The dramas are:--

"Strafford." 1837.

"Pippa Passes." 1841.

"King Victor and King Charles." 1842.

"The Return of the Druses." 1843.

"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." 1843.

"Colombe's Birthday." 1844.

"A Soul's Tragedy." 1846.

"Luria." 1846.

"In a Balcony." (A Fragment.) 1853.

The five-act tragedy of "STRAFFORD" turns on the impeachment and

condemnation of the man whose name it bears. Its keynote is Strafford's

devotion to the King, which Mr. Browning has represented as the

constant motive of his life, and also the cause of his death. When the

action opens, England is without a Parliament. The question of

ship-money is "burning." The Scotch Parliament has just been dissolved,

and Charles is determined to subdue the Scots by force. Wentworth has

been summoned from Ireland to assist in doing so. He is worn and weary,

but the King needs him, and he comes.

He accepts the Scotch war against his better judgment: and next finds

himself entrapped by the King's duplicity and selfishness, not only into

the command of the expedition to Scotland, but into the appearance of

having advised it. Pym has vainly tried to win him back to the popular

cause. Lady Carlisle vainly warns him of his danger in subserving the

King's designs. No danger can shake his allegiance. He leads the army to

the north; is beaten; discovers that the popular party is in league with

the Scotch; returns home to impeach it, and finds himself impeached. A

Bill of Attainder is passed against him; and Charles, who might prove by

one word his innocence of the charges conveyed in it, promises to do so,

evades his promise, and finally signs the warrant for Strafford's death.

Pym, who loved him best, who trusted him longest, is he who demands the

signature.

Lady Carlisle forms a plan for Strafford's escape from the Tower; but it

fails at the last moment, and we see him led away to execution. True to

the end, he has no thought but for the master who has betrayed

him--whose terrible weakness must betray himself--whose fate he sees

foreshadowed in his own. He kneels to Pym for the King's life; and,

seeing him inexorable, _thanks God that he dies first_. Pym's last

speech is a tender farewell to the friend whom he has sacrificed to his

country's cause, but whom he trusts soon to meet in the better land,

where they will walk together as of old, all sin and all error purged

away.

We are told in the preface to the first edition of Strafford that the

portraits are, so the author thinks, faithful: his "Carlisle," only,

being imaginary; and we may add that he regards his conception of her

as, in the main, confirmed by a very recent historian of the reign of

Charles I. The tragedy was performed in 1837, at Covent Garden Theatre,

under the direction of Macready, by whose desire it had been written,

and who sustained the principal part.

The appearance of "Strafford" coincides so closely with at least the

conception of "Sordello" as to afford a strong proof of the variety of

the author's genius. The evidence is still stronger in "Pippa Passes,"

in which he leaps directly from his most abstract mode of conception to

his most picturesque; and, from the prolonged strain of a single inward

experience, to a quick succession of pictures, in which life is given

from a general and external point of view. The humour which found little

place in the earlier work has abundant scope here; and the descriptive

power which was so vividly apparent in all of them, here shows itself

for the first time in those touches of local colour which paint without

describing. Mr. Browning is now fully developed, on the artistic and on

the practical side of his genius.

Mr. Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich, when the image

flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one

apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet

exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it;

and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo,

Felippa, or Pippa.

"PIPPA PASSES" represents the course of one day--Pippa's yearly holiday;

and is divided into what is virtually four acts, being the occurrences

of "Morning," "Noon," "Evening," and "Night." Pippa rises with the sun,

determined to make the best of the bright hours before her; and she

spends them in wandering through the town, singing as she goes, and all

the while thinking of its happiest men and women, and fancying herself

they. These happy ones are four, each the object of a different love.

Ottima, whose aged husband is the owner of the silk mills, has a lover

in Sebald. Phene, betrothed to the French sculptor Jules, will be led

this morning to her husband's home. Luigi (a conspiring patriot) meets

his mother at eve in the turret. The Bishop, blessed by God, will sleep

at Asolo to-night. Which love would she choose? The lover's? It gives

cause for scandal. The husband's? It may not last. The parent's? it

alone will guard us to the end of life. God's love? That is best of all.

It is Monsignore she decides to be.

Ottima and her lover have murdered her husband at his villa on the

hillside. She is the more reckless of the two, and she is striving by

the exercise of her attractions to silence Sebald's remorse. She has

succeeded for the moment, when Pippa passes--singing. Something in her

song strikes his conscience like a thunderbolt, and its reviving force

awakens Ottima's also. Both are spiritually saved.

Jules has brought home his bride, and is discovering that some students

who owed him a grudge have practised a cruel cheat upon him; and that

the refined woman by whom he fancied himself loved is but an ignorant

girl of the lowest class, of whom also his enemies have made a tool. Her

remorse at seeing what man she has deceived disarms his anger, and marks

the dawning of a moral sense in her; and he is dismissing her gently,

with all the money he can spare, when Pippa passes--singing.[21]

Something in her song awakens his truer manhood. Why should he dismiss

his wife? Why cast away a soul which needs him, and which he himself

has called into existence? He does not cast Phene away. Her salvation

and his happiness are secured.

Luigi and his mother are in the turret on the hillside above Asolo. He

believes it his mission to kill the Austrian Emperor. She entreats him

to desist; and has nearly conquered his resolution by the mention of the

girl he loves, when Pippa passes--singing. Something in her song revives

his flagging patriotism. He rushes from the tower, thus escaping the

police, who were on his track; and the virtuous, though mistaken motive,

secures his liberty, and perhaps his life.

Monsignore and his "Intendant" are conferring in the palace by the

Duomo; and the irony of the situation is now at its height. Pippa's

fancy has been aspiring to three separate existences, which would each

in its own way have been wrecked without her. The divinely-guarded one

which she especially covets is at this moment bent on her destruction.

For she is the child of the brother at whose death the Bishop has

connived, and whose wealth he is enjoying. She is still in his way, and

he is listening to a plan for removing her also, when Pippa

passes--singing. Something in her song stings his conscience or his

humanity to life. He starts up, summons his attendants, has his former

accomplice bound hand and foot, and the sequel may be guessed.

The scene is varied by groups of students, of poor girls, and of

Austrian policemen, all joking and chatting in characteristic fashion,

and all playing their part in the story; and also by the appearance of

Bluphocks, an English adventurer and spy, who is in league with the

police for the detection of Luigi, and with the Intendant for Pippa's

ruin; and the saving effect of Pippa's songs is the more dramatic that

it becomes on one occasion the means of betraying herself. She goes home

at sunset, unconscious of all she has effected and escaped, and

wondering how near she may ever come to touching for good or evil the

lives with which her fancy has been identifying her. "So far, perhaps,"

she says to herself, "that the silk she will wind to-morrow may some day

serve to border Ottima's cloak. And if it be only this!"

"All service ranks the same with God--

With God, whose puppets, best and worst,

Are we: there is no last nor first." (vol. iii. p. 79.)

These are her last words as she lies down to sleep.

Pippa's songs are not impressive in themselves. They are made so in

every case by the condition of her hearer's mind; and the idea of the

story is obvious, besides being partly stated in the heroine's own

words. No man is "great" or "small" in the sight of God--each life being

in its own way the centre of creation. Nothing should be "great" or

"small" in the sight of man; since it depends on personal feeling, or

individual circumstance, whether a given thing will prove one or the

other.

"KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES" is an historical tragedy in two divisions

and four parts, of which the time is 1730 and 31, and the place the

castle of Rivoli near Turin. The episode which it records may be read in

any chronicle of the period; and Mr. Browning adds a preface, in which

he justifies his own view of the characters and motives involved in it.

King Victor II. (first King of Sardinia) was sixty-four years old, and

had been nominally a ruler from the age of ten, when suddenly (1730) he

abdicated in favour of his son Charles. The Queen was dead, and he had

privately married a lady of the Court, to whom he had been long

attached; and the desire to acknowledge this union, combined with what

seems to have been a premature old age, might sufficiently have

explained the abdication; but Mr. Browning adopts the idea, which for a

time found favour, that it had a deeper cause: that the King's

intriguing ambition had involved him in many difficulties, and he had

devised this plan for eluding them.

Charles has become his father's heir through the death of an older and

better loved son. He has been thrust into the shade by the favourite,

now Victor's wife, and by the Minister d'Ormea; his sensitive nature

crushed into weakness, his loftiness of purpose never called into play.

He seems precisely the person of whom to make at once a screen and a

tool. But he has scarcely been crowned when it is evident that he will

be neither. He assumes the character of king at the same time as the

function; and by his honesty, courage, and humanity, restores the

prosperity of his country, and the honour of his house. He secures even

the devotion, interested though it be, of the unscrupulous d'Ormea

himself.

Victor, however, is restless in his obscurity; and by the end of the

year is scheming for the recovery of his crown. He presents himself

before his son, and demands that it be restored to him; denouncing what

he considers the weakness of King Charles' rule. Charles refuses, gently

but firmly, to abandon what has become for him the post of duty; and

King Victor departs, to conspire openly against him. D'Ormea is active

in detecting the conspiracy and unveiling it; and Victor is brought back

to the palace, this time a prisoner.

But Charles does not receive him as such. His filial piety is outraged

by the unnatural conflict; and his wife Polixena has vainly tried to

convince him that there is a higher because less obvious virtue in

resisting than in giving way. He once more acknowledges his father as

King. And both he and his wife are soon aware that in doing so, he is

only humouring the caprice of a dying man. "_I have no friend in the

wide world_ is the old King's cry. Give me what I have no power to take

from you."

"So few years give it quietly,

My son! It will drop from me. See you not?

A crown's unlike a sword to give away--

That, let a strong hand to a weak hand give!

But crowns should slip from palsied brows to heads

Young as this head:...." (vol. iii. p. 162-3.)

Charles places the crown on his father's head. A strange conflict of

gratified ambition, of remorseful tenderness, of dreamy regret, stirs

the failing spirit. But command and defiance flash out in the old King's

last words.

This death on the stage is the only point on which Mr. Browning diverges

from historical truth. King Victor lived a year longer, in a modified

captivity to which his son had most unwillingly consigned him; and he is

made to suggest this story in the half-insanity of his last moments as

one which may be told to the world; and will give his son the appearance

of reigning, while he remains, in secret, King.

"THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES" is a tragedy in five acts, fictitious in

plot, but historical in character. The Druses of Lebanon are a compound

of several warlike Eastern tribes, owing their religious system to a

caliph of Egypt, Hakeem Biamr Allah; and probably their name to his

confessor Darazi, who first attempted to promulgate his doctrine among

them; some also impute to the Druse nation a dash of the blood of the

Crusaders. One of their chief religious doctrines was that of divine

incarnations. It seems to have originated in the pretension of Hakeem to

be himself one; and as organized by the Persian mystic Hamzi, his Vizier

and disciple, it included ten manifestations of this kind, of which

Hakeem must have formed the last. Mr. Browning has assumed that in any

great national emergency, the miracle would be expected to recur; and he

has here conceived an emergency sufficiently great to call it forth.

The Druses, according to him, have colonized a small island belonging

to the Knights of Rhodes, and become subject to a Prefect appointed by

the Order. This Prefect has almost extirpated the Druse sheikhs, and

made the remainder of the tribe victims of his cruelty and lust. The cry

for rescue and retribution, if not loud, is deep. It finds a passionate

response in the soul of Djabal, a son of the last Emir, who escaped as a

child from the massacre of his family, and took refuge in Europe; and

who now returns, with a matured purpose of patriotic and personal

revenge. He has secured an ally in the young Lois de Dreux--an intended

Knight of the Order, and son of a Breton Count, whose hospitality he has

enjoyed--and induced him to accompany him to the islet, and pass his

probation there. This, he considers, will facilitate the murder of the

Prefect, which is an essential part of his plan; and he has obtained the

promise of the Venetians, who are hostile to the Knights, to lend their

ships for his countrymen's escape as soon as the death of the tyrant

shall have set them free.

So far his course is straight. But he has scarcely returned home, when

he falls in love with Anael, a Druse girl, whose devotion to her tribe

is a religion, and who is determined to marry none but the man who will

deliver it; and he is then seized by an impulse to heighten the act of

deliverance by a semblance of more than human power. He declares himself

Hakeem, the Divine founder of the sect, again present in human form, and

who will again be transformed, or "exalted," so soon as by the slaughter

of their tyrant he has set the Druses free. His bride will be exalted

with him. The imposture succeeds only too well. "Mystic" as well as

"schemer," Djabal, for a moment, deceives even himself; and when the

crisis is at hand, and reason and conscience reassert themselves, the

enthusiasm which he has kindled still forces him on. His only refuge is

in flight; and even this proves impossible. He nerves himself, before

escaping, to the Prefect's murder; and is confronted on the threshold

of the Prefect's chamber, by his promised wife, who has herself done the

deed.

Anael has loved Djabal, believing him Divine, with what seemed to her

too human a love. She felt unworthy to share his exaltation. She has

done that which her humanity disclaimed that she might no longer be so.

A few moments more, and they both know that the crime has been

superfluous. Lois, who also loves Anael, and hopes to win her, has

procured from the Chapter of his Order the removal of the tyrant, and

been appointed by it in his place; the day of Druse oppression was

already over. But Djabal and Anael are inseparably united. The scorn

with which she received his now inevitable confession was intense but

momentary. The woman's heart in her revels in its new freedom to cherish

and to protect; and she embraces her lover's shame with a far greater

joy than their common triumph could have aroused in her. She is brought

forward as the Prefect's murderer in presence of all the personages of

the drama; and falls dead with a cry of "Hakeem" on her lips. Djabal

stabs himself on her body, thus "exalting" himself to her. But he has

first committed his Druses to the care of Lois, to be led back to their

mountain home. He remains Hakeem for them, though branded as an impostor

by the rest of the world. Directly, or indirectly, he has done the work

of the deliverer.

"A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON" is a tragedy in three acts, less intricate as

well as shorter than those which precede it; and historical only in the

simple motive, the uncompromising action, and the mediæval code of

honour, which in some degree fix its date. Mr. Browning places this

somewhere in the eighteenth century.

Lord Henry Mertoun has fallen in love with Mildred Tresham. His estates

adjoin those of Earl Tresham, her brother and guardian. He inherits a

noble name, and an unsullied reputation; and need only offer himself to

be accepted. But the youthful reverence which he entertains for Lord

Tresham makes him shrink from preferring his suit; and he allows himself

and Mildred to drift into a secret intimacy, which begins in all

innocence, but does not end so. Then his shyness vanishes. He seeks an

interview with the Earl, and obtains his joyful consent to the union.

All seems to be going well. But Mildred's awakened womanhood takes the

form of an overpowering remorse and shame; and these become the indirect

cause of the catastrophe.

Gerard, an old retainer of the family, has witnessed Lord Mertoun's

nightly visits to the castle; and, amidst a bitter conflict of feeling,

he tells the Earl what he has seen. Tresham summons his sister. He is

writhing under the sense of outraged family honour; but a still stronger

fraternal affection commends the culprit to his mercy. He assists her

confession with touching delicacy and tenderness; shows himself prepared

to share her shame, to help her to live it through--to marry her to the

man she loves. He insists only upon this, that Mertoun shall not be

deceived: and that she shall cancel the promise of an interview which

she has given him for the following day.

Mildred tacitly owns her guilt, and invokes any punishment her brother

may adjudge to it; but she will not betray her lover by confessing his

name, and she will not forbid Mertoun to come. The Earl's mind does not

connect the two. No extenuating circumstance suggests itself. He has

loved his young sister with a chivalrous admiration and trust; and he is

one of those men to whom a blot in the 'scutcheon is only less terrible

than the knowledge that such trust has been misplaced. He is stung to

madness by what seems this crowning proof of his sister's depravity; and

by the thought of him who has thus corrupted her. He surprises Mertoun

on the way to the last stolen visit to his love; and, before there has

been time for an explanation, challenges and kills him.

The reaction of feeling begins when he perceives that Mertoun has

allowed himself to be killed. Remorse and sorrow deepen into despair as

the dying youth gasps out the story of his constant love, of his boyish

error--of his manly desire of reparation; above all, as he reminds his

hearer of the sister whose happiness he has slain; and asks if he has

done right to set his "thoughtless foot" upon them both, and say as they

perish--

"... Had I thought,

'All had gone otherwise'...."

(vol iv. p. 59.)

Mildred is waiting for her lover. The usual signal has been made: the

lighted purple pane of a painted window sends forth its beckoning gleam.

But Mertoun does not appear; and as the moments pass, a despairing

apathy steals over her, which is only the completed certainty of her

doom. She has never believed in the promised happiness. In a strange

process of self-consciousness she has realized at once the moral and the

natural consequences of her transgression; the lost peace of conscience,

the lost morning of her love. Her paramount desire has been for

expiation and rest. In one more pang they are coming. Lord Tresham

breaks in on her solitude. His empty scabbard shows what he has done.

But she soon sees that reproach is unnecessary, and that Mertoun's death

is avenged. It is best so. The cloud has lifted. The friend and the

brother are one in heart again. She dies because her own heart is

broken, but forgiving her brother, and blessing him. He has taken

poison, and survives her by a few minutes only.

Mildred has a firm friend in her cousin Gwendolen: a quick-witted,

true-hearted woman, the betrothed of Austin Tresham, who is next heir to

the earldom. She alone has guessed the true state of the case, and,

with the help of Austin, would have averted the tragedy, if Lord

Tresham's precipitate passion had not rendered this impossible. These

two are in no need of their dying kinsman's warning, to remember, if a

blot should again come in the 'scutcheon, that "vengeance is God's, not

man's."

This tragedy was performed in 1843, at Drury Lane Theatre, during the

ownership of Macready; in 1848, at "Sadlers Wells," under the direction

of Mr. Phelps, who had played the part of Lord Tresham in the Drury Lane

performance.

COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY is a play in five acts, of which the scene is the

palace at Juliers, the time 16--. Colombe of Ravestein is ostensibly

Duchess of Juliers and Cleves; but her title is neutralized by the Salic

law under which the Duchy is held; and though the Duke, her late father,

has wished to evade it in her behalf, those about her are aware that he

had no power to do so, and that the legal claimant, her cousin, may at

any moment assert his rights. This happens on the first anniversary of

her accession, which is also her birthday.

Prince Berthold is to arrive in a few hours. He has sent a letter before

him from which Colombe will learn her fate; and the handful of courtiers

who have stayed to see the drama out are disputing as to who shall

deliver it. Valence, an advocate of Cleves, arrives at this juncture,

with a petition from his townspeople who are starving; and is allowed to

place it in the Duchess's hands, on condition of presenting the Prince's

letter at the same time. He does this in ignorance of its contents; he

is very indignant when he knows them; and the incident naturally

constitutes him Colombe's adviser and friend; while the reverence with

which he owns himself her subject, also determines her if possible to

remain his sovereign.

Prince Berthold arrives unprepared for any show of resistance; and is a

little startled to find that Colombe defies him, and that one of her

courtiers (not choosing to be outdone by Valence) has the courage to

tell him so; but he treats the Duchess and her adviser with all the

courtesy of a man whose right is secure; and Valence, to whom he

entrusts his credentials, is soon convinced that it is so. But he has a

far-sighted ambition which keeps him alive to all possible risks: and it

occurs to him as wiser to secure the little sovereignty by marrying its

heiress than by dispossessing her. He desires Valence to convey to the

young Duchess the offer of his hand. The offer is worth considering,

since as he asserts, it may mean the Empire: to which the Duchy is, in

his case, but a necessary stepping-stone; and Valence, who has loved

Colombe since his first glimpse of her at Cleves, a year ago; who has

begun to hope that his affection is returned; and who knows that the

Prince's message is not only a test of her higher nature, but a snare to

it, feels nevertheless bound to leave her choice free. This choice lies

clearly between love and power; for Berthold parades a cynicism half

affected, half real; and on being questioned as to his feeling for the

lady, has dismissed the question as irrelevant.

Valence is, throughout the play, an advocate in the best sense of the

word. As he has pleaded the wrongs of an oppressed people, he sets forth

the happiness of a successful prince--the happiness which the young

Duchess is invited to share; and he departs from all the

conventionalities of fiction, by showing her the true poetry, not the

artificial splendours, of worldly success. Colombe is almost as grateful

as the young Prince could desire, for she assumes that he has fallen in

love with her, whether he says so or not; and here, too, Valence must

speak the truth. "The Prince does not love her." "How does he know

this?" "He knows it by the insight of one who does love." Astonished,

vaguely pained, Colombe questions him as to the object of his

attachment, and, in probably real ignorance of who it can be, draws him

on to a confession. For a moment she is disenchanted. "So much unselfish

devotion to turn out merely love! She will at all events see Valence's

rival."

In the last act she discusses the Prince's proposal with himself. He

frankly rests it on its advantages for both. He has much to say in

favour of such an understanding, and reminds his listener as she

questions and temporizes, that if he gives no heart he also asks none.

The courtiers now see their opportunity. They inform the Prince that by

her late father's will the Duchess forfeits her rights in the event of

marrying a subject. They point to such a marriage as a natural result of

the loving service which Valence has this day rendered to her, and the

love which is its only fitting reward. And Colombe, listening to the

just if treacherous praises of this man, feels no longer "sure" that she

does "not love him." Valence is summoned; requested to assert his claim

or to deny it; given to understand that the lady's interests demand the

latter course. The manly dignity and exalted tenderness with which he

resigns her convert, as it seems, the doubt into certainty; and Colombe

takes him on this her birthday at the sacrifice of "Juliers and the

world."

Berthold has a confidant, Melchior, a learned and thoughtful man, who is

affectionately attached to the young prince, and who views with regret

the easy worldly successes which neutralize his higher gifts. Melchior

has also appreciated the genuineness of Colombe's nature, and conducted

the last interview with Valence as one who desired that loyalty should

be attested and love triumph. He now turns to Berthold with what seems

an appeal to his generosity. But Berthold cannot afford to be generous.

As he reminds the happy bride before him he wants her duchy much more

than she does. He is, however, the sadder, and perhaps the wiser, for

having found this out.

"Colombe's Birthday" was performed in 1853, at the Haymarket Theatre; in

1853 or '54, in the United States, at Boston. The part of Colombe was

taken, as had been those of Mildred Tresham and Lady Carlisle, by Miss

Helen Faucit, now Lady Martin.

"A SOUL'S TRAGEDY" brings us near to the period of the "Men and Women;"

and displays, for the first time in Mr. Browning's work, a situation

quite dramatic in itself, but which is nevertheless made by the

characters, and imagined for them. It is a story of moral retrogression;

but, setting aside its very humorous treatment, it is no "tragedy" for

the reader, because he has never believed in that particular "soul,"

though its proprietor and his friends are justly supposed to do so. The

drama is divided into two acts, of which the first represents the

"poetry," the second the prose, of a certain Chiappino's life. The scene

is Faenza; the time 15--.

Chiappino is best understood by comparison with Luitolfo, his

fellow-townsman and friend. Luitolfo has a gentle, genial nature;

Chiappino, if we may judge him by his mood at the time of the action, an

ill-conditioned one. Luitolfo's gentleness is allied to physical

timidity, but his moral courage is always equal to the occasion.

Chiappino is a man more of words than of deeds, and wants both the

courage and the rectitude which ill-conditioned people often possess.

Faenza is governed by a provost from Ravenna. The present provost is a

tyrant; and Chiappino has been agitating in a somewhat purposeless

manner against him. He has been fined for this several times, and is now

sentenced to exile, and confiscation of all his goods.

Luitolfo has helped him until now by paying his fines; but this is an

additional grievance to him, for he is in love with Eulalia, the woman

whom his friend is going to marry, and declares that he has only

refrained from urging his own suit, because he was bound by this

pecuniary obligation not to do so. He is not too delicate, however, to

depreciate Luitolfo's generosity, and generally run him down with the

woman who is to be his wife; and this is what he is doing in the first

scene, under cover of taking leave of her, and while her intended

husband is interceding with the provost in his behalf. A hurried knock,

which they recognise as Luitolfo's, gives a fresh impulse to his spite;

and he begins sneering at the milk-and-watery manner in which Luitolfo

has probably been pleading his cause, and the awful fright in which he

has run home, on seeing that the provost "shrugged his shoulders" at the

intercession.

Luitolfo _is_ frightened, for his friendship for Chiappino has been

carrying him away; and on finding that entreaties were of no use, he has

struck at the provost, and, as he thinks, killed him. A crowd which he

imagines to be composed of the Provost's attendants has followed him

from the palace. Torture stares him in the face; and his physical

sensitiveness has the upper hand again. For a moment Chiappino becomes a

hero; he is shamed into nobleness. He flings his own cloak over

Luitolfo, gives him his passport, hurries him from the house, assumes

his friend's blood-stained garment, and claims his deed. But he has

scarcely done so when he perceives their mistake. Luitolfo's fears have

distorted a friendly crowd into a hostile one; and the throng which

Chiappino has nerved himself to defy is the populace of Faenza

applauding him as its saviour. He postpones the duty of undeceiving it

under pretence of the danger being not yet over. The next step will be

to refuse to do so. His moral collapse, the "tragedy" of his "soul," has

begun.

In the second act, a month later, this is complete. The papal legate,

Ogniben, has ridden on his mule in to Faenza to find out what was

wanted. "He has not come to punish; there is no harm done: for the

provost was not killed after all. He has known twenty-three leaders of

revolts," and therefore, so we understand, is not disposed to take such

persons too seriously. He has made friends with Chiappino, accepting him

in this character, and lured him on with the hope of becoming provost

himself; and Chiappino again rising--or falling--to the situation, has

discovered patriotic reasons for accepting the post. He has outgrown his

love, as well as modified his ideas of civic duty; and he disposes of

the obligations of friendship, by declaring (to Eulalia) that the blow

imputed to him was virtually his, because Luitolfo would fain have

avoided striking it, while he would have struck it if he could. The

legate draws him out in a humorous dialogue; satirizes his flimsy

sophistries under cover of endorsing them, and leads him up to a final

self-exposure.

This occurs when he reminds Chiappino in the hearing of the crowd of the

private agreement they have come to: that he is to have the title and

privileges of Provost on the one hand, and pay implicit obedience to

Rome, in the person of her legate, on the other; but with the now added

condition, that if the actual assailant of the late provost is

discovered, he shall be dealt with as he deserves. At which new view of

the situation Chiappino is silent; and Luitolfo, who had missed all the

reward of his deed, characteristically comes forward to receive its

punishment. The legate orders him to his own house; advises Chiappino,

with a little more joking at his expense, to leave the town for a short

time; takes possession of the key of the provost's palace, to which he

does _not_ intend to give a new inmate; bids a cheery goodbye to every

one, and rides away as he came. He has

"known _four_ and twenty leaders of revolts." (vol. iii. p. 302.)

The tragedy of "LURIA" is supposed to be enacted at some period of the

fifteenth century; being an episode in the historical struggle between

Florence and Pisa. It occupies one day; and the five acts correspond

respectively to its "Morning," "Noon," "Afternoon," "Evening," and

"Night." The day is that of a long-expected encounter which is to end

the war. The Florentine troops are commanded by the Moorish mercenary

Luria. He is encamped between the two cities; and with, or near him, are

his Moorish friend and confidant Husain; Puccio--the officer whom he has

superseded; Braccio--Commissary of the Republic; his secretary Jacopo,

or Lapo; and a noble Florentine lady, Domizia.

Luria is a consummate general, a brave fighter, and a humane man. Every

soldier of the army is devoted to him, and the triumph of the Republic

seems secured. But the men who trust him to win the victory cannot trust

him not to misuse it. They are afraid that his strength will be turned

against themselves so soon as it has disposed of their foreign foe: and

Braccio is on the spot, in order to watch his movements, to register

every deed that can give the slightest hold for an accusation--in short,

to supply the Signoria with the materials for a trial, which is

proceeding step by step with Luria's successful campaign, and is to

crush him the moment this is completed. Everyone but Husain is more or

less his enemy. For Lapo is almost blindly devoted to his chief. Puccio

is jealous of the stranger for whom he has been set aside. Domizia is

making him an instrument of revenge. Her brothers have been faithful as

he is, and condemned as he is to be. They accepted their sentence

because it was the mother-city who passed it. She encourages Luria to

encounter the same ingratitude, because she believes he will resist and

punish it.

He is not unwarned of his danger. The Pisan general, Tiburzio, has

discovered the conspiracy against him, and brings him, shortly before

the battle, an intercepted letter from Braccio to the Signoria, in

which he is convinced that he may read his fate. He urges him to open

it; to desert the perfidious city, and to adopt Pisa's cause. But

Luria's loyalty is unshaken. He tears up the letter in the presence of

Braccio, Puccio, and Domizia: and only when the battle has been fought

and won demands the secret of its contents. At the word "trial" he is

carried away by a momentary indignation; but this subsides into a tender

regret that "his Florentines" should have so misjudged him; that he

should have given them cause to do it. He has laboured for their city,

not only with the obedience of a son, but with the devotion of a lover.

His Eastern fancy has been enslaved by her art, her intellect: by the

life of educated thought which so far removed her from the blind unrest,

and the animal strength of his savage world; Domizia's attractions have

added to the spell. He has never guarded his love for Florence against

doubt, for he never dreamed that it could be doubted. He cannot find it

in his heart to chastise her now.

Temptation besets him on every side; for the armies of both Florence and

Pisa are at his command. Husain and Domizia urge him on to revenge.

Tiburzio entreats him to give to Pisa the head with which Florence will

only decorate a gateway. Him he thanks and dismisses. To the others he

prepares his answer. Alone for the last time; with eyes fixed on the

setting sun--his "own orb" so much nearer to him in his Eastern home,

and which will shine for him there no more--he drains a phial of poison:

the one thing he has brought from his own land to help him in the

possible adversity. Death was to be his refuge in defeat. He will die on

his triumph-day instead.

They all gather round him once more: Puccio grateful and devoted; for he

has seen that though discredited by Florence, Luria was still working

for her success--Tiburzio, who returns from Florence, where he has

tendered his submission to Luria's arms, and borne his heartfelt

testimony to Luria's honour--Domizia, who has learned from Luria that

there are nobler things than retaliation: and now entreats him to forego

his vengeance against her city, as she foregoes her own--Braccio,

repentant for the wrong done, and beseeching that Luria will not "punish

Florence." But they cannot avert the one punishment which that gentle

spirit could inflict. He lies dead before them.

"IN A BALCONY" is a dramatic fragment, equivalent to the third or fourth

act, of what might prove a tragedy or a drama, as the author designed.

The personages are "Norbert" and "Constance," a young man and woman; and

the "Queen," a woman of a certain age. Constance is a relation and

protégée of the Queen--as we imagine, a poor one. She is loved by

Norbert; and he has entered the Queen's service, for the opportunity of

wooing and winning her. His diplomatic exertions have been strenuous.

They have secured to his royal mistress the possession of a double

crown. The "Balcony" echoes with the sound of festivities which are

intended to mark the event.

Constance returns Norbert's affection. He thinks the moment come for

pleading his and her cause with their sovereign. But Constance entreats

him to temporize: either to defer the proposal for her hand, or to make

it in so indirect a manner, that the Queen may only see in it a tribute

to herself. He has allowed her to think that he served her for her own

sake; she must not be undeceived too roughly. Her heart has starved

amidst the show of devotion: its hunger must not be roused by the touch

of a living love in which she has no part. A shock of this kind would be

painful to her--dangerous to themselves.

Norbert is an honest man, possessed of all the courage of his love: and

he finds it hard to believe that the straightforward course would not be

the best; but he yields to the dictates of feminine wisdom; and having

consented to play a part, plays it with fatal success. The Queen is a

more unselfish woman than her young cousin suspects. She has guessed

Norbert's love for Constance, and is prepared to sanction it; but her

own nature is still only too capable of responding to the faintest touch

of affection: and at the seeming declaration that that love is her's,

her joy carries all before it. She is married; but as she declares she

will dissolve her marriage, merely formal as it has always been; she

will cast convention to the winds, and become Norbert's wife. She opens

her heart to Constance; tells her how she has yearned for love, and how

she will repay it. Constance knows, as she never knew, what a mystery of

pain and passion has been that outwardly frozen life; and in a sudden

impulse of pity and compunction, she determines that if possible its new

happiness shall be permanent--its delusions converted into truth.

She meets Norbert again; makes him talk of his future; discovers that he

only dreams of it as bound up with the political career he has already

entered upon; and though she sees that every vision of this future

begins and ends in her, she sees, as justly, that its making or marring

is in the Queen's hands. Here is a second motive for self-sacrifice.

Norbert has no suspicion of what he has done. The Queen appears before

Constance has had time to inform him of it; and the latter has now no

choice but to let him learn it from the Queen's own lips. She draws her

on, accordingly, under plea of Norbert's diffidence, to speak of what

she believes him to have asked of her, and what she knows to be already

granted. She tries to prompt his reply.

But Norbert will not be prompted. He is slow to understand what is

expected of him, very indignant when he does so; and in terror lest he

should still be misunderstood--in unconsciousness of the torture he is

inflicting--he asserts and re-asserts his respect for the one woman, his

absorbing passion for the other. The Queen goes out. Her looks and

silence have been ominous. The shadow of a great dread falls upon the

scene. The dance-music stops. Heavy footsteps are heard approaching.

Norbert and Constance stand awaiting their doom. But they are united as

they have never yet been, and they can defy it; for her love has shown

itself as capable of all sacrifice--his as above temptation.

Various theories have been formed as to the kind of woman Mr. Browning

meant Constance to be; but a careful and unbiassed reading of the poem

can leave no doubt on the subject. He has given her, not the courage of

an exclusively moral nature, but all the self-denial of a devoted one,

growing with the demands which are made upon it. How single-hearted is

her attempt to sacrifice Norbert's love, is sufficiently shown by one

sentence, addressed to him after his interview with the Queen:

"You were mine. Now I give myself to you." (vol. vii. p. 28.)

"THE RING AND THE BOOK." 1868-69.

From the dramas, we pass naturally to the dramatic monologues; poems

embodying a lengthened argument or soliloquy, and to which there is

already an approach in the tragedies themselves. The dramatic monologue

repeats itself in the finest poems of the "Men and Women," and "Dramatis

Personæ;" and Mr. Browning's constructive power thus remains, as it

were, diffused, till it culminates again in "The Ring and the Book:" at

once his greatest constructive achievement, and the triumph of the

monologue form. From this time onwards, the monologue will be his

prevailing mode of expression, but each will often form an independent

work. "The Ring and the Book" is thus our next object of interest.

Mr. Browning was strolling one day through a square in Florence, the

Piazza San Lorenzo, which is a standing market for old clothes, old

furniture, and old curiosities of every kind, when a parchment-covered

book attracted his eye, from amidst the artistic or nondescript rubbish

of one of the stalls. It was the record of a murder which had taken

place in Rome, and bore inside it an inscription which Mr. Browning thus

transcribes:--

"... A Roman murder-case:

Position of the entire criminal cause

Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,

With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay,

Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death

By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,

At Rome on February Twenty-Two,

Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight:

Wherein it is disputed if, and when,

Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape

The customary forfeit." (vol. viii. p. 6.)

The book proved, on examination, to contain the whole history of the

case, as carried on in writing, after the fashion of those days:

pleadings and counter-pleadings, the depositions of defendants and

witnesses; manuscript letters announcing the execution of the murderer;

and the "instrument of the Definitive Sentence" which established the

perfect innocence of the murdered wife: these various documents having

been collected and bound together by some person interested in the

trial, possibly the very Cencini, friend of the Franceschini family, to

whom the manuscript letters are addressed. Mr. Browning bought the whole

for the value of eightpence, and it became the raw material of what

appeared four years later as "The Ring and the Book."

This name is explained as follows:--The story of the Franceschini case,

as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle of evidence to its one

central truth; and this circle was constructed in the manner in which

the worker in Etruscan gold prepares the ornamental circlet which will

be worn as a ring. The pure metal is too soft to bear hammer or file; it

must be mixed with alloy to gain the necessary power of resistance. The

ring once formed and embossed, the alloy is disengaged, and a pure gold

ornament remains. Mr. Browning's material was also inadequate to his

purpose, though from a different cause. It was too _hard_. It was "pure

crude fact," secreted from the fluid being of the men and women whose

experience it had formed. In its existing state it would have broken up

under the artistic attempt to weld and round it. He supplied an alloy,

the alloy of fancy, or--as he also calls it--of one fact more: this fact

being the echo of those past existences awakened within his own. He

breathed into the dead record the breath of his own life; and when his

ring of evidence had re-formed, first in elastic then in solid strength,

here delicately incised, there broadly stamped with human thought and

passion, he could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognize in

what he set before them unadulterated human truth.

All this was not effected at once. The separate scenes of the

Franceschini tragedy sprang to life in Mr. Browning's imagination within

a few hours of his reading the book. He saw them re-enacted from his

terrace at Casa Guidi on a sultry summer night--every place and person

projected, as it seemed, against the thundery sky--but his mind did not

yet weave them into a whole. The drama lay by him and in him till the

unconscious inspiration was complete; and then, one day in London, he

felt what he thus describes:--

"A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb,

And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair,

Letting me have my will again with these...."

(vol. viii. p. 32.)

and "The Ring and the Book" was born. All this is told in an

introductory chapter, which bears the title of the whole work; and here

also Mr. Browning reviews those broad facts of the Franceschini case

which are beyond dispute, and which constitute, so far as they go, the

crude metal of his ring. He has worked into this almost every incident

which the chronicle supplies and his book requires no supplement. But

the fragmentary view of its contents, which I am reduced to giving, can

only be held together by a previous outline of the story.

There lived in Rome in 1679 Pietro and Violante Comparini, an elderly

couple of the middle class, fond of show and good living, and who in

spite of a fair income had run considerably into debt. They were, indeed

at the period in question, in receipt of a papal bounty, employed in the

relief of the needy who did not like to beg. Creditors were pressing,

and only one expedient suggested itself: they must have a child; and

thus enable themselves to draw on their capital, now tied up for the

benefit of an unknown heir-at-law. The wife conceived this plan, and

also carried it out, without taking her husband into her confidence. She

secured beforehand the infant of a poor and not very reputable woman,

announced her expectation, half miraculous at her past fifty years, and

became, to all appearance, the mother of a girl, the Francesca Pompilia

of the story.

When Pompilia had reached the age of thirteen, there was also in Rome

Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished nobleman of Arezzo, and the

elder of three brothers, of whom the second, Abate Paolo, and the third,

Canon Girolamo also play some part in the story. Count Guido himself

belonged to the minor ranks of the priesthood, and had spent his best

years in seeking preferment in it. Preferment had not come, and the only

means of building up the family fortunes in his own person, was now a

moneyed wife. He was poor, fifty years old, and personally

unattractive. A contemporary chronicle describes him as short, thin, and

pale, and with a projecting nose. He had nothing to offer but his rank;

but in the case of a very obscure heiress, this might suffice, and such

a one seemed to present herself in Pompilia Comparini. He heard of her

at the local centre of gossip, the barber's shop; received an

exaggerated estimate of her dowry; and made proposals for her hand;

being supported in his suit by the Abate Paul. They did not, on their

side, understate the advantages of the connection. They are, indeed,

said to have given as their yearly income, a sum exceeding their

capital, and Violante was soon dazzled into consenting to it. Old Pietro

was more wary. He made inquiries as to the state of the Count's fortune,

and declined, under plea of his daughter's extreme youth, to think of

him as a son-in-law.

Violante pretended submission, secretly led Pompilia to a church, the

very church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where four years later the

murdered bodies of all three were to be displayed, and brought her back

as Count Guido's wife. Pietro could only accept the accomplished fact;

and he so far resigned himself to it, that he paid down an instalment of

his daughter's dowry, and made up the deficiency by transferring to the

newly-married couple all that he actually possessed. This left him no

choice but to live under their roof, and the four removed together to

the Franceschini abode at Arezzo. The arrangement proved disastrous; and

at the end of a few months Pietro and Violante were glad to return to

Rome, though with empty pockets, and on money lent them for the journey

by their son-in-law.

We have conflicting testimony as to the cause of this rupture. The

Governor of Arezzo, writing to the Abate Paul in Rome, lays all the

blame of it on the Comparini, whom he taxes with vulgar and aggressive

behaviour; and Mr. Browning readily admits that at the beginning there

may have been faults on their side. But popular judgment, as well as

the balance of evidence, were in favour of the opposite view; and

curious details are given by Pompilia and by a servant of the family, a

sworn witness on Pompilia's trial, of the petty cruelties and privations

to which both parents and child were subjected.

So much, at all events, was clear; Violante's sin had overtaken her; and

it now occurred to her, apparently for the first time, to cast off its

burden by confession. The moment was propitious, for the Pope had

proclaimed a jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and absolution was

to be had for the asking. But the Church in this case made conditions.

Absolution must be preceded by atonement. Violante must restore to her

legal heirs that of which her pretended motherhood had defrauded them.

The first step towards this was to reveal the fraud to her husband; and

Pietro lost no time in making use of the revelation. He repudiated

Pompilia, and with her all claims on her husband's part. The case was

carried into court. The Court decreed a compromise. Pietro appealed from

the decree, and the question remained unsettled.

The chief sufferer by these proceedings was Pompilia herself. She

already had reason to dread her husband as a tyrant--he to dislike her

as a victim; and his discovery of her base birth, with the threatened

loss of the greater part of her dowry, could only result, with such a

man, in increased aversion towards her. From this moment his one aim

seems to have been to get rid of his wife, but in such a manner as not

to forfeit any pecuniary advantage he might still derive from their

union. This could only be done by convicting her of infielity; and he

attacked her so furiously, and so persistently, on the subject of a

certain Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi, whom she barely knew, but whose

attentions he declared her to have challenged, that at last she fled

from Arezzo, with this very man.

She had appealed for protection against her husband's violence to the

Archbishop and to the Governor. She had striven to enlist the aid of his

brother-in-law, Conti. She had implored a priest in confession to write

for her to her parents, and induce them to fetch her away. But the whole

town was in the interest of the Franceschini, or in dread of them. Her

prayers were useless, and Caponsacchi, whom she had heard of as a

"resolute man," appeared her last resource. He was, as she knew,

contemplating a journey to Rome; an opportunity presented itself for

speaking to him from her window, or her balcony; and she persuaded him,

though not without difficulty, to assist her escape, and conduct her to

her old home. On a given night she slipped away from her husband's side,

and joined the Canon where he awaited her with a carriage. They

travelled day and night till they reached Castelnuovo, a village within

four hours of the journey's end. There they were compelled to rest, and

there also the husband overtook them. They were not together at the

moment; but the fact of the elopement was patent; and if Franceschini

had killed his wife there, in the supposed excitement of the discovery,

the law might have dealt leniently with him. But it suited him best for

the time being to let her live. He procured the arrest of the fugitives,

and after a short confinement on the spot, they were conveyed to the New

Prisons in Rome (Carceri Nuove) and tried on the charge of adultery.

It is impossible not to believe that Count Guido had been working

towards this end. Pompilia's verbal communications with Caponsacchi had

been supplemented by letters, now brought to him in her name, now thrown

or let down from her window as he passed the house. They were written,

as he said, on the subject of the flight, and as he also said, he burned

them as soon as read, not doubting their authenticity. But Pompilia

declared, on examination, that she could neither write nor read; and

setting aside all presumption of her veracity, this was more than

probable. The writer of the letters must therefore, have been the Count,

or some one employed by him for the purpose. He now completed the

intrigue by producing eighteen or twenty more of a very incriminating

character, which he declared to have been left by the prisoners at

Castelnuovo; and these were not only disclaimed with every appearance of

sincerity by both the persons accused, but bore the marks of forgery

within themselves.

Pompilia and Caponsacchi answered all the questions addressed to them

simply and firmly; and though their statements did not always coincide,

these were calculated on the whole to create a moral conviction of their

innocence; the facts on which they disagreed being of little weight. But

moral conviction was not legal proof; the question of false testimony

does not seem to have been even raised; and the Court found itself in a

dilemma, which it acknowledged in the following way: it was decreed that

for his complicity in "the flight and deviation of Francesca Comparini,"

and too great intimacy with her, Caponsacchi should be banished for

three years to Civita Vecchia; and that Pompilia, on her side, should be

relegated, for the time being, to a convent. That is to say: the

prisoners were pronounced guilty; and a merely nominal punishment was

inflicted upon them.

The records of this trial contain almost everything of biographical or

even dramatic interest in the original book. They are, so far as they

go, the complete history of the case; and the result of the trial,

ambiguous as it was, supplied the only argument on which an even formal

defence of the subsequent murder could be based. The substance of these

records appears in full in Mr. Browning's work; and his readers can

judge for themselves whether the letters which were intended to

substantiate Pompilia's guilt, could, even if she had possessed the

power of writing, have been written by a woman so young and so

uncultured as herself. They will also see that the Count's plot against

his wife was still more deeply laid than the above-mentioned

circumstances attest.

Count Guido was of course not satisfied. He wanted a divorce; and he

continued to sue for it by means of his brother, the Abate Paul, then

residing in Rome; but before long he received news which was destined to

change his plans. Pompilia was about to become a mother; and in

consideration of her state, she had been removed from the convent to her

paternal home, where she was still to be ostensibly a prisoner. The

Comparini then occupied a small villa outside one of the city gates. A

few months later, in this secluded spot, the Countess Franceschini gave

birth to a son, whom her parents lost no time in conveying to a place of

concealment and safety. The murder took place a fortnight after this

event. I give the rest of the story in an almost literal translation

from a contemporary narrative, which was published, immediately after

the Count's execution, in the form of a pamphlet[22]--the then current

substitute for a newspaper.

"Being oppressed by various feelings, and stimulated to revenge, now by

honour, now by self-interest, yielding to his wicked thoughts, he (Count

Guido) devised a plan for killing his wife and her nominal parents; and

having enlisted in his enterprise four other ruffians,"--labourers on

his property, "started with them from Arezzo, and on Christmas-eve

arrived in Rome, and took up his abode at Ponte Milvio, where there was

a villa belonging to his brother, and where he concealed himself with

his followers till the fitting moment for the execution of his design

had arrived. Having therefore watched from thence all the movements of

the Comparini family, he proceeded on Thursday, the 2nd of January, at

one o'clock of the night,[23] with his companions to the Comparini's

house; and having left Biagio Agostinelli and Domenico Gambasini at the

gate, he instructed one of the others to knock at the house-door, which

was opened to him on his declaring that he brought a letter from Canon

Caponsacchi at Civita Vecchia. The wicked Franceschini, supported by two

other of his assassins, instantly threw himself on Violante Comparini,

who had opened the door, and flung her dead upon the ground. Pompilia,

in this extremity, extinguished the light, thinking thus to elude her

assassins, and made for the door of a neighbouring blacksmith, crying

for help. Seeing Franceschini provided with a lantern, she ran and hid

herself under the bed, but being dragged from under it, the unhappy

woman was barbarously put to death by twenty-two wounds from the hand of

her husband, who, not content with this, dragged her to the feet of

Comparini, who, being similarly wounded by another of the assassins, was

crying, '_confession_.'"

"At the noise of this horrible massacre people rushed to the spot; but

the villains succeeded in flying, leaving behind, however, in their

haste, one his cloak, and Franceschini his cap, which was the means of

betraying them. The unfortunate Francesca Pompilia, in spite of all the

wounds with which she had been mangled, having implored of the Holy

Virgin the grace of being allowed to confess, obtained it, since she was

able to survive for a short time and describe the horrible attack. She

also related that after the deed, her husband asked the assassin who had

helped him to murder her _if she were really dead_; and being assured

that she was, quickly rejoined, _let us lose no time, but return to the

vineyard_;[24] and so they escaped. Meanwhile the police (Forza) having

been called, it arrived with its chief officer (Bargello), and a

confessor was soon procured, together with a surgeon, who devoted

himself to the treatment of the unfortunate girl."

"Monsignore, the Governor, being informed of the event, immediately

despatched Captain Patrizj to arrest the culprits; but on reaching the

vineyard the police officers discovered that they were no longer there,

but had gone towards the high road an hour before. Patrizj pursued his

journey without rest, and having arrived at the inn, was told by the

landlord that Franceschini had insisted upon obtaining horses, which

were refused to him because he was not supplied with the necessary

order; and had proceeded therefore on foot with his companions towards

Baccano. Continuing his march, and taking the necessary precautions, he

arrived at the Merluzza inn, and there discovered the assassins, who

were speedily arrested; their knives still stained with blood, a hundred

and fifty scudi in coin being also found on Franceschini's person. The

arrest, however, cost Patrizj his life, for he had heated himself too

much, and having received a slight wound, died in a few days."

"The knife of Franceschini was on the Genoese pattern, and triangular;

and was notched at the edge, so that it could not be withdrawn from the

wounded flesh without lacerating it in such a manner as to render the

wound incurable."

"The criminals being taken to Ponte Milvio, they went through a first

examination at the inn there at the hands of the notaries and judges

sent thither for the purpose, and the chief points of a confession were

obtained from them."

"When the capture of the delinquents was known in Rome, a multitude of

the people hastened to see them as they were conveyed bound on horses

into the city. It is related that Franceschini having asked one of the

police officers in the course of the journey _how ever the crime had

been discovered_, and being told _that it had been revealed by his

wife, whom they had found still living_, was almost stupefied by the

intelligence. Towards twenty-three o'clock (the last hour before sunset)

they arrived at the prisons. A certain Francesco Pasquini, of Città di

Castello, and Allessandro Baldeschi, of the same town, both twenty-two

years of age, were the assistants of Guido Franceschini in the murder of

the Comparini; and Gambasini and Agostinelli were those who stood on

guard at the gate."

"Meanwhile the corpses of the assassinated Comparini were exposed at San

Lorenzo, in Lucina, but so disfigured, and especially Franceschini's

wife, by their wounds in the face, that they were no longer

recognizable. The unhappy Francesca, after taking the sacrament,

forgiving her murderers, under seventeen years of age, and after having

made her will, died on the sixth day of the month, which was that of the

Epiphany; and was able to clear herself of all the calumnies which her

husband had brought against her. The surprise of the people in seeing

these corpses was great, from the atrocity of the deed, which made one

really shudder, seeing two septuagenarians and a girl of seventeen so

miserably put to death."

"The trial proceeding meanwhile, many papers were drawn up on the

subject, bringing forward all the most incriminating circumstances of

this horrible massacre; and others also were written for the defence

with much erudition, especially by the advocate of the poor, a certain

Monsignor Spreti, which had the effect of postponing the sentence; also

because Baldeschi persisted in denial, though he was tortured with the

rope, and twice fainted under it. At last he confessed, and so did the

others, who also revealed the fact that they had intended in due time to

murder Franceschini himself, and take his money, because he had not kept

his promise of paying them the moment they should have left Rome."

"On the twenty-second of February there appeared on the Piazza del

Popolo a large platform with a guillotine and two gibbets, on which the

culprits were to be executed. Many stands were constructed for the

convenience of those who were curious to witness such a terrible act of

justice; and the concourse was so great that some windows fetched as

much as six dollars each. At eight o'clock Franceschini and his

companions were summoned to their death, and having been placed in the

Consorteria, and there assisted by the Abate Panciatici and the Cardinal

Acciajuoli, forthwith disposed themselves to die well. At twenty o'clock

the Company of Death and the Misericordia reached the dungeons, and the

condemned were let down, placed on separate carts, and conveyed to the

place of execution."

It is farther stated that Franceschini showed the most intrepidity and

cold blood of them all, and that he died with the name of Jesus on his

lips. He wore the same clothes in which he had committed the crime: a

close-fitting garment (_juste-au-corps_) of grey cloth, a loose black

shirt (_camiciuola_), a goat's hair cloak, a white hat, and a cotton

cap.

The attempt made by him to defraud his accomplices, poor and helpless as

they were, has been accepted by Mr. Browning as an indication of

character which forbade any lenient interpretation of his previous acts.

Pompilia, on the other hand, is absolved, by all the circumstances of

her protracted death, from any doubt of her innocence which previous

evidence might have raised. Ten different persons attest, not only her

denial of any offence against her husband, but, what is of far more

value, her Christian gentleness, and absolute maiden modesty, under the

sufferings of her last days, and the medical treatment to which they

subjected her. Among the witnesses are a doctor of theology (Abate

Liberate Barberito), the apothecary and his assistant, and a number of

monks or priests; the first and most circumstantial deposition being

that of an Augustine, Frà Celestino Angelo di Sant' Anna, and

concluding with these words: "I do not say more, for fear of being taxed

with partiality. I know well that God alone can examine the heart. But I

know also that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; and

that my great St. Augustine says: 'As the life was, so is its end.'"

It needed all the evidence in Pompilia's favour to secure the full

punishment of her murderer, strengthened, as he was, by social and

ecclesiastical position, and by the acknowledged rights of marital

jealousy. We find curious proof of the sympathies which might have

prejudiced his wife's cause, in the marginal notes appended to her

depositions, and which repeatedly introduce them as lies.

"F. _Lie concerning the arrival at Castelnuovo._"

"H. _New lies to the effect that she did not receive the lover's

letters, and does not know how to write_," &c., &c.[25]

The significant question, "Whether and when a husband may kill his

unfaithful wife," was in the present case not thought to be finally

answered, till an appeal had been made from the ecclesiastical tribunal

to the Pope himself. It was Innocent XII. who virtually sentenced Count

Franceschini and his four accomplices to death.

When Mr. Browning wrote "The Ring and the Book," his mind was made up on

the merits of the Franceschini case; and the unity of purpose which has

impressed itself upon his work contributes largely to its power. But he

also knew that contemporary opinion would be divided upon it; and he has

given the divergent views it was certain to create, as constituting a

part of its history. He reminds us that two sets of persons equally

acquainted with the facts, equally free from any wish to distort them,

might be led into opposite judgments through the mere action of some

impalpable bias in one direction or the other, which third, more

critical or more indifferent, would adopt a compromise between the two;

and he closes his introductory chapter with a tribute to that mystery of

human motive and character which so often renders more conclusive

judgments impossible.

"Action now shrouds, now shows the informing thought:

Man, like a glass ball with a spark a-top,

Out of the magic fire that lurks inside,

Shows one tint at a time to take the eye

Which, let a finger touch the silent sleep,

Shifted a hair's-breadth shoots you dark for bright,

Suffuses bright with dark, and baffles so

Your sentence absolute for shine or shade." (vol. viii. p. 55.)

The three forms of opinion here indicated appear in the three following

chapters as the respective utterance of "HALF-ROME," "THE OTHER

HALF-ROME," and "TERTIUM QUID."

HALF-ROME has an instinctive sympathy with the husband who has been made

ridiculous, and the nobleman who is threatened with an ignominious

death; and is disposed throughout to regard him as more sinned against

than sinning. "Count Guido has been unfortunate in everything. He is one

of those proud and sensitive men who make few friends, and who meet

reverses half-way. He has waited thirty years for advancement in the

church, is sick of hope deferred, and is on the point of returning home

to end his days, as he thinks, in frugality and peace, when a pretty

girl is thrown in his way. Visions of domestic cheerfulness and comfort

rise up before him. He is entrapped into marriage before he has had time

to consider what he is doing, and discovers when it is too late that the

parents reputed wealthy have little left but debts; and that in exchange

for their daughter's dowry, present and prospective, he must virtually

maintain them as well as her."

"He is far from rich, but he makes the best of a bad bargain--takes the

three with him to Arezzo, and lodges them with his mother and his

youngest brother, in the old family house. He is repaid with howls of

disappointment. Pietro and Violante want splendour and good-living. They

haven't married their daughter to a nobleman and gone to live in his

palace, to be duller than they were at home, and have less to eat and

drink. They abuse the mother, who won't give up her place in the

household, and try to sneer the young brother-priest out of his respect

for old-fashioned ways. They go back to Rome, trumpeting their wrongs:

and, once there, spring a mine upon the luckless Count. They refuse to

pay the remainder of Pompilia's dowry, on the ground that she is not

their child. Violante Comparini has cheated her husband into accepting a

base-born girl as his own, and a well-born gentleman into marrying her,

but was ready to have qualms of conscience as soon as it should be

convenient to tell the truth; and now the moment has come."

"Count Guido, left alone with his nameless and penniless wife, still

hopes for the best. Pompilia is not guilty of her mock parents' sins.

She has been honest enough to take part against them when writing to her

brother-in-law in Rome.[26] He and she may still live in peace together.

But now the old story begins again--that of the elderly husband and the

young wife. Canon Caponsacchi throws comfits at Pompilia in the theatre;

brushes against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under

her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks

up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count

is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox

prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a

drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and

everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to

Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the

night together. She brazens the matter out, covers her husband with

invective, and threatens him with his own sword. He gives both in

charge, and follows them to Rome, where he seeks redress from the law.

But he does not obtain redress, though the couple's guilt is made as

clear as day by a packet of love letters which they had left behind

them. They swear that they did not write the letters, and the Court

believes them. 'They have done wrong, of course, but there is no proof

of crime;' and they are let off with a mere show of punishment."

"The Count returns to Arezzo to find the whole story known, and himself

the laughing-stock of everybody. He is complimented on his patience

under his wife's attack--congratulated on having come out of it with a

whole skin. He pushes his claim for a divorce on the obvious ground of

infidelity! is met by a counter-claim on the ground of--cruelty! One

exasperating circumstance fellows another. At last he hears of the birth

of a child, which will be falsely represented as his heir; and then the

pent-up passion breaks forth, and in one great avenging wave it washes

his name clear."

"Yet he gives the guilty one a last chance. He utters the name of

Caponsacchi at her door. If she regrets her offence, that name will bar

it. It proves a talisman at which the door flies open. The Count and his

assistants must be tried for form's sake. But if they are condemned,

there is no justice left in Rome. If he had taken his wife's life at the

moment of provocation, he would have been praised for the act. But he

called in the law to do what he was bound to do for himself; and the law

has assessed his honour at what seemed to be his own price. The

vengeance, too long delayed, has been excessive in consequence. It was

clumsy into the bargain, since the Canon has escaped alive. Well, if

harm comes, husbands who are disposed to take the new way instead of the

old will have had a lesson; and the Count has only himself to thank."

THE OTHER HALF-ROME is chiefly impressed by the spectacle of a young

wife and mother butchered by her husband in cold blood: and can only

think of her as having been throughout a victim. It does not absolve

Violante, but it allows something for honest parental feeling in the old

couple's desire for a child; and something for the good done to this

human waif by its adoption into a decent home. According to this

version, it is the Count and his brother who lay the matrimonial trap,

and the Comparini parents and child who fall into it. "The grim Guido is

at first kept in the background. Abate Paolo makes the proposal. He is

oily and deferential, and flatters poor foolish Violante, and dazzles

her at the same time. 'His elder brother,' he says, 'is longing to

escape from Rome and its pomps and glare. He wants his empty old palace

at Arezzo, and his breezy villa among the vines,'--and here the

emptiness of both is described so as to sound like wealth. 'Poor Guido!

he is always harping upon his home. But he wants a wife to take there--a

wife not quite empty-handed, since he is not rich for his rank--but

above all, with a true tender heart and an innocent soul--one who will

be a child to his mother, and fall into his own ways. Many a parent

would be glad to welcome him as a son-in-law, but report tells him that

Violante's daughter is just the girl he wants.'"

"The marriage takes place. Foolish Pietro is talked over and strips

himself of everything he has. He and his wife have no choice but to go

and live with their son-in-law and his mother and brother. They meet

with nothing under his roof but starvation, insult, and cruelty, and

return home after a few months, duped and beggared, to ask hospitality

of those whom they had once entertained. Violante, overwhelmed by these

misfortunes, confesses that Pompilia is not her child, and Pietro

proclaims the fact; not that he wishes to leave Pompilia in the lurch,

but because he thinks this a sure way of getting her back.--Count Guido

is clearly not the man to wish to retain as his wife a base-born girl

without a dowry, and whom he has never loved.--But the case must be

settled by law, the law pronounces in Count Guido's favour so far as the

actual marriage portion is concerned; and Count Guido clearly lays his

plans so as to half-drive and half-tempt his wife into the kind of

misconduct which will rid him of her without prejudicing his right to

what she has brought him."

This half of Rome accepts Pompilia's story of all that led to her

flight, and Caponsacchi's statement that he assisted in it simply to

save her life. It thinks the husband's intrigues sufficiently proved by

the fact that the Canon owns to having received letters which the wife

denies having written, and which must, therefore, have been forged.

Count Guido, it declares, has had no wrongs to avenge, and supposing he

had wrongs, he has adopted too convenient a mode of avenging them. "He

demands protection from the law, and the moment its balance trembles

against him he flies out of court, declaring that wounded honour can

only be cured by the sword. At all events he has given the law plenty to

do: three courts at work for him, and an appeal to the Pope besides. If

any law is binding on mankind it is that such as he shall be made an end

of. He is the common enemy of his fellow-men."

TERTIUM QUID sees no reason for assuming that the wrong is altogether on

either side, and reviews the circumstances in such a manner as to show

that there is probably right on both. He lays stress on the expediency

of judging the Comparini by the morals of their class, and Count Guido

by the peculiarities of his own nature; admits the punishment of the

wife and parents to have been excessive, and cannot admit it to have

been unprovoked; does not pretend to decide between the conflicting

statements, and does not consider that Pompilia's dying confession

throws much light upon them; seeing that it may be equally true, or

false, or neutralized by another reserved for the priest's ear. Does not

regard putting the Count to the torture as the right mode of eliciting

the truth: because he may be innocent. But declares that if _he_ does

not deserve to undergo the torture, no one ever did or will. Tertium

Quid is sometimes flippant in tone, and his neutral attitude seems

chiefly the result of indifference or of caution. He is addressing

himself to a Highness and an Excellency, and is careful not to shock the

prejudices of either. Still, his statement is the nearest approach to a

judicial summing up of which the nature of the work admits.

Mr. Browning now enters on the constructive part of his work. He puts

the personages of the drama themselves before us, allowing each to plead

his or her own cause. The imaginary occasion is that of Count Guido's

trial; and all the depositions which were made on the previous one are

transferred to this. The author has been obliged in every case to build

up the character from the evidence, and to re-mould and expand the

evidence in conformity with the character. The motive, feeling, and

circumstance set forth by each separate speaker are thus in some degree

fictitious; but they are always founded upon fact; and the literal truth

of a vast number of details is self-evident. We first hear:

COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI. He has been caught red-handed from the murder

of his wife. His crime is patent. He has himself confessed it under

torture. His only hope of reprieve lies in the colour which he may be

able to impart to it; and his speech is cunningly adapted to the nature

of the Court, and to the moral and mental constitution of those of whom

it is composed. His judges are churchmen: neutral on the subject of

marriage; rather coarsely masculine in their idea of the destiny of

women. He does not profess to have entertained any affection for his

wife. He derides the idea of having ill-used her, and thinks she might

have liked him better if he had done so, instead of threatening her into

good behaviour like a naughty child, with hair powder for poison, and a

wooden toy for a sword; has no doubt that, if she had cared to warm his

heart, some smouldering embers within it might still have burst into

flame; but admits once for all that there was no question of feeling in

the case; it was a bargain on both sides, and a fair one as far as he

was concerned.

Paternity, however, is a condition with which his hearers may be

supposed to sympathize; and he is absolutely eloquent, when he describes

the desire he has cherished for a son, and the burning pain which filled

him when he knew that it had been defrauded. He tells the story of his

wife's intrigue and flight, much as the opinion of Half-Rome has

reflected it; but he laces the question of his child's legitimacy in

such a manner as to extract an equal advantage from either view. In

either case it was Pompilia's crowning iniquity that she gave birth to a

child, and placed it beyond his reach; and in either case it was the

outraged paternal feeling which inspired his act.

The whole monologue is leavened by a spirit of mock deference for

religion, for the Church, and for the law which represents the Church.

Count Guido is led in from the torture, a mass of mock-patient

suffering: wincing as he speaks, but quite in spite of himself--grateful

that his pains are not worse--begging his judges not to be too much

concerned about him; "since, thanks to his age and shaken health, a

fainting fit soon came to his relief--indeed, torture itself is a kind

of relief from the moral agonies he has undergone." He reminds his

judges that the Church was his only mistress for thirty years. He would

have served her, he declares, to the end of his life, but that his

fidelity had been so long ignored. He trusted to the law--in other words

to the Church--to avenge his honour when he ought to have done so

himself. She deceived his trust, and still he hoped and endured. When he

came to Rome, in his last frenzy of just revenge, he still stayed his

hand, because the Feast of the Nativity had begun: it was the period at

which the Church enjoins peace and good-will towards men. The face of

the heavenly infant looked down upon him; he prayed that he might not

enter into temptation. But the days went by, and the Face withered and

waned, and the cross alone confronted him. Then he felt that the hour

had come, and he found his way to his wife's retreat.

The door opened to the name of Caponsacchi. His worst fears were thus

confirmed. Even so, had he been admitted by Pompilia, weak from her

recent sufferings, he might have paused in pity--by Pietro, he might

have paused in contempt; but it was the hag Violante who opened to him:

the cheat, the mock-mother, the source of all his wrongs. The impulse to

stamp out that one detested life involved all three. And now he triumphs

in the deed. He has cast a foul burden from his life. He can look his

fellow-men in the face again. Far from admitting that he deserves

punishment, he claims the sympathy and the approval of those who have

met to judge him: for he has done their work--the work of Divine justice

and of natural law. In a final burst of rhetoric he challenges his

judges to restore to him his life, his name, his civil rights, and best

of all, his son; and together, he declares, they will rebuild the family

honour, and revive the old forgotten tradition of domestic purity and

peace. And if one day the son, about to kiss his hand, starts at the

marks of violence upon it, he will smile and say, "it was only an

accident--

"... just a trip

O' the torture-irons in their search for truth,--

Hardly misfortune, and no fault at all." (vol. ix. p. 82.)

GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI next tells his story. It includes some details of

his earlier life, which throw light on what will follow. He is not a

priest from choice. He had interest in the Church, and grew up in the

expectation of entering it. But when the time came for taking his vows,

he recoiled from the sacrifice which they involved, and yielded only to

the Bishop's assurance that he need make no sacrifice; there were two

ways of interpreting such vows, and he need not select the harder; a man

of polish and accomplishments was as valuable to the Church as a scholar

or an ascetic. Her structure stood firm, and no one need now-a-days

break his back in the effort to hold her up. Let him write his madrigals

(he had a turn for verse-making) and not become a fixture in his seat in

the choir through too close an attendance there. The terms were easy,

and Caponsacchi became a priest, no worse and no better than he was

expected to be; but with the feelings and purposes of a truer manhood

lying dormant within him. These Pompilia was destined to arouse.

He relates that he first saw her at the theatre. His attention was

attracted by her strange sad beauty: and a friend who sat by him, and

was a connection of the husband's, threw comfits at her to make her

return his gaze, warning him at the same time to do nothing which could

compromise her. He accepted the warning, but could not forget the face.

He felt a sudden disgust for the light women and the light pleasures

which were alone within his reach, and determined to change his mode of

life, and leave Arezzo for Rome.

At this juncture a love-letter was brought to him. It purported to come

from the lady at whom he had flung the comfits;[27] offered him her

heart, and begged an interview with him. The bearer was a masked woman,

who owned to an equivocal position in Count Guido's household.

Caponsacchi saw through the trick, declined the proposed interview on

the ground of his priesthood, and completed his answer with an allusion

to the husband, which would punish him in the probable case of its

passing directly into his hands. The next day the same messenger

appeared with a second letter, reproaching him for his cruelty; he

answered in the same strain. But the letters continued, now dropped into

his prayer-book, now flung down to him from a window. At length they

changed their tone. He had been begged to come: he was now entreated to

stay away. The husband, before absent, had returned: indifferent, had

become jealous. His vengeance was aroused; and the sooner Caponsacchi

escaped to Rome, the better. This challenge to his courage had the

intended effect. He wrote word that the street was public if the house

was not, and he would be under the lady's window that evening.

He went. She was standing there, lamp in hand, like Our Lady of Sorrows

on her altar. She vanished, reappeared on a terrace close above his

head, and spoke to him. He had sent her letters, she said, which she

could not read; but she had been told that they spoke of love. She

thought at first that he must be wicked, and then she felt that he could

not be so wicked as to have meant what that woman said; and now that she

saw his face she knew he did not write it. Still, he meant her well when

no one else did. Her need was sore; he alone in the world could help

her; she had determined to call to him. If he had some feverish fancy

for what was not her's to give, he would be cured of it so soon as he

knew all. She told him her story, and entreated him to take her to

Rome, and consign her to her parents' care. He promised, and then his

heart misgave him. Would it be right in him? Would it be good for her?

He passed two days in a ceaseless internal conflict, and then determined

to see her once more, but only to comfort and advise.

She stood again awaiting him at her window. Again she spoke, reproaching

him for the suspense she had undergone. Her manner dispelled all doubt,

and he did for her what she desired. The journey, which he describes in

detail, was to him one spontaneous and continued revelation of her

purity and truth. Then came the trial and his banishment. He was

compelled to leave her to the protection of the law; to the good offices

of the Court which confronts him now--of the men who, as he reminds

them, laughed in their sleeve at the young priest's escapade, and at the

transparent excuses with which he had taxed their credulity,--of the men

who, in consideration for his youth, merely sent him to disport himself

elsewhere, leaving the woman he had striven to protect, to the husband

who was to murder her.

The news which summons him from Civita Vecchia has fallen on him like a

thunderbolt. His being is shaken to its foundations. He strives to

contain himself in outward deference to the Court, but a storm of

suppressed sorrow and indignation rages beneath all his words: now

uttering itself in pitying tender reverence for Pompilia's memory; now

in scorn of those who would defame her; now in anger at himself, who is

casting suspicion on her innocence by the very passion with which he

defends it, now in defiance of those who choose to call the passion by

the vulgar name of love. He tears up the flimsy calumnies which have

been launched against her and himself; flinging them back in short,

contemptuous utterances in the teeth of whosoever may believe them; begs

his judges to forget his violence; and makes a last attempt to convince

himself and them that no selfish desire underlies it. Pompilia is

dying: he too is dead--to the world. What can she be to him but a

dream--a thinker's dream--of a life not consecrated to the Church, but

spent, as with her, in one constant domestic revelation of the eternal

goodness and truth--a dream from which he will pass content.... And here

the whole edifice of self-control and self-deception breaks down, and

the agonized heart sends forth its cry:--

"O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" (vol. ix. p. 166.)

The third speaker is POMPILIA. Her evidence is the story of her life. It

is given from her deathbed; and its half-dreamy reminiscences are

uttered with the childlike simplicity with which she may have opened her

heart to her priest. She is full of strange pathetic wonder at the

mystery of existence; at the manner in which the thing we seem to grasp

eludes us, and the seemingly impossible comes to pass. "Husbands are

supposed to love their wives and guard them. See how it has been with

her! That other man--that friend--they say _he_ loves her; his kindness

was all love! She is a wife and he a priest, and yet they go on saying

it! Her boy, she imagined, would be hers for life: and he is taken from

her. He, too, becomes a dream; and in that dream she sees him grown tall

and strong, and tutoring his mother as an imprudent child, for venturing

out of the safe street into the lonely house where no help could reach

her. It all reminds her of the day when she and a child-friend played at

finding each other out in the figures on the tapestry; and Tisbe

recognized her in a tree with a rough trunk for body, and her five

fingers blossoming into leaves. Things are, and are not at the same

time."

One thing, however, is real amidst the unreality: her joy and pride in

finding herself a mother. The event proved that when she left Arezzo the

hope of maternity was already dawning upon her; and Mr. Browning has

combined this fact with the latent maternal sentiment of all true women,

and read it into every impulse of her remaining life. She was wretched.

She had vainly sought for help. She had resigned herself to the

inevitable. She had lain down at night with the old thought--

"... 'Done, another day!

How good to sleep and so get nearer death!'--

When, what, first thing at day-break, pierced the sleep

With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,

Light in me, light without me, everywhere

Change!" (vol. ix. p. 216.)

From this moment, as she tells us, everything was transformed. For days,

for weeks, Caponsacchi's name had been ringing in her ears: in jealous

explosions on her husband's part; in corrupting advice on the part of

the waiting-woman who brought letters supposed to be sent to her by him;

in declarations of love which her first glance at his face told her he

could not have written. This, too, has all seemed a grotesquely painful

dream. But when she awoke on the April morning in that bounding of the

spirit towards an unknown joy, the name assumed a new meaning for her,

and she said, "Let Caponsacchi come."

She remembers little after that, but the enfolding tenderness which

secured the fulfilment of her hope. She describes nothing after the

"tap" at the door, which was the beginning of the end. She has attained

the crown of her woman's existence, and she can bear no resentment

towards him whose cruelty embittered, and whose vengeance has cut it

short. The motherly heart in her goes out to the wicked husband who was

also once a child, and strives to palliate what he has done. "He was

sinned against as well as sinning. Her poor parents were blind and

unjust in their mode of retaliating upon him. She was blind and foolish

in doing nothing to heal the breach. Her earthly goods have been a

snare to Guido; she herself was an importunate presence to him. By God's

grace he will be the better for having swept her from his path. She

thanks him for destroying in her that bodily life which was his to

pollute, and for leaving her soul free. Her infant shall have been born

of no earthly father. It is the child of its mother's love."

And this love for her child overflows in gratitude to him who saved her

for it--a gratitude which is also something more. She has recoiled from

the idea of being united to a priest by any bond of earthly affection;

but the knowledge is growing upon her that her bond to Caponsacchi _is_

love, though it assumes an ideal character in her innocence, her

ignorance, and the exaltation of feeling which denotes her approaching

death. She has recalled the incidents of her flight, but only to bear

witness to Caponsacchi's virtues: his watchful kindness, his chivalrous

courage, the unselfishness which could risk life and honour without

thought of reward, the priestly dignity which he never set aside. Her

last words contain an invocation to himself which has all the passion of

earthly tenderness, and all the solemnity of a prayer. She addresses him

as her soldier-saint--as the friend "her only, all her own," who is

closest to her now on her final journey; whose love shall sustain, whose

strong hand shall guide her, on the unknown path she is about to tread.

She thinks he would not marry if he could. True marriage is in heaven,

where there is no making of contracts, with gold on one side, power or

youth or beauty on the other, but one is "man and wife at once when the

true time is." Would either of them wish the past undone? Her soul says

"No."

"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." (vol. ix. p. 241.)

We have now the written pleadings of two advocates who figure largely in

the records of the case; the one enlisted on the Count's side, the other

on Pompilia's They are