Part 2 / Act 5 — THE RING AND THE BOOK (continued 5)

I am just seventeen years and five months old, And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks; 'T is writ so in the church's register, Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names At length, so many names for one poor child, —Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia Comparini,—laughable! Also 't is writ that I was married there Four years ago: and they will add, I hope, When they insert my death, a word or two,— Omitting all about the mode of death,— This, in its place, this which one cares to know, That I had been a mother of a son Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace O' the Curate, not through any claim I have; Because the boy was born at, so baptized Close to, the Villa, in the proper church: A pretty church, I say no word against, Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems My own particular place, I always say. I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high As the bed here, what the marble lion meant, With half his body rushing from the wall, Eating the figure of a prostrate man— (To the right, it is, of entry by the door)— An ominous sign to one baptized like me, Married, and to be buried there, I hope. And they should add, to have my life complete, He is a boy and Gaetan by name— Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar Don Celestine will ask this grace for me Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was Baptized me: he remembers my whole life As I do his gray hair. All these few things I know are true,—will you remember them? Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me, To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds, Five deadly, but I do not suffer much— Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night. Oh how good God is that my babe was born, —Better than born, baptized and hid away Before this happened, safe from being hurt! That had been sin God could not well forgive: He was too young to smile and save himself. When they took, two days after he was born, My babe away from me to be baptized And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,— The country-woman, used to nursing babes, Said, "Why take on so? where is the great loss? These next three weeks he will but sleep and feed, Only begin to smile at the month's end; He would not know you, if you kept him here, Sooner than that; so, spend three merry weeks Snug in the Villa, getting strong and stout, And then I bring him back to be your own, And both of you may steal to—we know where!" The month—there wants of it two weeks this day! Still, I half fancied when I heard the knock At the Villa in the dusk, it might prove she— Come to say, "Since he smiles before the time, Why should I cheat you out of one good hour? Back I have brought him; speak to him and judge!" Now I shall never see him; what is worse, When he grows up and gets to be my age, He will seem hardly more than a great boy; And if he asks, "What was my mother like?" People may answer, "Like girls of seventeen"— And how can he but think of this and that, Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush When he regards them as such boys may do? Therefore I wish some one will please to say I looked already old though I was young; Do I not ... say, if you are by to speak ... Look nearer twenty? No more like, at least, Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh, Than the poor Virgin that I used to know At our street-corner in a lonely niche,— The babe, that sat upon her knees, broke off,— Thin white glazed clay, you pitied her the more: She, not the gay ones, always got my rose. How happy those are who know how to write! Such could write what their son should read in time, Had they a whole day to live out like me. Also my name is not a common name, "Pompilia," and may help to keep apart A little the thing I am from what girls are. But then how far away, how hard to find Will anything about me have become, Even if the boy bethink himself and ask! No father that ever knew at all, Nor ever had—no, never had, I say! That is the truth,—nor any mother left, Out of the little two weeks that she lived, Fit for such memory as might assist: As good too as no family, no name, Not even poor old Pietro's name, nor hers, Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems They must not be my parents any more. That is why something put it in my head To call the boy "Gaetano"—no old name For sorrow's sake; I looked up to the sky And took a new saint to begin anew. One who has only been made 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! On second thoughts, I hope he will regard The history of me as what some one dreamed, And get to disbelieve it at the last: Since to myself it dwindles fast to that, Sheer dreaming and impossibility,— Just in four days too! All the seventeen years, Not once did a suspicion visit me How very different a lot is mine From any other woman's in the world. The reason must be, 't was by step and step It got to grow so terrible and strange. These strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were, Into my neighborhood and privacy, Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay; And I was found familiarized with fear, When friends broke in, held up a torch and cried, "Why, you Pompilia in the cavern thus, How comes that arm of yours about a wolf? And the soft length,—lies in and out your feet And laps you round the knee,—a snake it is!" And so on. Well, and they are right enough, By the torch they hold up now: for first, observe, I never had a father,—no, nor yet A mother: my own boy can say at least, "I had a mother whom I kept two weeks!" Not I, who little used to doubt ... I doubt Good Pietro, kind Violante, gave me birth? They loved me always as I love my babe (—Nearly so, that is—quite so could not be—) Did for me all I meant to do for him, Till one surprising day, three years ago, They both declared, at Rome, before some judge In some court where the people flocked to hear, That really I had never been their child, Was a mere castaway, the careless crime Of an unknown man, the crime and care too much Of a woman known too well,—little to these, Therefore, of whom I was the flesh and blood: What then to Pietro and Violante, both No more my relatives than you or you? Nothing to them! You know what they declared. So with my husband,—just such a surprise, Such a mistake, in that relationship! Every one says that husbands love their wives, Guard them and guide them, give them happiness; 'T is duty, law, pleasure, religion: well, You see how much of this comes true in mine! People indeed would fain have somehow proved He was no husband: but he did not hear, Or would not wait, and so has killed us all. Then there is ... only let me name one more! There is the friend,—men will not ask about, But tell untruths of, and give nicknames to, And think my lover, most surprise of all! Do only hear, it is the priest they mean, Giuseppe Caponsacchi: a priest—love, And love me! Well, yet people think he did. I am married, he has taken priestly vows, They know that, and yet go on, say, the same, "Yes, how he loves you!" "That was love"—they say, When anything is answered that they ask: Or else "No wonder you love him"—they say. Then they shake heads, pity much, scarcely blame— As if we neither of us lacked excuse, And anyhow are punished to the full, And downright love atones for everything! Nay, I heard read out in the public court Before the judge, in presence of my friends, Letters 't was said the priest had sent to me, And other letters sent him by myself, We being lovers! Listen what this is like! When I was a mere child, my mother ... that 's Violante, you must let me call her so, Nor waste time, trying to unlearn the word,... She brought a neighbor's child of my own age To play with me of rainy afternoons: And, since there hung a tapestry on the wall, We two agreed to find each other out Among the figures. "Tisbe, that is you, With half-moon on your hair-knot, spear in hand, Flying, but no wings, only the great scarf Blown to a bluish rainbow at your back: Call off your hound and leave the stag alone!" "—And there are you, Pompilia, such green leaves Flourishing out of your five finger-ends, And all the rest of you so brown and rough: Why is it you are turned a sort of tree?" You know the figures never were ourselves Though we nicknamed them so. Thus, all my life,— As well what was, as what, like this, was not,— Looks old, fantastic and impossible: I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades. —Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born, Something began for once that would not end, Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay Forevermore, eternally quite mine. Well, so he is,—but yet they bore him off, The third day, lest my husband should lay traps And catch him, and by means of him catch me. Since they have saved him so, it was well done: Yet thence comes such confusion of what was With what will be,—that late seems long ago, And, what years should bring round, already come, Till even he withdraws into a dream As the rest do: I fancy him grown great, Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me, Frowns with the others, "Poor imprudent child! Why did you venture out of the safe street? Why go so far from help to that lone house? Why open at the whisper and the knock?" Six days ago when it was New Year's day, We bent above the fire and talked of him, What he should do when he was grown and great. Violante, Pietro, each had given the arm I leant on, to walk by, from couch to chair And fireside,—laughed, as I lay safe at last, "Pompilia's march from bed to board is made, Pompilia back again and with a babe, Shall one day lend his arm and help her walk!" Then we all wished each other more New Years. Pietro began to scheme—"Our cause is gained; The law is stronger than a wicked man: Let him henceforth go his way, leave us ours! We will avoid the city, tempt no more The greedy ones by feasting and parade,— Live at the other villa, we know where, Still farther off, and we can watch the babe Grow fast in the good air; and wood is cheap And wine sincere outside the city gate. I still have two or three old friends will grope Their way along the mere half-mile of road, With staff and lantern on a moonless night When one needs talk: they 'll find me, never fear, And I 'll find them a flask of the old sort yet!" Violante said, "You chatter like a crow: Pompilia tires o' the tattle, and shall to bed: Do not too much the first day,—somewhat more To-morrow, and, the next, begin the cape And hood and coat! I have spun wool enough." Oh what a happy friendly eve was that! And, next day, about noon, out Pietro went— He was so happy and would talk so much, Until Violante pushed and laughed him forth Sight-seeing in the cold,—"So much to see I' the churches! Swathe your throat three times!" she cried, "And, above all, beware the slippery ways, And bring us all the news by supper-time!" He came back late, laid by cloak, staff and hat, Powdered so thick with snow it made us laugh, Rolled a great log upon the ash o' the hearth, And bade Violante treat us to a flask, Because he had obeyed her faithfully, Gone sight-see through the seven, and found no church To his mind like San Giovanni—"There 's the fold, And all the sheep together, big as cats! And such a shepherd, half the size of life, Starts up and hears the angel"—when, at the door, A tap: we started up: you know the rest. Pietro at least had done no harm, I know; Nor even Violante, so much harm as makes Such revenge lawful. Certainly she erred— Did wrong, how shall I dare say otherwise?— In telling that first falsehood, buying me From my poor faulty mother at a price, To pass off upon Pietro as his child. If one should take my babe, give him a name, Say he was not Gaetano and my own, But that some other woman made his mouth And hands and feet,—-how very false were that! No good could come of that; and all harm did. Yet if a stranger were to represent "Needs must you either give your babe to me And let me call him mine forevermore, Or let your husband get him"—ah, my God, That were a trial I refuse to face! Well, just so here: it proved wrong but seemed right To poor Violante—for there lay, she said, My poor real dying mother in her rags, Who put me from her with the life and all, Poverty, pain, shame and disease at once, To die the easier by what price I fetched— Also (I hope) because I should be spared Sorrow and sin,—why may not that have helped? My father,—he was no one, any one,— The worse, the likelier,—call him,—he who came, Was wicked for his pleasure, went his way, And left no trace to track by; there remained Nothing but me, the unnecessary life, To catch up or let fall,—and yet a thing She could make happy, be made happy with, This poor Violante,—who would frown thereat? Well, God, you see! God plants us where we grow. It is not that, because a bud is born At a wild brier's end, full i' the wild beast's way, We ought to pluck and put it out of reach On the oak-tree top,—say, "There the bud belongs!" She thought, moreover, real lies were lies told For harm's sake; whereas this had good at heart, Good for my mother, good for me, and good For Pietro who was meant to love a babe, And needed one to make his life of use, Receive his house and land when he should die. Wrong, wrong, and always wrong! how plainly wrong! For see, this fault kept pricking, as faults do, All the same at her heart: this falsehood hatched, She could not let it go nor keep it fast. She told me so,—the first time I was found Locked in her arms once more after the pain, When the nuns let me leave them and go home, And both of us cried all the cares away,— This it was set her on to make amends, This brought about the marriage—simply this! Do let me speak for her you blame so much! When Paul, my husband's brother, found me out, Heard there was wealth for who should marry me, So, came and made a speech to ask my hand For Guido,—she, instead of piercing straight Through the pretence to the ignoble truth, Fancied she saw God's very finger point, Designate just the time for planting me (The wild-brier slip she plucked to love and wear) In soil where I could strike real root, and grow, And get to be the thing I called myself: For, wife and husband are one flesh, God says, And I, whose parents seemed such and were none, Should in a husband have a husband now, Find nothing, this time, but was what it seemed, —All truth and no confusion any more. I know she meant all good to me, all pain To herself,—since how could it be aught but pain To give me up, so, from her very breast, The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those years, She had got used to feel for and find fixed? She meant well: has it been so ill i' the main? That is but fair to ask: one cannot judge Of what has been the ill or well of life, The day that one is dying,—sorrows change Into not altogether sorrow-like; I do see strangeness but scarce misery, Now it is over, and no danger more. My child is safe; there seems not so much pain. It comes, most like, that I am just absolved, Purged of the past, the foul in me, washed fair,— One cannot both have and not have, you know,— Being right now, I am happy and color things. Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all Softened and bettered: so with other sights: To me at least was never evening yet But seemed far beautifuller than its day, For past is past. There was a fancy came, When somewhere, in the journey with my friend, We stepped into a hovel to get food; And there began a yelp here, a bark there,— Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth And vexed themselves and us till we retired. The hovel is life: no matter what dogs bit Or cat scratched in the hovel I break from, All outside is lone field, moon and such peace— Flowing in, filling up as with a sea Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the white, Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares, To meet me and calm all things back again. Beside, up to my marriage, thirteen years Were, each day, happy as the day was long: This may have made the change too terrible. I know that when Violante told me first The cavalier—she meant to bring next morn, Whom I must also let take, kiss my hand— Would be at San Lorenzo the same eve And marry me,—which over, we should go Home both of us without him as before, And, till she bade speak, I must hold my tongue, Such being the correct way with girl-brides, From whom one word would make a father blush,— I know, I say, that when she told me this, —Well, I no more saw sense in what she said Than a lamb does in people clipping wool; Only lay down and let myself be clipped. And when next day the cavalier who came— (Tisbe had told me that the slim young man With wings at head, and wings at feet, and sword Threatening a monster, in our tapestry, Would eat a girl else,—was a cavalier)— When he proved Guido Franceschini,—old And nothing like so tall as I myself, Hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard, Much like a thing I saw on a boy's wrist, He called an owl and used for catching birds,— And when he took my hand and made a smile— Why, the uncomfortableness of it all Seemed hardly more important in the case Than—when one gives you, say, a coin to spend— Its newness or its oldness; if the piece Weigh properly and buy you what you wish, No matter whether you get grime or glare! Men take the coin, return you grapes and figs. Here, marriage was the' coin, a dirty piece Would purchase me the praise of those I loved: About what else should I concern myself? So, hardly knowing what a husband meant, I supposed this or any man would serve, No whit the worse for being so uncouth: For I was ill once and a doctor came With a great ugly hat, no plume thereto, Black jerkin and black buckles and black sword, And white sharp beard over the ruff in front, And oh so lean, so sour-faced and austere!— Who felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue, Then oped a phial, dripped a drop or two Of a black bitter something,—I was cured! What mattered the fierce beard or the grim face? It was the physic beautified the man, Master Malpichi,—never met his match In Rome, they said,—so ugly all the same! However, I was hurried through a storm, Next dark eve of December's deadest day— How it rained!—through our street and the Lion's-mouth And the bit of Corso,—cloaked round, covered close, I was like something strange or contraband,— Into blank San Lorenzo, up the aisle, My mother keeping hold of me so tight, I fancied we were come to see a corpse Before the altar which she pulled me toward. There we found waiting an unpleasant priest Who proved the brother, not our parish friend, But one with mischief-making mouth and eye, Paul, whom I know since to my cost. And then I heard the heavy church-door lock out help Behind us: for the customary warmth, Two tapers shivered on the altar. "Quick— Lose no time!" cried the priest. And straightway down From ... what 's behind the altar where he hid— Hawk-nose and yellowness and bush and all, Stepped Guido, caught my hand, and there was I O' the chancel, and the priest had opened book, Read here and there, made me say that and this, And after, told me I was now a wife, Honored indeed, since Christ thus weds the Church, And therefore turned he water into wine, To show I should obey my spouse like Christ. Then the two slipped aside and talked apart, And I, silent and scared, got down again And joined my mother, who was weeping now. Nobody seemed to mind us any more, And both of us on tiptoe found our way To the door which was unlocked by this, and wide. When we were in the street, the rain had stopped, All things looked better. At our own house-door, Violante whispered, "No one syllable To Pietro! Girl-brides never breathe a word!" "—Well treated to a wetting, draggle-tails!" Laughed Pietro as he opened—"Very near You made me brave the gutter's roaring sea To carry off from roost old dove and young, Trussed up in church, the cote, by me, the kite! What do these priests mean, praying folk to death On stormy afternoons, with Christmas close To wash our sins off nor require the rain?" Violante gave my hand a timely squeeze, Madonna saved me from immodest speech, I kissed him and was quiet, being a bride. When I saw nothing more, the next three weeks, Of Guido—"Nor the Church sees Christ" thought I: "Nothing is changed however, wine is wine And water only water in our house. Nor did I see that ugly doctor since That cure of the illness: just as I was cured, I am married,—neither scarecrow will return." Three weeks, I chuckled—"How would Giulia stare, And Tecla smile and Tisbe laugh outright, Were it not impudent for brides to talk!"— Until one morning, as I sat and sang At the broidery-frame alone i' the chamber,—loud Voices, two, three together, sobbings too, And my name, "Guido," "Paolo," flung like stones From each to the other! In I ran to see. There stood the very Guido and the priest With sly face,—formal but nowise afraid,— While Pietro seemed all red and angry, scarce Able to stutter out his wrath in words; And this it was that made my mother sob, As he reproached her—"You have murdered us, Me and yourself and this our child beside!" Then Guido interposed, "Murdered or not, Be it enough your child is now my wife! I claim and come to take her." Paul put in, "Consider—kinsman, dare I term you so?— What is the good of your sagacity Except to counsel in a strait like this? I guarantee the parties man and wife Whether you like or loathe it, bless or ban. May spilt milk be put back within the bowl— The done thing, undone? You, it is, we look For counsel to, you fitliest will advise! Since milk, though spilt and spoilt, does marble good, Better we down on knees and scrub the floor, Than sigh, 'the waste would make a syllabub!' Help us so turn disaster to account, So predispose the groom, he needs shall grace The bride with favor from the very first, Not begin marriage an embittered man!" He smiled,—the game so wholly in his hands! While fast and faster sobbed Violante—"Ay, All of us murdered, past averting now! O my sin, O my secret!" and such like. Then I began to half surmise the truth; Something had happened, low, mean, underhand, False, and my mother was to blame, and I To pity, whom all spoke of, none addressed: I was the chattel that had caused a crime. I stood mute,—those who tangled must untie The embroilment. Pietro cried, "Withdraw, my child! She is not helpful to the sacrifice At this stage,—do you want the victim by While you discuss the value of her blood? For her sake, I consent to hear you talk: Go, child, and pray God help the innocent!" I did go and was praying God, when came Violante, with eyes swollen and red enough, But movement on her mouth for make-believe Matters were somehow getting right again. She bade me sit down by her side and hear. "You are too young and cannot understand, Nor did your father understand at first. I wished to benefit all three of us, And when he failed to take my meaning,—why, I tried to have my way at unaware— Obtained him the advantage he refused. As if I put before him wholesome food Instead of broken victual,—he finds change I' the viands, never cares to reason why, But falls to blaming me, would fling the plate From window, scandalize the neighborhood, Even while he smacks his lips,—men's way, my child! But either you have prayed him unperverse Or I have talked him back into his wits: And Paolo was a help in time of need,— Guido, not much—my child, the way of men! A priest is more a woman than a man, And Paul did wonders to persuade. In short, Yes, he was wrong, your father sees and says; My scheme was worth attempting: and bears fruit, Gives you a husband and a noble name, A palace and no end of pleasant things. What do you care about a handsome youth? They are so volatile, and tease their wives! This is the kind of man to keep the house. We lose no daughter,—gain a son, that 's all: For 't is arranged we never separate, Nor miss, in our gray time of life, the tints Of you that color eve to match with morn. In good or ill, we share and share alike, And cast our lots into a common lap, And all three die together as we lived! Only, at Arezzo,—that 's a Tuscan town, Not so large as this noisy Rome, no doubt, But older far and finer much, say folk,— In a great palace where you will be queen, Know the Archbishop and the Governor, And we see homage done you ere we die. Therefore, be good and pardon!"—"Pardon what? You know things, I am very ignorant: All is right if you only will not cry!" And so an end! Because a blank begins From when, at the word, she kissed me hard and hot, And took me back to where my father leaned Opposite Guido—who stood eying him, As eyes the butcher the cast panting ox That feels his fate is come, nor struggles more,— While Paul looked archly on, pricked brow at whiles With the pen-point as to punish triumph there,— And said, "Count Guido, take your lawful wife Until death part you!" All since is one blank, Over and ended; a terrific dream. It is the good of dreams—so soon they go! Wake in a horror of heart-beats, you may— Cry, "The dread thing will never from my thoughts!" Still, a few daylight doses of plain life, Cock-crow and sparrow-chirp, or bleat and bell Of goats that trot by, tinkling, to be milked; And when you rub your eyes awake and wide, Where is the harm o' the horror? Gone! So here. I know I wake,—but from what? Blank, I say! This is the note of evil: for good lasts. Even when Don Celestine bade "Search and find! For your soul's sake, remember what is past, The better to forgive it,"—all in vain! What was fast getting indistinct before, Vanished outright. By special grace perhaps, Between that first calm and this last, four years Vanish,—one quarter of my life, you know. I am held up, amid the nothingness, By one or two truths only—thence I hang, And there I live,—the rest is death or dream, All but those points of my support. I think Of what I saw at Rome once in the Square O' the Spaniards, opposite the Spanish House: There was a foreigner had trained a goat, A shuddering white woman of a beast, To climb up, stand straight on a pile of sticks Put close, which gave the creature room enough: When she was settled there, he, one by one, Took away all the sticks, left just the four Whereon the little hoofs did really rest, There she kept firm, all underneath was air. So, what I hold by, are my prayer to God, My hope, that came in answer to the prayer, Some hand would interpose and save me—hand Which proved to be my friend's hand: and,—blest bliss,— That fancy which began so faint at first, That thrill of dawn's suffusion through my dark, Which I perceive was promise of my child, The light his unborn face sent long before,— God's way of breaking the good news to flesh. That is all left now of those four bad years. Don Celestine urged, "But remember more! Other men's faults may help me find your own. I need the cruelty exposed, explained, Or how can I advise you to forgive?" He thought I could not properly forgive Unless I ceased forgetting,—which is true: For, bringing back reluctantly to mind My husband's treatment of me,—by a light That 's later than my lifetime, I review And comprehend much and imagine more, And have but little to forgive at last. For now,—be fair and say,—is it not true He was ill-used and cheated of his hope To get enriched by marriage? Marriage gave Me and no money, broke the compact so: He had a right to ask me on those terms, As Pietro and Violante to declare They would not give me: so the bargain stood: They broke it, and he felt himself aggrieved, Became unkind with me to punish them. They said 't was he began deception first, Nor, in one point whereto he pledged himself, Kept promise: what of that, suppose it were? Echoes die off, scarcely reverberate Forever,—why should ill keep echoing ill, And never let our ears have done with noise? Then my poor parents took the violent way To thwart him,—he must needs retaliate,—wrong, Wrong, and all wrong,—better say, all blind! As I myself was, that is sure, who else Had understood the mystery: for his wife Was bound in some sort to help somehow there. It seems as if I might have interposed, Blunted the edge of their resentment so, Since he vexed me because they first vexed him; "I will entreat them to desist, submit, Give him the money and be poor in peace,— Certainly not go tell the world: perhaps He will grow quiet with his gains." Yes, say Something to this effect and you do well! But then you have to see first: I was blind. That is the fruit of all such wormy ways, The indirect, the unapproved of God: You cannot find their author's end and aim, Not even to substitute your good for bad, Your straight for the irregular; you stand Stupefied, profitless, as cow or sheep That miss a man's mind; anger him just twice By trial at repairing the first fault. Thus, when he blamed me, "You are a coquette, A lure-owl posturing to attract birds, You look love-lures at theatre and church, In walk, at window!"—that, I knew, was false: But why he charged me falsely, whither sought To drive me by such charge,—how could I know? So, unaware, I only made things worse. I tried to soothe him by abjuring walk, Window, church, theatre, for good and all, As if he had been in earnest: that, you know, Was nothing like the object of his charge. Yes, when I got my maid to supplicate The priest, whose name she read when she would read Those feigned false letters I was forced to hear Though I could read no word of,—he should cease Writing,—nay, if he minded prayer of mine, Cease from so much as even pass the street Whereon our house looked,—in my ignorance I was just thwarting Guido's true intent; Which was, to bring about a wicked change Of sport to earnest, tempt a thoughtless man To write indeed, and pass the house, and more, Till both of us were taken in a crime. He ought not to have wished me thus act lies, Simulate folly: but—wrong or right, the wish— I failed to apprehend its drift. How plain It follows,—if I fell into such fault, He also may have overreached the mark, Made mistake, by perversity of brain, I' the whole sad strange plot, the grotesque intrigue To make me and my friend unself ourselves, Be other man and woman than we were! Think it out, you who have the time! for me,— I cannot say less; more I will not say. Leave it to God to cover and undo! Only, my dulness should not prove too much! —Not prove that in a certain other point Wherein my husband blamed me,—and you blame, If I interpret smiles and shakes of head,— I was dull too. Oh, if I dared but speak! Must I speak? I am blamed that I forwent A way to make my husband's favor come. That is true: I was firm, withstood, refused ... —Women as you are, how can I find the words? I felt there was just one thing Guido claimed I had no right to give nor he to take; We being in estrangement, soul from soul: Till, when I sought help, the Archbishop smiled, Inquiring into privacies of life, —Said I was blamable—(he stands for God) Nowise entitled to exemption there. Then I obeyed,—as surely had obeyed Were the injunction "Since your husband bids, Swallow the burning coal he proffers you!" But I did wrong, and he gave wrong advice Though he were thrice Archbishop,—that, I know!— Now I have got to die and see things clear. Remember I was barely twelve years old— A child at marriage: I was let alone For weeks, I told you, lived my child-life still Even at Arezzo, when I woke and found First ... but I need not think of that again— Over and ended! Try and take the sense Of what I signify, if it must be so. After the first, my husband, for hate's sake, Said one eve, when the simpler cruelty Seemed somewhat dull at edge and fit to bear, "We have been man and wife six months almost: How long is this your comedy to last? Go this night to my chamber, not your own!" At which word, I did rush—most true the charge— And gain the Archbishop's house—he stands for God— And fall upon my knees and clasp his feet, Praying him hinder what my estranged soul Refused to bear, though patient of the rest: "Place me within a convent," I implored— "Let me henceforward lead the virgin life You praise in her you bid me imitate!" What did he answer? "Folly of ignorance! Know, daughter, circumstances make or mar Virginity,—'t is virtue or 't is vice. That which was glory in the Mother of God Had been, for instance, damnable in Eve Created to be mother of mankind. Had Eve, in answer to her Maker's speech 'Be fruitful, multiply, replenish earth'— Pouted 'But I choose rather to remain Single'—why, she had spared herself forthwith Further probation by the apple and snake, Been pushed straight out of Paradise! For see— If motherhood be qualified impure, I catch you making God command Eve sin! —A blasphemy so like these Molinists', I must suspect you dip into their books." Then he pursued "'T was in your covenant!" No! There my husband never used deceit. He never did by speech nor act imply "Because of our souls' yearning that we meet And mix in soul through flesh, which yours and mine Wear and impress, and make their visible selves, —All which means, for the love of you and me, Let us become one flesh, being one soul!" He only stipulated for the wealth; Honest so far. But when he spoke as plain— Dreadfully honest also—"Since our souls Stand each from each, a whole world's width between, Give me the fleshly vesture I can reach And rend and leave just fit for hell to burn!"— Why, in God's name, for Guido's soul's own sake Imperilled by polluting mine,—I say, I did resist; would I had overcome! My heart died out at the Archbishop's smile; —It seemed so stale and worn a way o' the world, As though 't were nature frowning—"Here is Spring, The sun shines as he shone at Adam's fall, The earth requires that warmth reach everywhere: What, must your patch of snow be saved forsooth Because you rather fancy snow than flowers?" Something in this style he began with me. Last he said, savagely for a good man, "This explains why you call your husband harsh, Harsh to you, harsh to whom you love. God's Bread! The poor Count has to manage a mere child Whose parents leave untaught the simplest things Their duty was and privilege to teach,— Goodwives' instruction, gossips' lore: they laugh And leave the Count the task,—or leave it me!" Then I resolved to tell a frightful thing. "I am not ignorant,—know what I say, Declaring this is sought for hate, not love. Sir, you may hear things like almighty God. I tell you that my housemate, yes—the priest My husband's brother, Canon Girolamo— Has taught me what depraved and misnamed love Means, and what outward signs denote the sin, For he solicits me and says he loves, The idle young priest with naught else to do. My husband sees this, knows this, and lets be. Is it your counsel I bear this beside?" "—More scandal, and against a priest this time! What, 't is the Canon now?"—less snappishly— "Rise up, my child, for such a child you are, The rod were too advanced a punishment! Let 's try the honeyed cake. A parable! 'Without a parable spake he not to them.' There was a ripe round long black toothsome fruit, Even a flower-fig, the prime boast of May; And, to the tree, said ... either the spirit o' the fig, Or, if we bring in men, the gardener, Archbishop of the orchard—had I time To try o' the two which fits in best: indeed It might be the Creator's self, but then The tree should bear an apple, I suppose,— Well, anyhow, one with authority said, 'Ripe fig, burst skin, regale the fig-pecker— The bird whereof thou art a perquisite!' 'Nay,' with a flounce, replied the restif fig, 'I much prefer to keep my pulp myself: He may go breakfastless and dinnerless, Supperless of one crimson seed, for me!' So, back she flopped into her bunch of leaves. He flew off, left her,—did the natural lord,— And lo, three hundred thousand bees and wasps Found her out, feasted on her to the shuck: Such gain the fig's that gave its bird no bite! The moral,—fools elude their proper lot, Tempt other fools, get ruined all alike. Therefore go home, embrace your husband quick! Which if his Canon brother chance to see, He will the sooner back to book again." So, home I did go; so, the worst befell: So, I had proof the Archbishop was just man, And hardly that, and certainly no more. For, miserable consequence to me, My husband's hatred waxed nor waned at all, His brother's boldness grew effrontery soon, And my last stay and comfort in myself Was forced from me: henceforth I looked to God Only, nor cared my desecrated soul Should have fair walls, gay windows for the world. God's glimmer, that came through the ruin-top, Was witness why all lights were quenched inside: Henceforth I asked God counsel, not mankind. So, when I made the effort, freed myself, They said—"No care to save appearance here! How cynic,—when, how wanton, were enough!" —Adding, it all came of my mother's life— My own real mother, whom I never knew, Who did wrong (if she needs must have done wrong) Through being all her life, not my four years, At mercy of the hateful: every beast O' the field was wont to break that fountain-fence, Trample the silver into mud so murk Heaven could not find itself reflected there. Now they cry, "Out on her, who, plashy pool, Bequeathed turbidity and bitterness To the daughter-stream where Guido dipt and drank!" Well, since she had to bear this brand—let me! The rather do I understand her now,— From my experience of what hate calls love,— Much love might be in what their love called hate. If she sold ... what they call, sold ... me, her child— I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart That I at least might try be good and pure, Begin to live untempted, not go doomed And done with ere once found in fault, as she. Oh and, my mother, it all came to this? Why should I trust those that speak ill of you, When I mistrust who speaks even well of them? Why, since all bound to do me good, did harm, May not you, seeming as you harmed me most, Have meant to do most good—and feed your child From bramble-bush, whom not one orchard-tree But drew bough back from, nor let one fruit fall? This it was for you sacrificed your babe? Gained just this, giving your heart's hope away As I might give mine, loving it as you, If ... but that never could be asked of me! There, enough! I have my support again, Again the knowledge that my babe was, is, Will be mine only. Him, by death, I give Outright to God, without a further care,— But not to any parent in the world,— So to be safe: why is it we repine? What guardianship were safer could we choose? All human plans and projects come to naught: My life, and what I know of other lives, Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care! And now you are not tired? How patient then All of you,—oh yes, patient this long while Listening, and understanding, I am sure! Four days ago, when I was sound and well And like to live, no one would understand. People were kind, but smiled, "And what of him, Your friend, whose tonsure the rich dark-brown hides? There, there!—your lover, do we dream he was? A priest too—never were such naughtiness! Still, he thinks many a long think, never fear, After the shy pale lady,—lay so light For a moment in his arms, the lucky one!" And so on: wherefore should I blame you much? So we are made, such difference in minds, Such difference too in eyes that see the minds! That man, you misinterpret and misprise— The glory of his nature, I had thought, Shot itself out in white light, blazed the truth Through every atom of his act with me: Yet where I point you, through the crystal shrine, Purity in quintessence, one dew-drop, You all descry a spider in the midst. One says, "The head of it is plain to see," And one, "They are the feet by which I judge," All say, "Those films were spun by nothing else." Then, I must lay my babe away with God, Nor think of him again for gratitude. Yes, my last breath shall wholly spend itself In one attempt more to disperse the stain, The mist from other breath fond mouths have made, About a lustrous and pellucid soul: So that, when I am gone but sorrow stays, And people need assurance in their doubt If God yet have a servant, man a friend, The weak a savior, and the vile a foe,— Let him be present, by the name invoked, Giuseppe-Maria Caponsacchi! There, Strength comes already with the utterance! I will remember once more for his sake The sorrow: for he lives and is belied. Could he be here, how he would speak for me! I had been miserable three drear years In that dread palace and lay passive now, When I first learned there could be such a man. Thus it fell: I was at a public play, In the last days of Carnival last March, Brought there I knew not why, but now know well. My husband put me where I sat, in front; Then crouched down, breathed cold through me from behind, Stationed i' the shadow,—none in front could see,— I, it was, faced the stranger-throng beneath, The crowd with upturned faces, eyes one stare, Voices one buzz. I looked but to the stage, Whereon two lovers sang and interchanged "True life is only love, love only bliss: I love thee—thee I love!" then they embraced. I looked thence to the ceiling and the walls,— Over the crowd, those voices and those eyes,— My thoughts went through the roof and out, to Rome On wings of music, waft of measured words,— Set me down there, a happy child again, Sure that to-morrow would be festa-day, Hearing my parents praise past festas more, And seeing they were old if I was young, Yet wondering why they still would end discourse With "We must soon go, you abide your time, And,—might we haply see the proper friend Throw his arm over you and make you safe!" Sudden I saw him; into my lap there fell A foolish twist of comfits, broke my dream And brought me from the air and laid me low, As ruined as the soaring bee that's reached (So Pietro told me at the Villa once) By the dust-handful. There the comfits lay: I looked to see who flung them, and I faced This Caponsacchi, looking up in turn. Ere I could reason out why, I felt sure, Whoever flung them, his was not the hand,— Up rose the round face and good-natured grin Of one who, in effect, had played the prank, From covert close beside the earnest face,— Fat waggish Conti, friend of all the world. He was my husband's cousin, privileged To throw the thing: the other, silent, grave, Solemn almost, saw me, as I saw him. There is a psalm Don Celestine recites, "Had I a dove's wings, how I fain would flee!" The psalm runs not "I hope, I pray for wings,"— Not "If wings fall from heaven, I fix them fast,"— Simply "How good it were to fly and rest, Have hope now, and one day expect content! How well to do what I shall never do!" So I said, "Had there been a man like that, To lift me with his strength out of all strife Into the calm, how I could fly and rest! I have a keeper in the garden here Whose sole employment is to strike me low If ever I, for solace, seek the sun. Life means with me successful feigning death, Lying stone-like, eluding notice so, Foregoing here the turf and there the sky. Suppose that man had been instead of this!" Presently Conti laughed into my ear, —Had tripped up to the raised place where I sat— "Cousin, I flung them brutishly and hard! Because you must be hurt, to look austere As Caponsacchi yonder, my tall friend A-gazing now. Ah, Guido, you so close? Keep on your knees, do! Beg her to forgive! My cornet battered like a cannon-ball. Good-by, I'm gone!"—nor waited the reply. That night at supper, out my husband broke, "Why was that throwing, that buffoonery? Do you think I am your dupe? What man would dare Throw comfits in a stranger lady's lap? 'T was knowledge of you bred such insolence In Caponsacchi; he dared shoot the bolt, Using that Conti for his stalking-horse. How could you see him this once and no more, When he is always haunting hereabout At the street-corner or the palace-side, Publishing my shame and your impudence? You are a wanton,—I a dupe, you think? O Christ, what hinders that I kill her quick?" Whereat he drew his sword and feigned a thrust. All this, now,—being not so strange to me, Used to such misconception day by day And broken-in to bear,—I bore, this time. More quietly than woman should perhaps; Repeated the mere truth and held my tongue. Then he said, "Since you play the ignorant, I shall instruct you. This amour,—commenced Or finished or midway in act, all's one,— 'T is the town-talk; so my revenge shall be. Does he presume because he is a priest? I warn him that the sword I wear shall pink His lily-scented cassock through and through, Next time I catch him underneath your eaves!" But he had threatened with the sword so oft And, after all, not kept his promise. All I said was, "Let God save the innocent! Moreover, death is far from a bad fate. I shall go pray for you and me, not him; And then I look to sleep, come death or, worse, Life." So, I slept. There may have elapsed a week, When Margherita,—called my waiting-maid, Whom it is said my husband found too fair— Who stood and heard the charge and the reply, Who never once would let the matter rest From that night forward, but rang changes still On this the thrust and that the shame, and how Good cause for jealousy cures jealous fools, And what a paragon was this same priest She talked about until I stopped my ears,— She said, "A week is gone; you comb your hair, Then go mope in a corner, cheek on palm, Till night comes round again,—so, waste a week As if your husband menaced you in sport. Have not I some acquaintance with his tricks? Oh no, he did not stab the serving-man Who made and sang the rhymes about me once! For why? They sent him to the wars next day. Nor poisoned he the foreigner, my friend, Who wagered on the whiteness of my breast,— The swarth skins of our city in dispute: For, though he paid me proper compliment, The Count well knew he was besotted with Somebody else, a skin as black as ink, (As all the town knew save my foreigner)— He found and wedded presently,—'Why need Better revenge?'—the Count asked. But what's here? A priest that does not fight, and cannot wed, Yet must be dealt with! If the Count took fire For the poor pastime of a minute,—me— What were the conflagration for yourself, Countess and lady-wife and all the rest? The priest will perish; you will grieve too late: So shall the city-ladies' handsomest Frankest and liberalest gentleman Die for you, to appease a scurvy dog Hanging's too good for. Is there no escape? Were it not simple Christian charity To warn the priest be on his guard,—save him Assured death, save yourself from causing it? I meet him in the street. Give me a glove, A ring to show for token! Mum's the word!" I answered, "If you were, as styled, my maid, I would command you: as you are, you say, My husband's intimate,—assist his wife Who can do nothing but entreat 'Be still!' Even if you speak truth and a crime is planned Leave help to God as I am forced to do! There is no other help, or we should craze, Seeing such evil with no human cure. Reflect that God, who makes the storm desist, Can make an angry violent heart subside. Why should we venture teach him governance? Never address me on this subject more!" Next night she said, "But I went, all the same, —Ay, saw your Caponsacchi in his house, And come back stuffed with news I must outpour. I told him, 'Sir, my mistress is a stone: Why should you harm her for no good you get? For you do harm her—prowl about our place With the Count never distant half the street, Lurking at every corner, would you look! 'T is certain she has witched you with a spell. Are there not other beauties at your beck? We all know, Donna This and Monna That Die for a glance of yours, yet here you gaze! Go make them grateful, leave the stone its cold!' And he—oh, he turned first white and then red, And then—'To her behest I bow myself, Whom I love with my body and my soul: Only a word i' the bowing! See, I write One little word, no harm to see or hear! Then, fear no further!' This is what he wrote. I know you cannot read,—therefore, let me! 'My idol!'" ... But I took it from her hand And tore it into shreds. "Why, join the rest Who harm me? Have I ever done you wrong? People have told me 't is you wrong myself: Let it suffice I either feel no wrong Or else forgive it,—yet you turn my foe! The others hunt me and you throw a noose!" She muttered, "Have your wilful way!" I slept. Whereupon ... no, I leave my husband out! It is not to do him more hurt, I speak. Let it suffice, when misery was most, One day, I swooned and got a respite so. She stooped as I was slowly coming to, This Margherita, ever on my trace, And whispered—"Caponsacchi!" If I drowned, But woke afloat i' the wave with upturned eyes, And found their first sight was a star! I turned— For the first time, I let her have her will, Heard passively,—"The imposthume at such head, One touch, one lancet-puncture would relieve,— And still no glance the good physician's way Who rids you of the torment in a trice! Still he writes letters you refuse to hear. He may prevent your husband, kill himself, So desperate and all fordone is he! Just hear the pretty verse he made to-day! A sonnet from Mirtillo. 'Peerless fair....' All poetry is difficult to read, —The sense of it is, anyhow, he seeks Leave to contrive you an escape from hell, And for that purpose asks an interview. I can write, I can grant it in your name, Or, what is better, lead you to his house. Your husband dashes you against the stones; This man would place each fragment in a shrine: You hate him, love your husband!" I returned, "It is not true I love my husband,—no, Nor hate this man. I listen while you speak, —Assured that what you say is false, the same: Much as when once, to me a little child, A rough gaunt man in rags, with eyes on fire, A crowd of boys and idlers at his heels, Rushed as I crossed the Square, and held my head In his two hands, 'Here 's she will let me speak! You little girl, whose eyes do good to mine, I am the Pope, am Sextus, now the Sixth; And that Twelfth Innocent, proclaimed to-day, Is Lucifer disguised in human flesh! The angels, met in conclave, crowned me!'—thus He gibbered and I listened; but I knew All was delusion, ere folk interposed, 'Unfasten him, the maniac!' Thus I know All your report of Caponsacchi false, Folly or dreaming: I have seen so much By that adventure at the spectacle, The face I fronted that one first, last time: He would belie it by such words and thoughts. Therefore while you profess to show him me, I ever see his own face. Get you gone!" "—That will I, nor once open mouth again,— No, by Saint Joseph and the Holy Ghost! On your head he the damage, so adieu!" And so more days, more deeds I must forget, Till ... what a strange thing now is to declare! Since I say anything, say all if true! And how my life seems lengthened as to serve! It may be idle or inopportune, But, true?—why, what was all I said but truth, Even when I found that such as are untrue Could only take the truth in through a lie? Now—I am speaking truth to the Truth's self: God will lend credit to my words this time. It had got half through April. I arose One vivid daybreak,—who had gone to bed In the old way my wont those last three years, Careless until, the cup drained, I should die. The last sound in my ear, the over-night, Had been a something let drop on the sly In prattle by Margherita, "Soon enough Gayeties end, now Easter 's past: a week, And the Archbishop gets him back to Rome,— Every one leaves the town for Rome, this Spring,— Even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope, Resigns himself and follows with the flock." I heard this drop and drop like rain outside Fast-falling through the darkness while she spoke: So had I heard with like indifference, "And Michael's pair of wings will arrive first At Rome, to introduce the company, And bear him from our picture where he fights Satan,—expect to have that dragon loose And never a defender!"—my sole thought Being still, as night came, "Done, another day! How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"— When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive, Light in me, light without me, everywhere Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall From heaven to earth,—a sudden drawbridge lay, Along which marched a myriad merry motes, Mocking the flies that crossed them and re-crossed In rival dance, companions new-born too. On the house-eaves, a dripping shag of weed Shook diamonds on each dull gray lattice-square, As first one, then another bird leapt by, And light was off, and lo was back again, 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! The bird brings hither sticks and hairs and wool, And nowhere else i' the world; what fly breaks rank, Falls out of the procession that befits, From window here to window there, with all The world to choose,—so well he knows his course? I have my purpose and my motive too, My march to Rome, like any bird or fly! Had I been dead! How right to be alive! Last night I almost prayed for leave to die, Wished Guido all his pleasure with the sword Or the poison,—poison, sword, was but a trick, Harmless, may God forgive him the poor jest! My life is charmed, will last till I reach Rome! Yesterday, but for the sin,—ah, nameless be The deed I could have dared against myself! Now—see if I will touch an unripe fruit, And risk the health I want to have and use! Not to live, now, would he the wickedness,— For life means to make haste and go to Rome And leave Arezzo, leave all woes at once!" Now, understand here, by no means mistake! Long ago had I tried to leave that house When it seemed such procedure would stop sin; And still failed more the more I tried—at first The Archbishop, as I told you,—next, our lord The Governor,—indeed I found my way, I went to the great palace where he rules, Though I knew well 't was he who,—when I gave A jewel or two, themselves had given me, Back to my parents,—since they wanted bread, They who had never let me want a nosegay,—he Spoke of the jail for felons, if they kept What was first theirs, then mine, so doubly theirs, Though all the while my husband's most of all! I knew well who had spoke the word wrought this: Yet, being in extremity, I fled To the Governor, as I say,—scarce opened lip When—the cold cruel snicker close behind— Guido was on my trace, already there, Exchanging nod and wink for shrug and smile, And I—pushed back to him and, for my pains, Paid with ... but why remember what is past? I sought out a poor friar the people call The Roman, and confessed my sin which came Of their sin,—that fact could not be repressed,— The frightfulness of my despair in God: And feeling, through the grate, his horror shake, Implored him, "Write for me who cannot write, Apprise my parents, make them rescue me! You bid me be courageous and trust God: Do you in turn dare somewhat, trust and write, 'Dear friends, who used to be my parents once, And now declare you have no part in me, This is some riddle I want wit to solve, Since you must love me with no difference. Even suppose you altered,—there's your hate, To ask for: hate of you two dearest ones I shall find liker love than love found here, If husbands love their wives. Take me away And hate me as you do the gnats and fleas, Even the scorpions! How I shall rejoice!' Write that and save me!" And he promised—wrote Or did not write; things never changed at all: He was not like the Augustinian here! Last, in a desperation I appealed To friends, whoever wished me better days, To Guillichini, that 's of kin,—"What, I— Travel to Rome with you? A flying gout Bids me deny my heart and mind my leg!" Then I tried Conti, used to brave—laugh back The louring thunder when his cousin scowled At me protected by his presence: "You— Who well know what you cannot save me from,— Carry me off! What frightens you, a priest?" He shook his head, looked grave—"Above my strength! Guido has claws that scratch, shows feline teeth; A formidabler foe than I dare fret: Give me a dog to deal with, twice the size! Of course I am a priest and Canon too, But ... by the bye ... though both, not quite so bold As he, my fellow-Canon, brother-priest, The personage in such ill odor here Because of the reports—pure birth o' the brain! Our Caponsacchi, he 's your true Saint George To slay the monster, set the Princess free, And have the whole High-Altar to himself: I always think so when I see that piece I' the Pieve, that 's his church and mine, you know: Though you drop eyes at mention of his name!" That name had got to take a half-grotesque Half-ominous, wholly enigmatic sense, Like any by-word, broken bit of song Born with a meaning, changed by mouth and mouth That mix it in a sneer or smile, as chance Bids, till it now means naught but ugliness And perhaps shame. —All this intends to say, That, over-night, the notion of escape Had seemed distemper, dreaming; and the name,— Not the man, but the name of him, thus made Into a mockery and disgrace,—why, she Who uttered it persistently, had laughed, "I name his name, and there you start and wince As criminal from the red tongs' touch!"—yet now, Now, as I stood letting morn bathe me bright, Choosing which butterfly should bear my news,— The white, the brown one, or that tinier blue,— The Margherita, I detested so, In she came—"The fine day, the good Spring time! What, up and out at window? That is best. No thought of Caponsacchi?—who stood there All night on one leg, like the sentry crane, Under the pelting of your water-spout— Looked last look at your lattice ere he leave Our city, bury his dead hope at Rome. Ay, go to looking-glass and make you fine, While he may die ere touch one least loose hair You drag at with the comb in such a rage!" I turned—"Tell Caponsacchi he may come!" "Tell him to come? Ah, but, for charity, A truce to fooling! Come? What,—come this eve? Peter and Paul! But I see through the trick! Yes, come, and take a flower-pot on his head. Flung from your terrace! No joke, sincere truth?" How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade O' the face of her,—the doubt that first paled joy, Then, final reassurance I indeed Was caught now, never to be free again! What did I care?—who felt myself of force To play with silk, and spurn the horsehair-springe. "But—do you know that I have bade him come, And in your own name? I presumed so much, Knowing the thing you needed in your heart. But somehow—what had I to show in proof? He would not come: half-promised, that was all, And wrote the letters you refused to read. What is the message that shall move him now?" "After the Ave Maria, at first dark, I will be standing on the terrace, say!" "I would I had a good long lock of hair Should prove I was not lying! Never mind!" Off she went—"May he not refuse, that 's all— Fearing a trick!" I answered, "He will come." And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up To God the strong, God the beneficent, God ever mindful in all strife and strait, Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, Till at the last he puts forth might and saves. An old rhyme came into my head and rang Of how a virgin, for the faith of God, Hid herself, from the Paynims that pursued, In a cave's heart; until a thunderstone, Wrapped in a flame, revealed the couch and prey: And they laughed—"Thanks to lightning, ours at last!" And she cried, "Wrath of God, assert his love! Servant of God, thou fire, befriend his child!" And lo, the fire she grasped at, fixed its flash, Lay in her hand a calm cold dreadful sword She brandished till pursuers strewed the ground, So did the souls within them die away, As o'er the prostrate bodies, sworded, safe, She walked forth to the solitudes and Christ: So should I grasp the lightning and be saved! And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew Whereby I guessed there would be born a star, Until at an intense throe of the dusk, I started up, was pushed, I dare to say, Out on the terrace, leaned and looked at last Where the deliverer waited me: the same Silent and solemn face, I first descried At the spectacle, confronted mine once more. So was that minute twice vouchsafed me, so The manhood, wasted then, was still at watch To save me yet a second time: no change Here, though all else changed in the changing world! I spoke on the instant, as my duty bade, In some such sense as this, whatever the phrase. "Friend, foolish words were borne from you to me; Your soul behind them is the pure strong wind, Not dust and feathers which its breath may bear: These to the witless seem the wind itself, Since proving thus the first of it they feel. If by mischance you blew offence my way, The straws are dropt, the wind desists no whit, And how such strays were caught up in the street And took a motion from you, why inquire? I speak to the strong soul, no weak disguise. If it be truth,—why should I doubt it truth?— You serve God specially, as priests are bound, And care about me, stranger as I am, So far as wish my good, that—miracle I take to imitate he wills you serve By saying me,—what else can he direct? Here is the service. Since a long while now, I am in course of being put to death: While death concerned nothing but me, I bowed The head and bade, in heart, my husband strike. Now I imperil something more, it seems, Something that 's trulier me than this myself, Something I trust in God and you to save. You go to Rome, they tell me: take me there, Put me back with my people!" He replied— The first word I heard ever from his lips, All himself in it,—an eternity Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth O' the soul that then broke silence—"I am yours." So did the star rise, soon to lead my step, Lead on, nor pause before it should stand still Above the House o' the Babe,—my babe to be, That knew me first and thus made me know him, That had his right of life and claim on mine, And would not let me die till he was born, But pricked me at the heart to save us both, Saying, "Have you the will? Leave God the way!" And the way was Caponsacchi—"mine," thank God! He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine. No pause i' the leading and the light! I know, Next night there was a cloud came, and not he: But I prayed through the darkness till it broke And let him shine. The second night, he came. "The plan is rash; the project desperate: In such a flight needs must I risk your life, Give food for falsehood, folly or mistake, Ground for your husband's rancor and revenge"— So he began again, with the same face. I felt that, the same loyalty—one star Turning now red that was so white before— One service apprehended newly: just A word of mine and there the white was back! "No, friend, for you will take me! 'T is yourself Risk all, not I,—who let you, for I trust In the compensating great God: enough! I know you: when is it that you will come?" "To-morrow at the day's dawn." Then I heard What I should do: how to prepare for flight And where to fly. That night my husband bade "—You, whom I loathe, beware you break my sleep This whole night! Couch beside me like the corpse I would you were!" The rest you know, I think— How I found Caponsacchi and escaped. And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ! Of whom men said, with mouths Thyself mad'st once, "He hath a devil"—say he was Thy saint, My Caponsacchi! Shield and show—unshroud In Thine own time the glory of the soul If aught obscure,—if ink-spot, from vile pens Scribbling a charge against him—(I was glad Then, for the first time, that I could not write)— Flirted his way, have flecked the blaze! For me, 'T is otherwise: let men take, sift my thoughts —Thoughts I throw like the flax for sun to bleach! I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die, "Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!" Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand Holding my hand across the world,—a sense That reads, as only such can read, the mark God sets on woman, signifying so She should—shall peradventure—be divine; Yet 'ware, the whole, how weakness mars the print And makes confusion, leaves the thing men see, —Not this man sees,—who from his soul, rewrites The obliterated charter,—love and strength Mending what 's marred. "So kneels a votarist, Weeds some poor waste traditionary plot, Where shrine once was, where temple yet may be, Purging the place but worshipping the while, By faith and not by sight, sight clearest so,— Such way the saints work,"—says Don Celestine. But I, not privileged to see a saint Of old when such walked earth with crown and palm, If I call "saint" what saints call something else— The saints must bear with me, impute the fault To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance, Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know. But if meanwhile some insect with a heart Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy— Some fire-fly renounced Spring for my dwarfed cup, Crept close to me, brought lustre for the dark, Comfort against the cold,—what though excess Of comfort should miscall the creature—sun? What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands Petal by petal, crude and colorless, Tore me? This one heart gave me all the Spring! Is all told? There 's the journey: and where 's time To tell you how that heart burst out in shine? Yet certain points do press on me too hard. Each place must have a name, though I forget: How strange it was—there where the plain begins And the small river mitigates its flow— When eve was fading fast, and my soul sank, And he divined what surge of bitterness, In overtaking me, would float me back Whence I was carried by the striding day— So,—"This gray place was famous once," said he— And he began that legend of the place As if in answer to the unspoken fear, And told me all about a brave man dead, Which lifted me and let my soul go on! How did he know too—at that town's approach By the rock-side—that in coming near the signs Of life, the house-roofs and the church and tower, I saw the old boundary and wall o' the world Rise plain as ever round me, hard and cold, As if the broken circlet joined again, Tightened itself about me with no break,— As if the town would turn Arezzo's self,— The husband there,—the friends my enemies, All ranged against me, not an avenue To try, but would be blocked and drive me back On him,—this other, ... oh the heart in that! Did not he find, bring, put into my arms A new-born babe?—and I saw faces beam Of the young mother proud to teach me joy, And gossips round expecting my surprise At the sudden hole through earth that lets in heaven. I could believe himself by his strong will Had woven around me what I thought the world We went along in, every circumstance, Towns, flowers and faces, all things helped so well! For, through the journey, was it natural Such comfort should arise from first to last? As I look back, all is one milky way; Still bettered more, the more remembered, so Do new stars bud while I but search for old, And fill all gaps i' the glory, and grow him— Him I now see make the shine everywhere. Even at the last when the bewildered flesh, The cloud of weariness about my soul Clogging too heavily, sucked down all sense,— Still its last voice was, "He will watch and care; Let the strength go, I am content: he stays!" I doubt not he did stay and care for all— From that sick minute when the head swam round, And the eyes looked their last and died on him, As in his arms he caught me, and, you say, Carried me in, that tragical red eve, And laid me where I next returned to life In the other red of morning, two red plates That crushed together, crushed the time between, And are since then a solid fire to me,— When in, my dreadful husband and the world Broke,—and I saw him, master, by hell's right, And saw my angel helplessly held back By guards that helped the malice—the lamb prone, The serpent towering and triumphant—then Came all the strength back in a sudden swell, I did for once see right, do right, give tongue The adequate protest: for a worm must turn If it would have its wrong observed by God. I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low The neutralizer of all good and truth. If I sinned so,—never obey voice more O' the Just and Terrible, who bids us—"Bear!" Not—"Stand by, bear to see my angels bear!" I am clear it was on impulse to serve God Not save myself,—no—nor my child unborn! Had I else waited patiently till now?— Who saw my old kind parents, silly-sooth And too much trustful, for their worst of faults, Cheated, browbeaten, stripped and starved, cast out Into the kennel: I remonstrated, Then sank to silence, for,—their woes at end, Themselves gone,—only I was left to plague. If only I was threatened and belied, What matter? I could bear it and did bear; It was a comfort, still one lot for all: They were not persecuted for my sake And I, estranged, the single happy one. But when at last, all by myself I stood Obeying the clear voice which bade me rise, Not for my own sake but my babe unborn, And take the angel's hand was sent to help— And found the old adversary athwart the path— Not my hand simply struck from the angel's, but The very angel's self made foul i' the face By the fiend who struck there,—that I would not bear, That only I resisted! So, my first And last resistance was invincible. Prayers move God; threats, and nothing else, move men! I must have prayed a man as he were God When I implored the Governor to right My parents' wrongs: the answer was a smile. The Archbishop,—did I clasp his feet enough, Hide my face hotly on them, while I told More than I dared make my own mother know? The profit was—compassion and a jest. This time, the foolish prayers were done with, right Used might, and solemnized the sport at once. All was against the combat: vantage, mine? The runaway avowed, the accomplice-wife, In company with the plan-contriving priest? Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare, At foe from head to foot in magic mail, And off it withered, cobweb-armory Against the lightning! 'T was truth singed the lies And saved me, not the vain sword nor weak speech! You see, I will not have the service fail! I say, the angel saved me: I am safe! Others may want and wish, I wish nor want One point o' the circle plainer, where I stand Traced round about with white to front the world. What of the calumny I came across, What o' the way to the end?—the end crowns all. The judges judged aright i' the main, gave me The uttermost of my heart's desire, a truce From torture and Arezzo, balm for hurt, With the quiet nuns,—God recompense the good! Who said and sang away the ugly past. And, when my final fortune was revealed, What safety, while, amid my parents' arms, 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: back Had it returned nor ever let me see! But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live And give my bird the life among the leaves God meant him! Weeks and months of quietude, I could lie in such peace and learn so much— Begin the task, I see how needful now, Of understanding somewhat of my past,— Know life a little, I should leave so soon. Therefore, because this man restored my soul, All has been right; I have gained my gain, enjoyed As well as suffered,—nay, got foretaste too Of better life beginning where this ends— All through the breathing-while allowed me thus, Which let good premonitions reach my soul Unthwarted, and benignant influence flow And interpenetrate and change my heart, Uncrossed by what was wicked,—nay, unkind. For, as the weakness of my time drew nigh, Nobody did me one disservice more, Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love I lay in the arms of, till my boy was born, Born all in love, with naught to spoil the bliss A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much. All women are not mothers of a boy, Though they live twice the length of my whole life, And, as they fancy, happily all the same. There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long, As if it would continue, broaden out Happily more and more, and lead to heaven: Christmas before me,—was not that a chance? I never realized God's birth before— How he grew likest God in being born. This time I felt like Mary, had my babe Lying a little on my breast like hers. So all went on till, just four days ago— The night and the tap. Oh, it shall be success To the whole of our poor family! My friends ... Nay, father and mother,—give me back my word! They have been rudely stripped of life, disgraced Like children who must needs go clothed too fine, Carry the garb of Carnival in Lent. If they too much affected frippery, They have been punished and submit themselves, Say no word: all is over, they see God Who will not be extreme to mark their fault Or he had granted respite: they are safe. For that most woeful man my husband once, Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath, I—pardon him? So far as lies in me, I give him for his good the life he takes, Praying the world will therefore acquiesce. Let him make God amends,—none, none to me Who thank him rather that, whereas strange fate Mockingly styled him husband and me wife, Himself this way at least pronounced divorce, Blotted the marriage-bond: this blood of mine Flies forth exultingly at any door, Washes the parchment white, and thanks the blow. We shall not meet in this world nor the next, But where will God be absent? In his face Is light, but in his shadow healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed! And as my presence was importunate,— My earthly good, temptation and a snare,— Nothing about me but drew somehow down His hate upon me,—somewhat so excused Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,— May my evanishment forevermore Help further to relieve the heart that cast Such object of its natural loathing forth! So he was made; he nowise made himself: I could not love him, but his mother did. His soul has never lain beside my soul; But for the unresisting body,—thanks! He burned that garment spotted by the flesh. Whatever he touched is rightly ruined: plague It caught, and disinfection it had craved Still but for Guido; I am saved through him So as by fire; to him—thanks and farewell! Even for my babe, my boy, there 's safety thence— From the sudden death of me, I mean: we poor Weak souls, how we endeavor to be strong! I was already using up my life,— This portion, now, should do him such a good, This other go to keep off such an ill! The great life; see, a breath and it is gone! So is detached, so left all by itself The little life, the fact which means so much. Shall not God stoop the kindlier to his work, His marvel of creation, foot would crush, Now that the hand he trusted to receive And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce? The better; he shall have in orphanage His own way all the clearlier: if my babe Outlived the hour—and he has lived two weeks— It is through God who knows I am not by. Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black, And sets the tongue, might lie so long at rest, Trying to talk? Let us leave God alone! Why should I doubt he will explain in time What I feel now, but fail to find the words? My babe nor was, nor is, nor yet shall be Count Guido Franceschini's child at all— Only his mother's, born of love not hate! So shall I have my rights in after-time. It seems absurd, impossible to-day; So seems so much else, not explained but known! Ah! Friends, I thank and bless you every one! No more now: I withdraw from earth and man To my own soul, compose myself for God. Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breath Shall hear away my soul in being true! He is still here, not outside with the world, Here, here, I have him in his rightful place! 'T is now, when I am most upon the move, I feel for what I verily find—again The face, again the eyes, again, through all, The heart and its immeasurable love Of my one friend, my only, all my own, Who put his breast between the spears and me. Ever with Caponsacchi! Otherwise Here alone would be failure, loss to me— How much more loss to him, with life debarred From giving life, love locked from love's display, The day-star stopped its task that makes night morn! O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death! Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread— My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that! Tell him that if I seem without him now, That 's the world's insight! Oh, he understands! He is at Civita—do I once doubt The world again is holding us apart? He had been here, displayed in my behalf The broad brow that reverberates the truth, And flashed the word God gave him, back to man! I know where the free soul is flown! My fate Will have been hard for even him to bear: Let it confirm him in the trust of God, Showing how holily he dared the deed! And, for the rest,—say, from the deed, no touch Of harm came, but all good, all happiness, Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain? What I see, oh, he sees and how much more! Tell him,—I know not wherefore the true word Should fade and fall unuttered at the last— It was the name of him I sprang to meet When came the knock, the summons and the end. "My great heart, my strong hand are back again!" I would have sprung to these, beckoning across Murder and hell gigantic and distinct O' the threshold, posted to exclude me heaven: He is ordained to call and I to come! Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God? Say,—I am all in flowers from head to foot! Say,—not one flower of all he said and did, Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown, But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place At this supreme of moments! He is a priest; He cannot marry therefore, which is right: I think he would not marry if he could. Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, Mere imitation of the inimitable: In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 'T is there they neither marry nor are given In marriage but are as the angels: right, Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ To say that! Marriage-making for the earth, With gold so much,—birth, power, repute so much, Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these! Be as the angels rather, who, apart, Know themselves into one, are found at length Married, but marry never, no, nor give In marriage; they are man and wife at once When the true time is: here we have to wait Not so long neither! Could we by a wish Have what we will and get the future now, Would we wish aught done undone in the past? So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of his light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.

Ah, my Giacinto, he 's no ruddy rogue, Is not Cinone? What, to-day we 're eight? Seven and one 's eight, I hope, old curly-pate! —Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate, Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans, Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood, Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry) And chews Corderius with his morning crust! Look eight years onward, and he 's perched, he 's perched Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair, Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he? —Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case Like this, papa shall triturate full soon To smooth Papinianian pulp! It trots Already through my head, though noon be now, Does supper-time and what belongs to eve. Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play! —The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast, Cinnolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own, That makes gruff January grin perforce! For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth Escaping from so many hearts at once— When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet, Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key O' the box beneath his pillow every night,— Which box may hold a parchment (some one thinks) Will show a scribbled something like a name "Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end, "To whom I give and I bequeath my lands, Estates, tenements, hereditaments, When I decease as honest grandsire ought." Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps— Sha'n't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose! Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world, May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind, Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint There 's cookery in a certain dwelling-place! Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke, Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light, And so find door, put galligaskin off At entry of a decent domicile Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love, All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo! Well, Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp! How vain are chambering and wantonness, Revel and rout and pleasures that make mad! Commend me to home-joy, the family board, Altar and hearth! These, with a brisk career, A source of honest profit and good fame, Just so much work as keeps the brain from rust, Just so much play as lets the heart expand, Honoring God and serving man,—I say, These are reality, and all else,—fluff, Nutshell and naught,—thank Flaccus for the phrase! Suppose I had been Fisc, yet bachelor! Why, work with a will, then! Wherefore lazy now? Turn up the hour-glass, whence no sand-grain slips But should have done its duty to the saint O' the day, the son and heir that 's eight years old! Let law come dimple Cinoncino's cheek, And Latin dumple Cinarello's chin, And while we spread him fine and toss him flat This pulp that makes the pancake, trim our mass Of matter into Argument the First, Prime Pleading in defence of our accused, Which, once a-waft on paper wing, shall soar, Shall signalize before applausive Rome What study, and mayhap some mother-wit, Can do toward making Master fop and Fisc Old bachelor Bottinius bite his thumb. Now, how good God is! How falls plumb to point This murder, gives me Guido to defend Now, of all days i' the year, just when the boy Verges on Virgil, reaches the right age For some such illustration from his sire, Stimulus to himself! One might wait years And never find the chance which now finds me! The fact is, there 's a blessing on the hearth, A special providence for fatherhood! Here 's a man, and what 's more, a noble, kills —Not sneakingly but almost with parade— Wife's father and wife's mother and wife's self That 's mother's self of son and heir (like mine!) —And here stand I, the favored advocate, Who pluck this flower o' the field, no Solomon Was ever clothed in glorious gold to match, And set the same in Cinoncino's cap! I defend Guido and his comrades—I! Pray God, I keep me humble: not to me— Non nobis, Domine, sed tibi laus! How the fop chuckled when they made him Fisc! We 'll beat you, my Bottinius, all for love, All for our tribute to Cinotto's day! Why, 'sbuddikins, old Innocent himself May rub his eyes at the bustle,—ask "What 's this Rolling from out the rostrum, as a gust O' the Pro Milone had been prisoned there, And rattled Rome awake?" Awaken Rome, How can the Pope doze on in decency? He needs must wake up also, speak his word, Have his opinion like the rest of Rome, About this huge, this hurly-burly case: He wants who can excogitate the truth, Give the result in speech, plain black and white, To mumble in the mouth and make his own —A little changed, good man, a little changed! No matter, so his gratitude be moved, By when my Giacintino gets of age, Mindful of who thus helped him at a pinch, Archangelus Procurator Pauperum— And proved Hortensius Redivivus! Whew! To earn the Est-est, merit the minced herb That mollifies the liver's leathery slice, With here a goose-foot, there a cock's-comb stuck, Cemented in an element of cheese! I doubt if dainties do the grandsire good: Last June he had a sort of strangling ... bah! He 's his own master, and his will is made. So, liver fizz, law flit and Latin fly As we rub hands o'er dish by way of grace! May I lose cause if I vent one word more Except—with fresh-cut quill we ink the white— P-r-o-pro Guidone et Sociis. There! Count Guido married—or, in Latin due, What? Duxit in uxorem?—commonplace! Tædus jugales iniit, subiit,—ha! He underwent the matrimonial torch? Connubio stabili sibi junxit,—hum! In stable bond of marriage bound his own? That 's clear of any modern taint: and yet ... Virgil is little help to who writes prose. He shall attack me Terence with the dawn, Shall Cinuccino! Mum, mind business, Sir! Thus circumstantially evolve we facts, Ita se habet ideo series facti: He wedded,—ah, with owls for augury! Nupserat, heu sinistris avibus, One of the blood Arezzo boasts her best, Dominus Guido, nobili genere ortus, Pompiliæ ... But the version afterward! Curb we this ardor! Notes alone, to-day, The speech to-morrow, and the Latin last: Such was the rule in Farinacci's time. Indeed I hitched it into verse and good. Unluckily, law quite absorbs a man, Or else I think I too had poetized. "Law is the pork substratum of the fry, Goose-foot and cock's-comb are Latinity,"— And in this case, if circumstance assist, We 'll garnish law with idiom, never fear! Out-of-the-way events extend our scope: For instance, when Bottini brings his charge, "That letter which you say Pompilia wrote, To criminate her parents and herself And disengage her husband from the coil,— That, Guido Franceschini wrote, say we: Because Pompilia could not read nor write, Therefore he pencilled her such letter first, Then made her trace in ink the same again." —Ha, my Bottini, have I thee on hip? How will he turn this and break Tully's pate? "Existimandum" (don't I hear the dog!) "Quod Guido designaverit elementa Dictæ epistolæ, quæ fuerint (Superinducto ab ea calamo) Notata atramento"—there 's a style!— "Quia ipsa scribere nesciebat." Boh! Now, my turn! Either, Insulse! (I outburst) Stupidly put! Inane is the response, Inanis est responsio, or the like— To wit, that each of all those characters, Quod singula elementa epistolæ, Had first of all been traced for her by him, Fuerant per eum prius designata, And then, the ink applied a-top of that, Et deinde, superinducto calamo, The piece, she says, became her handiwork, Per eam, efformata, ut ipsa asserit. Inane were such response! (a second time:) Her husband outlined her the whole, forsooth? Vir ejus lineabat epistolam? What, she confesses that she wrote the thing, Fatetur eam scripsisse, (scorn that scathes!) That she might pay obedience to her lord? Ut viro obtemperaret, apices (Here repeat charge with proper varied phrase) Eo designante, ipsaque calamum Super inducente? By such argument, Ita pariter, she seeks to show the same, (Ay, by Saint Joseph and what saints you please) Epistolam ostendit, medius fidius, No voluntary deed but fruit of force! Non voluntarie sed coacte scriptam! That 's the way to write Latin, friend my Fisc! Bottini is a beast, one barbarous: Look out for him when he attempts to say "Armed with a pistol, Guido followed her!" Will not I be beforehand with my Fisc, Cut away phrase by phrase from underfoot! Guido Pompiliam—Guido thus his wife Following with igneous engine, shall I have? Armis munitus igneis persequens— Arma sulphurea gestans, sulphury arms, Or, might one style a pistol—popping-piece? Armatus breviori sclopulo? We 'll let him have been armed so, though it make Somewhat against us: I had thought to own— Provided with a simple travelling-sword, Ense solummodo viatorio Instructus: but we 'll grant the pistol here: Better we lost the cause than lacked the gird At the Fisc's Latin, lost the Judge's laugh! It 's Venturini that decides for style. Tommati rather goes upon the law. So, as to law,— Ah, but with law ne'er hope To level the fellow,—don't I know his trick! How he draws up, ducks under, twists aside! He 's a lean-gutted hectic rascal, fine As pale-haired red-eyed ferret which pretends 'T is ermine, pure soft snow from tail to snout. He eludes law by piteous looks aloft. Lets Latin glance off as he makes appeal To saint that 's somewhere in the ceiling-top: Do you suppose I don't conceive the beast? Plague of the ermine-vermin! For it takes, It takes, and here 's the fellow Fisc, you see, And Judge, you 'll not be long in seeing next! Confound the fop—he 's now at work like me: Enter his study, as I seem to do, Hear him read out his writing to himself! I know he writes as if he spoke: I hear The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck shot-forth, —I see him strain on tiptoe, soar and pour Eloquence out, nor stay nor stint at all— Perorate in the air, then quick to press With the product! What abuse of type and sheet! He 'll keep clear of my cast, my logic-throw, Let argument slide, and then deliver swift Some bowl from quite an unguessed point of stand— Having the luck o' the last word, the reply! A plaguy cast, a mortifying stroke: You face a fellow—cries, "So, there you stand? But I discourteous jump clean o'er your head! You take ship-carpentry for pilotage, Stop rat-holes, while a sea sweeps through the breach,— Hammer and fortify at puny points? Do, clamp and tenon, make all tight and safe! 'T is here and here and here you ship a sea, No good of your stopped leaks and littleness!" Yet what do I name "little and a leak"? The main defence o' the murder's used to death, By this time, dry bare bones, no scrap we pick: Safer I worked the new, the unforeseen, The nice by-stroke, the fine and improvised Point that can titillate the brain o' the Bench Torpid with over-teaching, long ago! As if Tommati (that has heard, reheard And heard again, first this side and then that— Guido and Pietro, Pietro and Guido, din And deafen, full three years, at each long ear) Don't want amusement for instruction now, Won't rather feel a flea run o'er his ribs, Than a daw settle heavily on his head! Oh, I was young and had the trick of fence, Knew subtle pass and push with careless right— My left arm ever quiet behind back, With dagger ready: not both hands to blade! Puff and blow, put the strength out, Blunder-bore! There 's my subordinate, young Spreti, now, Pedant and prig,—he 'll pant away at proof, That 's his way! Now for mine—to rub some life Into one's choppy fingers this cold day! I trust Cinuzzo ties on tippet, guards The precious throat on which so much depends! Guido must be all goose-flesh in his hole, Despite the prison-straw: bad Carnival For captives! no sliced fry for him, poor Count! Carnival-time,—another providence! The town a-swarm with strangers to amuse, To edify, to give one's name and fame In charge of, till they find, some future day, Cintino come and claim it, his name too, Pledge of the pleasantness they owe papa— Who else was it cured Rome of her great qualms, When she must needs have her own judgment?—ay, When all her topping wits had set to work, Pronounced already on the case: mere boys, Twice Cineruggiolo's age with half his sense, As good as tell me, when I cross the court, "Master Arcangeli!" (plucking at my gown) "We can predict, we comprehend your play, We 'll help you save your client." Tra-la-la! I 've travelled ground, from childhood to this hour, To have the town anticipate my track? The old fox takes the plain and velvet path, The young hound's predilection,—prints the dew, Don't he, to suit their pulpy pads of paw? No! Burying nose deep down i' the briery bush, Thus I defend Count Guido. Where are we weak? First, which is foremost in advantage too, Our murder,—we call, killing,—is a fact Confessed, defended, made a boast of: good! To think the Fisc claimed use of torture here, And got thereby avowal plump and plain That gives me just the chance I wanted,—scope Not for brute-force but ingenuity, Explaining matters, not denying them! One may dispute,—as I am bound to do, And shall,—validity of process here: Inasmuch as a noble is exempt From torture which plebeians undergo In such a case: for law is lenient, lax, Remits the torture to a nobleman Unless suspicion be of twice the strength Attaches to a man born vulgarly: We don't card silk with comb that dresses wool. Moreover, 't was severity undue In this case, even had the lord been lout. What utters, on this head, our oracle, Our Farinacci, my Gamaliel erst, In those immortal "Questions"? This I quote: "Of all the tools at Law's disposal, sure That named Vigiliarum is the best— That is, the worst—to whoso needs must bear: Lasting, as it may do, from some seven hours To ten; (beyond ten, we 've no precedent; Certain have touched their ten but, bah, they died!) It does so efficaciously convince, That—speaking by much observation here— Out of each hundred cases, by my count, Never I knew of patients beyond four Withstand its taste, or less than ninety-six End by succumbing: only martyrs four, Of obstinate silence, guilty or no,—against Ninety-six full confessors, innocent Or otherwise,—so shrewd a tool have we!" No marvel either: in unwary hands, Death on the spot is no rare consequence: As indeed all but happened in this case To one of ourselves, our young tough peasant-friend The accomplice called Baldeschi: they were rough, Dosed him with torture as you drench a horse, Not modify your treatment to a man: So, two successive days he fainted dead, And only on the third essay, gave up, Confessed like flesh and blood. We could reclaim,— Blockhead Bottini giving cause enough! But no,—we 'll take it as spontaneously Confessed: we 'll have the murder beyond doubt. Ah, fortunate (the poet's word reversed) Inasmuch as we know our happiness! Had the antagonist left dubiety, Here were we proving murder a mere myth, And Guido innocent, ignorant, absent,—ay, Absent! He was—why, where should Christian be?— Engaged in visiting his proper church, The duty of us all at Christmas-time, When Caponsacchi, the seducer, stung To madness by his relegation, cast About him and contrived a remedy In murder: since opprobrium broke afresh, By birth o' the babe, on him the imputed sire. He it was quietly sought to smother up His shame and theirs together,—killed the three, And fled—(go seek him where you please to search)— Just at the time when Guido, touched by grace, Devotions ended, hastened to the spot, Meaning to pardon his convicted wife, "Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace!"— And thus arrived i' the nick of time to catch The charge o' the killing, though great-heartedly He came but to forgive and bring to life. Doubt ye the force of Christmas on the soul? "Is thine eye evil because mine is good?" So, doubtless, had I needed argue here But for the full confession round and sound! Thus might you wrong some kingly alchemist,— Whose concern should not be with showing brass Transmuted into gold, but triumphing, Rather, about his gold changed out of brass, Not vulgarly to the mere sight and touch, But in the idea, the spiritual display, The apparition buoyed by winged words Hovering above its birthplace in the brain,— Thus would you wrong this excellent personage Forced, by the gross need, to gird apron round, Plant forge, light fire, ply bellows,—in a word, Demonstrate: when a faulty pipkin's crack May disconcert you his presumptive truth! Here were I hanging to the testimony Of one of these poor rustics—four, ye gods! Whom the first taste of friend the Fiscal's cord May drive into undoing my whole speech, Undoing, on his birthday,—what is worse,— My son and heir! I wonder, all the same, Not so much at those peasants' lack of heart; But—Guido Franceschini, nobleman, Bear pain no better! Everybody knows It used once, when my father was a boy, To form a proper, nay, important point I' the education of our well-born youth, That they took torture handsomely at need, Without confessing in this clownish guise. Each noble had his rack for private use, And would, for the diversion of a guest, Bid it be set up in the yard of arms, And take thereon his hour of exercise,— Command the varletry stretch, strain their best, While friends looked on, admired my lord could smile 'Mid tugging which had caused an ox to roar. Men are no longer men! —And advocates No longer Farinacci, let us add, If I one more time fly from point proposed! So, Vindicatio—here begins the speech! Honoris causa; thus we make our stand: Honor in us had injury, we prove. Or if we fail to prove such injury More than misprision of the fact,—what then? It is enough, authorities declare, If the result, the deed in question now, Be caused by confidence that injury Is veritable and no figment: since, What, though proved fancy afterward, seemed fact At the time, they argue shall excuse result. That which we do, persuaded of good cause For what we do, hold justifiable!— So casuists bid: man, bound to do his best, They would not have him leave that best undone And mean to do his worst,—though fuller light Show best was worst and worst would have been best. Act by the present light!—they ask of man. Ultra quod hic non agitur, besides It is not anyway our business here, De probatione adulterii, To prove what we thought crime was crime indeed, Ad irrogandam pœnam, and require Its punishment: such nowise do we seek: Sed ad effectum, but 't is our concern, Excusandi, here to simply find excuse, Occisorem, for who did the killing-work, Et ad illius defensionem, (mark The difference) and defend the man, just that! Quo casu levior probatio Exuberaret, to which end far lighter proof Suffices than the prior case would claim: It should be always harder to convict, In short, than to establish innocence. Therefore we shall demonstrate first of all That Honor is a gift of God to man Precious beyond compare: which natural sense Of human rectitude and purity,— Which white, man's soul is born with,—brooks no touch: Therefore, the sensitivest spot of all, Wounded by any wafture breathed from black, Is—honor within honor, like the eye Centred i' the ball—the honor of our wife. Touch us o' the pupil of our honor, then, Not actually,—since so you slay outright,— But by a gesture simulating touch, Presumable mere menace of such taint,— This were our warrant for eruptive ire "To whose dominion I impose no end." (Virgil, now, should not be too difficult To Cinoncino,—say, the early books. Pen, truce to further gambols! Poscimur!) Nor can revenge of injury done here To the honor proved the life and soul of us, Be too excessive, too extravagant: Such wrong seeks and must have complete revenge. Show we this, first, on the mere natural ground: Begin at the beginning, and proceed Incontrovertibly. Theodoric, In an apt sentence Cassiodorus cites, Propounds for basis of all household law— I hardly recollect it, but it ends, "Bird mates with bird, beast genders with his like, And brooks no interference." Bird and beast? The very insects ... if they wive or no, How dare I say when Aristotle doubts? But the presumption is they likewise wive, At least the nobler sorts; for take the bee As instance,—copying King Solomon,— Why that displeasure of the bee to aught Which savors of incontinency, makes The unchaste a very horror to the hive? Whence comes it bees obtain their epithet Of castæ apes, notably "the chaste"? Because, ingeniously saith Scaliger, (The young sage,—see his book of table-talk) "Such is their hatred of immodest act, They fall upon the offender, sting to death." I mind a passage much confirmative I' the Idyllist (though I read him Latinized)— "Why," asks a shepherd, "is this bank unfit For celebration of our vernal loves?" "Oh swain," returns the instructed shepherdess, "Bees swarm here, and would quick resent our warmth!" Only cold-blooded fish lack instinct here, Nor gain nor guard connubiality: But beasts, quadrupedal, mammiferous, Do credit to their beasthood: witness him That Ælian cites, the noble elephant, (Or if not Ælian, somebody as sage) Who seeing, much offence beneath his nose, His master's friend exceed in courtesy The due allowance to his master's wife, Taught them good manners and killed both at once, Making his master and the world admire. Indubitably, then, that master's self, Favored by circumstance, had done the same Or else stood clear rebuked by his own beast. Adeo, ut qui honorem spernit, thus, Who values his own honor not a straw,— Et non recuperare curat, nor Labors by might and main to salve its wound, Se ulciscendo, by revenging him, Nil differat a belluis, is a brute, Quinimo irrationabilior Ipsismet belluis, nay, contrariwise, Much more irrational than brutes themselves, Should be considered, reputetur! How? If a poor animal feel honor smart, Taught by blind instinct nature plants in him, Shall man,—confessed creation's masterstroke, Nay, intellectual glory, nay, a god, Nay, of the nature of my Judges here,— Shall man prove the insensible, the block, The blot o' the earth he crawls on to disgrace? (Come, that 's both solid and poetic!) Man Derogate, live for the low tastes alone, Mean creeping cares about the animal life? Absit such homage to vile flesh and blood! (May Gigia have remembered, nothing stings Fried liver out of its monotony Of richness, like a root of fennel, chopped Fine with the parsley: parsley-sprigs, I said— Was there need I should say "and fennel too"? But no, she cannot have been so obtuse! To our argument! The fennel will be chopped.) From beast to man next mount we—ay, but, mind, Still mere man, not yet Christian,—that, in time! Not too fast, mark you! 'T is on Heathen grounds We next defend our act: then, fairly urge— If this were done of old, in a green tree, Allowed in the Spring rawness of our kind, What may be licensed in the Autumn dry And ripe, the latter harvest-tide of man? If, with his poor and primitive half-lights, The Pagan, whom our devils served for gods, Could stigmatize the breach of marriage-vow As that which blood, blood only might efface,— Absolve the husband, outraged, whose revenge Anticipated law, plied sword himself,— How with the Christian in full blaze of noon? Shall not he rather double penalty, Multiply vengeance, than, degenerate, Let privilege be minished, droop, decay? Therefore set forth at large the ancient law! Superabundant the examples be To pick and choose from. The Athenian Code, Solon's, the name is serviceable,—then, The Laws of the Twelve Tables, that fifteenth,— "Romulus" likewise rolls out round and large. The Julian; the Cornelian: Gracchus' Law: So old a chime, the bells ring of themselves! Spreti can set that going if he please, I point you, for my part, the belfry plain, Intent to rise from dusk, diluculum, Into the Christian day shall broaden next. First, the fit compliment to His Holiness Happily reigning: then sustain the point— All that was long ago declared as law By the natural revelation, stands confirmed By Apostle and Evangelist and Saint,— To wit—that Honor is man's supreme good. Why should I balk Saint Jerome of his phrase? Ubi honor non est, where no honor is, Ibi contemptus est; and where contempt, Ibi injuria frequens; and where that, The frequent injury, ibi et indignatio; And where the indignation, ibi quies Nulla: and where there is no quietude, Why, ibi, there, the mind is often cast Down from the heights where it proposed to dwell, Mens a proposito sæpe dejicitur. And naturally the mind is so cast down, Since harder 't is, quum difficilius sit, Iram cohibere, to coerce one's wrath, Quam miracula facere, than work miracles,— So Gregory smiles in his First Dialogue. Whence we infer, the ingenuous soul, the man Who makes esteem of honor and repute, Whenever honor and repute are touched, Arrives at term of fury and despair, Loses all guidance from the reason-check: As in delirium or a frenzy-fit, Nor fury nor despair he satiates,—no, Not even if he attain the impossible, O'erturn the hinges of the universe To annihilate—not whoso caused the smart Solely, the author simply of his pain, But the place, the memory, vituperii, O' the shame and scorn: quia,—says Solomon, (The Holy Spirit speaking by his mouth In Proverbs, the sixth chapter near the end) —Because, the zeal and fury of a man, Zelus et furor viri, will not spare, Non parcet, in the day of his revenge, In die vindictæ, nor will acquiesce, Nec acquiescet, through a person's prayers, Cujusdam precibus,—nec suscipiet, Nor yet take, pro redemptione, for Redemption, dona plurium, gifts of friends, Mere money-payment to compound for ache. Who recognizes not my client's case? Whereto, as strangely consentaneous here, Adduce Saint Bernard in the Epistle writ To Robertulus, his nephew: "Too much grief, Dolor quippe nimius non deliberat, Does not excogitate propriety, Non verecundatur, nor knows shame at all, Non consulit rationem, nor consults Reason, non dignitatis metuit Damnum, nor dreads the loss of dignity; Modum et ordinem, order and the mode, Ignorat, it ignores:" why, trait for trait, Was ever portrait limned so like the life? (By Cavalier Maratta, shall I say? I hear he 's first in reputation now.) Yes, that of Samson in the Sacred Text: That 's not so much the portrait as the man! Samson in Gaza was the antetype Of Guido at Rome: observe the Nazarite! Blinded he was,—an easy thing to bear: Intrepidly he took imprisonment, Gyves, stripes, and daily labor at the mill: But when he found himself, i' the public place, Destined to make the common people sport, Disdain burned up with such an impetus I' the breast of him, that, all the man one fire, Moriatur, roared he, let my soul's self die, Anima mea, with the Philistines! So, pulled down pillar, roof, and death and all, Multosque plures interfecit, ay, And many more he killed thus, moriens, Dying, quam vivus, than in his whole life, Occiderat, he ever killed before. Are these things writ for no example, Sirs? One instance more, and let me see who doubts! Our Lord himself, made all of mansuetude, Sealing the sum of sufferance up, received Opprobrium, contumely and buffeting Without complaint: but when he found himself Touched in his honor never so little for once, Then outbroke indignation pent before— "Honorem meum nemini dabo!" "No, My honor I to nobody will give!" And certainly the example so hath wrought, That whosoever, at the proper worth, Apprises worldly honor and repute, Esteems it nobler to die honored man Beneath Mannaia, than live centuries Disgraced in the eye o' the world. We find Saint Paul No recreant to this faith delivered once: "Far worthier were it that I died," cries he, Expedit mihi magis mori, "than That any one should make my glory void," Quam ut gloriam meam quis evacuet! See, ad Corinthienses: whereupon Saint Ambrose makes a comment with much fruit, Doubtless my Judges long since laid to heart, So I desist from bringing forward here. (I can't quite recollect it.) Have I proved Satis superque, both enough and to spare, That Revelation old and new admits The natural man may effervesce in ire, O'erflood earth, o'erfroth heaven with foamy rage, At the first puncture to his self-respect? Then, Sirs, this Christian dogma, this law-bud Full-blown now, soon to bask the absolute flower Of Papal doctrine in our blaze of day,— Bethink you, shall we miss one promise-streak, One doubtful birth of dawn crepuscular, One dew-drop comfort to humanity, Now that the chalice teems with noonday wine? Yea, argue Molinists who bar revenge— Referring just to what makes out our case! Under old dispensation, argue they, The doom of the adulterous wife was death, Stoning by Moses' law. "Nay, stone her not, Put her away!" next legislates our Lord; And last of all, "Nor yet divorce a wife!" Ordains the Church, "she typifies ourself, The Bride no fault shall cause to fall from Christ." Then, as no jot nor tittle of the Law Has passed away—which who presumes to doubt? As not one word of Christ is rendered vain— Which, could it be though heaven and earth should pass? —Where do I find my proper punishment For my adulterous wife, I humbly ask Of my infallible Pope,—who now remits Even the divorce allowed by Christ in lieu Of lapidation Moses licensed me? The Gospel checks the Law which throws the stone, The Church tears the divorce-bill Gospel grants: Shall wives sin and enjoy impunity? What profits me the fulness of the days, The final dispensation, I demand, Unless Law, Gospel, and the Church subjoin, "But who hath barred thee primitive revenge, Which, like fire damped and dammed up, burns more fierce? Use thou thy natural privilege of man, Else wert thou found like those old ingrate Jews, Despite the manna-banquet on the board, A-longing after melons, cucumbers, And such like trash of Egypt left behind!" (There was one melon had improved our soup: But did not Cinoncino need the rind To make a boat with? So I seem to think.) Law, Gospel, and the Church—from these we leap To the very last revealment, easy rule Befitting the well-born and thorough-bred O' the happy day we live in, not the dark O' the early rude and acorn-eating race. "Behold," quoth James, "we bridle in a horse And turn his body as we would thereby!" Yea, but we change the bit to suit the growth, And rasp our colt's jaw with a rugged spike, We hasten to remit our managed steed Who wheels round at persuasion of a touch. Civilization bows to decency, The acknowledged use and wont: 't is manners—mild But yet imperative law—which make the man. Thus do we pay the proper compliment To rank, and that society of Rome Hath so obliged us by its interest, Taken our client's part instinctively, As unaware defending its own cause. What dictum doth Society lay down I' the case of one who hath a faithless wife? Wherewithal should the husband cleanse his way? Be patient and forgive? Oh, language fails,— Shrinks from depicturing his turpitude! For if wronged husband raise not hue and cry, Quod si maritus de adulterio non Conquereretur, he 's presumed a—foh! Presumitur leno: so, complain he must. But how complain? At your tribunal, lords? Far weighter challenge suits your sense, I wot! You sit not to have gentlemen propose Questions gentility can itself discuss. Did not you prove that to our brother Paul? The Abate, quum judicialiter Prosequeretur, when he tried the law, Guidonis causam, in Count Guido's case, Accidit ipsi, this befell himself, Quod risum moverit et cachinnos, that He moved to mirth and cachinnation, all Or nearly all, fere in omnibus Etiam sensatis et cordatis, men Strong-sensed, sound-hearted, nay, the very Court, Ipsismet in judicibus, I might add, Non tamen dicam. In a cause like this, So multiplied were reasons pro and con, Delicate, intertwisted and obscure, That Law refused loan of a finger-tip To unravel, readjust the hopeless twine, Since, half-a-dozen steps outside Law's seat, There stood a foolish trifler with a tool A-dangle to no purpose by his side, Had clearly cut the embroilment in a trice. Asserunt enim unanimiter Doctores, for the Doctors all assert, That husbands, quod mariti, must be held Viles, cornuti reputantur, vile, Fronts branching forth a florid infamy, Si propriis manibus, if with their own hands, Non sumunt, they fail straight to take revenge, Vindictam, but expect the deed be done By the Court—expectant illam fieri Per judices, qui summopere rident, which Gives an enormous guffaw for reply, Et cachinnantur. For he ran away, Deliquit enim, just that he might 'scape The censure of both counsellors and crowd, Ut vulgi et Doctorum evitaret Censuram, and lest so he superadd To loss of honor ignominy too, Et sic ne istam quoque ignominiam Amisso honori superadderet. My lords, my lords, the inconsiderate step Was—we referred ourselves to Law at all! Twit me not with, "Law else had punished you!" Each punishment of the extra-legal step, To which the high-born preferably revert, Is ever for some oversight, some slip I' the taking vengeance, not for vengeance' self. A good thing, done unhandsomely, turns ill; And never yet lacked ill the law's rebuke. For pregnant instance, let us contemplate The luck of Leonardus,—see at large Of Sicily's Decisions sixty-first. This Leonard finds his wife is false: what then? He makes her own son snare her, and entice Out of the town walls to a private walk, Wherein he slays her with commodity. They find her body half-devoured by dogs: Leonard is tried, convicted, punished, sent To labor in the galleys seven years long: Why? For the murder? Nay, but for the mode! Malus modus occidendi, ruled the Court, An ugly mode of killing, nothing more! Another fructuous sample,—see "De Re Criminali," in Matthæus' divine piece. Another husband, in no better plight, Simulates absence, thereby tempts his wife; On whom he falls, out of sly ambuscade, Backed by a brother of his, and both of them Armed to the teeth with arms that law had blamed. Nimis dolose, overwilily, Fuisse operatum, did they work, Pronounced the law: had all been fairly done Law had not found him worthy, as she did, Of four years' exile. Why cite more? Enough Is good as a feast—(unless a birthday-feast For one's Cinuccio) so, we finish here. My lords, we rather need defend ourselves Inasmuch as, for a twinkling of an eye, We hesitatingly appealed to law,— Than need deny that, on mature advice, We blushingly bethought us, bade revenge Back to its simple proper private way Of decent self-dealt gentlemanly death. Judges, here is the law, and here beside, The testimony! Look to it! Pause and breathe! So far is only too plain; we must watch: Bottini will scarce hazard an attack Here: best anticipate the fellow's play, And guard the weaker places—warily ask, What if considerations of a sort, Reasons of a kind, arise from out the strange Peculiar unforeseen new circumstance Of this our (candor owns) abnormal act, To bar the right of us revenging so? "Impunity were otherwise your meed: Go slay your wife and welcome,"—may be urged,— "But why the innocent old couple slay, Pietro, Violante? You may do enough, Not too much, not exceed the golden mean: Neither brute-beast nor Pagan, Gentile, Jew, Nor Christian, no nor votarist of the mode, Is justified to push revenge so far!" No, indeed? Why, thou very sciolist! The actual wrong, Pompilia seemed to do, Was virtual wrong done by the parents here— Imposing her upon us as their child— Themselves allow: then, her fault was their fault, Her punishment be theirs accordingly! But wait a little, sneak not off so soon! Was this cheat solely harm to Guido, pray? The precious couple you call innocent,— Why, they were felons that Law failed to clutch, Qui ut fraudarent, who that they might rob, Legitime vocatos, folk law called, Ad fidei commissum, true heirs to the Trust, Partum supposuerunt, feigned this birth, Immemores reos factos esse, blind To the fact that, guilty, they incurred thereby, Ultimi supplicii, hanging or what 's worse. Do you blame us that we turn Law's instruments, Not mere self-seekers,—mind the public weal, Nor make the private good our sole concern? That having—shall I say—secured a thief, Not simply we recover from his pouch The stolen article our property, But also pounce upon our neighbor's purse We opportunely find reposing there, And do him justice while we right ourselves? He owes us, for our part, a drubbing say, But owes our neighbor just a dance i' the air Under the gallows: so, we throttle him. That neighbor's Law, that couple are the Thief, We are the over-ready to help Law— Zeal of her house hath eaten us up: for which, Can it be, Law intends to eat up us, Crudum Priamum, devour poor Priam raw, ('T was Jupiter's own joke,) with babes to boot, Priamique pisinnos, in Homeric phrase? Shame!——and so ends my period prettily. But even,—prove the pair not culpable, Free as unborn babe from connivance at, Participation in, their daughter's fault: Ours the mistake. Is that a rare event? Non semel, it is anything but rare, In contingentia facti, that by chance, Impunes evaserunt, go scot-free, Qui, such well-meaning people as ourselves, Justo dolore moti, who aggrieved With cause, apposuerunt manus, lay Rough hands, in innocentes, on wrong heads. Cite we an illustrative case in point: Mulier Smirnea quædam, good my lords, A gentlewoman lived in Smyrna once, Virum et filium ex eo conceptum, who, Both husband and her son begot by him, Killed, interfecerat, ex quo, because, Vir filium suum perdiderat, her spouse Had been beforehand with her, killed her son, Matrimonii primi, of a previous bed. Deinde accusata, then accused, Apud Dolabellam, before him that sat Proconsul, nec duabus cædibus Contaminatam liberare, nor To liberate a woman doubly-dyed With murder, voluit, made he up his mind, Nec condemnare, nor to doom to death, Justo dolore impulsam, one impelled By just grief; sed remisit, but sent her up Ad Areopagum, to the Hill of Mars, Sapientissimorum judicum Cœtum, to that assembly of the sage Paralleled only by my judges here; Ubi, cognito de causa, where, the cause Well weighed, responsum est, they gave reply, Ut ipsa et accusator, that both sides O' the suit, redirent, should come back again, Post centum annos, after a hundred years, For judgment; et sic, by which sage decree, Duplici parricidio rea, one Convicted of a double parricide, Quamvis etiam innocentem, though in truth Out of the pair, one innocent at least She, occidisset, plainly had put to death, Undequaque, yet she altogether 'scaped, Evasit impunis. See the case at length In Valerius, fittingly styled Maximus, That eighth book of his Memorable Facts. Nor Cyriacus cites beside the mark: Similiter uxor quæ mandaverat, Just so, a lady who had taken care, Homicidium viri, that her lord be killed, Ex denegatione debiti. For denegation of a certain debt, Matrimonialis, he was loth to pay, Fuit pecuniaria mulcta, was Amerced in a pecuniary mulet, Punita, et ad pœnam, and to pains, Temporalem, for a certain space of time, In monasterio, in a convent. (Ay, In monasterio! He mismanages In with the ablative, the accusative! I had hoped to have hitched the villain into verse For a gift, this very day, a complete list O' the prepositions each with proper case, Telling a story, long was in my head. What prepositions take the accusative? Ad, to or at—who saw the cat?—down to Ob, for, because of, keep her claws off! Tush! Law in a man takes the whole liberty: The muse is fettered: just as Ovid found!) And now, sea widens and the coast is clear. What of the dubious act you bade excuse? Surely things broaden, brighten, till at length Remains—so far from act that needs defence— Apology to make for act delayed One minute, let alone eight mortal months Of hesitation! "Why procrastinate?" (Out with it, my Bottinius, ease thyself!) "Right, promptly done, is twice right: right delayed Turns wrong. We grant you should have killed your wife, But killed o' the moment, at the meeting her In company with the priest: then did the tongue O' the Brazen Head give license, 'Time is now!' Wait to make mind up? 'Time is past' it peals. Friend, you are competent to mastery O' the passions that confessedly explain An outbreak: you allow an interval, And then break out as if time's clock still clanged. You have forfeited your chance, and flat you fall Into the commonplace category Of men bound to go softly all their days, Obeying law." Now, which way make response? What was the answer Guido gave, himself? —That so to argue came of ignorance How honor bears a wound: "For, wound," said he, "My body, and the smart soon mends and ends: While, wound my soul where honor sits and rules, Longer the sufferance, stronger grows the pain, Being ex incontinenti, fresh as first." But try another tack, urge common sense By way of contrast: say—Too true, my lords! We did demur, awhile did hesitate: Since husband sure should let a scruple speak Ere he slay wife,—for his own safety, lords! Carpers abound in this misjudging world: Moreover, there 's a nicety in law That seems to justify them should they carp. Suppose the source of injury a son,— Father may slay such son yet run no risk: Why graced with such a privilege? Because A father so incensed with his own child, Or must have reason, or believe he has; Quia semper, seeing that in such event, Presumitur, the law is bound suppose, Quod capiat pater, that the sire must take, Bonum consilium pro filio, The best course as to what befits his boy, Through instinct, ex instinctu, of mere love, Amoris, and, paterni, fatherhood; Quam confidentiam, which confidence, Non habet, law declines to entertain, De viro, of the husband: where finds he An instinct that compels him love his wife? Rather is he presumably her foe. So, let him ponder long in this bad world Ere do the simplest act of justice. But Again—and here we brush Bottini's breast— Object you, "See the danger of delay, Suppose a man murdered my friend last month: Had I come up and killed him for his pains In rage, I had done right, allows the law: I meet him now and kill him in cold blood, I do wrong, equally allows the law: Wherein do actions differ, yours and mine?" In plenitudine intellectus es? Hast thy wits, Fisc? To take such slayer's life, Returns it life to thy slain friend at all? Had he stolen ring instead of stabbing friend,— To-day, to-morrow, or next century, Meeting the thief, thy ring upon his thumb, Thou justifiably hadst wrung it thence: So, couldst thou wrench thy friend's life back again, Though prisoned in the bosom of his foe, Why, law would look complacent on thy wrath. Our case is, that the thing we lost, we found: The honor, we were robbed of eight months since, Being recoverable at any day By death of the delinquent. Go thy ways! Ere thou hast learned law, will be much to do, As said the gaby while he shod the goose. Nay, if you urge me, interval was none! From the inn to the villa—blank or else a bar Of adverse and contrarious incident Solid between us and our just revenge! What with the priest who flourishes his blade, The wife who like a fury flings at us, The crowd—and then the capture, the appeal To Rome, the journey there, the jaunting thence To shelter at the House of Convertites, The visits to the Villa, and so forth, Where was one minute left us all this while To put in execution that revenge We planned o' the instant?—as it were, plumped down O' the spot, some eight months since, which round sound egg, Rome, more propitious than our nest, should hatch! Object not, "You reached Rome on Christmas-eve, And, despite liberty to act at once, Waited a whole and indecorous week!" Hath so the Molinism, the canker, lords, Eaten to our bone? Is no religion left? No care for aught held holy by the Church? What, would you have us skip and miss those Feasts O' the Natal Time, must we go prosecute Secular business on a sacred day? Should not the merest charity expect, Setting our poor concerns aside for once, We hurried to the song matutinal I' the Sistine, and pressed forward for the Mass The Cardinal that 's Camerlengo chants, Then rushed on to the blessing of the Hat And Rapier, which the Pope sends to what prince Has done most detriment to the Infidel— And thereby whetted courage if 't were blunt? Meantime, allow we kept the house a week, Suppose not we were idle in our mew! Picture us raging here and raving there— "'Money?' I need none. 'Friends?' The word is null. Restore the white was on that shield of mine Borne at" ... wherever might be shield to bear. "I see my grandsire, he who fought so well At" ... here find out and put in time and place, Or else invent the fight his grandsire fought: "I see this! I see that!" (See nothing else, Or I shall scarce see lamb's fry in an hour! What to the uncle, as I bid advance The smoking dish? "Fry suits a tender tooth! Behooves we care a little for our kin— You, Sir,—who care so much for cousinship As come to your poor loving nephew's feast!" He has the reversion of a long lease yet— Land to bequeath! He loves lamb's fry, I know!) Here fall to be considered those same six Qualities; what Bottini needs must call So many aggravations of our crime, Parasite-growth upon mere murder's back. We summarily might dispose of such By some off-hand and jaunty fling, some skit—? "So, since there 's proved no crime to aggravate, A fico for your aggravations, Fisc!" No,—handle mischief rather,—play with spells Were meant to raise a spirit, and laugh the while We show that did he rise we stand his match! Therefore, first aggravation: we made up— Over and above our simple murderous selves— A regular assemblage of armed men, Coadunatio armatorum,—ay, Unluckily it was the very judge That sits in judgment on our cause to-day Who passed the law as Governor of Rome: "Four men armed"—though for lawful purpose, mark! Much more for an acknowledged crime—"shall die." We five were armed to the teeth, meant murder too? Why, that 's the very point that saves us, Fisc! Let me instruct you. Crime nor done nor meant,— You punish still who arm and congregate: For wherefore use bad means to a good end? Crime being meant not done,—you punish still The means to crime, whereon you haply pounce, Though accident have balked them of effect. But crime not only compassed but complete, Meant and done too? Why, since you have the end, Be that your sole concern, nor mind those means No longer to the purpose! Murdered we? (—Which, that our luck was in the present case, Quod contigisse in præsenti casu, Is palpable, manibus palpatum est—) Make murder out against us, nothing else! Of many crimes committed with a view To one main crime, Law overlooks the less, Intent upon the large. Suppose a man Having in view commission of a theft, Climbs the town-wall: 't is for the theft he hangs, In case he stands convicted of such theft: Law remits whipping, due to who clomb wall Through bravery or wantonness alone, Just to dislodge a daw's nest, plant a flag. So I interpret you the manly mind Of him about to judge both you and me,— Our Governor, who, being no Fisc, my Fisc, Cannot have blundered on ineptitude! Next aggravation,—that the arms themselves Were specially of such forbidden sort Through shape or length or breadth, as, prompt, Law plucks From single hand of solitary man, Making him pay the carriage with his life: Delatio armorum, arms against the rule, Contra formam constitutionis, of Pope Alexander's blessed memory. Such are the poniards with the double prong, Horn-like, when tines make bold the antlered buck, Each prong of brittle glass—wherewith to stab And break off short and so let fragment stick Fast in the flesh to baffle surgery: Such being the Genoese blade with hooked edge That did us service at the villa here. Sed parcat mihi tam eximius vir, But,—let so rare a personage forgive,— Fisc, thy objection is a foppery! Thy charge runs that we killed three innocents: Killed, dost see? Then, if killed, what matter how?— By stick or stone, by sword or dagger, tool Long or tool short, round or triangular— Poor slain folk find small comfort in the choice! Means to an end, means to an end, my Fisc! Nature cries out, "Take the first arms you find!" Furor ministrat arma: where 's a stone? Unde mî lapidem, where darts for me? Unde sagittas? But subdue the bard And rationalize a little. Eight months since, Had we, or had we not, incurred your blame For letting 'scape unpunished this bad pair? I think I proved that in last paragraph! Why did we so? Because our courage failed. Wherefore? Through lack of arms to fight the foe: We had no arms or merely lawful ones, An unimportant sword and blunderbuss, Against a foe, pollent in potency, The amasius, and our vixen of a wife. Well then, how culpably do we gird loin And once more undertake the high emprise, Unless we load ourselves this second time With handsome superfluity of arms, Since better is "too much" than "not enough," And "plus non vitiat," too much does no harm, Except in mathematics, sages say. Gather instruction from the parable! At first we are advised—"A lad hath here Seven barley loaves and two small fishes: what Is that among so many?" Aptly asked: But put that question twice and, quite as apt, The answer is, "Fragments, twelve baskets full!" And, while we speak of superabundance, fling We word by the way to fools who cast their flout On Guido—"Punishment were pardoned him, But here the punishment exceeds offence: He might be just, but he was cruel too!" Why, grant there seems a kind of cruelty In downright stabbing people he could maim, (If so you stigmatize the stern and strict) Still, Guido meant no cruelty—may plead Transgression of his mandate, over-zeal O' the part of his companions: all he craved Was, they should fray the faces of the folk, Merely disfigure, nowise make them die. Solummodo fassus est, he owns no more, Dedisse mandatum, than that he desired, Ad sfrisiandum, dicam, that they hack And hew, i' the customary phrase, his wife, Uxorem tantum, and no harm beside. If his instructions then be misconceived, Nay, disobeyed, impute you blame to him? Cite me no Panicollus to the point, As adverse! Oh, I quite expect his case— How certain noble youths of Sicily Having good reason to mistrust their wives, Killed them and were absolved in consequence: While others who had gone beyond the need By mutilation of each paramour— As Galba in the Horatian satire grieved —These were condemned to the galleys, cast for guilt Exceeding simple murder of a wife. But why? Because of ugliness, and not Cruelty, in the said revenge, I trow! Ex causa abscissionis partium; Qui nempe id facientes reputantur Naturæ inimici, man revolts Against them as the natural enemy. Pray, grant to one who meant to slit the nose And slash the cheek and slur the mouth, at most, A somewhat more humane award than these Obtained, these natural enemies of man! Objectum funditus corruit, flat you fall, My Fisc! I waste no kick on you, but pass. Third aggravation: that our act was done— Not in the public street, where safety lies, Not in the by-place, caution may avoid, Wood, cavern, desert, spots contrived for crime,— But in the very house, home, nook and nest, O' the victims, murdered in their dwelling-place, In domo ac habitatione propria, Where all presumably is peace and joy. The spider, crime, pronounce we twice a pest When, creeping from congenial cottage, she Taketh hold with her hands, to horrify His household more, i' the palace of the king. All three were housed and safe and confident. Moreover, the permission that our wife Should have at length domum pro carcere, Her own abode in place of prison—why, We ourselves granted, by our other self And proxy Paolo: did we make such grant, Meaning a lure?—elude the vigilance O' the jailer, lead her to commodious death, While we ostensibly relented? Ay, Just so did we, nor otherwise, my Fisc! Is vengeance lawful? We demand our right, But find it will be questioned or refused By jailer, turnkey, hangdog,—what know we? Pray, how is it we should conduct ourselves? To gain our private right—break public peace, Do you bid us?—trouble order with our broils? Endanger ... shall I shrink to own ... ourselves?— Who want no broken head nor bloody nose (While busied slitting noses, breaking heads) From the first tipstaff that may interfere! Nam quicquid sit, for howsoever it be, An de consensu nostro, if with leave Or not, a monasterio, from the nuns, Educta esset, she had been led forth, Potuimus id dissimulare, we May well have granted leave in pure pretence, Ut aditum habere, that thereby An entry we might compass, a free move Potuissemus, to her easy death, Ad eam occidendam. Privacy O' the hearth, and sanctitude of home, say you? Shall we give man's abode more privilege Than God's?—for in the churches where he dwells, In quibus assistit Regum Rex, by means Of his essence, per essentiam, all the same, Et nihilominus, therein, in eis, Ex justa via delinquens, whoso dares To take a liberty on ground enough, Is pardoned, excusatur: that 's our case— Delinquent through befitting cause. You hold, To punish a false wife in her own house Is graver than, what happens every day, To hale a debtor from his hiding-place In church protected by the Sacrament? To this conclusion have I brought my Fisc? Foxes have holes, and fowls o' the air their nests; Praise you the impiety that follows, Fisc? Shall false wife yet have where to lay her head? "Contra Fiscum definitum est!" He's done! "Surge et scribe," make a note of it! —If I may dally with Aquinas' word. Or in the death-throe does he mutter still, Fourth aggravation, that we changed our garb, And rusticized ourselves with uncouth hat, Rough vest and goatskin wrappage; murdered thus Mutatione vestium, in disguise, Whereby mere murder got complexed with wile, Turned homicidium ex insidiis? Fisc, How often must I round thee in the ears— All means are lawful to a lawful end? Concede he had the right to kill his wife: The Count indulged in a travesty; why? De ilia ut vindictam sumeret, That on her he might lawful vengeance take, Commodius, with more ease, et tutius, And safelier: wants he warrant for the step? Read to thy profit how the Apostle once For ease and safety, when Damascus raged, Was let down in a basket by the wall, To 'scape the malice of the governor (Another sort of Governor boasts Rome!) —Many are of opinion,—covered close, Concealed with—what except that very cloak He left behind at Troas afterward? I shall not add a syllable: Molinists may! Well, have we more to manage? Ay, indeed! Fifth aggravation, that our wife reposed Sub potestate judicis, beneath Protection of the judge,—her house was styled A prison, and his power became its guard In lieu of wall and gate and bolt and bar. This is a tough point, shrewd, redoubtable: Because we have to supplicate that judge Shall overlook wrong done the judgment-seat. Now, I might suffer my own nose be pulled, As man: but then as father ... if the Fisc Touched one hair of my boy who held my hand In confidence he could not come to harm Crossing the Corso, at my own desire, Going to see those bodies in the church— What would you say to that, Don Hyacinth? This is the sole and single knotty point: For, bid Tommati blink his interest, You laud his magnanimity the while: But balk Tommati's office,—he talks big! "My predecessors in the place,—those sons O' the prophets that may hope succeed me here,— Shall I diminish their prerogative? Count Guido Franceschini's honor!—well, Has the Governor of Rome none?" You perceive, The cards are all against us. Make a push, Kick over table, as shrewd gamesters do! We, do you say, encroach upon the rights, Deny the omnipotence o' the Judge forsooth? We, who have only been from first to last Intending that his purpose should prevail, Nay more, at times, anticipating it At risk of his rebuke? But wait awhile! Cannot we lump this with the sixth and last Of the aggravations—that the Majesty O' the Sovereign here received a wound? to wit, Læsa Majestas, since our violence Was out of envy to the course of law, In odium litis? We out short thereby Three pending suits, promoted by ourselves I' the main,—which worsens crime, accedit ad Exasperationem criminis! Yes, here the eruptive wrath with full effect! How, did not indignation chain my tongue, Could I repel this last, worst charge of all! (There is a porcupine to barbecue; Gigia can jug a rabbit well enough, With sour-sweet sauce and pine-pips; but, good Lord, Suppose the devil instigate the wench To stew, not roast him? Stew my porcupine? If she does, I know where his quills shall stick! Come, I must go myself and see to things: I cannot stay much longer stewing here.) Our stomach ... I mean, our soul is stirred within, And we want words. We wounded Majesty? Fall under such a censure, we?—who yearned So much that Majesty dispel the cloud And shine on us with healing on her wings, That we prayed Pope Majestas' very self To anticipate a little the tardy pack, Bell us forth deep the authoritative bay Should start the beagles into sudden yelp Unisonous,—and, Gospel leading Law, Grant there assemble in our own behoof A Congregation, a particular Court, A few picked friends of quality and place, To hear the several matters in dispute, Causes big, little, and indifferent, Bred of our marriage like a mushroom-growth, All at once (can one brush off such too soon?) And so with laudable dispatch decide Whether we, in the main (to sink detail) Were one the Pope should hold fast or let go. "What, take the credit from the Law?" you ask? Indeed, we did! Law ducks to Gospel here: Why should Law gain the glory and pronounce A judgment shall immortalize the Pope? Yes: our self-abnegating policy Was Joab's—we would rouse our David's sloth, Bid him encamp against a city, sack A place whereto ourselves had long laid seige, Lest, taking it at last, it take our name Nor be styled Innocentinopolis. But no! The modesty was in alarm, The temperance refused to interfere, Returned us our petition with the word "Ad judices suos," "Leave him to his Judge!" As who should say, "Why trouble my repose? Why consult Peter in a simple case, Peter's wife's sister in her fever-fit Might solve as readily as the Apostle's self? Are my Tribunals posed by aught so plain? Hath not my Court a conscience? It is of age, Ask it!" We do ask,—but, inspire reply To the Court thou bidst me ask, as I have asked— Oh thou, who vigilantly dost attend To even the few, the ineffectual words Which rise from this our low and mundane sphere Up to thy region out of smoke and noise, Seeking corroboration from thy nod Who art all justice—which means mercy too, In a low noisy smoky world like ours Where Adam's sin made peccable his seed! We venerate the father of the flock, Whose last faint sands of life, the frittered gold, Fall noiselessly, yet all too fast, o' the cone And tapering heap of those collected years: Never have these been hurried in their flow, Though justice fain would jog reluctant arm, In eagerness to take the forfeiture Of guilty life: much less shall mercy sue In vain that thou let innocence survive, Precipitate no minim of the mass O' the all-so precious moments of thy life, By pushing Guido into death and doom! (Our Cardinal engages to go read The Pope my speech, and point its beauties out. They say, the Pope has one half-hour, in twelve, Of something like a moderate return Of the intellectuals,—never much to lose!— If I adroitly plant this passage there, The Fisc will find himself forestalled, I think, Though he stand, beat till the old ear-drum break! —Ah, boy of my own bowels, Hyacinth, Wilt ever catch the knack, requite the pains Of poor papa, become proficient too I' the how and why and when, the time to laugh, The time to weep, the time, again, to pray, And all the times prescribed by Holy Writ? Well, well, we fathers can but care, but cast Our bread upon the waters!) In a word, These secondary charges go to ground, Since secondary, and superfluous,—motes Quite from the main point: we did all and some, Little and much, adjunct and principal, Causa honoris. Is there such a cause As the sake of honor? By that sole test try Our action, nor demand if more or less, Because of the action's mode, we merit blame Or maybe deserve praise! The Court decides. Is the end lawful? It allows the means: What we may do, we may with safety do, And what means "safety" we ourselves must judge. Put case a person wrongs me past dispute: If my legitimate vengeance be a blow, Mistrusting my bare arm can deal that blow, I claim co-operation of a stick; Doubtful if stick be tough, I crave a sword; Diffident of ability in fence, I fee a friend, a swordsman to assist: Take one—he may be coward, fool or knave: Why not take fifty?—and if these exceed I' the due degree of drubbing, whom accuse But the first author of the aforesaid wrong Who put poor me to such a world of pains? Surgery would have just excised a wart; The patient made such pother, struggled so That the sharp instrument sliced nose and all. Taunt us not that our friends performed for pay! Ourselves had toiled for simple honor's sake: But country clowns want dirt they comprehend, The piece of gold! Our reasons, which suffice Ourselves, be ours alone; our piece of gold Be, to the rustic, reason he approves! We must translate our motives like our speech, Into the lower phrase that suits the sense O' the limitedly apprehensive. Let Each level have its language! Heaven speaks first To the angel, then the angel tames the word Down to the ear of Tobit: he, in turn, Diminishes the message to his dog, And finally that dog finds how the flea (Which else, importunate, might check his speed) Shall learn its hunger must have holiday, By application of his tongue or paw: So many varied sorts of language here, Each following each with pace to match the step, Haud passibus æquis! Talking of which flea, Reminds me I must put in special word For the poor humble following,—the four friends, Sicarii, our assassins caught and caged. Ourselves are safe in your approval now: Yet must we care for our companions, plead The cause o' the poor, the friends (of old-world faith) Who lie in tribulation for our sake. Pauperum Procurator is my style: I stand forth as the poor man's advocate: And when we treat of what concerns the poor, Et cum agatur de pauperibus, In bondage, carceratis, for their sake, In eorum causis, natural piety, Pietas, ever ought to win the day, Triumphare debet, quia ipsi sunt, Because those very paupers constitute, Thesaurus Christi, all the wealth of Christ. Nevertheless I shall not hold you long With multiplicity of proofs, nor burn Candle at noontide, clarify the clear. There beams a case refulgent from our books— Castrensis, Butringarius, everywhere I find it burn to dissipate the dark. 'T is this: a husband had a friend, which friend Seemed to him over-friendly with his wife In thought and purpose,—I pretend no more. To justify suspicion or dispel, He bids his wife make show of giving heed, Semblance of sympathy—propose, in fine, A secret meeting in a private place. The friend, enticed thus, finds an ambuscade, To wit, the husband posted with a pack Of other friends, who fall upon the first And beat his love and life out both at once. These friends were brought to question for their help; Law ruled, "The husband being in the right, Who helped him in the right can scarce be wrong"— Opinio, an opinion every way, Multum tenenda cordi, heart should hold! When the inferiors follow as befits The lead o' the principal, they change their name, And, non dicuntur, are no longer called His mandatories, mandatorii, But helpmates, sed auxiliatores; since To that degree does honor's sake lend aid, Adeo honoris causa est efficax, That not alone, non solum, does it pour Itself out, se diffundat, on mere friends We bring to do our bidding of this sort, In mandatorios simplices, but sucks Along with it in wide and generous whirl, Sed etiam assassinii qualitate Qualificatos, people qualified By the quality of assassination's self, Dare I make use of such neologism, Ut utar verbo. Haste we to conclude: Of the other points that favor, leave some few For Spreti; such as the delinquents' youth. One of them falls short, by some months, of age Fit to be managed by the gallows; two May plead exemption from our law's award, Being foreigners, subjects of the Granduke— I spare that bone to Spreti, and reserve Myself the juicier breast of argument— Flinging the breast-blade i' the face o' the Fisc, Who furnished me the tidbit: he must needs Play off his privilege and rack the clowns,— And they, at instance of the rack, confess All four unanimously made resolve,— The night o' the murder, in brief minute snatched Behind the back of Guido as he fled,— That, since he had not kept his promise, paid The money for the murder on the spot, So, reaching home again, might please ignore The pact or pay them in improper coin,— They one and all resolved, these hopeful friends, 'T were best inaugurate the morrow's light, Nature recruited with her due repose, By killing Guido as he lay asleep Pillowed on wallet which contained their fee. I thank the Fisc for knowledge of this fact: What fact could hope to make more manifest Their rectitude, Guido's integrity? For who fails recognize the touching truth That these poor rustics bore no envy, hate, Malice nor yet uncharitableness Against the people they had put to death? In them, did such an act reward itself? All done was to deserve the simple pay, Obtain the bread clowns earn by sweat of brow, And missing which, they missed of every thing— Hence claimed pay, even at expense of life To their own lord, so little warped (admire!) By prepossession, such the absolute Instinct of equity in rustic souls! Whereas our Count, the cultivated mind, He, wholly rapt in his serene regard Of honor, he contemplating the sun, Who hardly marks if taper blink below, He, dreaming of no argument for death Except a vengeance worthy noble hearts,— Dared not so desecrate the deed, forsooth, Vulgarize vengeance, as defray its cost By money dug from out the dirty earth, Irritant mere, in Ovid's phrase, to ill. What though he lured base hinds by lucre's hope,— The only motive they could masticate, Milk for babes, not strong meat which men require? The deed done, those coarse hands were soiled enough, He spared them the pollution of the pay. So much for the allegement, thine, my Fisc, Quo nil absurdius, than which naught more mad, Excogitari potest, may be squeezed From out the cogitative brain of thee! And now, thou excellent the Governor! (Push to the peroration) cæterum Enixe supplico, I strive in prayer, Ut dominis meis, that unto the Court, Benigna fronte, with a gracious brow, Et oculis serenis, and mild eyes, Perpendere placeat, it may please them weigh, Quod dominus Guido, that our noble Count, Occidit, did the killing in dispute, Ut ejus honor tumulatus, that The honor of him buried fathom-deep In infamy, in infamia, might arise, Resurgeret, as ghost breaks sepulchre! Occidit, for he killed, uxorem, wife, Quia illi fuit, since she was to him, Opprobrio, a disgrace and nothing more! Et genitores, killed her parents too, Qui, who, postposita verecundia, Having thrown off all sort of decency, Filiam repudiarunt, had renounced Their daughter, atque declarare non Erubuerunt, nor felt blush tinge cheek, Declaring, meretricis genitam Esse, she was the offspring of a drab, Ut ipse dehonestaretur, just That so himself might lose his social rank! Cujus mentem, and which daughter's heart and soul, They, perverterunt, turned from the right course, Et ad illicitos amores non Dumtaxat pellexerunt, and to love Not simply did alluringly incite, Sed vi obedientiæ, but by force O' the duty, filialis, daughters owe, Coegerunt, forced and drove her to the deed: Occidit, I repeat he killed the clan, Ne scilicet amplius in dedecore, Lest peradventure longer life might trail, Viveret, link by link his turpitude, Invisus consanguineis, hateful so To kith and kindred, a nobilibus Notatus, shunned by men of quality, Relictus ab amicis, left i' the lurch By friends, ab omnibus derisus, turned A common hack-block to try edge of jokes, Occidit, and he killed them here in Rome, In Urbe, the Eternal City, Sirs, Nempe quæ alias spectata est, The appropriate theatre which witnessed once, Matronam nobilem, Lucretia's self, Abluere pudicitiæ maculas, Wash off the spots of her pudicity, Sanguine proprio, with her own pure blood; Quæ vidit, and which city also saw, Patrem, Virginius, undequaque, quite, Impunem, with no sort of punishment, Nor, et non illaudatum, lacking praise, Sed polluentem parricidio, Imbrue his hands with butchery, filiæ, Of chaste Virginia, to avoid a rape, Ne raperetur ad stupra; so to heart, Tanti illi cordi fuit, did he take, Suspicio, the mere fancy men might have, Honoris amittendi, of fame's loss, Ut potius voluerit filia Orbari, he preferred to lose his child, Quam illa incederet, rather than she walk The ways an, inhonesta, child disgraced, Licet non sponte, though against her will. Occidit—killed them, I reiterate— In propria domo, in their own abode, Ut adultera et parentes, that each wretch, Conscii agnoscerent, might both see and say, Nullum locum, there 's no place, nullumque esse Asylum, nor yet refuge of escape, Impenetrabilem, shall serve as bar, Honori læso, to the wounded one In honor; neve ibi opprobria Continuarentur, killed them on the spot Moreover, dreading lest within those walls The opprobrium peradventure be prolonged, Et domus quæ testis fuit turpium, And that the domicile which witnessed crime, Esset et pœnæ, might watch punishment: Occidit, killed, I round you in the ears, Quia alio modo, since by other mode, Non poterat ejus existimatio, There was no possibility his fame, Læsa, gashed griesly, tam enormiter, Ducere cicatrices, might be healed: Occidit ut exemplum præberet Uxoribus, killed her, so to lesson wives Jura conjugii, that the marriage-oath, Esse servanda, must be kept henceforth: Occidit denique, killed her, in a word, Ut pro posse honestus viveret, That he, please God, might creditably live, Sin minus, but if fate willed otherwise, Proprii honoris, of his outraged fame, Offensi, by Mannaia, if you please, Commiseranda victima caderet, The pitiable victim he should fall! Done! I' the rough, i' the rough! But done! And, lo, Landed and stranded lies my very speech, My miracle, my monster of defence— Leviathan into the nose whereof I have put fish-hook, pierced his jaw with thorn, And given him to my maidens for a play! I' the rough: to-morrow I review my piece Tame here and there undue floridity. It's hard: you have to plead before these priests And poke at them with Scripture, or you pass For heathen and, what's worse, for ignorant O' the quality o' the Court and what it likes By way of illustration of the law. To-morrow stick in this, and throw out that, And, having first ecclesiasticized, Regularize the whole, next emphasize, Then latinize, and lastly Cicero-ize, Giving my Fisc his finish. There's my speech! And where's my fry, and family and friends? Where's that huge Hyacinth I mean to hug Till he cries out, "Jam satis! Let me breathe!" Now, what an evening have I earned to-day! Hail, ye true pleasures, all the rest are false! Oh, the old mother, oh, the fattish wife! Rogue Hyacinth shall put on paper toque, And wrap himself around with mamma's veil Done up to imitate papa's black robe, (I'm in the secret of the comedy,— Part of the program leaked out long ago!) And call himself the Advocate o' the Poor, Mimic Don father that defends the Count: And for reward shall have a small full glass Of manly red rosolio to himself, —Always provided that he conjugate Bibo, I drink, correctly—nor be found Make the perfectum, bipsi, as last year! How the ambitious do so harden heart As lightly hold by these home-sanctitudes, To me is matter of bewilderment— Bewilderment! Because ambition's range Is nowise tethered by domestic tie: Am I refused an outlet from my home To the world's stage?—whereon a man should play The man in public, vigilant for law, Zealous for truth, a credit to his kind, Nay,—since, employing talent so, I yield The Lord his own again with usury,— A satisfaction, yea, to God himself! Well, I have modelled me by Agur's wish, "Remove far from me vanity and lies, Feed me with food convenient for me!" What I' the world should a wise man require beyond? Can I but coax the good fat little wife To tell her fool of a father the mad prank His scapegrace nephew played this time last year At Carnival! He could not choose, I think, But modify that inconsiderate gift O' the cup and cover (somewhere in the will Under the pillow, some one seems to guess) —Correct that clause in favor of a boy The trifle ought to grace, with name engraved, Would look so well, produced in future years To pledge a memory, when poor papa Latin and law are long since laid at rest— Hyacintho dono dedit avus! Why, The wife should get a necklace for her pains, The very pearls that made Violante proud, And Pietro pawned for half their value once,— Redeemable by somebody, ne sit Marita quæ rotundioribus Onusta mammis ... baccis ambulet: Her bosom shall display the big round balls, No braver proudly borne by wedded wife! With which Horatian promise I conclude. Into the pigeon-hole with thee, my speech! Off and away, first work, then play, play, play! Bottini, burn thy books, thou blazing ass! Sing "Tra-la-la, for, lambkins, we must live!"