Chapter 6

"Another day that finds her living yet,Little Pompilia, with the patient browAnd lamentable smile on those poor lips,And, under the white hospital-array,A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruiseYou'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,Alive i' the ruins. 'Tis a miracle.It seems that when her husband struck her first,She prayed Madonna just that she might liveSo long as to confess and be absolved;And whether it was that, all her sad life longNever before successful in a prayer,This prayer rose with authority too dread—Or whether because earth was hell to her,By compensation when the blackness broke,She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,To show her for a moment such things were,"

—the prayer was granted her.

So, musing on the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express itself—"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" demands the imagined spokesman; and, summing up, he exclaims:

"Who did it shall account to Christ—Having no pity on the harmless lifeAnd gentle face and girlish form he found,And thus flings back. Go practise if you pleaseWith men and women. Leave a child aloneFor Christ's particular love's sake!"

Then, burning with pity and indignation, he proceeds to tell the story of Pompilia as he sees it, feels it—and as Browning, in the issue, makes us see and feel it too.

InThe Ring and the Book, Browning tells us this story—this "pure crude fact" (for fact it actually is)—ten times over, through nine different persons, Guido Franceschini, the husband, speaking twice. Stated thus baldly, the plan may sound almost absurd, and the prospect of reading the work appear a tedious one; but once begin it, and neither impression survives for a moment. Each telling is at once the same and new—for in each the speaker's point of view is altered. We get, first of all, Browning's own summary of the "pure crude fact"; then the appearance of that fact to:

1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia.2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her.3. "Tertium Quid," neutral.4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial.5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), at the trial.6. Pompilia, on her death-bed.7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the defence.8. The Public Prosecutor's speech.9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him after the trial.10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers before execution.

1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia.

2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her.

3. "Tertium Quid," neutral.

4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial.

5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), at the trial.

6. Pompilia, on her death-bed.

7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the defence.

8. The Public Prosecutor's speech.

9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him after the trial.

10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers before execution.

Only the speeches of the two lawyers are wholly tedious; the rest of the survey is absorbing. Not a point which can be urged on any side is omitted, as that side presents itself; yet in the event, as I have said, one overmastering effect stands forth—the utter loveliness and purity of Pompilia. "She is the heroine," says Mr. Arthur Symons,[126:1]"as neither Guido nor Caponsacchi can be called the hero. . . . With hardly [any] consciousness of herself, [she] makes and unmakes the lives and characters of those about her"; and in this way he compares her story with Pippa's: "the mere passing of an innocent child."

And so, here, have we not indeed the victim? But though I spoke of weariness, I must take back the words; for here too we have indeed the beauty and the glory of suffering, and here the beauty and the glory of manhood. Guido, like all evil things, is Nothingness: he serves but to show forth what purity and love, in Pompilia, could be; what bravery and love, in Caponsacchi, the "warrior-priest," could do. This girl has not the Browning-mark of gaiety, but she has both the others—this "lady young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad," who answered without fear the call of the unborn life within her, and trusted without question "the appointed man."

The "pure crude fact," detailed by Browning, was found in the authentic legal documents bound together in an old, square, yellow parchment-covered volume, picked up by him, "one day struck fierce 'mid many a day struck calm," on a stall in the Piazza San Lorenzo of Florence. He bought the pamphlet for eightpence, and it gave to him and us the great, unique achievement of this wonderful poem:

"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore,Prime nature with an added artistry."

Pompilia, called Comparini, was in reality "nobody's child." This, which at first sight may seem of minor importance to the issue, is actually at the heart of all; for, as I have said, it was the question of her dowry which set the entire drama in motion. The old Comparini couple, childless, of mediocre class and fortunes, had through silly extravagance run into debt, and in 1679 were hard pressed by creditors. They could not draw on their capital, for it was tied up in favour of the legal heir, an unknown cousin. But if they had a child, that disability would be removed. Violante Comparini, seeing this, resolved upon a plan. She bought beforehand for a small sum the expected baby of a disreputable woman, giving herself out to her husband, Pietro, and their friends as almost miraculously pregnant—for she was past fifty. In due time she became the apparent mother of a girl,Pompilia. This girl was married at thirteen to Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished nobleman, fifty years old, of Arezzo. He married her for her reported dowry, and she was sold to him for the sake of his rank. Both parties to the bargain found themselves deceived (Pompilia was, of course, a mere chattel in the business), for there was no dowry, and Guido, though hehadthe rank, had none of the appurtenances thereof which had dazzled the fancy of Violante. Pietro too was tricked, and the marriage carried through against his will. The old couple, reduced to destitution by extracted payment of a part of the dowry, were taken to the miserable Franceschini castle at Arezzo, and there lived wretchedly, in every sense, for a while; but soon fled back to Rome, leaving the girl-wife behind to aggravated woes. About three years afterwards she also fled, intending to rejoin the Comparini at Rome. She was about to become a mother. The organiser and companion of her flight was a young priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, who was a canon at Arezzo. Guido followed them, caught them at Castelnuovo, a village on the outskirts of Rome, and caused both to be arrested. They were confined in the "New Prisons" at Rome, and tried for adultery. The result was a compromise—they were pronounced guilty, but a merely nominal punishment ("the jocular piece of punishment," as the young priest called it) was inflicted on each. Pompilia was relegated for a time to a convent;Caponsacchi was banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. As the time for Pompilia's confinement drew near, she was permitted to go to her reputed parents' home, which was a villa just outside the walls of the city. A few months after her removal there, she became the mother of a son, whom the old people quickly removed to a place of concealment and safety. A fortnight later—on the second day of the New Year—Count Guido, with four hired assassins, came to the villa, and all three occupants were killed: Pietro and Violante Comparini, and Pompilia his wife. For these murders, Guido and his hirelings were hanged at Rome on February 22, 1698.

But now we must return upon our steps, if we would know "the truth of this."

When the old Comparini reached Rome, after their flight from Arezzo, the Pope had just proclaimed jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and absolution for any sin was to be had for the asking—atonement, however, necessarily preceding. Violante, remorseful for the sacrifice of their darling, and regarding the woe as retribution for her original lie about the birth, resolved to confess; but since absolution was granted only if atonement preceded it, she must be ready to restore to the rightful heir that which her pretended motherhood had taken from him. She therefore confessed to Pietro first, and he instantly seized the occasion for revenge on Guido, though that was not (or at any rate, accordingto the Other Half-Rome, may not have been) his only motive.

"What? All that used to be, may be again?* * * * *What, the girl's dowry never was the girl's,And unpaid yet, is never now to pay?Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia childThat used to be my own with her great eyes—Will she come back, with nothing changed at all?"

"What? All that used to be, may be again?

* * * * *

What, the girl's dowry never was the girl's,And unpaid yet, is never now to pay?Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia childThat used to be my own with her great eyes—Will she come back, with nothing changed at all?"

He repudiated Pompilia publicly, and with her, of course, all claims from her husband. Taken into Court, the case (also bound up in the square yellow book) was, after appeals and counter-appeals, left undecided.

It was this which loosed all Guido's fury on Pompilia. He had already learned to hate her for her shrinking from him; now, while he still controlled her person, and wreaked the vilest cruelties and basenesses upon it, he at the same time resolved to rid himself of her in any fashion whatsoever which should leave him still a legal claimant to the disputed dowry.[130:1]There was only one way thus to rid himself, and that was to prove her guilty of adultery. He concentrated on it. First, his brother, the young Canon Girolamo, who lived at the castle, was incited to pursue her with vilesolicitations. She fled to the Archbishop of Arezzo and implored his succour. He gave none. Then she went to the Governor: he also "pushed her back." She sought out a poor friar, and confessed her "despair in God"; he promised to write to her parents for her, but afterwards flinched, and did nothing. . . . Guido's plan was nevertheless hanging fire; a supplementary system of persecution must be set up. She was hourly accused of "looking love-lures at theatre and church, in walk, at window"; but this, in the apathy which was descending on her, she baffled by "a new game of giving up the game."[131:1]She abandoned theatre, church, walk, and window; she "confounded him with her gentleness and worth," he "saw the same stone strength of white despair":

"How does it differ in aught, save degree,From the terrible patience of God?"

—and more and more he hated her.

But at last, at the theatre one night, Pompilia—

"Brought there I knew not why, but now know well"[131:2]

—saw, for the first time, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, "the young frank personable priest"[131:3]—and seeing him as rapt he gazed at her, felt

". . . Had there been a man like that,To lift me with his strength out of all strifeInto the calm! . . .Suppose that man had been instead of this?"* * * * *

". . . Had there been a man like that,To lift me with his strength out of all strifeInto the calm! . . .Suppose that man had been instead of this?"

* * * * *

Caponsacchi had hitherto been very much "the courtly spiritual Cupid" that Browning calls him. His family, the oldest in Arezzo and once the greatest, had wide interest in the Church, and he had always known that he was to be a priest. But when the time came for "just a vow to read!" he stopped awestruck. Could he keep such a promise? He knew himself too weak. But the Bishop smiled. There were two ways of taking that vow, and a man like Caponsacchi, with "that superior gift of making madrigals," need not choose the harder one.

"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!"

He was good enough forthat, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fashion rule"—a fribble and a coxcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the place, amused or no . . .

"When I saw enter, stand, and seat herselfA lady young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad"

—and it was (he remembered) like seeing a burden carried to the Altar in his church one day, while he "got yawningly through Matin-Song." The burden was unpacked, and left—

"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I lookedThere was the Rafael!"

Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she turned,

"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"

and thought the thought that we have learned—for instinctively and surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that man":

". . . Silent, grave,Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."

Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day, Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze.Hewould not signify, but there was Pompilia:

"Spare her, because he beats her as it is,She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."

It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse—he felt that he must leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him therewas done with—the social successes, the intrigue, song-making; and his patron was already displeased. These things were what he was there to do, and he was going to church instead! "Are you turning Molinist?" the patron asked. "I answered quick" (says Caponsacchi in his narrative)

"Sir, what if I turned Christian?"

—and at once announced his resolve to go to Rome as soon as Lent was over. One evening, before he went, he was sitting thinking how his life "had shaken under him"; and

"Thinking moreover . . . oh, thinking, if you like,How utterly dissociated was IA priest and celibate, from the sad strange wifeOf Guido . . .. . . I had a whole store of strengthsEating into my heart, which craved employ,And she, perhaps, need of a finger's help—And yet there was no way in the wide worldTo stretch out mine."

Her smile kept glowing out of the devotional book he was trying to read, and he sat thus—when suddenly there came a tap at the door, and on his summons, there glided in "a masked muffled mystery," who laid a letter on the open book, and stood back demurely waiting.

It was Margherita, the "kind of maid" of Count Guido, and the letter purported to be from Pompilia, offering her love. Caponsacchi saw through thetrick at once: the letter was written by Guido. He answered it in such a way that it would saveherfrom all anger, and at the same time infuriate the "jealous miscreant" who had written it:

". . . What made you—may one ask?—Marry your hideous husband?"

But henceforth such letters came thick and fast. Caponsacchi was met in the street, signed to in church; slips were found in his prayer-book, they dropped from the window if he passed. . . . At length there arrived a note in a different manner. This warned himnotto come, to avoid the window for his life. At once he answered that the street was free—he should go to the window if he chose, and he would go that evening at the Ave. His conviction was that he should find the husband there, not the wife—for though he had seen through the trick, it did not occur to him that it was more than a device of jealousy to trap them, already suspected after that mutual gaze at the theatre. What it really was, he never guessed at all.

Meanwhile—turning now to Pompilia's dying speech to the nuns who nursed her—the companion persecution had been going on at the castle. Day after day, Margherita had dinned the name of Caponsacchi into the wife's ears. How he loved her, what a paragon he was, how little she owed fidelity to the Count who usedher, Margherita, as his pastime—ought she not at least to see the priestand warn him, if nothing more? Guido might kill him! Here was a letter from him; and she began to impart it:

"I know you cannot read—therefore, let me!'My idol'" . . .

The letter was not from Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, divining this as surely as she had divined that he did not throw the comfits, took it from the woman's hands and tore it into shreds. . . . Day after day such moments added themselves to all the rest of the misery, and at last, at end of her strength, she swooned away. As she was coming to again, Margherita stooped and whisperedCaponsacchi. But still, though the sound of his name was to the broken girl as if, drowning, she had looked up through the waves and seen a star . . . still she repudiated the servant's report of him: had she not that once beheld him?

"Therefore while you profess to show him me,I ever see his own face. Get you gone!"

But the swoon had portended something; and on "one vivid daybreak," half through April, Pompilia learned what that something was. . . . Going to bed the previous night, the last sound in her ears had been Margherita's prattle. "Easter was over; everyone was on the wing for Rome—even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope, was going there." Pompilia had heard it, as she might have heard rain drop, thinking only that another day was done:

"How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"

But with the daybreak, what was the clear summons that seemed to pierce her slumber?

". . . Up I sprang alive,Light in me, light without me, everywhereChange!"

The exquisite morning was there—the broad yellow sunbeams with their "myriad merry motes," the glittering leaves of the wet weeds against the lattice-panes, the birds—

"Always with one voice—where are two such joys?—The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth,Stood on the terrace—o'er the roofs such sky!My heart sang, 'I too am to go away,I too have something I must care about,Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!* * * * *Not to live now would be the wickedness.'"[137:1]

* * * * *

Not to live now would be the wickedness.'"[137:1]

Pope Innocent XII—"the great good old Pope," as Browning calls him in the summary of Book I—when in his turn he speaks to us, gives his highest praise, "where all he praises," to this trait in her whom he calls "My rose, I gather for the breast of God."

"Oh child, that didst despise thy life so muchWhen it seemed only thine to keep or lose,How the fine ear felt fall the first low word'Value life, and preserve life for My sake!'* * * * *Thou, at first prompting of what I call God,And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,Accept the obligation laid on thee,Mother elect, to save the unborn child.. . . Go past me,And get thy praise—and be not far to seekPresently when I follow if I may!"

"Oh child, that didst despise thy life so muchWhen it seemed only thine to keep or lose,How the fine ear felt fall the first low word'Value life, and preserve life for My sake!'

* * * * *

Thou, at first prompting of what I call God,And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,Accept the obligation laid on thee,Mother elect, to save the unborn child.. . . Go past me,And get thy praise—and be not far to seekPresently when I follow if I may!"

"Now" (says the sympathetic Other Half-Rome), "begins the tenebrific passage of the tale." As we have seen, Pompilia had tried all other means of escape, even before the great call came to her. Her last appeal had been made to two of Guido's kinsmen, on the wing for Rome like everyone else—Conti being one. Both had refused, but Conti had referred her to Caponsacchi—not evilly like Margherita, but jestingly, flippantly. Nevertheless, that name had come to take a half-fateful sense to her ears . . . and the Other Half-Rome thusimages the moment in which she resolved to appeal to him.

"If then, all outlets thus secured save one,At last she took to the open, stood and staredWith her wan face to see where God might wait—And there found Caponsacchi wait as wellFor the precious something at perdition's edge,He only was predestinate to save . . .* * * * *Whatever way in this strange world it was,Pompilia and Caponsacchi met, in fine,She at her window, he i' the street beneath,And understood each other at first look."

* * * * *

Whatever way in this strange world it was,Pompilia and Caponsacchi met, in fine,She at her window, he i' the street beneath,And understood each other at first look."

For suddenly (she tells us) on that morning of Annunciation, she turned on Margherita, ever at her ear, and said, "Tell Caponsacchi he may come!" "How plainly" (says Pompilia)—

"How plainly I perceived hell flash and fadeO' the face of her—the doubt that first paled joy,Then final reassurance I indeedWas caught now, never to be free again!"

But she cared not; she felt herself strong for everything.

"After the Ave Maria, at first dark,I will be standing on the terrace, say!"

She knew he would come, and prayed to God all day. At "an intense throe of the dusk" she started up—she "dared to say," in her dying speech,that she was divinely pushed out on the terrace—and there he waited her, with the same silent and solemn face, "at watch to save me."

He had come, as he defiantly had said, and not the husband met him, but, at the window, with a lamp in her hand, "Our Lady of all the Sorrows." He knelt, but even as he knelt she vanished, only to reappear on the terrace, so close above him that she could almost touch his head if she bent down—"and she did bend, while I stood still as stone, all eye, all ear."

First she told him that she could neither read nor write, but that the letters said to be from him had been read to her, and seemed to say that he loved her. She did not believe that he meant that as Margherita meant it; but "good true love would help me now so much" that at last she had resolved to see him. Her whole life was so strange that this but belonged to the rest: that an utter stranger should be able to help her—he, and he alone! She told him her story. There was a reason now at last why she must fly from "this fell house of hate," and she would take from Caponsacchi's love what she needed: enough to save her life with—

". . . Take me to Rome!Take me as you would take a dog, I think,Masterless left for strangers to maltreat:Take me home like that—leave me in the houseWhere the father and mother are" . . .

She tells his answer thus:

"He replied—The first word I heard ever from his lips,All himself in it—an eternityOf speech, to match the immeasurable depthO' the soul that then broke silence—'I am yours.'"* * * * *

"He replied—The first word I heard ever from his lips,All himself in it—an eternityOf speech, to match the immeasurable depthO' the soul that then broke silence—'I am yours.'"

* * * * *

But when he had left her, irresolution swept over him. First, the Church seemed to rebuke—the Church who had smiled on his silly intrigues! Now she changed her tone, it appeared:—

"Now, when I found out first that life and deathAre means to an end, that passion uses both,Indisputably mistress of the manWhose form of worship is self-sacrifice."

But that soon passed: the word was God's; this was the true self-sacrifice. . . . But might it not injure her—scandal would hiss about her name. Would not God choose His own way to save her? Andhemight pray. . . . Two days passed thus. But he must go to counsel and to comfort her—was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over the terrace; she reproached him: why did he delay the help his heart yearned to give? He answered with his fears for her, but she broke in, never doubting him though he should doubt himself:

"'I know you: when is it that you will come?'"

"To-morrow at the day's dawn," he replied; and all was arranged—the place, the time; she came, she did not speak, but glided into the carriage, while he cried to the driver:

". . . 'By San Spirito,To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!'"

When she was dying of Guido's twenty-two dagger-thrusts, this was how Pompilia thought of that long flight:

"I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die:'Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!'Ever the face upturned to mine, the handHolding my hand across the world . . ."

And he, telling the judges of it at the murder-trial, cried that he never could lie quiet in his grave unless he "mirrored them plain the perfect soul Pompilia."

"You must know that a man gets drunk with truthStagnant inside him. Oh, they've killed her, Sirs!Can I be calm?"

But he must be calm: he must show them that soul.

"The glory of life, the beauty of the world,The splendour of heaven . . . well, Sirs, does no one move?Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I" . . .

—for thus he flings defiance at them. Why do they not smile as they smiled at the earlier adultery-trial, when they gave him "the jocular piece of punishment," now that he stands before them "in this sudden smoke from hell"?

"Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?"

For if they had but seenthenwhat Guido Franceschini was! If they would but have been serious! Pompilia would not now be

"Gasping away the latest breath of all,This minute, while I talk—not while you laugh?"

How can the end of this deed surprise them? Pompilia and he had shown them what its beginning meant—but all in vain. He, the priest, had left her to "law's watch and ward," and now she is dying—"there and thus she lies!" Do they understandnowthat he was not unworthy of Christ when he tried to save her? His part is done—all that he had been able to do; he wants no more with earth, except to "show Pompilia who was true"—

"The snow-white soul that angels fear to takeUntenderly . . . Sirs,Only seventeen!"

Then he begins his story of

". . . Our flight from dusk to clear,Through day and night and day again to nightOnce more, and to last dreadful dawn of all."

Thinking how they sat in silence, both so fearless and so safe, waking but now and then to consciousness of the wonder of it, he cries:

"You know this is not love, Sirs—it is faith,The feeling that there's God."

By morning they had passed Perugia; Assisi was opposite. He met her look for the first time since they had started. . . . At Foligno he urged her to take a brief rest, but with eyes like a fawn's,

"Tired to death in the thicket, when she feelsThe probing spear o' the huntsman,"

she had cried, "On, on to Rome, on, on"—and they went on. During the night she had a troubled dream, waving away something with wild arms; and Caponsacchi prayed (thinking "Why, in my life I never prayed before!") that the dream might go, and soon she slept peacefully. . . . When she woke, he answered her first look with the assurance that Rome was within twelve hours; no more of the terrible journey. But she answered that she wished it could last for ever: to be "with no dread"—

"Never to see a face nor hear a voice—Yours is no voice; you speak when you are dumb;Nor face, I see it in the dark" . . .

—such tranquillity was such heaven to her!

"This one heart" (she said on her death-bed):

"This one heart gave me all the spring!I could believe himself by his strong willHad woven around me what I thought the worldWe went along in . . .For, through the journey, was it naturalSuch comfort should arise from first to last?"

As she looks back, new stars bud even while she seeks for old, and all is Caponsacchi:

"Him I now see make the shine everywhere."

Best of all her memories—"oh, the heart in that!"—was the descent at a little wayside inn. He tells of it thus. When the day was broad, he begged her to descend at the post-house of a village. He told the woman of the house that Pompilia was his sister, married and unhappy—would she comfort her as women can? And then he left them together:

"I spent a good half-hour, paced to and froThe garden; just to leave her free awhile . . .I might have sat beside her on the benchWhere the children were: I wish the thing had been,Indeed: the event could not be worse, you know:One more half-hour of her saved! She's dead now, Sirs!"

As they again drove forward, she asked him if, supposing she were to die now, he would account it to be in sin? The woman at the inn had told her about the trees that turn away from the north wind with the nests they hold; she thought she might be like those trees. . . . But soon, half-sleepingagain, and restless now with returning fears, she seemed to wander in her mind; once she addressed him as "Gaetano." . . . Afterwards he knew that this name (the name of a newly-made saint) was that which she destined for her child, if she was given a son:

"One who has only been made a saint—how long?Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps,To guard a namesake than those old saints grow,Tired out by this time—see my own five saints!"[146:1]

For "little Pompilia" had been given five names by her pretended parents:

". . . so many names for one poor child—Francesca Camilla Vittoria AngelaPompilia Comparini—laughable!"[146:1]. . .

But now Caponsacchi himself grew restless, nervous: here was Castelnuovo, as good as Rome:

"Say you are saved, sweet lady!"

She awoke. The sky was fierce with the sunset colours—suddenly she cried out that she must not die:

"'Take me no farther, I should die: stay here!I have more life to save than mine!' She swooned.We seemed safe: what was it foreboded so?"

He carried her,

"Against my heart, beneath my head bowed low,As we priests carry the paten,"

into the little inn and to a couch, where he laid her, sleeping deeply. The host urged him to leave her in peace till morn.

"Oh, my foreboding! But I could not choose."

All night he paced the passage, throbbing with fear from head to foot, "filled with a sense of such impending woe" . . . and at the first pause of night went to the courtyard, ordered the horses—the last moment came, he must awaken her—he turned to go:

". . . And thereFaced me Count Guido."

Oh, if he had killed him then! if he had taken the throat in "one great good satisfying gripe," and abolished Guido with his lie! . . . But while he mused on the irony of such a miscreant callingherhis wife,

"The minute, oh the misery, was gone;"

—two police-officers stood beside, and Guido was ordering them to take her.

Caponsacchi insisted thatheshould lead them to the room where she was sleeping. He was a priest and privileged; when they came there, if the officer should detect

"Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judgeBetween us and the mad dog howling there!"

They all went up together. There she lay,

"O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self,Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sunThat filled the window with a light like blood."

At Guido's loud order to the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, sincehewas in it—and she cried to him to stand away, she chose hell rather than "embracing any more."

Caponsacchi tried to go to her, but now the room was full of the rabble pouring in at the noise—he was caught—"they heaped themselves upon me." . . . Then, when she saw "my angel helplessly held back," then

"Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,"

—and she sprang at her husband, seized the sword that hung beside him,

"Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joyO' the blade. 'Die,' cried she, 'devil, in God's name!'Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one. . . Dead-white and disarmed she lay."

She said, dying, that this, her first and last resistance, had been invincible, for she had struck at the lie in Guido; and thus not "the vain sword nor weak speech" had saved her, but Caponsacchi's truth:—

"You see, I will not have the service fail!I say the angel saved me: I am safe! . . .What o' the way to the end?—the end crowns all"

—for even though she now was dying, there had been the time at the convent with the quiet nuns, and then the safety with her parents, and then:

"My babe was given me! Yes, he saved my babe:It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like thing,Through that Arezzo noise and trouble . . .But the sweet peace cured all, and let me liveAnd give my bird the life among the leavesGod meant him! Weeks and months of quietude,I could lie in such peace and learn so much,Know life a little, I should leave so soon.Therefore, because this man restored my soulAll has been right . . .For as the weakness of my time drew nigh,Nobody did me one disservice more,Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the loveI lay in the arms of, till my boy was born,Born all in love, with nought to spoil the blissA whole long fortnight: in a life like mineA fortnight filled with bliss is long and much."

For, thinking of her happy childhood before the marriage, already she has said that only that childhood, and the prayer that brought her Caponsacchi, and the "great fortnight" remain as real: the four bad years between

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