast<br>Of friend the money-lender,—then he's touched<br>By the flame and frizzles at the babe to kiss!<br>Here was the converse trial, opposite mind:<br>Here did a petty nature split on rock<br>Of vulgar wants predestinate for such—<br>One dish at supper and weak wine to boot!<br>The prince had grinned and borne: the citizen shrieked,<br>Summoned the neighbourhood to attest the wrong,<br>Made noisy protest he was murdered,—stoned<br>And burned and drowned and hanged,—then broke away,<br>He and his wife, to tell their Rome the rest.<br>And this you admire, you men o' the world, my lords?<br>This moves compassion, makes you doubt my faith?<br>Why, I appeal to … sun and moon? Not I!<br>Rather to Plautus, Terence, Boccaccio's Book,<br>My townsman, frank Ser Franco's merry Tales.—<br>To all who strip a vizard from a face,<br>A body from its padding, and a soul<br>From froth and ignorance it styles itself,—<br>If this be other than the daily hap<br>Of purblind greed that dog-like still drops bone,<br>Grasps shadow, and then howls the case is hard!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So much for them so far: now for myself,<br>My profit or loss i' the matter: married am I:<br>Text whereon friendly censors burst to preach.<br>Ay, at Rome even, long ere I was left<br>To regulate her life for my young bride<br>Alone at Arezzo, friendliness outbroke<br>(Sifting my future to predict its fault)<br>"Purchase and sale being thus so plain a point,<br>"How of a certain soul bound up, may-be,<br>"I' the barter with the body and money-bags?<br>"From the bride's soul what is it you expect?"<br>Why, loyalty and obedience,—wish and will<br>To settle and suit her fresh and plastic mind<br>To the novel, not disadvantageous mould!<br>Father and mother shall the woman leave,<br>Cleave to the husband, be it for weal or woe:<br>There is the law: what sets this law aside<br>In my particular case? My friends submit<br>"Guide, guardian, benefactor,—fee, faw, fum,<br>"The fact is you are forty-five years old,<br>"Nor very comely even for that age:<br>"Girls must have boys." Why, let girls say so then,<br>Nor call the boys and men, who say the same,<br>Brute this and beast the other as they do!<br>Come, cards on table! When you chaunt us next<br>Epithalamium full to overflow<br>With praise and glory of white womanhood,<br>The chaste and pure—troll no such lies o'er lip!<br>Put in their stead a crudity or two,<br>Such short and simple statement of the case<br>As youth chalks on our walls at spring of year!<br>No! I shall still think nobler of the sex,<br>Believe a woman still may take a man<br>For the short period that his soul wears flesh,<br>And, for the soul's sake, understand the fault<br>Of armour frayed by fighting. Tush, it tempts<br>One's tongue too much! I'll say—the law's the law:<br>With a wife I look to find all wifeliness,<br>As when I buy, timber and twig, a tree—<br>I buy the song o' the nightingale inside.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such was the pact: Pompilia from the first<br>Broke it, refused from the beginning day<br>Either in body or soul to cleave to mine,<br>And published it forthwith to all the world.<br>No rupture,—you must join ere you can break,—<br>Before we had cohabited a month<br>She found I was a devil and no man,—<br>Made common cause with those who found as much,<br>Her parents, Pietro and Violante,—moved<br>Heaven and earth to the rescue of all three.<br>In four months' time, the time o' the parents' stay,<br>Arezzo was a-ringing, bells in a blaze,<br>With the unimaginable story rife<br>I' the mouth of man, woman and child—to-wit<br>My misdemeanour. First the lighter side,<br>Ludicrous face of things,—how very poor<br>The Franceschini had become at last,<br>The meanness and the misery of each shift<br>To save a soldo, stretch and make ends meet.<br>Next, the more hateful aspect,—how myself<br>With cruelty beyond Caligula's<br>Had stripped and beaten, robbed and murdered them,<br>The good old couple, I decoyed, abused,<br>Plundered and then cast out, and happily so,<br>Since,—in due course the abominable comes,—<br>Woe worth the poor young wife left lonely here!<br>Repugnant in my person as my mind,<br>I sought,—was ever heard of such revenge?<br>—To lure and bind her to so cursed a couch,<br>Such co-embrace with sulphur, snake and toad,<br>That she was fain to rush forth, call the stones<br>O' the common street to save her, not from hate<br>Of mine merely, but … must I burn my lips<br>With the blister of the lie? … the satyr-love<br>Of who but my own brother, the young priest,<br>Too long enforced to lenten fare belike,<br>Now tempted by the morsel tossed him full<br>I' the trencher where lay bread and herbs at best.<br>Mark, this yourselves say!—this, none disallows,<br>Was charged to me by the universal voice<br>At the instigation of my four-months' wife!—<br>And then you ask "Such charges so preferred,<br>"(Truly or falsely, here concerns us not)<br>"Pricked you to punish now if not before?—<br>"Did not the harshness double itself, the hate<br>"Harden?" I answer "Have it your way and will!"<br>Say my resentment grew apace: what then?<br>Do you cry out on the marvel? When I find<br>That pure smooth egg which, laid within my nest,<br>Could not but hatch a comfort to us all,<br>Issues a cockatrice for me and mine,<br>Do you stare to see me stamp on it? Swans are soft:<br>Is it not clear that she you call my wife,<br>That any wife of any husband, caught<br>Whetting a sting like this against his breast,—<br>Speckled with fragments of the fresh-broke shell,<br>Married a month and making outcry thus,—<br>Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man?<br>She married: what was it she married for,<br>Counted upon and meant to meet thereby?<br>"Love" suggests some one, "love, a little word<br>"Whereof we have not heard one syllable."<br>So, the Pompilia, child, girl, wife, in one,<br>Wanted the beating pulse, the rolling eye,<br>The frantic gesture, the devotion due<br>From Thyrsis to Neæra! Guido's love—<br>Why not Provencal roses in his shoe,<br>Plume to his cap, and trio of guitars<br>At casement, with a bravo close beside?<br>Good things all these are, clearly claimable<br>When the fit price is paid the proper way.<br>Had it been some friend's wife, now, threw her fan<br>At my foot, with just this pretty scrap attached,<br>"Shame, death, damnation—fall these as they may,<br>"So I find you, for a minute! Come this eve!"<br>—Why, at such sweet self-sacrifice,—who knows?<br>I might have fired up, found me at my post,<br>Ardent from head to heel, nor feared catch cough.<br>Nay, had some other friend's … say, daughter, tripped<br>Upstairs and tumbled flat and frank on me,<br>Bareheaded and barefooted, with loose hair<br>And garments all at large,—cried "Take me thus!<br>"Duke So-and-So, the greatest man in Rome—<br>"To escape his hand and heart have I broke bounds,<br>"Traversed the town and reached you!"—then, indeed,<br>The lady had not reached a man of ice!<br>I would have rummaged, ransacked at the word<br>Those old odd corners of an empty heart<br>For remnants of dim love the long disused,<br>And dusty crumblings of romance! But here,<br>We talk of just a marriage, if you please—<br>The every-day conditions and no more;<br>Where do these bind me to bestow one drop<br>Of blood shall dye my wife's true-love-knot pink?<br>Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus' pet,<br>That shuffled from between her pressing paps<br>To sit on my rough shoulder,—but a hawk,<br>I bought at a hawk's price and carried home<br>To do hawk's service—at the Rotunda, say,<br>Where, six o' the callow nestlings in a row,<br>You pick and choose and pay the price for such.<br>I have paid my pound, await my penny's worth,<br>So, hoodwink, starve and properly train my bird,<br>And, should she prove a haggard,—twist her neck!<br>Did I not pay my name and style, my hope<br>And trust, my all? Through spending these amiss<br>I am here! 'T is scarce the gravity of the Court<br>Will blame me that I never piped a tune,<br>Treated my falcon-gentle like my finch.<br>The obligation I incurred was just<br>To practise mastery, prove my mastership:—<br>Pompilia's duty was—submit herself,<br>Afford me pleasure, perhaps cure my bile.<br>Am I to teach my lords what marriage means,<br>What God ordains thereby and man fulfils<br>Who, docile to the dictate, treads the house?<br>My lords have chosen the happier part with Paul<br>And neither marry nor burn,—yet priestliness<br>Can find a parallel to the marriage-bond<br>In its own blessed special ordinance<br>Whereof indeed was marriage made the type:<br>The Church may show her insubordinate,<br>As marriage her refractory. How of the Monk<br>Who finds the claustral regimen too sharp<br>After the first month's essay? What's the mode<br>With the Deacon who supports indifferently<br>The rod o' the Bishop when he tastes its smart<br>Full four weeks? Do you straightway slacken hold<br>Of the innocents, the all-unwary ones<br>Who, eager to profess, mistook their mind?—<br>Remit a fast-day's rigour to the Monk<br>Who fancied Francis' manna meant roast quails,—<br>Concede the Deacon sweet society,<br>He never thought the Levite-rule renounced,—<br>Or rather prescribe short chain and sharp scourge<br>Corrective of such peccant humours? This—<br>I take to be the Church's mode, and mine.<br>If I was over-harsh,—the worse i' the wife<br>Who did not win from harshness as she ought,<br>Wanted the patience and persuasion, lore<br>Of love, should cure me and console herself.<br>Put case that I mishandle, flurry and fright<br>My hawk through clumsiness in sportsmanship,<br>Twitch out five pens where plucking one would serve—<br>What, shall she bite and claw to mend the case?<br>And, if you find I pluck five more for that,<br>Shall you weep "How he roughs the turtle there"?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such was the starting; now of the further step.<br>In lieu of taking penance in good part,<br>The Monk, with hue and cry, summons a mob<br>To make a bonfire of the convent, say,—<br>And the Deacon's pretty piece of virtue (save<br>The ears o' the Court! I try to save my head)<br>Instructed by the ingenuous postulant,<br>Taxes the Bishop with adultery, (mud<br>Needs must pair off with mud, and filth with filth)—<br>Such being my next experience. Who knows not—<br>The couple, father and mother of my wife,<br>Returned to Rome, published before my lords,<br>Put into print, made circulate far and wide<br>That they had cheated me who cheated them?<br>Pompilia, I supposed their daughter, drew<br>Breath first 'mid Rome's worst rankness, through the deed<br>Of a drab and a rogue, was by-blow bastard-babe<br>Of a nameless strumpet, passed off, palmed on me<br>As the daughter with the dowry. Daughter? Dirt<br>O' the kennel! Dowry? Dust o' the street! Nought more,<br>Nought less, nought else but—oh—ah—assuredly<br>A Franceschini and my very wife!<br>Now take this charge as you will, for false or true,—<br>This charge, preferred before your very selves<br>Who judge me now,—I pray you, adjudge again,<br>Classing it with the cheats or with the lies,<br>By which category I suffer most!<br>But of their reckoning, theirs who dealt with me<br>In either fashion,—I reserve my word,<br>Justify that in its place; I am now to say,<br>Whichever point o' the charge might poison most,<br>Pompilia's duty was no doubtful one.<br>You put the protestation in her mouth<br>"Henceforward and forevermore, avaunt<br>"Ye fiends, who drop disguise and glare revealed<br>"In your own shape, no longer father mine<br>"Nor mother mine! Too nakedly you hate<br>"Me whom you looked as if you loved once,—me<br>"Whom, whether true or false, your tale now damns,<br>"Divulged thus to my public infamy,<br>"Private perdition, absolute overthrow.<br>"For, hate my husband to your hearts' content,<br>"I, spoil and prey of you from first to last,<br>"I who have done you the blind service, lured<br>"The lion to your pitfall,—I, thus left<br>"To answer for my ignorant bleating there,<br>"I should have been remembered and withdrawn<br>"From the first o' the natural fury, not flung loose<br>"A proverb and a by-word men will mouth<br>"At the cross-way, in the corner, up and down<br>"Rome and Arezzo,—there, full in my face,<br>"If my lord, missing them and finding me,<br>"Content himself with casting his reproach<br>"To drop i' the street where such impostors die.<br>"Ah, but—that husband, what the wonder were!—<br>"If, far from casting thus away the rag<br>"Smeared with the plague his hand had chanced upon,<br>"Sewn to his pillow by Locusta's wile,—<br>"Far from abolishing, root, stem and branch,<br>"The misgrowth of infectious mistletoe<br>"Foisted into his stock for honest graft,—<br>"If he repudiate not, renounce nowise,<br>"But, guarding, guiding me, maintain my cause<br>"By making it his own, (what other way?)<br>"—To keep my name for me, he call it his,<br>"Claim it of who would take it by their lie,—<br>"To save my wealth for me—or babe of mine<br>"Their lie was framed to beggar at the birth—<br>"He bid them loose grasp, give our gold again:<br>"If he become no partner with the pair<br>"Even in a game which, played adroitly, gives<br>"Its winner life's great wonderful new chance,—<br>"Of marrying, to-wit, a second time,—<br>"Ah, if he did thus, what a friend were he!<br>"Anger he might show,—who can stamp out flame<br>"Yet spread no black o' the brand?—yet, rough albeit<br>"In the act, as whose bare feet feel embers scorch,<br>"What grace were his, what gratitude were mine!"<br>Such protestation should have been my wife's.<br>Looking for this, do I exact too much?<br>Why, here's the,—word for word, so much, no more,—<br>Avowal she made, her pure spontaneous speech<br>To my brother the Abate at first blush,<br>Ere the good impulse had begun to fade:<br>So did she make confession for the pair,<br>So pour forth praises in her own behalf.<br>"Ay, the false letter," interpose my lords—<br>"The simulated writing,—'t was a trick:<br>"You traced the signs, she merely marked the same,<br>"The product was not hers but yours." Alack,<br>I want no more impulsion to tell truth<br>From the other trick, the torture inside there!<br>I confess all—let it be understood—<br>And deny nothing! If I baffle you so,<br>Can so fence, in the plenitude of right,<br>That my poor lathen dagger puts aside<br>Each pass o' the Bilboa, beats you all the same,—<br>What matters inefficiency of blade?<br>Mine and not hers the letter,—conceded, lords!<br>Impute to me that practice!—take as proved<br>I taught my wife her duty, made her see<br>What it behoved her see and say and do,<br>Feel in her heart and with her tongue declare,<br>And, whether sluggish or recalcitrant,<br>Forced her to take the right step, I myself<br>Was marching in marital rectitude!<br>Why who finds fault here, say the tale be true?<br>Would not my lords commend the priest whose zeal<br>Seized on the sick, morose or moribund,<br>By the palsy-smitten finger, made it cross<br>His brow correctly at the critical time?<br>—Or answered for the inarticulate babe<br>At baptism, in its stead declared the faith,<br>And saved what else would perish unprofessed?<br>True, the incapable hand may rally yet,<br>Renounce the sign with renovated strength,—<br>The babe may grow up man and Molinist,—<br>And so Pompilia, set in the good path<br>And left to go alone there, soon might see<br>That too frank-forward, all too simple-straight<br>Her step was, and decline to tread the rough,<br>When here lay, tempting foot, the meadow-side,<br>And there the coppice rang with singing-birds!<br>Soon she discovered she was young and fair,<br>That many in Arezzo knew as much.<br>Yes, this next cup of bitterness, my lords,<br>Had to begin go filling, drop by drop,<br>Its measure up of full disgust for me,<br>Filtered into by every noisome drain—<br>Society's sink toward which all moisture runs.<br>Would not you prophesy—"She on whose brow is stamped<br>"The note of the imputation that we know,—<br>"Rightly or wrongly mothered with a whore,—<br>"Such an one, to disprove the frightful charge,<br>"What will she but exaggerate chastity,<br>"Err in excess of wifehood, as it were,<br>"Renounce even levities permitted youth,<br>"Though not youth struck to age by a thunderbolt?<br>"Cry 'wolf' i' the sheepfold, where's the sheep dares bleat,<br>"Knowing the shepherd listens for a growl?"<br>So you expect. How did the devil decree?<br>Why, my lords, just the contrary of course!<br>It was in the house from the window, at the church<br>From the hassock,—where the theatre lent its lodge,<br>Or staging for the public show left space,—<br>That still Pompilia needs must find herself<br>Launching her looks forth, letting looks reply<br>As arrows to a challenge; on all sides<br>Ever new contribution to her lap,<br>Till one day, what is it knocks at my clenched teeth<br>But the cup full, curse-collected all for me?<br>And I must needs drink, drink this gallant's praise,<br>That minion's prayer, the other fop's reproach,<br>And come at the dregs to—Caponsacchi! Sirs,<br>I,—chin-deep in a marsh of misery,<br>Struggling to extricate my name and fame<br>And fortune from the marsh would drown them all,<br>My face the sole unstrangled part of me,—<br>I must have this new gad-fly in that face,<br>Must free me from the attacking lover too!<br>Men say I battled ungracefully enough—<br>Was harsh, uncouth and ludicrous beyond<br>The proper part o' the husband: have it so!<br>Your lordships are considerate at least—<br>You order me to speak in my defence<br>Plainly, expect no quavering tuneful trills<br>As when you bid a singer solace you,—<br>Nor look that I shall give it, for a grace,<br>Stans pede in uno:—you remember well<br>In the one case, 't is a plainsong too severe,<br>This story of my wrongs,—and that I ache<br>And need a chair, in the other. Ask you me<br>Why, when I felt this trouble flap my face,<br>Already pricked with every shame could perch,—<br>When, with her parents, my wife plagued me too,—<br>Why I enforced not exhortation mild<br>To leave whore's-tricks and let my brows alone,<br>With mulct of comfits, promise of perfume?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Far from that! No, you took the opposite course,<br>"Breathed threatenings, rage and slaughter!" What you will!<br>And the end has come, the doom is verily here,<br>Unhindered by the threatening. See fate's flare<br>Full on each face of the dead guilty three!<br>Look at them well, and now, lords, look at this!<br>Tell me: if on that day when I found first<br>That Caponsacchi thought the nearest way<br>To his church was some half-mile round by my door,<br>And that he so admired, shall I suppose,<br>The manner of the swallows' come-and-go<br>Between the props o' the window over-head,—<br>That window happening to be my wife's,—<br>As to stand gazing by the hour on high,<br>Of May-eves, while she sat and let him smile,—<br>If I,—instead of threatening, talking big,<br>Showing hair-powder, a prodigious pinch,<br>For poison in a bottle,—making believe<br>At desperate doings with a bauble-sword,<br>And other bugaboo-and-baby-work,—<br>Had, with the vulgarest household implement,<br>Calmly and quietly cut off, clean thro' bone<br>But one joint of one finger of my wife,<br>Saying "For listening to the serenade,<br>"Here's your ring-finger shorter a full third:<br>"Be certain I will slice away next joint,<br>"Next time that anybody underneath<br>"Seems somehow to be sauntering as he hoped<br>"A flower would eddy out of your hand to his<br>"While you please fidget with the branch above<br>"O' the rose-tree in the terrace!"—had I done so,<br>Why, there had followed a quick sharp scream, some pain,<br>Much calling for plaister, damage to the dress,<br>A somewhat sulky countenance next day,<br>Perhaps reproaches,—but reflections too!<br>I don't hear much of harm that Malchus did<br>After the incident of the ear, my lords!<br>Saint Peter took the efficacious way;<br>Malchus was sore but silenced for his life:<br>He did not hang himself i' the Potter's Field<br>Like Judas, who was trusted with the bag<br>And treated to sops after he proved a thief.<br>So, by this time, my true and obedient wife<br>Might have been telling beads with a gloved hand;<br>Awkward a little at pricking hearts and darts<br>On sampler possibly, but well otherwise:<br>Not where Rome shudders now to see her lie.<br>I give that for the course a wise man takes;<br>I took the other however, tried the fool's,<br>The lighter remedy, brandished rapier dread<br>With cork-ball at the tip, boxed Malchus' ear<br>Instead of severing the cartilage,<br>Called her a terrible nickname, and the like,<br>And there an end: and what was the end of that?<br>What was the good effect o' the gentle course?<br>Why, one night I went drowsily to bed,<br>Dropped asleep suddenly, not suddenly woke,<br>But did wake with rough rousing and loud cry,<br>To find noon in my face, a crowd in my room,<br>Fumes in my brain, fire in my thoat, my wife<br>Gone God knows whither,—rifled vesture-chest,<br>And ransacked money-coffer. "What does it mean?"<br>The servants had been drugged too, stared and yawned<br>"It must be that our lady has eloped!"<br>—"Whither and with whom?"—"With whom but the Canon's self?<br>"One recognizes Caponsacchi there!"—<br>(By this time the admiring neighbourhood<br>Joined chorus round me while I rubbed my eyes)<br>"'T is months since their intelligence began,—<br>"A comedy the town was privy to,—<br>"He wrote and she wrote, she spoke, he replied,<br>"And going in and out your house last night<br>"Was easy work for one … to be plain with you …<br>"Accustomed to do both, at dusk and dawn<br>"When you were absent,—at the villa, you know,<br>"Where husbandry required the master-mind.<br>"Did not you know? Why, we all knew, you see!"<br>And presently, bit by bit, the full and true<br>Particulars of the tale were volunteered<br>With all the breathless zeal of friendship—"Thus<br>"Matters were managed: at the seventh hour of night" . .<br>—"Later, at daybreak" … "Caponsacchi came" …<br>—"While you and all your household slept like death,<br>"Drugged as your supper was with drowsy stuff" …<br>—"And your own cousin Guillichini too—<br>"Either or both entered your dwelling-place,<br>"Plundered it at their pleasure, made prize of all,<br>"Including your wife …"—"Oh, your wife led the way,<br>"Out of doors, on to the gate …"—"But gates are shut,<br>"In a decent town, to darkness and such deeds:<br>"They climbed the wall—your lady must be lithe—<br>"At the gap, the broken bit …" —"Torrione, true!<br>"To escape the questioning guard at the proper gate,<br>"Clemente, where at the inn, hard by, 'the Horse,'<br>"Just outside, a calash in readiness<br>"Took the two principals, all alone at last,<br>"To gate San Spirito, which o'erlooks the road,<br>"Leads to Perugia, Rome and liberty."<br>Bit by bit thus made-up mosaic-wise,<br>Flat lay my fortune,—tesselated floor,<br>Imperishable tracery devils should foot<br>And frolic it on, around my broken gods,<br>Over my desecrated hearth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So much<br>For the terrible effect of threatening, Sirs!<br>Well, this way I was shaken wide awake,<br>Doctored and drenched, somewhat unpoisoned so.<br>Then, set on horseback and bid seek the lost,<br>I started alone, head of me, heart of me<br>Fire, and eaeh limb as languid … ah, sweet lords,<br>Bethink you!—poison-torture, try persuade<br>The next refractory Molinist with that! …<br>Floundered thro' day and night, another day<br>And yet another night, and so at last,<br>As Lucifer kept falling to find hell,<br>Tumbled into the court-yard of an inn<br>At the end, and fell on whom I thought to find,<br>Even Caponsacchi,—what part once was priest,<br>Cast to the winds now with the cassock-rags.<br>In cape and sword a cavalier confessed,<br>There stood he chiding dilatory grooms,<br>Chafing that only horseflesh and no team<br>Of eagles would supply the last relay,<br>Whirl him along the league, the one post more<br>Between the couple and Rome and liberty.<br>'T was dawn, the couple were rested in a sort,<br>And though the lady, tired,—the tenderer sex,—<br>Still lingered in her chamber,—to adjust<br>The limp hair, look for any blush astray,—<br>She would descend in a twinkling,—"Have you out<br>"The horses therefore!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So did I find my wife.<br>Is the case complete? Do your eyes here see with mine?<br>Even the parties dared deny no one<br>Point out of all these points.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What follows next?<br>"Why, that then was the time," you interpose,<br>"Or then or never, while the fact was fresh,<br>"To take the natural vengeance: there and thus<br>"They and you,—somebody had stuck a sword<br>"Beside you while he pushed you on your horse,—<br>"'T was requisite to slay the couple, Count!"<br>Just so my friends say. "Kill!" they cry in a breath,<br>Who presently, when matters grow to a head<br>And I do kill the offending ones indeed,—<br>When crime of theirs, only surmised before,<br>Is patent, proved indisputably now,—<br>When remedy for wrong, untried at the time,<br>Which law professes shall not fail a friend,<br>Is thrice tried now, found threefold worse than null,—<br>When what might turn to transient shade, who knows?<br>Solidifies into a blot which breaks<br>Hell's black off in pale flakes for fear of mine,—<br>Then, when I claim and take revenge—"So rash?"<br>They cry—"so little reverence for the law?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Listen, my masters, and distinguish here!<br>At first, I called in law to act and help:<br>Seeing I did so, "Why, 't is clear," they cry,<br>"You shrank from gallant readiness and risk,<br>"Were coward: the thing's inexplicable else."<br>Sweet my lords, let the thing be! I fall flat,<br>Play the reed, not the oak, to breath of man.<br>Only inform my ignorance! Say I stand<br>Convicted of the having been afraid,<br>Proved a poltroon, no lion but a lamb,—<br>Does that deprive me of my right of lamb<br>And give my fleece and flesh to the first wolf?<br>Are eunuchs, women, children, shieldless quite<br>Against attack their own timidity tempts?<br>Cowardice were misfortune and no crime!<br>—Take it that way, since I am fallen so low<br>I scarce dare brush the fly that blows my face,<br>And thank the man who simply spits not there,—<br>Unless the Court be generous, comprehend<br>How one brought up at the very feet of law<br>As I, awaits the grave Gamaliel's nod<br>Ere he clench fist at outrage,—much less, stab!<br>—How, ready enough to rise at the right time,<br>I still could recognise no time mature<br>Unsanctioned by a move o' the judgment-seat,<br>So, mute in misery, eyed my masters here<br>Motionless till the authoritative word<br>Pronounced amercement. There's the riddle solved:<br>This is just why I slew nor her nor him,<br>But called in law, law's delegate in the place,<br>And bade arrest the guilty couple, Sirs!<br>We had some trouble to do so—you have heard<br>They braved me,—he with arrogance and scorn,<br>She, with a volubility of curse,<br>A conversancy in the skill of tooth<br>And claw to make suspicion seem absurd,<br>Nay, an alacrity to put to proof<br>At my own throat my own sword, teach me so<br>To try conclusions better the next time,—<br>Which did the proper service with the mob.<br>They never tried to put on mask at all:<br>Two avowed lovers forcibly torn apart,<br>Upbraid the tyrant as in a playhouse scene,<br>Ay, and with proper clapping and applause<br>From the audience that enjoys the bold and free.<br>I kept still, said to myself, "There's law!" Anon<br>We searched the chamber where they passed the night,<br>Found what confirmed the worst was feared before,<br>However needless confirmation now—<br>The witches' circle intact, charms undisturbed<br>That raised the spirit and succubus,—letters, to-wit,<br>Love-laden, each the bag o' the bee that bore<br>Honey from lily and rose to Cupid's hive,—<br>Now, poetry in some rank blossom-burst,<br>Now, prose,—"Come here, go there, wait such a while,<br>"He's at the villa, now he's back again:<br>"We are saved, we are lost, we are lovers all the same!"<br>All in order, all complete,—even to a clue<br>To the drowsiness that happed so opportune—<br>No mystery, when I read "Of all things, find<br>"What wine Sir Jealousy decides to drink—<br>"Red wine? Because a sleeping-potion, dust<br>"Dropped into white, discolours wine and shows."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">—"Oh, but we did not write a single word!<br>"Somebody forged the letters in our name!—"<br>Both in a breath protested presently.<br>Aha, Sacchetti again!—"Dame,"—quoth the Duke,<br>"What meaneth this epistle, counsel me,<br>"I pick from out thy placket and peruse,<br>"Wherein my page averreth thou art white<br>"And warm and wonderful 'twixt pap and pap?"<br>"Sir," laughed the Lady, " 't is a counterfeit!<br>"Thy page did never stroke but Dian's breast,<br>"The pretty hound I nurture for thy sake:<br>"To lie were losel,—by my fay, no more!"<br>And no more say I too, and spare the Court.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah, the Court! yes, I come to the Court's self;<br>Such the case, so complete in fact and proof,<br>I laid at the feet of law,—there sat my lords,<br>Here sit they now, so may they ever sit<br>In easier attitude than suits my haunch!<br>In this same chamber did I bare my sores<br>O' the soul and not the body,—shun no shame,<br>Shrink from no probing of the ulcerous part,<br>Since confident in Nature,—which is God,—<br>That she who, for wise ends, concocts a plague,<br>Curbs, at the right time, the plague's virulence too:<br>Law renovates even Lazarus,—cures me!<br>Cæsar thou seekest? To Cæsar thou shalt go!<br>Cæsar's at Rome: to Rome accordingly!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The case was soon decided: both weights, cast<br>I' the balance, vibrate, neither kicks the beam,<br>Here away, there away, this now and now that.<br>To every one o' my grievances law gave<br>Redress, could purblind eye but see the point.<br>The wife stood a convicted runagate<br>From house and husband,—driven to such a course<br>By what she somehow took for cruelty,<br>Oppression and imperilment of life—<br>Not that such things were, but that so they seemed:<br>Therefore, the end conceded lawful, (since<br>To save life there's no risk should stay our leap)<br>It follows that all means to the lawful end<br>Are lawful likewise,—poison, theft and flight.<br>As for the priest's part, did he meddle or make,<br>Enough that he too thought life jeopardized;<br>Concede him then the colour charity<br>Casts on a doubtful course,—if blackish white<br>Or whitish black, will charity hesitate?<br>What did he else but act the precept out,<br>Leave, like a provident shepherd, his safe flock<br>To follow the single lamb and strayaway?<br>Best hope so and think so,—that the ticklish time<br>I' the carriage, the tempting privacy, the last<br>Somewhat ambiguous accident at the inn,<br>—All may bear explanation: may? then, must!<br>The letters,—do they so incriminate?<br>But what if the whole prove a prank o' the pen,<br>Flight of the fancy, none of theirs at all,<br>Bred of the vapours of my brain belike,<br>Or at worst mere exercise of scholar's-wit<br>In the courtly Caponsacchi: verse, convict?<br>Did not Catullus write less seemly once?<br>Yet doctus and unblemished he abides.<br>Wherefore so ready to infer the worst?<br>Still, I did righteously in bringing doubts<br>For the law to solve,—take the solution now!<br>"Seeing that the said associates, wife and priest,<br>"Bear themselves not without some touch of blame<br>"—Else why the pother, scandal and outcry<br>"Which trouble our peace and require chastisement?<br>"We, for complicity in Pompilia's flight<br>"And deviation, and carnal intercourse<br>"With the same, do set aside and relegate<br>"The Canon Caponsacchi for three years<br>"At Civita in the neighbourhood of Rome:<br>"And we consign Pompilia to the care<br>"Of a certain Sisterhood of penitents<br>"I' the city's self, expert to deal with such."<br>Word for word, there's your judgment! Read it, lords,<br>Re-utter your deliberate penalty<br>For the crime yourselves establish! Your award—<br>Who chop a man's right-hand off at the wrist<br>For tracing with forefinger words in wine<br>O' the table of a drinking-booth that bear<br>Interpretation as they mocked the Church!<br>—Who brand a woman black between the breasts<br>For sinning by connection with a Jew:<br>While for the Jew's self—pudency be dumb!<br>You mete out punishment such and such, yet so<br>Punish the adultery of wife and priest!<br>Take note of that, before the Molinists do,<br>And read me right the riddle, since right must be!<br>While I stood rapt away with wonderment,<br>Voices broke in upon my mood and muse.<br>"Do you sleep?" began the friends at either ear,<br>"The case is settled,—you willed it should be so—<br>"None of our counsel, always recollect!<br>"With law's award, budge! Back into your place!<br>"Your betters shall arrange the rest for you.<br>"We'll enter a new action, claim divorce:<br>"Your marriage was a cheat themselves allow:<br>"You erred i' the person,—might have married thus<br>"Your sister or your daughter unaware.<br>"We'll gain you, that way, liberty at least,<br>"Sure of so much by law's own showing. Up<br>"And off with you and your unluckiness—<br>"Leave us to bury the blunder, sweep things smooth!"<br>I was in humble frame of mind, be sure!<br>I bowed, betook me to my place again.<br>Station by station I retraced the road,<br>Touched at this hostel, passed this post-house by,<br>Where, fresh-remembered yet, the fugitives<br>Had risen to the heroic stature: still—<br>"That was the bench they sat on,—there's the board<br>"They took the meal at,—yonder garden-ground<br>"They leaned across the gate of,"—ever a word<br>O' the Helen and the Paris, with "Ha! you're he,<br>"The … much-commiserated husband?" Step<br>By step, across the pelting, did I reach<br>Arezzo, underwent the archway's grin,<br>Traversed the length of sarcasm in the street,<br>Found myself in my horrible house once more,<br>And after a colloquy … no word assists!<br>With the mother and the brothers, stiffened me<br>Straight out from head to foot as dead man does,<br>And, thus prepared for life as he for hell,<br>Marched to the public Square and met the world.<br>Apologize for the pincers, palliate screws?<br>Ply me with such toy-trifles, I entreat!<br>Trust who has tried both sulphur and sops-in-wine!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I played the man as I best might, bade friends<br>Put non-essentials by and face the fact.<br>"What need to hang myself as you advise?<br>"The paramour is banished,—the ocean's width,<br>"Or the suburb's length,—to Ultima Thule, say,<br>"Or Proxima Civitas, what's the odds of name<br>"And place? He's banished, and the fact's the thing.<br>"Why should law banish innocence an inch?<br>"Here's guilt then, what else do I care to know?<br>"The adulteress lies imprisoned,—whether in a well<br>"With bricks above and a snake for company,<br>"Or tied by a garter to a bed-post,—much<br>"I mind what's little,—least's enough and to spare!<br>"The little fillip on the coward's cheek<br>"Serves as though crab-tree cudgel broke his pate.<br>"Law has pronounced there's punishment, less or more:<br>"And I take note o' the fact and use it thus—<br>"For the first flaw in the original bond,<br>"I claim release. My contract was to wed<br>"The daughter of Pietro and Violante. Both<br>"Protest they never had a child at all.<br>"Then I have never made a contract: good!<br>"Cancel me quick the thing pretended one.<br>"I shall be free. What matter if hurried over<br>"The harbour-boom by a great favouring tide,<br>"Or the last of a spent ripple that lifts and leaves?<br>"The Abate is about it. Laugh who wins!<br>"You shall not laugh me out of faith in law!<br>"I listen, through all your noise, to Rome!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Rome spoke.<br>In three months letters thence admonished me,<br>"Your plan for the divorce is all mistake.<br>"It would hold, now, had you, taking thought to wed<br>"Rachel of the blue eye and golden hair,<br>"Found swarth-skinned Leah cumber couch next day:<br>"But Rachel, blue-eyed golden-haired aright,<br>"Proving to be only Laban's child, not Lot's,<br>"Remains yours all the same for ever more.<br>"No whit to the purpose is your plea: you err<br>"I' the person and the quality—nowise<br>"In the individual,—that's the case in point!<br>"You go to the ground,—are met by a cross-suit<br>"For separation, of the Rachel here,<br>"From bed and board,—she is the injured one,<br>"You did the wrong and have to answer it.<br>"As for the circumstance of imprisonment<br>"And colour it lends to this your new attack,<br>"Never fear, that point is considered too!<br>"The durance is already at an end;<br>"The convent-quiet preyed upon her health,<br>"She is transferred now to her parents' house<br>"—No-parents, when that cheats and plunders you,<br>"But parentage again confessed in full,<br>"When such confession pricks and plagues you more—<br>"As now—for, this their house is not the house<br>"In Via Vittoria wherein neighbours' watch<br>"Might incommode the freedom of your wife,<br>"But a certain villa smothered up in vines<br>"At the town's edge by the gate i' the Pauline Way,<br>"Out of eye-reach, out of ear-shot, little and lone,<br>"Whither a friend,—at Civita, we hope,<br>"A good half-dozen-hours' ride off,—might, some eve,<br>"Betake himself, and whence ride back, some morn,<br>"Nobody the wiser: but be that as it may,<br>"Do not afflict your brains with trifles now.<br>"You have still three suits to manage, all and each<br>"Ruinous truly should the event play false.<br>"It is indeed the likelier so to do,<br>"That brother Paul, your single prop and stay,<br>"After a vain attempt to bring the Pope<br>"To set aside procedures, sit himself<br>"And summarily use prerogative,<br>"Afford us the infallible finger's tact<br>"To disentwine your tangle of affairs,<br>"Paul,—finding it moreover past his strength<br>"To stem the irruption, bear Rome's ridicule<br>"Of … since friends must speak … to be round with you …<br>"Of the old outwitted husband, wronged and wroth,<br>"Pitted against a brace of juveniles—<br>"A brisk priest who is versed in Ovid's art<br>"More than his Summa, and a gamesome wife<br>"Able to act Corinna without book,<br>"Beside the waggish parents who played dupes<br>"To dupe the duper—(and truly divers scenes<br>"Of the Arezzo palace, tickle rib<br>"And tease eye till the tears come, so we laugh;<br>"Nor wants the shock at the inn its comic force,<br>"And then the letters and poetry—merum sal!)<br>"—Paul, finally, in such a state of things,<br>"After a brief temptation to go jump<br>"And join the fishes in the Tiber, drowns<br>"Sorrow another and a wiser way:<br>"House and goods, he has sold all off, is gone,<br>"Leaves Rome,—whether for France or Spain, who knows?<br>"Or Britain almost divided from our orb.<br>"You have lost him anyhow."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now,—I see my lords<br>Shift in their seat,—would I could do the same!<br>They probably please expect my bile was moved<br>To purpose, nor much blame me: now, they judge,<br>The fiery titillation urged my flesh<br>Break through the bonds. By your pardon, no, sweet Sirs!<br>I got such missives in the public place;<br>When I sought home,—with such news, mounted stair<br>And sat at last in the sombre gallery,<br>('T was Autumn, the old mother in bed betimes,<br>Having to bear that cold, the finer frame<br>Of her daughter-in-law had found intolerable—<br>The brother, walking misery away<br>O' the mountain-side with dog and gun belike)<br>As I supped, ate the coarse bread, drank the wine<br>Weak once, now acrid with the toad's-head-squeeze,<br>My wife's bestowment,—I broke silence thus:<br>"Let me, a man, manfully meet the fact,<br>"Confront the worst o' the truth, end, and have peace!<br>"I am irremediably beaten here,—<br>"The gross illiterate vulgar couple,—bah!<br>"Why, they have measured forces, mastered mine,<br>"Made me their spoil and prey from first to last.<br>"They have got my name,—'t is nailed now fast to theirs,<br>"The child or changeling is anyway my wife;<br>"Point by point as they plan they execute,<br>"They gain all, and I lose all—even to the lure<br>"That led to loss,—they have the wealth again<br>"They hazarded awhile to hook me with,<br>"Have caught the fish and find the bait entire:<br>"They even have their child or changeling back<br>"To trade with, turn to account a second time.<br>"The brother presumably might tell a tale<br>"Or give a warning,—he, too, flies the field,<br>"And with him vanish help and hope of help.<br>"They have caught me in the cavern where I fell,<br>"Covered my loudest cry for human aid<br>"With this enormous paving-stone of shame.<br>"Well, are we demigods or merely clay?<br>"Is success still attendant on desert?<br>"Is this, we live on, heaven and the final state,<br>"Or earth which means probation to the end?<br>"Why claim escape from man's predestined lot<br>"Of being beaten and baffled?—God's decree,<br>"In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce.<br>"One of us Franceschini fell long since<br>"I' the Holy Land, betrayed, tradition runs,<br>"To Paynims by the feigning of a girl<br>"He rushed to free from ravisher, and found<br>"Lay safe enough with friends in ambuscade<br>"Who flayed him while she clapped her hands and laughed:<br>"Let me end, falling by a like device.<br>"It will not be so hard. I am the last<br>"O' my line which will not suffer any more.<br>"I have attained to my full fifty years,<br>"(About the average of us all, 't is said,<br>"Though it seems longer to the unlucky man)<br>"—Lived through my share of life; let all end here,<br>"Me and the house and grief and shame at once.<br>"Friends my informants,—I can bear your blow!"<br>And I believe 't was in no unmeet match<br>For the stoic's mood, with something like a smile,<br>That, when morose December roused me next,<br>I took into my hand, broke seal to read<br>The new epistle from Rome. "All to no use!<br>"Whate'er the turn next injury take," smiled I,<br>"Here's one has chosen his part and knows his cue.<br>"I am done with, dead now; strike away, good friends!<br>"Are the three suits decided in a trice?<br>"Against me,—there's no question! How does it go?<br>"Is the parentage of my wife demonstrated<br>"Infamous to her wish? Parades she now<br>"Loosed of the cincture that so irked the loin?<br>"Is the last penny extracted from my purse<br>"To mulct me for demanding the first pound<br>"Was promised in return for value paid?<br>"Has the priest, with nobody to court beside,<br>"Courted the Muse in exile, hitched my hap<br>"Into a rattling ballad-rhyme which, bawled<br>"At tavern-doors, wakes rapture everywhere,<br>"And helps cheap wine down throat this Christmas time,<br>"Beating the bagpipes? Any or all of these!<br>"As well, good friends, you cursed my palace here<br>"To its old cold stone face,—stuck your cap for crest<br>"Over the shield that's extant in the Square,—<br>"Or spat on the statue's cheek, the impatient world<br>"Sees cumber tomb-top in our family church:<br>"Let him creep under covert as I shall do,<br>"Half below-ground already indeed. Good-bye!<br>"My brothers are priests, and childless so; that's well—<br>"And, thank God most for this, no child leave I—<br>"None after me to bear till his heart break<br>"The being a Franceschini and my son!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Nay," said the letter, "but you have just that!<br>"A babe, your veritable son and heir—<br>"Lawful,—'t is only eight months since your wife<br>"Left you,—so, son and heir, your babe was born<br>"Last Wednesday in the villa,—you see the cause<br>"For quitting Convent without beat of drum,<br>"Stealing a hurried march to this retreat<br>"That's not so savage as the Sisterhood<br>"To slips and stumbles: Pietro's heart is soft,<br>"Violante leans to pity's side,—the pair<br>"Ushered you into life a bouncing boy:<br>"And he's already hidden away and safe<br>"From any claim on him you mean to make—<br>"They need him for themselves,—don't fear, they know<br>"The use o' the bantling,—the nerve thus laid bare<br>"To nip at, new and nice, with finger-nail!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then I rose up like fire, and fire-like roared.<br>What, all is only beginning not ending now?<br>The worm which wormed its way from skin through flesh<br>To the bone and there lay biting, did its best,—<br>What, it goes on to scrape at the bone's self,<br>Will wind to inmost marrow and madden me?<br>There's to be yet my representative,<br>Another of the name shall keep displayed<br>The flag with the ordure on it, brandish still<br>The broken sword has served to stir a jakes?<br>Who will he be, how will you call the man?<br>A Franceschini,—when who cut my purse,<br>Filched my name, hemmed me round, hustled me hard<br>As rogues at a fair some fool they strip i' the midst,<br>When these count gains, vaunt pillage presently:—<br>But a Caponsacchi, oh, be very sure!<br>When what demands its tribute of applause<br>Is the cunning and impudence o' the pair of cheats,<br>The lies and lust o' the mother, and the brave<br>Bold carriage of the priest, worthily crowned<br>By a witness to his feat i' the following age,—<br>And how this three-fold cord could hook and fetch<br>And land leviathan that king of pride!<br>Or say, by some mad miracle of chance,<br>Is he indeed my flesh and blood, this babe?<br>Was it because fate forged a link at last<br>Betwixt my wife and me, and both alike<br>Found we had henceforth some one thing to love,<br>Was it when she could damn my soul indeed<br>She unlatched door, let all the devils o' the dark<br>Dance in on me to cover her escape?<br>Why then, the surplusage of disgrace, the spilth<br>Over and above the measure of infamy,<br>Failing to take effect on my coarse flesh<br>Seasoned with scorn now, saturate with shame,—<br>Is saved to instil on and corrode the brow,<br>The baby-softness of my first-born child—<br>The child I had died to see though in a dream,<br>The child I was bid strike out for, beat the wave<br>And baffle the tide of troubles where I swam,<br>So I might touch shore, lay down life at last<br>At the feet so dim and distant and divine<br>Of the apparition, as 't were Mary's Babe<br>Had held, through night and storm, the torch aloft,—<br>Born now in very deed to bear this brand<br>On forehead and curse me who could not save!<br>Rather be the town talk true, square's jest, street's jeer<br>True, my own inmost heart's confession true,<br>And he the priest's bastard and none of mine!<br>Ay, there was cause for flight, swift flight and sure!<br>The husband gets unruly, breaks all bounds<br>When he encounters some familiar face,<br>Fashion of feature, brow and eyes and lips<br>Where he least looked to find them,—time to fly!<br>This bastard then, a nest for him is made,<br>As the manner is of vermin, in my flesh:<br>Shall I let the filthy pest buzz, flap and sting,<br>Busy at my vitals and, nor hand nor foot<br>Lift, but let be, lie still and rot resigned?<br>No, I appeal to God,—what says Himself,<br>How lessons Nature when I look to learn?<br>Why, that I am alive, am still a man<br>With brain and heart and tongue and right-hand too—<br>Nay, even with friends, in such a cause as this,<br>To right me if I fail to take my right.<br>No more of law; a voice beyond the law<br>Enters my heart, Quis est pro Domino?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Myself, in my own Vittiano, told the tale<br>To my own serving-people summoned there:<br>Told the first half of it, scarce heard to end<br>By judges who got done with judgment quick<br>And clamoured to go execute her 'hest—<br>Who cried "Not one of us that dig your soil<br>"And dress your vineyard, prune your olive-trees,<br>"But would have brained the man debauched our wife,<br>"And staked the wife whose lust allured the man,<br>"And paunched the Duke, had it been possible,<br>"Who ruled the land yet barred us such revenge!"<br>I fixed on the first whose eyes caught mine, some four<br>Resolute youngsters with the heart still fresh,<br>Filled my purse with the residue o' the coin<br>Uncaught-up by my wife whom haste made blind,<br>Donned the first rough and rural garb I found,<br>Took whatsoever weapon came to hand,<br>And out we flung and on we ran or reeled<br>Romeward. I have no memory of our way,<br>Only that, when at intervals the cloud<br>Of horror about me opened to let in life,<br>I listened to some song in the ear, some snatch<br>Of a legend, relic of religion, stray<br>Fragment of record very strong and old<br>Of the first conscience, the anterior right,<br>The God's-gift to mankind, impulse to quench<br>The antagonistic spark of hell and tread<br>Satan and all his malice into dust,<br>Declare to the world the one law, right is right.<br>Then the cloud re-encompassed me, and so<br>I found myself, as on the wings of winds,<br>Arrived: I was at Rome on Christmas Eve.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Festive bells—everywhere the Feast o' the Babe,<br>Joy upon earth, peace and good will to man!<br>I am baptized. I started and let drop<br>The dagger. "Where is it, His promised peace?"<br>Nine days o' the Birth-Feast did I pause and pray<br>To enter into no temptation more.<br>I bore the hateful house, my brother's once,<br>Deserted,—let the ghost of social joy<br>Mock and make mouths at me from empty room<br>And idle door that missed the master's step,—<br>Bore the frank wonder of incredulous eyes,<br>As my own people watched without a word,<br>Waited, from where they huddled round the hearth<br>Black like all else, that nod so slow to come.<br>I stopped my ears even to the inner call<br>Of the dread duty, only heard the song<br>"Peace upon earth," saw nothing but the face<br>O' the Holy Infant and the halo there<br>Able to cover yet another face<br>Behind it, Satan's which I else should see.<br>But, day by day, joy waned and withered off:<br>The Babe's face, premature with peak and pine,<br>Sank into wrinkled ruinous old age,<br>Suffering and death, then mist-like disappeared,<br>And showed only the Cross at end of all,<br>Left nothing more to interpose 'twixt me<br>And the dread duty: for the angels' song,<br>"Peace upon earth," louder and louder pealed<br>"O Lord, how long, how long be unavenged?"<br>On the ninth day, this grew too much for man.<br>I started up—"Some end must be!" At once,<br>Silence: then, scratching like a death-watch-tick,<br>Slowly within my brain was syllabled,<br>"One more concession, one decisive way<br>"And but one, to determine thee the truth,—<br>"This way, in fine, I whisper in thy ear:<br>"Now doubt, anon decide, thereupon act!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"That is a way, thou whisperest in my ear!<br>"I doubt, I will decide, then act," said I—<br>Then beckoned my companions: "Time is come!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so, all yet uncertain save the will<br>To do right, and the daring aught save leave<br>Right undone, I did find myself at last<br>I' the dark before the villa with my friends,<br>And made the experiment, the final test,<br>Ultimate chance that ever was to be<br>For the wretchedness inside. I knocked, pronounced<br>The name, the predetermined touch for truth,<br>"What welcome for the wanderer? Open straight—"<br>To the friend, physician, friar upon his rounds,<br>Traveller belated, beggar lame and blind?<br>No, but—"to Caponsacchi!" And the door<br>Opened.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And then,—why, even then, I think,<br>I' the minute that confirmed my worst of fears,<br>Surely,—I pray God that I think aright!—<br>Had but Pompilia's self, the tender thing<br>Who once was good and pure, was once my lamb<br>And lay in my bosom, had the well-known shape<br>Fronted me in the door-way,—stood there faint<br>With the recent pang perhaps of giving birth<br>To what might, though by miracle, seem my child,—<br>Nay more, I will say, had even the aged fool<br>Pietro, the dotard, in whom folly and age<br>Wrought, more than enmity or malevolence,<br>To practise and conspire against my peace,—<br>Had either of these but opened, I had paused.<br>But it was she the hag, she that brought hell<br>For a dowry with her to her husband's house,<br>She the mock-mother, she that made the match<br>And married me to perdition, spring and source<br>O' the fire inside me that boiled up from heart<br>To brain and hailed the Fury gave it birth,—<br>Violante Comparini, she it was,<br>With the old grin amid the wrinkles yet,<br>Opened: as if in turning from the Cross,<br>With trust to keep the sight and save my soul,<br>I had stumbled, first thing, on the serpent's head<br>Coiled with a leer at foot of it.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There was the end!<br>Then was I rapt away by the impulse, one<br>Immeasurable everlasting wave of a need<br>To abolish that detested life. 'T was done:<br>You know the rest and how the folds o' the thing,<br>Twisting for help, involved the other two<br>More or less serpent-like: how I was mad,<br>Blind, stamped on all, the earth-worms with the asp,<br>And ended so.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You came on me that night,<br>Your officers of justice,—caught the crime<br>In the first natural frenzy of remorse?<br>Twenty miles off, sound sleeping as a child<br>On a cloak i' the straw which promised shelter first,<br>With the bloody arms beside me,—was it not so?<br>Wherefore not? Why, how else should I be found?<br>I was my own self, had my sense again,<br>My soul safe from the serpents. I could sleep:<br>Indeed and, dear my lords, I shall sleep now,<br>Spite of my shoulder, in five minutes' space,<br>When you dismiss me, having truth enough!<br>It is but a few days are passed, I find,<br>Since this adventure. Do you tell me, four?<br>Then the dead are scarce quiet where they lie,<br>Old Pietro, old Violante, side by side<br>At the church Lorenzo,—oh, they know it well!<br>So do I. But my wife is still alive,<br>Has breath enough to tell her story yet,<br>Her way, which is not mine, no doubt at all.<br>And Caponsacchi, you have summoned him,—<br>Was he so far to send for? Not at hand?<br>I thought some few o' the stabs were in his heart,<br>Or had not been so lavish: less had served.<br>Well, he too tells his story,—florid prose<br>As smooth as mine is rough. You see, my lords,<br>There will be a lying intoxicating smoke<br>Born of the blood,—confusion probably,—<br>For lies breed lies—but all that rests with you!<br>The trial is no concern of mine; with me<br>The main of the care is over: I at least<br>Recognize who took that huge burthen off,<br>Let me begin to live again. I did<br>God's bidding and man's duty, so, breathe free;<br>Look you to the rest! I heard Himself prescribe,<br>That great Physician, and dared lance the core<br>Of the bad ulcer; and the rage abates,<br>I am myself and whole now: I prove cured<br>By the eyes that see, the ears that hear again,<br>The limbs that have relearned their youthful play,<br>The healthy taste of food and feel of clothes<br>And taking to our common life once more,<br>All that now urges my defence from death.<br>The willingness to live, what means it else?<br>Before,—but let the very action speak!<br>Judge for yourselves, what life seemed worth to me<br>Who, not by proxy but in person, pitched<br>Head-foremost into danger as a fool<br>That never cares if he can swim or no—<br>So he but find the bottom, braves the brook.<br>No man omits precaution, quite neglects<br>Secresy, safety, schemes not how retreat,<br>Having schemed he might advance. Did I so scheme?<br>Why, with a warrant which 't is ask and have,<br>With horse thereby made mine without a word,<br>I had gained the frontier and slept safe that night.<br>Then, my companions,—call them what you please,<br>Slave or stipendiary,—what need of one<br>To me whose right-hand did its owner's work?<br>Hire an assassin yet expose yourself?<br>As well buy glove and then thrust naked hand<br>I' the thorn-bush. No, the wise man stays at home,<br>Send, only agents out, with pay to earn:<br>At home, when they come back,—he straight discards<br>Or else disowns. Why use such tools at all<br>When a man's foes are of his house, like mine,<br>Sit at his board, sleep in his bed? Why noise,<br>When there's the acquetta and the silent way?<br>Clearly my life was valueless.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But now<br>Health is returned, and sanity of soul<br>Nowise indifferent to the body's harm.<br>I find the instinct bids me save my life;<br>My wits, too, rally round me; I pick up<br>And use the arms that strewed the ground before,<br>Unnoticed or spurned aside: I take my stand,<br>Make my defence. God shall not lose a life<br>May do Him further service, while I speak<br>And you hear, you my judges and last hope!<br>You are the law: 't is to the law I look.<br>I began life by hanging to the law,<br>To the law it is I hang till life shall end.<br>My brother made appeal to the Pope, 't is true,<br>To stay proceedings, judge my cause himself<br>Nor trouble law,—some fondness of conceit<br>That rectitude, sagacity sufficed<br>The investigator in a case like mine,<br>Dispensed with the machine of law. The Pope<br>Knew better, set aside my brother's plea<br>And put me back to law,—referred the cause<br>Ad judices meos,—doubtlessly did well.<br>Here, then, I clutch my judges,—I claim law—<br>Cry, by the higher law whereof your law<br>O' the land is humbly representative,—<br>Cry, on what point is it, where either accuse,<br>I fail to furnish you defence? I stand<br>Acquitted, actually or virtually,<br>By every intermediate kind of court<br>That takes account of right or wrong in man,<br>Each unit in the series that begins<br>With God's throne, ends with the tribunal here.<br>God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not heard,<br>Passed on successively to each court I call<br>Man's conscience, custom, manners, all that make<br>More and more effort to promulgate, mark<br>God's verdict in determinable words,<br>Till last come human jurists—solidify<br>Fluid result,—what's fixable lies forged,<br>Statute,—the residue escapes in fume,<br>Yet hangs aloft, a cloud, as palpable<br>To the finer sense as word the legist welds.<br>Justinian's Pandects only make precise<br>What simply sparkled in men's eyes before,<br>Twitched in their brow or quivered on their lip,<br>Waited the speech they called but would not come.<br>These courts then, whose decree your own confirms,—<br>Take my whole life, not this last act alone,<br>Look on it by the light reflected thence!<br>What has Society to charge me with?<br>Come, unreservedly,—favour none nor fear,—<br>I am Guido Franceschini, am I not?<br>You know the courses I was free to take?<br>I took just that which let me serve the Church,<br>I gave it all my labour in body and soul<br>Till these broke down i' the service. "Specify?"<br>Well, my last patron was a Cardinal.<br>I left him unconvicted of a fault—<br>Was even helped, by was of gratitude,<br>Into the new life that I left him for,<br>This very misery of the marriage,—he<br>Made it, kind soul, so far as in him lay—<br>Signed the deed where you yet may see his name.<br>He is gone to his reward,—dead, being my friend<br>Who could have helped here also,—that, of course!<br>So far, there's my acquittal, I suppose.<br>Then comes the marriage itself—no question, lords,<br>Of the entire validity of that!<br>In the extremity of distress, 't is true,<br>For after-reasons, furnished abundantly,<br>I wished the thing invalid, went to you<br>Only some months since, set you duly forth<br>My wrong and prayed your remedy, that a cheat<br>Should not have force to cheat my whole life long.<br>"Annul a marriage? 'T is impossible!<br>"Though ring about your neck be brass not gold,<br>"Needs must it clasp, gangrene you all the same!"<br>Well, let me have the benefit, just so far,<br>O' the fact announced,—my wife then is my wife,<br>I have allowance for a husband's right.<br>I am charged with passing right's due bound,—such acts<br>As I thought just, my wife called cruelty,<br>Complained of in due form,—convoked no court<br>Of common gossipry, but took her wrongs—<br>And not once, but so long as patience served—<br>To the town's top, jurisdiction's pride of place,<br>To the Archbishop and the Governor.<br>These heard her charge with my reply, and found<br>That futile, this sufficient: they dismissed<br>The hysteric querulous rebel, and confirmed<br>Authority in its wholesome exercise,<br>They, with directest access to the facts.<br>"—Ay, for it was their friendship favoured you,<br>"Hereditary alliance against a breach<br>"I' the social order: prejudice for the name<br>"Of Franceschini!"—So I hear it said:<br>But not here. You, lords, never will you say<br>"Such is the nullity of grace and truth,<br>"Such the corruption of the faith, such lapse<br>"Of law, such warrant have the Molinists<br>"For daring reprehend us as they do,—<br>"That we pronounce it just a common case,<br>"Two dignitaries, each in his degree<br>"First, foremost, this the spiritual head, and that<br>"The secular arm o' the body politic,<br>"Should, for mere wrongs' love and injustice' sake,<br>"Side with, aid and abet in cruelty<br>"This broken beggarly noble,—bribed perhaps<br>"By his watered wine and mouldy crust of bread—<br>"Rather than that sweet tremulous flower-like wife<br>"Who kissed their hands and curled about their feet<br>"Looking the irresistible loveliness<br>"In tears that takes man captive, turns" … enough!<br>Do you blast your predecessors? What forbids<br>Posterity to trebly blast yourselves<br>Who set the example and instruct their tongue?<br>You dreaded the crowd, succumbed to the popular cry,<br>Or else, would nowise seem defer thereto<br>And yield to public clamour though i' the right!<br>You ridded your eye of my unseemliness,<br>The noble whose misfortune wearied you,—<br>Or, what's more probable, made common cause<br>With the cleric section, punished in myself<br>Maladroit uncomplaisant laity,<br>Defective in behaviour to a priest<br>Who claimed the customary partnership<br>I' the house and the wife. Lords, any lie will serve!<br>Look to it,—or allow me freed so far!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then I proceed a step, come with clean hands<br>Thus far, re-tell the tale told eight months since.<br>The wife, you allow so far, I have not wronged,<br>Has fled my roof, plundered me and decamped<br>In company with the priest her paramour:<br>And I gave chase, came up with, caught the two<br>At the wayside inn where both had spent the night,<br>Found them in flagrant fault, and found as well,<br>By documents with name and plan and date,<br>The fault was furtive then that's flagrant now,<br>Their intercourse a long established crime.<br>I did not take the license law's self gives<br>To slay both criminals o' the spot at the time,<br>But held my hand,—preferred play prodigy<br>Of patience which the world calls cowardice,<br>Rather than seem anticipate the law<br>And cast discredit on its organs,—you.<br>So, to your bar I brought both criminals,<br>And made my statement: heard their counter-charge,<br>Nay,—their corroboration of my tale,<br>Nowise disputing its allegements, not<br>I' the main, not more than nature's decency<br>Compels men to keep silence in this kind,—<br>Only contending that the deeds avowed<br>Would take another colour and bear excuse.<br>You were to judge between us; so you did.<br>You disregard the excuse, you breathe away<br>The colour of innocence and leave guilt black,<br>"Guilty" is the decision of the court,<br>And that I stand in consequence untouched,<br>One white integrity from head to heel.<br>Not guilty? Why then did you punish them?<br>True, punishment has been inadequate—<br>'T is not I only, not my friends that joke,<br>My foes that jeer, who echo "inadequate"—<br>For, by a chance that comes to help for once,<br>The same case simultaneously was judged<br>At Arezzo, in the province of the Court<br>Where the crime had its beginning but not end.<br>They then, deciding on but half o' the crime,<br>The effraction, robbery,—features of the fault<br>I never cared to dwell upon at Rome,—<br>What was it they adjudged as penalty<br>To Pompilia,—the one criminal o' the pair<br>Amenable to their judgment, not the priest<br>Who is Rome's? Why, just imprisonment for life<br>I' the Stinche. There was Tuscany's award<br>To a wife that robs her husband: you at Rome—<br>Having to deal with adultery in a wife<br>And, in a priest, breach of the priestly vow—<br>Give gentle sequestration for a month<br>In a manageable Convent, then release,<br>You call imprisonment, in the very house<br>O' the very couple, which the aim and end<br>Of the culprits' crime was—just to reach and rest<br>And there take solace and defy me: well,—<br>This difference 'twixt their penalty and yours<br>Is immaterial: make your penalty less—<br>Merely that she should henceforth wear black gloves<br>And white fan, she who wore the opposite—<br>Why, all the same the fact o' the thing subsists.<br>Reconcile to your conscience as you may,<br>Be it on your own heads, you pronounced but half<br>O' the penalty for heinousness like hers<br>And his, that pays a fault at Carnival<br>Of comfit-pelting past discretion's law,<br>Or accident to handkerchief in Lent<br>Which falls perversely as a lady kneels<br>Abruptly, and but half conceals her neck!<br>I acquiesce for my part: punished, though<br>By a pin-point scratch, means guilty: guilty means<br>—What have I been but innocent hitherto?<br>Anyhow, here the offence, being punished, ends.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116359" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ends?—for you deemed so, did you not, sweet lords?<br>That was throughout the veritable aim<br>O' the sentence light or heavy,—to redress<br>Recognized wrong? You righted me, I think?<br>Well then,—what if I, at this last of all,<br>Demonstrate you, as my whole pleading proves,<br>No particle of wrong received thereby<br>One atom of right?—that cure grew worse disease?<br>That in the process you call "justice done"<br>All along you have nipped away just inch<br>By inch the creeping climbing length of plague<br>Breaking my tree of life from root to branch,<br>And left me, after all and every act<br>Of your interference,—lightened of what load?<br>At liberty wherein? Mere words and wind!<br>"Now I was saved, now I should feel no more<br>"The hot breath, find a respite from fixed eye<br>"And vibrant tongue!" Why, scarce your back was turned,<br>There was the reptile, that feigned death at first,<br>Renewing its detested spire and spire<br>Around me, rising to such heights of hate<br>That, so far from mere purpose now to crush<br>And coil itself on the remains of me,<br>Body and mind, and there flesh fang content,<br>Its aim is now to evoke life from death,<br>Make me anew, satisfy in my son<br>The hunger I may feed but never sate,<br>Tormented on to perpetuity,—<br>My son, whom, dead, I shall know, understand,<br>Feel, hear, see, never more escape the sight<br>In heaven that's turned to hell, or hell returned<br>(So rather say) to this same earth again,—<br>Moulded into the image and made one,<br>Fashioned of soul as featured like in face,<br>First taught to laugh and lisp and stand and go<br>By that thief, poisoner and adulteress<br>I call Pompilia, he calls … sacred name,<br>Be unpronounced, be unpolluted here!<br>And last led up to the glory and prize of hate<br>By his … foster-father, Caponsacchi's self,<br>The perjured priest, pink of conspirators,<br>Tricksters and knaves, yet polished, superfine,<br>Manhood to model adolescence by!<br>Lords, look on me, declare,—when, what I show,<br>Is nothing more nor less than what you deemed<br>And doled me out for justice,—what did you say?<br>For reparation, restitution and more,—<br>Will you not thank, praise, bid me to your breasts<br>For having done the thing you thought to do,<br>And thoroughly trampled out sin's life at last?<br>I have heightened phrase to make your soft speech serve,<br>Doubled the blow you but essayed to strike,<br>Carried into effect your mandate here<br>That else had fallen to ground: mere duty done,<br>Oversight of the master just supplied<br>By zeal i' the servant. I, being used to serve,<br>Have simply … what is it they charge me with?<br>Blackened again, made legible once more<br>Your own decree, not permanently writ,<br>Rightly conceived but all too faintly traced.<br>It reads efficient, now, comminatory,<br>A terror to the wicked, answers so<br>The mood o' the magistrate, the mind of law.<br>Absolve, then, me, law's mere executant!<br>Protect your own defender,—save me, Sirs!<br>Give me my life, give me my liberty,<br>My good name and my civic rights again!<br>It would be too fond, too complacent play<br>Into the hands o' the devil, should we lose<br>The game here, I for God: a soldier-bee<br>That yields his life, exenterate with the stroke<br>O' the sting that saves the hive. I need that life.<br>Oh, never fear! I'll find life plenty use<br>Though it should last five years more, aches and all!<br>For, first thing, there's the mother's age to help—<br>Let her come break her heart upon my breast,<br>Not on the blank stone of my nameless tomb!<br>The fugitive brother has to be bidden back<br>To the old routine, repugnant to the tread,<br>Of daily suit and service to the Church,—<br>Thro' gibe and jest, those stones that Shimei flung!<br>Ay, and the spirit-broken youth at home,<br>The awe-struck altar-ministrant, shall make<br>Amends for faith now palsied at the source,<br>Shall see truth yet triumphant, justice yet<br>A victor in the battle of this world!<br>Give me—for last, best gift—my son again,<br>Whom law makes mine,—I take him at your word,<br>Mine be he, by miraculous mercy, lords!<br>Let me lift up his youth and innocence<br>To purify my palace, room by room<br>Purged of the memories, land from his bright brow<br>Light to the old proud paladin my sire<br>Shrunk now for shame into the darkest shade<br>O' the tapestry, showed him once and shrouds him now!<br>Then may we,—strong from that rekindled smile,—<br>Go forward, face new times, the better day.<br>And when, in times made better through your brave<br>Decision now,—might but Utopia be!—<br>Rome rife with honest women and strong men,<br>Manners reformed, old habits back once more,<br>Customs that recognize the standard worth,—<br>The wholesome household rule in force again,<br>Husbands once more God's representative,<br>Wives like the typical Spouse once more, and Priests<br>No longer men of Belial, with no aim<br>At leading silly women captive, but<br>Of rising to such duties as yours now,—<br>Then will I set my son at my right-hand<br>And tell his father's story to this point,<br>Adding "The task seemed superhuman, still<br>"I dared and did it, trusting God and law:<br>"And they approved of me: give praise to both!"<br>And if, for answer, he shall stoop to kiss<br>My hand, and peradventure start thereat,—<br>I engage to smile "That was an accident<br>"I' the necessary process,—just a trip<br>"O' the torture-irons in their search for truth,—<br>"Hardly misfortune, and no fault at all."</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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