You see, I will not have the service fail!

I say, the angel saved me: I am safe!

Others may want and wish, I wish nor want

One point o' the circle plainer, where I stand

Traced round about with white to front the world.

What of the calumny I came across,

What o' the way to the end?--the end crowns all.

The judges judged aright i' the main, gave me

The uttermost of my heart's desire, a truce

From torture and Arezzo, balm for hurt,

With the quiet nuns,--God recompense the good!

Who said and sang away the ugly past.

And, when my final fortune was revealed,

What safety, while, amid my parents' arms,

My babe was given me! Yes, he saved my babe:

It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like thing,

Through that Arezzo noise and trouble: back

Had it returned nor ever let me see!

But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live

And give my bird the life among the leaves

God meant him! Weeks and months of quietude,

I could lie in such peace and learn so much--

Begin the task, I see how needful now,

Of understanding somewhat of my past,--

Know life a little, I should leave so soon.

Therefore, because this man restored my soul,

All has been right; I have gained my gain, enjoyed

As well as suffered,--nay, got foretaste too

Of better life beginning where this ends--

All through the breathing-while allowed me thus,

Which let good premonitions reach my soul

Unthwarted, and benignant influence flow

And interpenetrate and change my heart,

Uncrossed by what was wicked,--nay, unkind.

For, as the weakness of my time drew nigh,

Nobody did me one disservice more,

Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love

I lay in the arms of, till my boy was born,

Born all in love, with naught to spoil the bliss

A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine

A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.

All women are not mothers of a boy,

Though they live twice the length of my whole life,

And, as they fancy, happily all the same.

There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,

As if it would continue, broaden out

Happily more and more, and lead to heaven:

Christmas before me,--was not that a chance?

I never realized God's birth before--

How he grew likest God in being born.

This time I felt like Mary, had my babe

Lying a little on my breast like hers.

So all went on till, just four days ago--

The night and the tap.

Oh, it shall be success

To the whole of our poor family! My friends

... Nay, father and mother,--give me back my word!

They have been rudely stripped of life, disgraced

Like children who must needs go clothed too fine,

Carry the garb of Carnival in Lent.

If they too much affected frippery,

They have been punished and submit themselves,

Say no word: all is over, they see God

Who will not be extreme to mark their fault

Or he had granted respite: they are safe.

For that most woeful man my husband once,

Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath,

I--pardon him? So far as lies in me,

I give him for his good the life he takes,

Praying the world will therefore acquiesce.

Let him make God amends,--none, none to me

Who thank him rather that, whereas strange fate

Mockingly styled him husband and me wife,

Himself this way at least pronounced divorce,

Blotted the marriage-bond: this blood of mine

Flies forth exultingly at any door,

Washes the parchment white, and thanks the blow.

We shall not meet in this world nor the next,

But where will God be absent? In his face

Is light, but in his shadow healing too:

Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!

And as my presence was importunate,--

My earthly good, temptation and a snare,--

Nothing about me but drew somehow down

His hate upon me,--somewhat so excused

Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,--

May my evanishment forevermore

Help further to relieve the heart that cast

Such object of its natural loathing forth!

So he was made; he nowise made himself:

I could not love him, but his mother did.

His soul has never lain beside my soul;

But for the unresisting body,--thanks!

He burned that garment spotted by the flesh.

Whatever he touched is rightly ruined: plague

It caught, and disinfection it had craved

Still but for Guido; I am saved through him

So as by fire; to him--thanks and farewell!

Even for my babe, my boy, there 's safety thence--

From the sudden death of me, I mean: we poor

Weak souls, how we endeavor to be strong!

I was already using up my life,--

This portion, now, should do him such a good,

This other go to keep off such an ill!

The great life; see, a breath and it is gone!

So is detached, so left all by itself

The little life, the fact which means so much.

Shall not God stoop the kindlier to his work,

His marvel of creation, foot would crush,

Now that the hand he trusted to receive

And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce?

The better; he shall have in orphanage

His own way all the clearlier: if my babe

Outlived the hour--and he has lived two weeks--

It is through God who knows I am not by.

Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black,

And sets the tongue, might lie so long at rest,

Trying to talk? Let us leave God alone!

Why should I doubt he will explain in time

What I feel now, but fail to find the words?

My babe nor was, nor is, nor yet shall be

Count Guido Franceschini's child at all--

Only his mother's, born of love not hate!

So shall I have my rights in after-time.

It seems absurd, impossible to-day;

So seems so much else, not explained but known!

Ah! Friends, I thank and bless you every one!

No more now: I withdraw from earth and man

To my own soul, compose myself for God.

Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breath

Shall hear away my soul in being true!

He is still here, not outside with the world,

Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!

'T is now, when I am most upon the move,

I feel for what I verily find--again

The face, again the eyes, again, through all,

The heart and its immeasurable love

Of my one friend, my only, all my own,

Who put his breast between the spears and me.

Ever with Caponsacchi! Otherwise

Here alone would be failure, loss to me--

How much more loss to him, with life debarred

From giving life, love locked from love's display,

The day-star stopped its task that makes night morn!

O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,

No work begun shall ever pause for death!

Love will be helpful to me more and more

I' the coming course, the new path I must tread--

My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!

Tell him that if I seem without him now,

That 's the world's insight! Oh, he understands!

He is at Civita--do I once doubt

The world again is holding us apart?

He had been here, displayed in my behalf

The broad brow that reverberates the truth,

And flashed the word God gave him, back to man!

I know where the free soul is flown! My fate

Will have been hard for even him to bear:

Let it confirm him in the trust of God,

Showing how holily he dared the deed!

And, for the rest,--say, from the deed, no touch

Of harm came, but all good, all happiness,

Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain?

What I see, oh, he sees and how much more!

Tell him,--I know not wherefore the true word

Should fade and fall unuttered at the last--

It was the name of him I sprang to meet

When came the knock, the summons and the end.

"My great heart, my strong hand are back again!"

I would have sprung to these, beckoning across

Murder and hell gigantic and distinct

O' the threshold, posted to exclude me heaven:

He is ordained to call and I to come!

Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God?

Say,--I am all in flowers from head to foot!

Say,--not one flower of all he said and did,

Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown,

But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree

Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place

At this supreme of moments! He is a priest;

He cannot marry therefore, which is right:

I think he would not marry if he could.

Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,

Mere imitation of the inimitable:

In heaven we have the real and true and sure.

'T is there they neither marry nor are given

In marriage but are as the angels: right,

Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ

To say that! Marriage-making for the earth,

With gold so much,--birth, power, repute so much,

Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these!

Be as the angels rather, who, apart,

Know themselves into one, are found at length

Married, but marry never, no, nor give

In marriage; they are man and wife at once

When the true time is: here we have to wait

Not so long neither! Could we by a wish

Have what we will and get the future now,

Would we wish aught done undone in the past?

So, let him wait God's instant men call years;

Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,

Do out the duty! Through such souls alone

God stooping shows sufficient of his light

For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.

VIII

DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS,

PAUPERUM PROCURATOR

Ah, my Giacinto, he 's no ruddy rogue,

Is not Cinone? What, to-day we 're eight?

Seven and one 's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!

--Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,

_Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans_,

Up to _-aturus_, person, tense, and mood,

_Qui_es _me cum subjunctivo_ (I could cry)

And chews Corderius with his morning crust!

Look eight years onward, and he 's perched, he 's perched

Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,

Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?

--Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case

Like this, papa shall triturate full soon

To smooth Papinianian pulp!

It trots

Already through my head, though noon be now,

Does supper-time and what belongs to eve.

Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play!

--The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold

Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,

Cinnolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own,

That makes gruff January grin perforce!

For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth

Escaping from so many hearts at once--

When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,

Jokes the hale grandsire,--such are just the sort

To go off suddenly,--he who hides the key

O' the box beneath his pillow every night,--

Which box may hold a parchment (some one thinks)

Will show a scribbled something like a name

"Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end,

"To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,

Estates, tenements, hereditaments,

When I decease as honest grandsire ought."

Wherefore--yet this one time again perhaps--

Sha'n't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!

Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world,

May--drop in, merely?--trudge through rain and wind,

Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint

There 's cookery in a certain dwelling-place!

Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,

Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,

And so find door, put galligaskin off

At entry of a decent domicile

Cornered in snug Condotti,--all for love,

All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!

Well,

Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp!

How vain are chambering and wantonness,

Revel and rout and pleasures that make mad!

Commend me to home-joy, the family board,

Altar and hearth! These, with a brisk career,

A source of honest profit and good fame,

Just so much work as keeps the brain from rust,

Just so much play as lets the heart expand,

Honoring God and serving man,--I say,

These are reality, and all else,--fluff,

Nutshell and naught,--thank Flaccus for the phrase!

Suppose I had been Fisc, yet bachelor!

Why, work with a will, then! Wherefore lazy now?

Turn up the hour-glass, whence no sand-grain slips

But should have done its duty to the saint

O' the day, the son and heir that 's eight years old!

Let law come dimple Cinoncino's cheek,

And Latin dumple Cinarello's chin,

And while we spread him fine and toss him flat

This pulp that makes the pancake, trim our mass

Of matter into Argument the First,

Prime Pleading in defence of our accused,

Which, once a-waft on paper wing, shall soar,

Shall signalize before applausive Rome

What study, and mayhap some mother-wit,

Can do toward making Master fop and Fisc

Old bachelor Bottinius bite his thumb.

Now, how good God is! How falls plumb to point

This murder, gives me Guido to defend

Now, of all days i' the year, just when the boy

Verges on Virgil, reaches the right age

For some such illustration from his sire,

Stimulus to himself! One might wait years

And never find the chance which now finds me!

The fact is, there 's a blessing on the hearth,

A special providence for fatherhood!

Here 's a man, and what 's more, a noble, kills

--Not sneakingly but almost with parade--

Wife's father and wife's mother and wife's self

That 's mother's self of son and heir (like mine!)

--And here stand I, the favored advocate,

Who pluck this flower o' the field, no Solomon

Was ever clothed in glorious gold to match,

And set the same in Cinoncino's cap!

I defend Guido and his comrades--I!

Pray God, I keep me humble: not to me--

_Non nobis, Domine, sed tibi laus!_

How the fop chuckled when they made him Fisc!

We 'll beat you, my Bottinius, all for love,

All for our tribute to Cinotto's day!

Why, 'sbuddikins, old Innocent himself

May rub his eyes at the bustle,--ask "What 's this

Rolling from out the rostrum, as a gust

O' the _Pro Milone_ had been prisoned there,

And rattled Rome awake?" Awaken Rome,

How can the Pope doze on in decency?

He needs must wake up also, speak his word,

Have his opinion like the rest of Rome,

About this huge, this hurly-burly case:

He wants who can excogitate the truth,

Give the result in speech, plain black and white,

To mumble in the mouth and make his own

--A little changed, good man, a little changed!

No matter, so his gratitude be moved,

By when my Giacintino gets of age,

Mindful of who thus helped him at a pinch,

Archangelus _Procurator Pauperum_--

And proved Hortensius _Redivivus!_

Whew!

To earn the _Est-est_, merit the minced herb

That mollifies the liver's leathery slice,

With here a goose-foot, there a cock's-comb stuck,

Cemented in an element of cheese!

I doubt if dainties do the grandsire good:

Last June he had a sort of strangling ... bah!

He 's his own master, and his will is made.

So, liver fizz, law flit and Latin fly

As we rub hands o'er dish by way of grace!

May I lose cause if I vent one word more

Except--with fresh-cut quill we ink the white--

_P-r-o-pro Guidone et Sociis_. There!

Count Guido married--or, in Latin due,

What? _Duxit in uxorem?_--commonplace!

_Tædus jugales iniit, subiit_,--ha!

He underwent the matrimonial torch?

_Connubio stabili sibi junxit_,--hum!

In stable bond of marriage bound his own?

That 's clear of any modern taint: and yet ...

Virgil is little help to who writes prose.

He shall attack me Terence with the dawn,

Shall Cinuccino! Mum, mind business, Sir!

Thus circumstantially evolve we facts,

_Ita se habet ideo series facti:_

He wedded,--ah, with owls for augury!

_Nupserat, heu sinistris avibus_,

One of the blood Arezzo boasts her best,

_Dominus Guido, nobili genere ortus_,

_Pompiliæ_ ...

But the version afterward!

Curb we this ardor! Notes alone, to-day,

The speech to-morrow, and the Latin last:

Such was the rule in Farinacci's time.

Indeed I hitched it into verse and good.

Unluckily, law quite absorbs a man,

Or else I think I too had poetized.

"Law is the pork substratum of the fry,

Goose-foot and cock's-comb are Latinity,"--

And in this case, if circumstance assist,

We 'll garnish law with idiom, never fear!

Out-of-the-way events extend our scope:

For instance, when Bottini brings his charge,

"That letter which you say Pompilia wrote,

To criminate her parents and herself

And disengage her husband from the coil,--

That, Guido Franceschini wrote, say we:

Because Pompilia could not read nor write,

Therefore he pencilled her such letter first,

Then made her trace in ink the same again."

--Ha, my Bottini, have I thee on hip?

How will he turn this and break Tully's pate?

"_Existimandum_" (don't I hear the dog!)

"_Quod Guido designaverit elementa_

_Dictæ epistolæ, quæ fuerint_

_(Superinducto ab ea calamo)_

_Notata atramento_"--there 's a style!--

"_Quia ipsa scribere nesciebat._" Boh!

Now, my turn! Either, _Insulse!_ (I outburst)

Stupidly put! Inane is the response,

_Inanis est responsio_, or the like--

To wit, that each of all those characters,

_Quod singula elementa epistolæ_,

Had first of all been traced for her by him,

_Fuerant per eum prius designata_,

And then, the ink applied a-top of that,

_Et deinde, superinducto calamo_,

The piece, she says, became her handiwork,

_Per eam, efformata, ut ipsa asserit_.

Inane were such response! (a second time:)

Her husband outlined her the whole, forsooth?

_Vir ejus lineabat epistolam?_

What, she confesses that she wrote the thing,

_Fatetur eam scripsisse_, (scorn that scathes!)

That she might pay obedience to her lord?

_Ut viro obtemperaret, apices_

(Here repeat charge with proper varied phrase)

_Eo designante, ipsaque calamum_

_Super inducente?_ By such argument,

_Ita pariter_, she seeks to show the same,

(Ay, by Saint Joseph and what saints you please)

_Epistolam ostendit, medius fidius_,

No voluntary deed but fruit of force!

_Non voluntarie sed coacte scriptam!_

That 's the way to write Latin, friend my Fisc!

Bottini is a beast, one barbarous:

Look out for him when he attempts to say

"Armed with a pistol, Guido followed her!"

Will not I be beforehand with my Fisc,

Cut away phrase by phrase from underfoot!

_Guido Pompiliam_--Guido thus his wife

Following with igneous engine, shall I have?

_Armis munitus igneis persequens--_

_Arma sulphurea gestans_, sulphury arms,

Or, might one style a pistol--popping-piece?

_Armatus breviori sclopulo?_

We 'll let him have been armed so, though it make

Somewhat against us: I had thought to own--

Provided with a simple travelling-sword,

_Ense solummodo viatorio_

_Instructus:_ but we 'll grant the pistol here:

Better we lost the cause than lacked the gird

At the Fisc's Latin, lost the Judge's laugh!

It 's Venturini that decides for style.

Tommati rather goes upon the law.

So, as to law,--

Ah, but with law ne'er hope

To level the fellow,--don't I know his trick!

How he draws up, ducks under, twists aside!

He 's a lean-gutted hectic rascal, fine

As pale-haired red-eyed ferret which pretends

'T is ermine, pure soft snow from tail to snout.

He eludes law by piteous looks aloft.

Lets Latin glance off as he makes appeal

To saint that 's somewhere in the ceiling-top:

Do you suppose I don't conceive the beast?

Plague of the ermine-vermin! For it takes,

It takes, and here 's the fellow Fisc, you see,

And Judge, you 'll not be long in seeing next!

Confound the fop--he 's now at work like me:

Enter his study, as I seem to do,

Hear him read out his writing to himself!

I know he writes as if he spoke: I hear

The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck shot-forth,

--I see him strain on tiptoe, soar and pour

Eloquence out, nor stay nor stint at all--

Perorate in the air, then quick to press

With the product! What abuse of type and sheet!

He 'll keep clear of my cast, my logic-throw,

Let argument slide, and then deliver swift

Some bowl from quite an unguessed point of stand--

Having the luck o' the last word, the reply!

A plaguy cast, a mortifying stroke:

You face a fellow--cries, "So, there you stand?

But I discourteous jump clean o'er your head!

You take ship-carpentry for pilotage,

Stop rat-holes, while a sea sweeps through the breach,--

Hammer and fortify at puny points?

Do, clamp and tenon, make all tight and safe!

'T is here and here and here you ship a sea,

No good of your stopped leaks and littleness!"

Yet what do I name "little and a leak"?

The main defence o' the murder's used to death,

By this time, dry bare bones, no scrap we pick:

Safer I worked the new, the unforeseen,

The nice by-stroke, the fine and improvised

Point that can titillate the brain o' the Bench

Torpid with over-teaching, long ago!

As if Tommati (that has heard, reheard

And heard again, first this side and then that--

Guido and Pietro, Pietro and Guido, din

And deafen, full three years, at each long ear)

Don't want amusement for instruction now,

Won't rather feel a flea run o'er his ribs,

Than a daw settle heavily on his head!

Oh, I was young and had the trick of fence,

Knew subtle pass and push with careless right--

My left arm ever quiet behind back,

With dagger ready: not both hands to blade!

Puff and blow, put the strength out, Blunder-bore!

There 's my subordinate, young Spreti, now,

Pedant and prig,--he 'll pant away at proof,

That 's his way!

Now for mine--to rub some life

Into one's choppy fingers this cold day!

I trust Cinuzzo ties on tippet, guards

The precious throat on which so much depends!

Guido must be all goose-flesh in his hole,

Despite the prison-straw: bad Carnival

For captives! no sliced fry for him, poor Count!

Carnival-time,--another providence!

The town a-swarm with strangers to amuse,

To edify, to give one's name and fame

In charge of, till they find, some future day,

Cintino come and claim it, his name too,

Pledge of the pleasantness they owe papa--

Who else was it cured Rome of her great qualms,

When she must needs have her own judgment?--ay,

When all her topping wits had set to work,

Pronounced already on the case: mere boys,

Twice Cineruggiolo's age with half his sense,

As good as tell me, when I cross the court,

"Master Arcangeli!" (plucking at my gown)

"We can predict, we comprehend your play,

We 'll help you save your client." Tra-la-la!

I 've travelled ground, from childhood to this hour,

To have the town anticipate my track?

The old fox takes the plain and velvet path,

The young hound's predilection,--prints the dew,

Don't he, to suit their pulpy pads of paw?

No! Burying nose deep down i' the briery bush,

Thus I defend Count Guido.

Where are we weak?

First, which is foremost in advantage too,

Our murder,--we call, killing,--is a fact

Confessed, defended, made a boast of: good!

To think the Fisc claimed use of torture here,

And got thereby avowal plump and plain

That gives me just the chance I wanted,--scope

Not for brute-force but ingenuity,

Explaining matters, not denying them!

One may dispute,--as I am bound to do,

And shall,--validity of process here:

Inasmuch as a noble is exempt

From torture which plebeians undergo

In such a case: for law is lenient, lax,

Remits the torture to a nobleman

Unless suspicion be of twice the strength

Attaches to a man born vulgarly:

We don't card silk with comb that dresses wool.

Moreover, 't was severity undue

In this case, even had the lord been lout.

What utters, on this head, our oracle,

Our Farinacci, my Gamaliel erst,

In those immortal "Questions"? This I quote:

"Of all the tools at Law's disposal, sure

That named _Vigiliarum_ is the best--

That is, the worst--to whoso needs must bear:

Lasting, as it may do, from some seven hours

To ten; (beyond ten, we 've no precedent;

Certain have touched their ten but, bah, they died!)

It does so efficaciously convince,

That--speaking by much observation here--

Out of each hundred cases, by my count,

Never I knew of patients beyond four

Withstand its taste, or less than ninety-six

End by succumbing: only martyrs four,

Of obstinate silence, guilty or no,--against

Ninety-six full confessors, innocent

Or otherwise,--so shrewd a tool have we!"

No marvel either: in unwary hands,

Death on the spot is no rare consequence:

As indeed all but happened in this case

To one of ourselves, our young tough peasant-friend

The accomplice called Baldeschi: they were rough,

Dosed him with torture as you drench a horse,

Not modify your treatment to a man:

So, two successive days he fainted dead,

And only on the third essay, gave up,

Confessed like flesh and blood. We could reclaim,--

Blockhead Bottini giving cause enough!

But no,--we 'll take it as spontaneously

Confessed: we 'll have the murder beyond doubt.

Ah, fortunate (the poet's word reversed)

Inasmuch as we know our happiness!

Had the antagonist left dubiety,

Here were we proving murder a mere myth,

And Guido innocent, ignorant, absent,--ay,

Absent! He was--why, where should Christian be?--

Engaged in visiting his proper church,

The duty of us all at Christmas-time,

When Caponsacchi, the seducer, stung

To madness by his relegation, cast

About him and contrived a remedy

In murder: since opprobrium broke afresh,

By birth o' the babe, on him the imputed sire.

He it was quietly sought to smother up

His shame and theirs together,--killed the three,

And fled--(go seek him where you please to search)--

Just at the time when Guido, touched by grace,

Devotions ended, hastened to the spot,

Meaning to pardon his convicted wife,

"Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace!"--

And thus arrived i' the nick of time to catch

The charge o' the killing, though great-heartedly

He came but to forgive and bring to life.

Doubt ye the force of Christmas on the soul?

"Is thine eye evil because mine is good?"

So, doubtless, had I needed argue here

But for the full confession round and sound!

Thus might you wrong some kingly alchemist,--

Whose concern should not be with showing brass

Transmuted into gold, but triumphing,

Rather, about his gold changed out of brass,

Not vulgarly to the mere sight and touch,

But in the idea, the spiritual display,

The apparition buoyed by winged words

Hovering above its birthplace in the brain,--

Thus would you wrong this excellent personage

Forced, by the gross need, to gird apron round,

Plant forge, light fire, ply bellows,--in a word,

Demonstrate: when a faulty pipkin's crack

May disconcert you his presumptive truth!

Here were I hanging to the testimony

Of one of these poor rustics--four, ye gods!

Whom the first taste of friend the Fiscal's cord

May drive into undoing my whole speech,

Undoing, on his birthday,--what is worse,--

My son and heir!

I wonder, all the same,

Not so much at those peasants' lack of heart;

But--Guido Franceschini, nobleman,

Bear pain no better! Everybody knows

It used once, when my father was a boy,

To form a proper, nay, important point

I' the education of our well-born youth,

That they took torture handsomely at need,

Without confessing in this clownish guise.

Each noble had his rack for private use,

And would, for the diversion of a guest,

Bid it be set up in the yard of arms,

And take thereon his hour of exercise,--

Command the varletry stretch, strain their best,

While friends looked on, admired my lord could smile

'Mid tugging which had caused an ox to roar.

Men are no longer men!

--And advocates

No longer Farinacci, let us add,

If I one more time fly from point proposed!

So, _Vindicatio_--here begins the speech!

_Honoris causa;_ thus we make our stand:

Honor in us had injury, we prove.

Or if we fail to prove such injury

More than misprision of the fact,--what then?

It is enough, authorities declare,

If the result, the deed in question now,

Be caused by confidence that injury

Is veritable and no figment: since,

What, though proved fancy afterward, seemed fact

At the time, they argue shall excuse result.

That which we do, persuaded of good cause

For what we do, hold justifiable!--

So casuists bid: man, bound to do his best,

They would not have him leave that best undone

And mean to do his worst,--though fuller light

Show best was worst and worst would have been best.

Act by the present light!--they ask of man.

_Ultra quod hic non agitur_, besides

It is not anyway our business here,

_De probatione adulterii_,

To prove what we thought crime was crime indeed,

_Ad irrogandam pœnam_, and require

Its punishment: such nowise do we seek:

_Sed ad effectum_, but 't is our concern,

_Excusandi_, here to simply find excuse,

_Occisorem_, for who did the killing-work,

_Et ad illius defensionem_, (mark

The difference) and defend the man, just that!

_Quo casu levior probatio_

_Exuberaret_, to which end far lighter proof

Suffices than the prior case would claim:

It should be always harder to convict,

In short, than to establish innocence.

Therefore we shall demonstrate first of all

That Honor is a gift of God to man

Precious beyond compare: which natural sense

Of human rectitude and purity,--

Which white, man's soul is born with,--brooks no touch:

Therefore, the sensitivest spot of all,

Wounded by any wafture breathed from black,

Is--honor within honor, like the eye

Centred i' the ball--the honor of our wife.

Touch us o' the pupil of our honor, then,

Not actually,--since so you slay outright,--

But by a gesture simulating touch,

Presumable mere menace of such taint,--

This were our warrant for eruptive ire

"To whose dominion I impose no end."

(Virgil, now, should not be too difficult

To Cinoncino,--say, the early books.

Pen, truce to further gambols! _Poscimur!_)

Nor can revenge of injury done here

To the honor proved the life and soul of us,

Be too excessive, too extravagant:

Such wrong seeks and must have complete revenge.

Show we this, first, on the mere natural ground:

Begin at the beginning, and proceed

Incontrovertibly. Theodoric,

In an apt sentence Cassiodorus cites,

Propounds for basis of all household law--

I hardly recollect it, but it ends,

"Bird mates with bird, beast genders with his like,

And brooks no interference." Bird and beast?

The very insects ... if they wive or no,

How dare I say when Aristotle doubts?

But the presumption is they likewise wive,

At least the nobler sorts; for take the bee

As instance,--copying King Solomon,--

Why that displeasure of the bee to aught

Which savors of incontinency, makes

The unchaste a very horror to the hive?

Whence comes it bees obtain their epithet

Of _castæ apes_, notably "the chaste"?

Because, ingeniously saith Scaliger,

(The young sage,--see his book of table-talk)

"Such is their hatred of immodest act,

They fall upon the offender, sting to death."

I mind a passage much confirmative

I' the Idyllist (though I read him Latinized)--

"Why," asks a shepherd, "is this bank unfit

For celebration of our vernal loves?"

"Oh swain," returns the instructed shepherdess,

"Bees swarm here, and would quick resent our warmth!"

Only cold-blooded fish lack instinct here,

Nor gain nor guard connubiality:

But beasts, quadrupedal, mammiferous,

Do credit to their beasthood: witness him

That Ælian cites, the noble elephant,

(Or if not Ælian, somebody as sage)

Who seeing, much offence beneath his nose,

His master's friend exceed in courtesy

The due allowance to his master's wife,

Taught them good manners and killed both at once,

Making his master and the world admire.

Indubitably, then, that master's self,

Favored by circumstance, had done the same

Or else stood clear rebuked by his own beast.

_Adeo, ut qui honorem spernit_, thus,

Who values his own honor not a straw,--

_Et non recuperare curat_, nor

Labors by might and main to salve its wound,

_Se ulciscendo_, by revenging him,

_Nil differat a belluis_, is a brute,

_Quinimo irrationabilior_

_Ipsismet belluis_, nay, contrariwise,

Much more irrational than brutes themselves,

Should be considered, _reputetur!_ How?

If a poor animal feel honor smart,

Taught by blind instinct nature plants in him,

Shall man,--confessed creation's masterstroke,

Nay, intellectual glory, nay, a god,

Nay, of the nature of my Judges here,--

Shall man prove the insensible, the block,

The blot o' the earth he crawls on to disgrace?

(Come, that 's both solid and poetic!) Man

Derogate, live for the low tastes alone,

Mean creeping cares about the animal life?

_Absit_ such homage to vile flesh and blood!

(May Gigia have remembered, nothing stings

Fried liver out of its monotony

Of richness, like a root of fennel, chopped

Fine with the parsley: parsley-sprigs, I said--

Was there need I should say "and fennel too"?

But no, she cannot have been so obtuse!

To our argument! The fennel will be chopped.)

From beast to man next mount we--ay, but, mind,

Still mere man, not yet Christian,--that, in time!

Not too fast, mark you! 'T is on Heathen grounds

We next defend our act: then, fairly urge--

If this were done of old, in a green tree,

Allowed in the Spring rawness of our kind,

What may be licensed in the Autumn dry

And ripe, the latter harvest-tide of man?

If, with his poor and primitive half-lights,

The Pagan, whom our devils served for gods,

Could stigmatize the breach of marriage-vow

As that which blood, blood only might efface,--

Absolve the husband, outraged, whose revenge

Anticipated law, plied sword himself,--

How with the Christian in full blaze of noon?

Shall not he rather double penalty,

Multiply vengeance, than, degenerate,

Let privilege be minished, droop, decay?

Therefore set forth at large the ancient law!

Superabundant the examples be

To pick and choose from. The Athenian Code,

Solon's, the name is serviceable,--then,

The Laws of the Twelve Tables, that fifteenth,--

"Romulus" likewise rolls out round and large.

The Julian; the Cornelian: Gracchus' Law:

So old a chime, the bells ring of themselves!

Spreti can set that going if he please,

I point you, for my part, the belfry plain,

Intent to rise from dusk, _diluculum_,

Into the Christian day shall broaden next.

First, the fit compliment to His Holiness

Happily reigning: then sustain the point--

All that was long ago declared as law

By the natural revelation, stands confirmed

By Apostle and Evangelist and Saint,--

To wit--that Honor is man's supreme good.

Why should I balk Saint Jerome of his phrase?

_Ubi honor non est_, where no honor is,

_Ibi contemptus est;_ and where contempt,

_Ibi injuria frequens;_ and where that,

The frequent injury, _ibi et indignatio;_

And where the indignation, _ibi quies_

_Nulla:_ and where there is no quietude,

Why, _ibi_, there, the mind is often cast

Down from the heights where it proposed to dwell,

_Mens a proposito sæpe dejicitur_.

And naturally the mind is so cast down,

Since harder 't is, _quum difficilius sit,_

_Iram cohibere_, to coerce one's wrath,

_Quam miracula facere_, than work miracles,--

So Gregory smiles in his First Dialogue.

Whence we infer, the ingenuous soul, the man

Who makes esteem of honor and repute,

Whenever honor and repute are touched,

Arrives at term of fury and despair,

Loses all guidance from the reason-check:

As in delirium or a frenzy-fit,

Nor fury nor despair he satiates,--no,

Not even if he attain the impossible,

O'erturn the hinges of the universe

To annihilate--not whoso caused the smart

Solely, the author simply of his pain,

But the place, the memory, _vituperii_,

O' the shame and scorn: _quia_,--says Solomon,

(The Holy Spirit speaking by his mouth

In Proverbs, the sixth chapter near the end)

--Because, the zeal and fury of a man,

_Zelus et furor viri_, will not spare,

_Non parcet_, in the day of his revenge,

_In die vindictæ_, nor will acquiesce,

_Nec acquiescet_, through a person's prayers,

_Cujusdam precibus,--nec suscipiet_,

Nor yet take, _pro redemptione_, for

Redemption, _dona plurium_, gifts of friends,

Mere money-payment to compound for ache.

Who recognizes not my client's case?

Whereto, as strangely consentaneous here,

Adduce Saint Bernard in the Epistle writ

To Robertulus, his nephew: "Too much grief,

_Dolor quippe nimius non deliberat_,

Does not excogitate propriety,

_Non verecundatur_, nor knows shame at all,

_Non consulit rationem_, nor consults

Reason, _non dignitatis metuit_

_Damnum_, nor dreads the loss of dignity;

_Modum et ordinem_, order and the mode,

_Ignorat_, it ignores:" why, trait for trait,

Was ever portrait limned so like the life?

(By Cavalier Maratta, shall I say?

I hear he 's first in reputation now.)

Yes, that of Samson in the Sacred Text:

That 's not so much the portrait as the man!

Samson in Gaza was the antetype

Of Guido at Rome: observe the Nazarite!

Blinded he was,--an easy thing to bear:

Intrepidly he took imprisonment,

Gyves, stripes, and daily labor at the mill:

But when he found himself, i' the public place,

Destined to make the common people sport,

Disdain burned up with such an impetus

I' the breast of him, that, all the man one fire,

_Moriatur_, roared he, let my soul's self die,

_Anima mea_, with the Philistines!

So, pulled down pillar, roof, and death and all,

_Multosque plures interfecit_, ay,

And many more he killed thus, _moriens_,

Dying, _quam vivus_, than in his whole life,

_Occiderat_, he ever killed before.

Are these things writ for no example, Sirs?

One instance more, and let me see who doubts!

Our Lord himself, made all of mansuetude,

Sealing the sum of sufferance up, received

Opprobrium, contumely and buffeting

Without complaint: but when he found himself

Touched in his honor never so little for once,

Then outbroke indignation pent before--

"_Honorem meum nemini dabo!_" "No,

My honor I to nobody will give!"

And certainly the example so hath wrought,

That whosoever, at the proper worth,

Apprises worldly honor and repute,

Esteems it nobler to die honored man

Beneath Mannaia, than live centuries

Disgraced in the eye o' the world. We find Saint Paul

No recreant to this faith delivered once:

"Far worthier were it that I died," cries he,

_Expedit mihi magis mori_, "than

That any one should make my glory void,"

_Quam ut gloriam meam quis evacuet!_

See, _ad Corinthienses:_ whereupon

Saint Ambrose makes a comment with much fruit,

Doubtless my Judges long since laid to heart,

So I desist from bringing forward here.

(I can't quite recollect it.)

Have I proved

_Satis superque_, both enough and to spare,

That Revelation old and new admits

The natural man may effervesce in ire,

O'erflood earth, o'erfroth heaven with foamy rage,

At the first puncture to his self-respect?

Then, Sirs, this Christian dogma, this law-bud

Full-blown now, soon to bask the absolute flower

Of Papal doctrine in our blaze of day,--

Bethink you, shall we miss one promise-streak,

One doubtful birth of dawn crepuscular,

One dew-drop comfort to humanity,

Now that the chalice teems with noonday wine?

Yea, argue Molinists who bar revenge--

Referring just to what makes out our case!

Under old dispensation, argue they,

The doom of the adulterous wife was death,

Stoning by Moses' law. "Nay, stone her not,

Put her away!" next legislates our Lord;

And last of all, "Nor yet divorce a wife!"

Ordains the Church, "she typifies ourself,

The Bride no fault shall cause to fall from Christ."

Then, as no jot nor tittle of the Law

Has passed away--which who presumes to doubt?

As not one word of Christ is rendered vain--

Which, could it be though heaven and earth should pass?

--Where do I find my proper punishment

For my adulterous wife, I humbly ask

Of my infallible Pope,--who now remits

Even the divorce allowed by Christ in lieu

Of lapidation Moses licensed me?

The Gospel checks the Law which throws the stone,

The Church tears the divorce-bill Gospel grants:

Shall wives sin and enjoy impunity?

What profits me the fulness of the days,

The final dispensation, I demand,

Unless Law, Gospel, and the Church subjoin,

"But who hath barred thee primitive revenge,

Which, like fire damped and dammed up, burns more fierce?

Use thou thy natural privilege of man,

Else wert thou found like those old ingrate Jews,

Despite the manna-banquet on the board,

A-longing after melons, cucumbers,

And such like trash of Egypt left behind!"

(There was one melon had improved our soup:

But did not Cinoncino need the rind

To make a boat with? So I seem to think.)

Law, Gospel, and the Church--from these we leap

To the very last revealment, easy rule

Befitting the well-born and thorough-bred

O' the happy day we live in, not the dark

O' the early rude and acorn-eating race.

"Behold," quoth James, "we bridle in a horse

And turn his body as we would thereby!"

Yea, but we change the bit to suit the growth,

And rasp our colt's jaw with a rugged spike,

We hasten to remit our managed steed

Who wheels round at persuasion of a touch.

Civilization bows to decency,

The acknowledged use and wont: 't is manners--mild

But yet imperative law--which make the man.

Thus do we pay the proper compliment

To rank, and that society of Rome

Hath so obliged us by its interest,

Taken our client's part instinctively,

As unaware defending its own cause.

What _dictum_ doth Society lay down

I' the case of one who hath a faithless wife?

Wherewithal should the husband cleanse his way?

Be patient and forgive? Oh, language fails,--

Shrinks from depicturing his turpitude!

For if wronged husband raise not hue and cry,

_Quod si maritus de adulterio non_

_Conquereretur_, he 's presumed a--foh!

_Presumitur leno:_ so, complain he must.

But how complain? At your tribunal, lords?

Far weighter challenge suits your sense, I wot!

You sit not to have gentlemen propose

Questions gentility can itself discuss.

Did not you prove that to our brother Paul?

The Abate, _quum judicialiter_

_Prosequeretur_, when he tried the law,

_Guidonis causam_, in Count Guido's case,

_Accidit ipsi_, this befell himself,

_Quod risum moverit et cachinnos_, that

He moved to mirth and cachinnation, all

Or nearly all, _fere in omnibus_

_Etiam sensatis et cordatis_, men

Strong-sensed, sound-hearted, nay, the very Court,

_Ipsismet in judicibus_, I might add,

_Non tamen dicam_. In a cause like this,

So multiplied were reasons _pro_ and _con_,

Delicate, intertwisted and obscure,

That Law refused loan of a finger-tip

To unravel, readjust the hopeless twine,

Since, half-a-dozen steps outside Law's seat,

There stood a foolish trifler with a tool

A-dangle to no purpose by his side,

Had clearly cut the embroilment in a trice.

_Asserunt enim unanimiter_

_Doctores_, for the Doctors all assert,

That husbands, _quod mariti_, must be held

_Viles, cornuti reputantur_, vile,

Fronts branching forth a florid infamy,

_Si propriis manibus_, if with their own hands,

_Non sumunt_, they fail straight to take revenge,

_Vindictam_, but expect the deed be done

By the Court--_expectant illam fieri_

_Per judices, qui summopere rident_, which

Gives an enormous guffaw for reply,

_Et cachinnantur_. For he ran away,

_Deliquit enim_, just that he might 'scape

The censure of both counsellors and crowd,

_Ut vulgi et Doctorum evitaret_

_Censuram_, and lest so he superadd

To loss of honor ignominy too,

_Et sic ne istam quoque ignominiam_

_Amisso honori superadderet_.

My lords, my lords, the inconsiderate step

Was--we referred ourselves to Law at all!

Twit me not with, "Law else had punished you!"

Each punishment of the extra-legal step,

To which the high-born preferably revert,

Is ever for some oversight, some slip

I' the taking vengeance, not for vengeance' self.

A good thing, done unhandsomely, turns ill;

And never yet lacked ill the law's rebuke.

For pregnant instance, let us contemplate

The luck of Leonardus,--see at large

Of Sicily's Decisions sixty-first.

This Leonard finds his wife is false: what then?

He makes her own son snare her, and entice

Out of the town walls to a private walk,

Wherein he slays her with commodity.

They find her body half-devoured by dogs:

Leonard is tried, convicted, punished, sent

To labor in the galleys seven years long:

Why? For the murder? Nay, but for the mode!

_Malus modus occidendi_, ruled the Court,

An ugly mode of killing, nothing more!

Another fructuous sample,--see "_De Re_

_Criminali_," in Matthæus' divine piece.

Another husband, in no better plight,

Simulates absence, thereby tempts his wife;

On whom he falls, out of sly ambuscade,

Backed by a brother of his, and both of them

Armed to the teeth with arms that law had blamed.

_Nimis dolose_, overwilily,

_Fuisse operatum_, did they work,

Pronounced the law: had all been fairly done

Law had not found him worthy, as she did,

Of four years' exile. Why cite more? Enough

Is good as a feast--(unless a birthday-feast

For one's Cinuccio) so, we finish here.

My lords, we rather need defend ourselves

Inasmuch as, for a twinkling of an eye,

We hesitatingly appealed to law,--

Than need deny that, on mature advice,

We blushingly bethought us, bade revenge

Back to its simple proper private way

Of decent self-dealt gentlemanly death.

Judges, here is the law, and here beside,

The testimony! Look to it!

Pause and breathe!

So far is only too plain; we must watch:

Bottini will scarce hazard an attack

Here: best anticipate the fellow's play,

And guard the weaker places--warily ask,

What if considerations of a sort,

Reasons of a kind, arise from out the strange

Peculiar unforeseen new circumstance

Of this our (candor owns) abnormal act,

To bar the right of us revenging so?

"Impunity were otherwise your meed:

Go slay your wife and welcome,"--may be urged,--

"But why the innocent old couple slay,

Pietro, Violante? You may do enough,

Not too much, not exceed the golden mean:

Neither brute-beast nor Pagan, Gentile, Jew,

Nor Christian, no nor votarist of the mode,

Is justified to push revenge so far!"

No, indeed? Why, thou very sciolist!

The actual wrong, Pompilia seemed to do,

Was virtual wrong done by the parents here--

Imposing her upon us as their child--

Themselves allow: then, her fault was their fault,

Her punishment be theirs accordingly!

But wait a little, sneak not off so soon!

Was this cheat solely harm to Guido, pray?

The precious couple you call innocent,--

Why, they were felons that Law failed to clutch,

_Qui ut fraudarent_, who that they might rob,

_Legitime vocatos_, folk law called,

_Ad fidei commissum_, true heirs to the Trust,

_Partum supposuerunt_, feigned this birth,

_Immemores reos factos esse_, blind

To the fact that, guilty, they incurred thereby,

_Ultimi supplicii_, hanging or what 's worse.

Do you blame us that we turn Law's instruments,

Not mere self-seekers,--mind the public weal,

Nor make the private good our sole concern?

That having--shall I say--secured a thief,

Not simply we recover from his pouch

The stolen article our property,

But also pounce upon our neighbor's purse

We opportunely find reposing there,

And do him justice while we right ourselves?

He owes us, for our part, a drubbing say,

But owes our neighbor just a dance i' the air

Under the gallows: so, we throttle him.

That neighbor's Law, that couple are the Thief,

We are the over-ready to help Law--

Zeal of her house hath eaten us up: for which,

Can it be, Law intends to eat up us,

_Crudum Priamum_, devour poor Priam raw,

('T was Jupiter's own joke,) with babes to boot,

_Priamique pisinnos_, in Homeric phrase?

Shame!----and so ends my period prettily.

But even,--prove the pair not culpable,

Free as unborn babe from connivance at,

Participation in, their daughter's fault:

Ours the mistake. Is that a rare event?

_Non semel_, it is anything but rare,

_In contingentia facti_, that by chance,

_Impunes evaserunt_, go scot-free,

_Qui_, such well-meaning people as ourselves,

_Justo dolore moti_, who aggrieved

With cause, _apposuerunt manus_, lay

Rough hands, _in innocentes_, on wrong heads.

Cite we an illustrative case in point:

_Mulier Smirnea quædam_, good my lords,

A gentlewoman lived in Smyrna once,

_Virum et filium ex eo conceptum_, who,

Both husband and her son begot by him,

Killed, _interfecerat, ex quo_, because,

_Vir filium suum perdiderat_, her spouse

Had been beforehand with her, killed her son,

_Matrimonii primi_, of a previous bed.

_Deinde accusata_, then accused,

_Apud Dolabellam_, before him that sat

Proconsul, _nec duabus cædibus_

_Contaminatam liberare_, nor

To liberate a woman doubly-dyed

With murder, _voluit_, made he up his mind,

_Nec condemnare_, nor to doom to death,

_Justo dolore impulsam_, one impelled

By just grief; _sed remisit_, but sent her up

_Ad Areopagum_, to the Hill of Mars,

_Sapientissimorum judicum_

_Cœtum_, to that assembly of the sage

Paralleled only by my judges here;

_Ubi, cognito de causa_, where, the cause

Well weighed, _responsum est_, they gave reply,

_Ut ipsa et accusator_, that both sides

O' the suit, _redirent_, should come back again,

_Post centum annos_, after a hundred years,

For judgment; _et sic_, by which sage decree,

_Duplici parricidio rea_, one

Convicted of a double parricide,

_Quamvis etiam innocentem_, though in truth

Out of the pair, one innocent at least

She, _occidisset_, plainly had put to death,

_Undequaque_, yet she altogether 'scaped,

_Evasit impunis_. See the case at length

In Valerius, fittingly styled _Maximus_,

That eighth book of his Memorable Facts.

Nor Cyriacus cites beside the mark:

_Similiter uxor quæ mandaverat_,

Just so, a lady who had taken care,

_Homicidium viri_, that her lord be killed,

_Ex denegatione debiti_.

For denegation of a certain debt,

_Matrimonialis_, he was loth to pay,

_Fuit pecuniaria mulcta_, was

Amerced in a pecuniary mulet,

_Punita, et ad pœnam_, and to pains,

_Temporalem_, for a certain space of time,

_In monasterio_, in a convent.

(Ay,

_In monasterio!_ He mismanages

_In_ with the ablative, the accusative!

I had hoped to have hitched the villain into verse

For a gift, this very day, a complete list

O' the prepositions each with proper case,

Telling a story, long was in my head.

What prepositions take the accusative?

_Ad_, to or at--_who saw the cat?_--down to

_Ob_, for, because of, _keep her claws off!_ Tush!

Law in a man takes the whole liberty:

The muse is fettered: just as Ovid found!)

And now, sea widens and the coast is clear.

What of the dubious act you bade excuse?

Surely things broaden, brighten, till at length

Remains--so far from act that needs defence--

Apology to make for act delayed

One minute, let alone eight mortal months

Of hesitation! "Why procrastinate?"

(Out with it, my Bottinius, ease thyself!)

"Right, promptly done, is twice right: right delayed

Turns wrong. We grant you should have killed your wife,

But killed o' the moment, at the meeting her

In company with the priest: then did the tongue

O' the Brazen Head give license, 'Time is now!'

Wait to make mind up? 'Time is past' it peals.

Friend, you are competent to mastery

O' the passions that confessedly explain

An outbreak: you allow an interval,

And then break out as if time's clock still clanged.

You have forfeited your chance, and flat you fall

Into the commonplace category

Of men bound to go softly all their days,

Obeying law."

Now, which way make response?

What was the answer Guido gave, himself?

--That so to argue came of ignorance

How honor bears a wound: "For, wound," said he,

"My body, and the smart soon mends and ends:

While, wound my soul where honor sits and rules,

Longer the sufferance, stronger grows the pain,

Being _ex incontinenti_, fresh as first."

But try another tack, urge common sense

By way of contrast: say--Too true, my lords!

We did demur, awhile did hesitate:

Since husband sure should let a scruple speak

Ere he slay wife,--for his own safety, lords!

Carpers abound in this misjudging world:

Moreover, there 's a nicety in law

That seems to justify them should they carp.

Suppose the source of injury a son,--

Father may slay such son yet run no risk:

Why graced with such a privilege? Because

A father so incensed with his own child,

Or must have reason, or believe he has;

_Quia semper_, seeing that in such event,

_Presumitur_, the law is bound suppose,

_Quod capiat pater_, that the sire must take,

_Bonum consilium pro filio_,

The best course as to what befits his boy,

Through instinct, _ex instinctu_, of mere love,

_Amoris_, and, _paterni_, fatherhood;

_Quam confidentiam_, which confidence,

_Non habet_, law declines to entertain,

_De viro_, of the husband: where finds he

An instinct that compels him love his wife?

Rather is he presumably her foe.

So, let him ponder long in this bad world

Ere do the simplest act of justice.

But

Again--and here we brush Bottini's breast--

Object you, "See the danger of delay,

Suppose a man murdered my friend last month:

Had I come up and killed him for his pains

In rage, I had done right, allows the law:

I meet him now and kill him in cold blood,

I do wrong, equally allows the law:

Wherein do actions differ, yours and mine?"

_In plenitudine intellectus es?_

Hast thy wits, Fisc? To take such slayer's life,

Returns it life to thy slain friend at all?

Had he stolen ring instead of stabbing friend,--

To-day, to-morrow, or next century,

Meeting the thief, thy ring upon his thumb,

Thou justifiably hadst wrung it thence:

So, couldst thou wrench thy friend's life back again,

Though prisoned in the bosom of his foe,

Why, law would look complacent on thy wrath.

Our case is, that the thing we lost, we found:

The honor, we were robbed of eight months since,

Being recoverable at any day

By death of the delinquent. Go thy ways!

Ere thou hast learned law, will be much to do,

As said the gaby while he shod the goose.

Nay, if you urge me, interval was none!

From the inn to the villa--blank or else a bar

Of adverse and contrarious incident

Solid between us and our just revenge!

What with the priest who flourishes his blade,

The wife who like a fury flings at us,

The crowd--and then the capture, the appeal

To Rome, the journey there, the jaunting thence

To shelter at the House of Convertites,

The visits to the Villa, and so forth,

Where was one minute left us all this while

To put in execution that revenge

We planned o' the instant?--as it were, plumped down

O' the spot, some eight months since, which round sound egg,

Rome, more propitious than our nest, should hatch!

Object not, "You reached Rome on Christmas-eve,

And, despite liberty to act at once,

Waited a whole and indecorous week!"

Hath so the Molinism, the canker, lords,

Eaten to our bone? Is no religion left?

No care for aught held holy by the Church?

What, would you have us skip and miss those Feasts

O' the Natal Time, must we go prosecute

Secular business on a sacred day?

Should not the merest charity expect,

Setting our poor concerns aside for once,

We hurried to the song matutinal

I' the Sistine, and pressed forward for the Mass

The Cardinal that 's Camerlengo chants,

Then rushed on to the blessing of the Hat

And Rapier, which the Pope sends to what prince

Has done most detriment to the Infidel--

And thereby whetted courage if 't were blunt?

Meantime, allow we kept the house a week,

Suppose not we were idle in our mew!

Picture us raging here and raving there--

"'Money?' I need none. 'Friends?' The word is null.

Restore the white was on that shield of mine

Borne at" ... wherever might be shield to bear.

"I see my grandsire, he who fought so well

At" ... here find out and put in time and place,

Or else invent the fight his grandsire fought:

"I see this! I see that!"

(See nothing else,

Or I shall scarce see lamb's fry in an hour!

What to the uncle, as I bid advance

The smoking dish? "Fry suits a tender tooth!

Behooves we care a little for our kin--

You, Sir,--who care so much for cousinship

As come to your poor loving nephew's feast!"

He has the reversion of a long lease yet--

Land to bequeath! He loves lamb's fry, I know!)

Here fall to be considered those same six

Qualities; what Bottini needs must call

So many aggravations of our crime,

Parasite-growth upon mere murder's back.

We summarily might dispose of such

By some off-hand and jaunty fling, some skit--?

"So, since there 's proved no crime to aggravate,

A fico for your aggravations, Fisc!"

No,--handle mischief rather,--play with spells

Were meant to raise a spirit, and laugh the while

We show that did he rise we stand his match!

Therefore, first aggravation: we made up--

Over and above our simple murderous selves--

A regular assemblage of armed men,

_Coadunatio armatorum_,--ay,

Unluckily it was the very judge

That sits in judgment on our cause to-day

Who passed the law as Governor of Rome:

"Four men armed"--though for lawful purpose, mark!

Much more for an acknowledged crime--"shall die."

We five were armed to the teeth, meant murder too?

Why, that 's the very point that saves us, Fisc!

Let me instruct you. Crime nor done nor meant,--

You punish still who arm and congregate:

For wherefore use bad means to a good end?

Crime being meant not done,--you punish still

The means to crime, whereon you haply pounce,

Though accident have balked them of effect.

But crime not only compassed but complete,

Meant and done too? Why, since you have the end,

Be that your sole concern, nor mind those means

No longer to the purpose! Murdered we?

(--Which, that our luck was in the present case,

_Quod contigisse in præsenti casu_,

Is palpable, _manibus palpatum est_--)

Make murder out against us, nothing else!

Of many crimes committed with a view

To one main crime, Law overlooks the less,

Intent upon the large. Suppose a man

Having in view commission of a theft,

Climbs the town-wall: 't is for the theft he hangs,

In case he stands convicted of such theft:

Law remits whipping, due to who clomb wall

Through bravery or wantonness alone,

Just to dislodge a daw's nest, plant a flag.

So I interpret you the manly mind

Of him about to judge both you and me,--

Our Governor, who, being no Fisc, my Fisc,

Cannot have blundered on ineptitude!

Next aggravation,--that the arms themselves

Were specially of such forbidden sort

Through shape or length or breadth, as, prompt, Law plucks

From single hand of solitary man,

Making him pay the carriage with his life:

_Delatio armorum_, arms against the rule,

_Contra formam constitutionis_, of

Pope Alexander's blessed memory.

Such are the poniards with the double prong,

Horn-like, when tines make bold the antlered buck,

Each prong of brittle glass--wherewith to stab

And break off short and so let fragment stick

Fast in the flesh to baffle surgery:

Such being the Genoese blade with hooked edge

That did us service at the villa here.

_Sed parcat mihi tam eximius vir_,

But,--let so rare a personage forgive,--

Fisc, thy objection is a foppery!

Thy charge runs that we killed three innocents:

Killed, dost see? Then, if killed, what matter how?--

By stick or stone, by sword or dagger, tool

Long or tool short, round or triangular--

Poor slain folk find small comfort in the choice!

Means to an end, means to an end, my Fisc!

Nature cries out, "Take the first arms you find!"

_Furor ministrat arma:_ where 's a stone?

_Unde mî lapidem_, where darts for me?

_Unde sagittas?_ But subdue the bard

And rationalize a little. Eight months since,

Had we, or had we not, incurred your blame

For letting 'scape unpunished this bad pair?

I think I proved that in last paragraph!

Why did we so? Because our courage failed.

Wherefore? Through lack of arms to fight the foe:

We had no arms or merely lawful ones,

An unimportant sword and blunderbuss,

Against a foe, pollent in potency,

The _amasius_, and our vixen of a wife.

Well then, how culpably do we gird loin

And once more undertake the high emprise,

Unless we load ourselves this second time

With handsome superfluity of arms,

Since better is "too much" than "not enough,"

And "_plus non vitiat_," too much does no harm,

Except in mathematics, sages say.

Gather instruction from the parable!

At first we are advised--"A lad hath here

Seven barley loaves and two small fishes: what

Is that among so many?" Aptly asked:

But put that question twice and, quite as apt,

The answer is, "Fragments, twelve baskets full!"

And, while we speak of superabundance, fling

We word by the way to fools who cast their flout

On Guido--"Punishment were pardoned him,

But here the punishment exceeds offence:

He might be just, but he was cruel too!"

Why, grant there seems a kind of cruelty

In downright stabbing people he could maim,

(If so you stigmatize the stern and strict)

Still, Guido meant no cruelty--may plead

Transgression of his mandate, over-zeal

O' the part of his companions: all he craved

Was, they should fray the faces of the folk,

Merely disfigure, nowise make them die.

_Solummodo fassus est_, he owns no more,

_Dedisse mandatum_, than that he desired,

_Ad sfrisiandum, dicam_, that they hack

And hew, i' the customary phrase, his wife,

_Uxorem tantum_, and no harm beside.

If his instructions then be misconceived,

Nay, disobeyed, impute you blame to him?

Cite me no Panicollus to the point,

As adverse! Oh, I quite expect his case--

How certain noble youths of Sicily

Having good reason to mistrust their wives,

Killed them and were absolved in consequence:

While others who had gone beyond the need

By mutilation of each paramour--

As Galba in the Horatian satire grieved

--These were condemned to the galleys, cast for guilt

Exceeding simple murder of a wife.

But why? Because of ugliness, and not

Cruelty, in the said revenge, I trow!

_Ex causa abscissionis partium;_

_Qui nempe id facientes reputantur_

_Naturæ inimici_, man revolts

Against them as the natural enemy.

Pray, grant to one who meant to slit the nose

And slash the cheek and slur the mouth, at most,

A somewhat more humane award than these

Obtained, these natural enemies of man!

_Objectum funditus corruit_, flat you fall,

My Fisc! I waste no kick on you, but pass.

Third aggravation: that our act was done--

Not in the public street, where safety lies,

Not in the by-place, caution may avoid,

Wood, cavern, desert, spots contrived for crime,--

But in the very house, home, nook and nest,

O' the victims, murdered in their dwelling-place,

_In domo ac habitatione propria_,

Where all presumably is peace and joy.

The spider, crime, pronounce we twice a pest

When, creeping from congenial cottage, she

Taketh hold with her hands, to horrify

His household more, i' the palace of the king.

All three were housed and safe and confident.

Moreover, the permission that our wife

Should have at length _domum pro carcere_,

Her own abode in place of prison--why,

We ourselves granted, by our other self

And proxy Paolo: did we make such grant,

Meaning a lure?--elude the vigilance

O' the jailer, lead her to commodious death,

While we ostensibly relented?

Ay,

Just so did we, nor otherwise, my Fisc!

Is vengeance lawful? We demand our right,

But find it will be questioned or refused

By jailer, turnkey, hangdog,--what know we?

Pray, how is it we should conduct ourselves?

To gain our private right--break public peace,

Do you bid us?--trouble order with our broils?

Endanger ... shall I shrink to own ... ourselves?--

Who want no broken head nor bloody nose

(While busied slitting noses, breaking heads)

From the first tipstaff that may interfere!

_Nam quicquid sit_, for howsoever it be,

_An de consensu nostro_, if with leave

Or not, _a monasterio_, from the nuns,

_Educta esset_, she had been led forth,

_Potuimus id dissimulare_, we

May well have granted leave in pure pretence,

_Ut aditum habere_, that thereby

An entry we might compass, a free move

_Potuissemus_, to her easy death,

_Ad eam occidendam_. Privacy

O' the hearth, and sanctitude of home, say you?

Shall we give man's abode more privilege

Than God's?--for in the churches where he dwells,

_In quibus assistit Regum Rex_, by means

Of his essence, _per essentiam_, all the same,

_Et nihilominus_, therein, _in eis,_

_Ex justa via delinquens_, whoso dares

To take a liberty on ground enough,

Is pardoned, _excusatur:_ that 's our case--

Delinquent through befitting cause. You hold,

To punish a false wife in her own house

Is graver than, what happens every day,

To hale a debtor from his hiding-place

In church protected by the Sacrament?

To this conclusion have I brought my Fisc?

Foxes have holes, and fowls o' the air their nests;

Praise you the impiety that follows, Fisc?

Shall false wife yet have where to lay her head?

"_Contra Fiscum definitum est!_" He's done!

"_Surge et scribe_," make a note of it!

--If I may dally with Aquinas' word.

Or in the death-throe does he mutter still,

Fourth aggravation, that we changed our garb,

And rusticized ourselves with uncouth hat,

Rough vest and goatskin wrappage; murdered thus

_Mutatione vestium_, in disguise,

Whereby mere murder got complexed with wile,

Turned _homicidium ex insidiis?_ Fisc,

How often must I round thee in the ears--

All means are lawful to a lawful end?

Concede he had the right to kill his wife:

The Count indulged in a travesty; why?

_De ilia ut vindictam sumeret_,

That on her he might lawful vengeance take,

_Commodius_, with more ease, _et tutius_,

And safelier: wants he warrant for the step?

Read to thy profit how the Apostle once

For ease and safety, when Damascus raged,

Was let down in a basket by the wall,

To 'scape the malice of the governor

(Another sort of Governor boasts Rome!)

--Many are of opinion,--covered close,

Concealed with--what except that very cloak

He left behind at Troas afterward?

I shall not add a syllable: Molinists may!

Well, have we more to manage? Ay, indeed!

Fifth aggravation, that our wife reposed

_Sub potestate judicis_, beneath

Protection of the judge,--her house was styled

A prison, and his power became its guard

In lieu of wall and gate and bolt and bar.

This is a tough point, shrewd, redoubtable:

Because we have to supplicate that judge

Shall overlook wrong done the judgment-seat.

Now, I might suffer my own nose be pulled,

As man: but then as father ... if the Fisc

Touched one hair of my boy who held my hand

In confidence he could not come to harm

Crossing the Corso, at my own desire,

Going to see those bodies in the church--

What would you say to that, Don Hyacinth?

This is the sole and single knotty point:

For, bid Tommati blink his interest,

You laud his magnanimity the while:

But balk Tommati's office,--he talks big!

"My predecessors in the place,--those sons

O' the prophets that may hope succeed me here,--

Shall I diminish their prerogative?

Count Guido Franceschini's honor!--well,

Has the Governor of Rome none?"

You perceive,

The cards are all against us. Make a push,

Kick over table, as shrewd gamesters do!

We, do you say, encroach upon the rights,

Deny the omnipotence o' the Judge forsooth?

We, who have only been from first to last

Intending that his purpose should prevail,

Nay more, at times, anticipating it

At risk of his rebuke?

But wait awhile!

Cannot we lump this with the sixth and last

Of the aggravations--that the Majesty

O' the Sovereign here received a wound? to wit,

_Læsa Majestas_, since our violence

Was out of envy to the course of law,

_In odium litis?_ We out short thereby

Three pending suits, promoted by ourselves

I' the main,--which worsens crime, _accedit ad_

_Exasperationem criminis!_

Yes, here the eruptive wrath with full effect!

How, did not indignation chain my tongue,

Could I repel this last, worst charge of all!

(There is a porcupine to barbecue;

Gigia can jug a rabbit well enough,

With sour-sweet sauce and pine-pips; but, good Lord,

Suppose the devil instigate the wench

To stew, not roast him? Stew my porcupine?

If she does, I know where his quills shall stick!

Come, I must go myself and see to things:

I cannot stay much longer stewing here.)

Our stomach ... I mean, our soul is stirred within,

And we want words. We wounded Majesty?

Fall under such a censure, we?--who yearned

So much that Majesty dispel the cloud

And shine on us with healing on her wings,

That we prayed Pope _Majestas'_ very self

To anticipate a little the tardy pack,

Bell us forth deep the authoritative bay

Should start the beagles into sudden yelp

Unisonous,--and, Gospel leading Law,

Grant there assemble in our own behoof

A Congregation, a particular Court,

A few picked friends of quality and place,

To hear the several matters in dispute,

Causes big, little, and indifferent,

Bred of our marriage like a mushroom-growth,

All at once (can one brush off such too soon?)

And so with laudable dispatch decide

Whether we, in the main (to sink detail)

Were one the Pope should hold fast or let go.

"What, take the credit from the Law?" you ask?

Indeed, we did! Law ducks to Gospel here:

Why should Law gain the glory and pronounce

A judgment shall immortalize the Pope?

Yes: our self-abnegating policy

Was Joab's--we would rouse our David's sloth,

Bid him encamp against a city, sack

A place whereto ourselves had long laid seige,

Lest, taking it at last, it take our name

Nor be styled _Innocentinopolis_.

But no! The modesty was in alarm,

The temperance refused to interfere,

Returned us our petition with the word

"_Ad judices suos_," "Leave him to his Judge!"

As who should say, "Why trouble my repose?

Why consult Peter in a simple case,

Peter's wife's sister in her fever-fit

Might solve as readily as the Apostle's self?

Are my Tribunals posed by aught so plain?

Hath not my Court a conscience? It is of age,

Ask it!"

We do ask,--but, inspire reply

To the Court thou bidst me ask, as I have asked--

Oh thou, who vigilantly dost attend

To even the few, the ineffectual words

Which rise from this our low and mundane sphere

Up to thy region out of smoke and noise,

Seeking corroboration from thy nod

Who art all justice--which means mercy too,

In a low noisy smoky world like ours

Where Adam's sin made peccable his seed!

We venerate the father of the flock,

Whose last faint sands of life, the frittered gold,

Fall noiselessly, yet all too fast, o' the cone

And tapering heap of those collected years:

Never have these been hurried in their flow,

Though justice fain would jog reluctant arm,

In eagerness to take the forfeiture

Of guilty life: much less shall mercy sue

In vain that thou let innocence survive,

Precipitate no minim of the mass

O' the all-so precious moments of thy life,

By pushing Guido into death and doom!

(Our Cardinal engages to go read

The Pope my speech, and point its beauties out.

They say, the Pope has one half-hour, in twelve,

Of something like a moderate return

Of the intellectuals,--never much to lose!--

If I adroitly plant this passage there,

The Fisc will find himself forestalled, I think,

Though he stand, beat till the old ear-drum break!

--Ah, boy of my own bowels, Hyacinth,

Wilt ever catch the knack, requite the pains

Of poor papa, become proficient too

I' the how and why and when, the time to laugh,

The time to weep, the time, again, to pray,

And all the times prescribed by Holy Writ?

Well, well, we fathers can but care, but cast

Our bread upon the waters!)

In a word,

These secondary charges go to ground,

Since secondary, and superfluous,--motes

Quite from the main point: we did all and some,

Little and much, adjunct and principal,

_Causa honoris_. Is there such a cause

As the sake of honor? By that sole test try

Our action, nor demand if more or less,

Because of the action's mode, we merit blame

Or maybe deserve praise! The Court decides.

Is the end lawful? It allows the means:

What we may do, we may with safety do,

And what means "safety" we ourselves must judge.

Put case a person wrongs me past dispute:

If my legitimate vengeance be a blow,

Mistrusting my bare arm can deal that blow,

I claim co-operation of a stick;

Doubtful if stick be tough, I crave a sword;

Diffident of ability in fence,

I fee a friend, a swordsman to assist:

Take one--he may be coward, fool or knave:

Why not take fifty?--and if these exceed

I' the due degree of drubbing, whom accuse

But the first author of the aforesaid wrong

Who put poor me to such a world of pains?

Surgery would have just excised a wart;

The patient made such pother, struggled so

That the sharp instrument sliced nose and all.

Taunt us not that our friends performed for pay!

Ourselves had toiled for simple honor's sake:

But country clowns want dirt they comprehend,

The piece of gold! Our reasons, which suffice

Ourselves, be ours alone; our piece of gold

Be, to the rustic, reason he approves!

We must translate our motives like our speech,

Into the lower phrase that suits the sense

O' the limitedly apprehensive. Let

Each level have its language! Heaven speaks first

To the angel, then the angel tames the word

Down to the ear of Tobit: he, in turn,

Diminishes the message to his dog,

And finally that dog finds how the flea

(Which else, importunate, might check his speed)

Shall learn its hunger must have holiday,

By application of his tongue or paw:

So many varied sorts of language here,

Each following each with pace to match the step,

_Haud passibus æquis!_

Talking of which flea,

Reminds me I must put in special word

For the poor humble following,--the four friends,

_Sicarii_, our assassins caught and caged.

Ourselves are safe in your approval now:

Yet must we care for our companions, plead

The cause o' the poor, the friends (of old-world faith)

Who lie in tribulation for our sake.

_Pauperum Procurator_ is my style:

I stand forth as the poor man's advocate:

And when we treat of what concerns the poor,

_Et cum agatur de pauperibus_,

In bondage, _carceratis_, for their sake,

_In eorum causis_, natural piety,

_Pietas_, ever ought to win the day,

_Triumphare debet, quia ipsi sunt_,

Because those very paupers constitute,

_Thesaurus Christi_, all the wealth of Christ.

Nevertheless I shall not hold you long

With multiplicity of proofs, nor burn

Candle at noontide, clarify the clear.

There beams a case refulgent from our books--

Castrensis, Butringarius, everywhere

I find it burn to dissipate the dark.

'T is this: a husband had a friend, which friend

Seemed to him over-friendly with his wife

In thought and purpose,--I pretend no more.

To justify suspicion or dispel,

He bids his wife make show of giving heed,

Semblance of sympathy--propose, in fine,

A secret meeting in a private place.

The friend, enticed thus, finds an ambuscade,

To wit, the husband posted with a pack

Of other friends, who fall upon the first

And beat his love and life out both at once.

These friends were brought to question for their help;

Law ruled, "The husband being in the right,

Who helped him in the right can scarce be wrong"--

_Opinio_, an opinion every way,

_Multum tenenda cordi_, heart should hold!

When the inferiors follow as befits

The lead o' the principal, they change their name,

And, _non dicuntur_, are no longer called

His mandatories, _mandatorii_,

But helpmates, _sed auxiliatores;_ since

To that degree does honor's sake lend aid,

_Adeo honoris causa est efficax_,

That not alone, _non solum_, does it pour

Itself out, _se diffundat_, on mere friends

We bring to do our bidding of this sort,

_In mandatorios simplices_, but sucks

Along with it in wide and generous whirl,

_Sed etiam assassinii qualitate_

_Qualificatos_, people qualified

By the quality of assassination's self,

Dare I make use of such neologism,

_Ut utar verbo_.

Haste we to conclude:

Of the other points that favor, leave some few

For Spreti; such as the delinquents' youth.

One of them falls short, by some months, of age

Fit to be managed by the gallows; two

May plead exemption from our law's award,

Being foreigners, subjects of the Granduke--

I spare that bone to Spreti, and reserve

Myself the juicier breast of argument--

Flinging the breast-blade i' the face o' the Fisc,

Who furnished me the tidbit: he must needs

Play off his privilege and rack the clowns,--

And they, at instance of the rack, confess

All four unanimously made resolve,--

The night o' the murder, in brief minute snatched

Behind the back of Guido as he fled,--

That, since he had not kept his promise, paid

The money for the murder on the spot,

So, reaching home again, might please ignore

The pact or pay them in improper coin,--

They one and all resolved, these hopeful friends,

'T were best inaugurate the morrow's light,

Nature recruited with her due repose,

By killing Guido as he lay asleep

Pillowed on wallet which contained their fee.

I thank the Fisc for knowledge of this fact:

What fact could hope to make more manifest

Their rectitude, Guido's integrity?

For who fails recognize the touching truth

That these poor rustics bore no envy, hate,

Malice nor yet uncharitableness

Against the people they had put to death?

In them, did such an act reward itself?

All done was to deserve the simple pay,

Obtain the bread clowns earn by sweat of brow,

And missing which, they missed of every thing--

Hence claimed pay, even at expense of life

To their own lord, so little warped (admire!)

By prepossession, such the absolute

Instinct of equity in rustic souls!

Whereas our Count, the cultivated mind,

He, wholly rapt in his serene regard

Of honor, he contemplating the sun,

Who hardly marks if taper blink below,

He, dreaming of no argument for death

Except a vengeance worthy noble hearts,--

Dared not so desecrate the deed, forsooth,

Vulgarize vengeance, as defray its cost

By money dug from out the dirty earth,

Irritant mere, in Ovid's phrase, to ill.

What though he lured base hinds by lucre's hope,--

The only motive they could masticate,

Milk for babes, not strong meat which men require?

The deed done, those coarse hands were soiled enough,

He spared them the pollution of the pay.

So much for the allegement, thine, my Fisc,

_Quo nil absurdius_, than which naught more mad,

_Excogitari potest_, may be squeezed

From out the cogitative brain of thee!

And now, thou excellent the Governor!

(Push to the peroration) _cæterum_

_Enixe supplico_, I strive in prayer,

_Ut dominis meis_, that unto the Court,

_Benigna fronte_, with a gracious brow,

_Et oculis serenis_, and mild eyes,

_Perpendere placeat_, it may please them weigh,

_Quod dominus Guido_, that our noble Count,

_Occidit_, did the killing in dispute,

_Ut ejus honor tumulatus_, that

The honor of him buried fathom-deep

In infamy, _in infamia_, might arise,

_Resurgeret_, as ghost breaks sepulchre!

_Occidit_, for he killed, _uxorem_, wife,

_Quia illi fuit_, since she was to him,

_Opprobrio_, a disgrace and nothing more!

_Et genitores_, killed her parents too,

_Qui_, who, _postposita verecundia_,

Having thrown off all sort of decency,

_Filiam repudiarunt_, had renounced

Their daughter, _atque declarare non_

_Erubuerunt_, nor felt blush tinge cheek,

Declaring, _meretricis genitam_

_Esse_, she was the offspring of a drab,

_Ut ipse dehonestaretur_, just

That so himself might lose his social rank!

_Cujus mentem_, and which daughter's heart and soul,

They, _perverterunt_, turned from the right course,

_Et ad illicitos amores non_

_Dumtaxat pellexerunt_, and to love

Not simply did alluringly incite,

_Sed vi obedientiæ_, but by force

O' the duty, _filialis_, daughters owe,

_Coegerunt_, forced and drove her to the deed:

_Occidit_, I repeat he killed the clan,

_Ne scilicet amplius in dedecore_,

Lest peradventure longer life might trail,

_Viveret_, link by link his turpitude,

_Invisus consanguineis_, hateful so

To kith and kindred, _a nobilibus_

_Notatus_, shunned by men of quality,

_Relictus ab amicis_, left i' the lurch

By friends, _ab omnibus derisus_, turned

A common hack-block to try edge of jokes,

_Occidit_, and he killed them here in Rome,

_In Urbe_, the Eternal City, Sirs,

_Nempe quæ alias spectata est_,

The appropriate theatre which witnessed once,

_Matronam nobilem_, Lucretia's self,

_Abluere pudicitiæ maculas_,

Wash off the spots of her pudicity,

_Sanguine proprio_, with her own pure blood;

_Quæ vidit_, and which city also saw,

_Patrem_, Virginius, _undequaque_, quite,

_Impunem_, with no sort of punishment,

Nor, _et non illaudatum_, lacking praise,

_Sed polluentem parricidio_,

Imbrue his hands with butchery, _filiæ_,

Of chaste Virginia, to avoid a rape,

_Ne raperetur ad stupra;_ so to heart,

_Tanti illi cordi fuit_, did he take,

_Suspicio_, the mere fancy men might have,

_Honoris amittendi_, of fame's loss,

_Ut potius voluerit filia_

_Orbari_, he preferred to lose his child,

_Quam illa incederet_, rather than she walk

The ways an, _inhonesta_, child disgraced,

_Licet non sponte_, though against her will.

_Occidit_--killed them, I reiterate--

_In propria domo_, in their own abode,

_Ut adultera et parentes_, that each wretch,

_Conscii agnoscerent_, might both see and say,

_Nullum locum_, there 's no place, _nullumque esse_

_Asylum_, nor yet refuge of escape,

_Impenetrabilem_, shall serve as bar,

_Honori læso_, to the wounded one

In honor; _neve ibi opprobria_

_Continuarentur_, killed them on the spot

Moreover, dreading lest within those walls

The opprobrium peradventure be prolonged,

_Et domus quæ testis fuit turpium_,

And that the domicile which witnessed crime,

_Esset et pœnæ_, might watch punishment:

_Occidit_, killed, I round you in the ears,

_Quia alio modo_, since by other mode,

_Non poterat ejus existimatio_,

There was no possibility his fame,

_Læsa_, gashed griesly, _tam enormiter_,

_Ducere cicatrices_, might be healed:

_Occidit ut exemplum præberet_

_Uxoribus_, killed her, so to lesson wives

_Jura conjugii_, that the marriage-oath,

_Esse servanda_, must be kept henceforth:

_Occidit denique_, killed her, in a word,

_Ut pro posse honestus viveret_,

That he, please God, might creditably live,

_Sin minus_, but if fate willed otherwise,

_Proprii honoris_, of his outraged fame,

_Offensi_, by Mannaia, if you please,

_Commiseranda victima caderet_,

The pitiable victim he should fall!

Done! I' the rough, i' the rough! But done! And, lo,

Landed and stranded lies my very speech,

My miracle, my monster of defence--

Leviathan into the nose whereof

I have put fish-hook, pierced his jaw with thorn,

And given him to my maidens for a play!

I' the rough: to-morrow I review my piece

Tame here and there undue floridity.

It's hard: you have to plead before these priests

And poke at them with Scripture, or you pass

For heathen and, what's worse, for ignorant

O' the quality o' the Court and what it likes

By way of illustration of the law.

To-morrow stick in this, and throw out that,

And, having first ecclesiasticized,

Regularize the whole, next emphasize,

Then latinize, and lastly Cicero-ize,

Giving my Fisc his finish. There's my speech!

And where's my fry, and family and friends?

Where's that huge Hyacinth I mean to hug

Till he cries out, "_Jam satis!_ Let me breathe!"

Now, what an evening have I earned to-day!

Hail, ye true pleasures, all the rest are false!

Oh, the old mother, oh, the fattish wife!

Rogue Hyacinth shall put on paper toque,

And wrap himself around with mamma's veil

Done up to imitate papa's black robe,

(I'm in the secret of the comedy,--

Part of the program leaked out long ago!)

And call himself the Advocate o' the Poor,

Mimic Don father that defends the Count:

And for reward shall have a small full glass

Of manly red rosolio to himself,

--Always provided that he conjugate

_Bibo_, I drink, correctly--nor be found

Make the _perfectum, bipsi_, as last year!

How the ambitious do so harden heart

As lightly hold by these home-sanctitudes,

To me is matter of bewilderment--

Bewilderment! Because ambition's range

Is nowise tethered by domestic tie:

Am I refused an outlet from my home

To the world's stage?--whereon a man should play

The man in public, vigilant for law,

Zealous for truth, a credit to his kind,

Nay,--since, employing talent so, I yield

The Lord his own again with usury,--

A satisfaction, yea, to God himself!

Well, I have modelled me by Agur's wish,

"Remove far from me vanity and lies,

Feed me with food convenient for me!" What

I' the world should a wise man require beyond?

Can I but coax the good fat little wife

To tell her fool of a father the mad prank

His scapegrace nephew played this time last year

At Carnival! He could not choose, I think,

But modify that inconsiderate gift

O' the cup and cover (somewhere in the will

Under the pillow, some one seems to guess)

--Correct that clause in favor of a boy

The trifle ought to grace, with name engraved,

Would look so well, produced in future years

To pledge a memory, when poor papa

Latin and law are long since laid at rest--

_Hyacintho dono dedit avus!_ Why,

The wife should get a necklace for her pains,

The very pearls that made Violante proud,

And Pietro pawned for half their value once,--

Redeemable by somebody, _ne sit_

_Marita quæ rotundioribus_

_Onusta mammis ... baccis ambulet:_

Her bosom shall display the big round balls,

No braver proudly borne by wedded wife!

With which Horatian promise I conclude.

Into the pigeon-hole with thee, my speech!

Off and away, first work, then play, play, play!

Bottini, burn thy books, thou blazing ass!

Sing "Tra-la-la, for, lambkins, we must live!"

IX

JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS,

FISCI ET REV. CAM. APOSTOL. ADVOCATUS

Had I God's leave, how I would alter things!

If I might read instead of print my speech,--

Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower

Refuses obstinate to blow in print,

As wildings planted in a prim parterre,--

This scurvy room were turned an immense hall;

Opposite, fifty judges in a row;

This side and that of me, for audience--Rome:

And, where yon window is, the Pope should hide--

Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough.

A buzz of expectation! Through the crowd,

Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff,

Up comes an usher, louts him low, "The Court

Requires the allocution of the Fisc!"

I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause

O'er the hushed multitude: I count--One, two--

* * * * *

Have ye seen, Judges, have ye, lights of law,--

When it may hap some painter, much in vogue

Throughout our city nutritive of arts,

Ye summon to a task shall test his worth,

To manufacture, as he knows and can,

A work may decorate a palace-wall,

Affords my lords their Holy Family,--

Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court

How such a painter sets himself to paint?

Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe

A-journeying to Egypt, prove the piece:

Why, first he sedulously practiseth,

This painter,--girding loin and lighting lamp,--

On what may nourish eye, make facile hand;

Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so)

From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk

Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves,--

This Luca or this Carlo or the like.

To him the bones their inmost secret yield,

Each notch and nodule signify their use:

On him the muscles turn, in triple tier,

And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man

"Familiarize thee with our play that lifts

Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and foot!"

--Ensuring due correctness in the nude.

Which done, is all done? Not a whit, ye know!

He,--to art's surface rising from her depth,--

If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found,

May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance!)--

Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow,

Loseth no involution, cheek or chap,

Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives!

Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse

That poseth? (be the phrase accorded me!)

Each feminine delight of florid lip,

Eyes brimming o'er and brow bowed down with love,

Marmoreal neck and bosom uberous,--

Glad on the paper in a trice they go

To help his notion of the Mother-maid:

Methinks I see it, chalk a little stumped!

Yea and her babe--that flexure of soft limbs,

That budding face imbued with dewy sleep,

Contribute each an excellence to Christ.

Nay, since he humbly lent companionship,

Even the poor ass, unpanniered and elate

Stands, perks an ear up, he a model too;

While clouted shoon, staff, scrip and water-gourd,--

Aught may betoken travel, heat and haste,--

No jot nor tittle of these but in its turn

Ministers to perfection of the piece:

Till now, such piece before him, part by part,--

Such prelude ended,--pause our painter may,

Submit his fifty studies one by one,

And in some sort boast "I have served my lords."

But what? And hath he painted once this while?

Or when ye cry, "Produce the thing required,

Show us our picture shall rejoice its niche,

Thy Journey through the Desert done in oils!"--

What, doth he fall to shuffling 'mid his sheets,

Fumbling for first this, then the other fact

Consigned to paper,--"studies," bear the term!--

And stretch a canvas, mix a pot of paste,

And fasten here a head and there a tail,

(The ass hath one, my Judges!) so dove-tail

Or, rather, ass-tail in, piece sorrily out--

By bits of reproduction of the life--

The picture, the expected Family?

I trow not! do I miss with my conceit

The mark, my lords?--not so my lords were served!

Rather your artist turns abrupt from these,

And preferably buries him and broods

(Quite away from aught vulgar and extern)

On the inner spectrum, filtered through the eye,

His brain-deposit, bred of many a drop,

_E pluribus unum:_ and the wiser he!

For in that brain,--their fancy sees at work,

Could my lords peep indulged,--results alone,

Not processes which nourish such results,

Would they discover and appreciate,--life

Fed by digestion, not raw food itself,

No gobbets but smooth comfortable chyme

Secreted from each snapped-up crudity,--

Less distinct, part by part, but in the whole

Truer to the subject,--the main central truth

And soul o' the picture, would my Judges spy,--

Not those mere fragmentary studied facts

Which answer to the outward frame and flesh--

Not this nose, not that eyebrow, the other fact

Of man's staff, woman's stole or infant's clout,

But lo, a spirit-birth conceived of flesh,

Truth rare and real, not transcripts, fact and false.

The studies--for his pupils and himself!

The picture be for our eximious Rome

And--who knows?--satisfy its Governor,

Whose new wing to the villa he hath bought

(God give him joy of it) by Capena, soon

('T is bruited) shall be glowing with the brush

Of who hath long surpassed the Florentine,

The Urbinate and ... what if I dared add,

Even his master, yea the Cortonese,--

I mean the accomplished Ciro Ferri, Sirs!

(--Did not he die? I 'll see before I print.)

End we exordium, Phœbus plucks my ear!

Thus then, just so and no whit otherwise,

Have I,--engaged as I were Ciro's self,

To paint a parallel, a Family,

The patriarch Pietro with his wise old wife

To boot (as if one introduced Saint Anne

By bold conjecture to complete the group)

And juvenile Pompilia with her babe,

Who, seeking safety in the wilderness,

Were all surprised by Herod, while outstretched

In sleep beneath a palm-tree by a spring,

And killed--the very circumstance I paint,

Moving the pity and terror of my lords--

Exactly so have I, a month at least,

Your Fiscal, made me cognizant of facts,

Searched out, pried into, pressed the meaning forth

Of every piece of evidence in point,

How bloody Herod slew these innocents,--

Until the glad result is gained, the group

Demonstrably presented in detail,

Their slumber and his onslaught,--like as life.

Yea, and, availing me of help allowed

By law, discreet provision lest my lords

Be too much troubled by effrontery,--

The rack, law plies suspected crime withal--

(Law that hath listened while the lyrist sang

"_Lene tormentum ingenio admoves_,"

Gently thou joggest by a twinge the wit,

"_Plerumque duro_," else were slow to blab!)

Through this concession my full cup runs o'er:

The guilty owns his guilt without reserve.

Therefore by part and part I clutch my case

Which, in entirety now,--momentous task--

My lords demand, so render them I must,

Since, one poor pleading more and I have done.

But shall I ply my papers, play my proofs,

Parade my studies, fifty in a row,

As though the Court were yet in pupilage,

Claimed not the artist's ultimate appeal?

Much rather let me soar the height prescribed

And, bowing low, proffer my picture's self!

No more of proof, disproof,--such virtue was,

Such vice was never in Pompilia, now!

(Far better say "Behold Pompilia!"--for

I leave the family as unmanageable,

And stick to just one portrait, but life-size.)

Hath calumny imputed to the fair

A blemish, mole on cheek or wart on chin,

Much more, blind hidden horrors best unnamed?

Shall I descend to prove you, point by point,

Never was knock-knee known nor splay-foot found

In Phryne? (I must let the portrait go,

Content me with the model, I believe)--

--I prove this? An indignant sweep of hand,

Dash at and doing away with drapery,

And,--use your eyes, Athenians, smooth she smiles!

Or,--since my client can no longer smile,

And more appropriate instances abound,--

What is this Tale of Tarquin, how the slave

Was caught by him, preferred to Collatine?

Thou, even from thy corpse-clothes virginal,

Look'st the lie dead, Lucretia!

Thus at least

I, by the guidance of antiquity,

(Our one infallible guide,) now operate,

Sure that the innocence thus shown is safe;

Sure, too, that, while I plead, the echoes cry

(Lend my weak voice thy trump, sonorous Fame!)

"Monstrosity the Phrynean shape shall mar,

Lucretia's soul comport with Tarquin's lie,

When thistles grow on vines or thorns yield figs,

Or oblique sentence leave this judgment-seat!"

A great theme: may my strength be adequate!

For--paint Pompilia, dares my feebleness?

How did I unaware engage so much

--Find myself undertaking to produce

A faultless nature in a flawless form?

What 's here? Oh, turn aside nor dare the blaze

Of such a crown, such constellation, say,

As jewels here thy front, Humanity!

First, infancy, pellucid as a pearl;

Then, childhood--stone which, dewdrop at the first,

(An old conjecture) sucks, by dint of gaze,

Blue from the sky and turns to sapphire so:

Yet both these gems eclipsed by, last and best,

Womanliness and wifehood opaline,

Its milk-white pallor,--chastity,--suffused

With here and there a tint and hint of flame,--

Desire,--the lapidary loves to find.

Such jewels bind conspicuously thy brow,

Pompilia, infant, child, maid, woman, wife--

Crown the ideal in our earth at last!

What should a faculty like mine do here?

Close eyes, or else, the rashlier hurry hand!

Which is to say,--lose no time but begin!

_Sermocinando ne declamem_, Sirs,

_Ultra clepsydram_, as our preachers smile,

Lest I exceed my hour-glass. Whereupon,

As Flaccus prompts, I dare the epic plunge--

Begin at once with marriage, up till when

Little or nothing would arrest your love,

In the easeful life o' the lady; lamb and lamb,

How do they differ? Know one, you know all

Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she.

And since all lambs are like in more than fleece,

Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks--

O' the weaker sex, my lords, the weaker sex!

To whom, the Teian teaches us, for gift,

Not strength,--man's dower,--but beauty, nature gave,

"Beauty in lieu of spears, in lieu of shields!"

And what is beauty's sure concomitant,

Nay, intimate essential character,

But melting wiles, deliciousest deceits,

The whole redoubted armory of love?

Therefore of vernal pranks, dishevellings

O' the hair of youth that dances April in,

And easily-imagined Hebe-slips

O'er sward which May makes over-smooth for foot--

These shall we pry into?--or wiselier wink,

Though numerous and dear they may have been?

For lo, advancing Hymen and his pomp!

_Discedunt nunc amores_, loves, farewell!

_Maneat amor_, let love, the sole, remain!

Farewell to dewiness and prime of life!

Remains the rough determined day: dance done,

To work, with plough and harrow! What comes next?

'T is Guido henceforth guides Pompilia's step,

Cries, "No more friskings o'er the foodful glebe,

Else, 'ware the whip!" Accordingly,--first crack

O' the thong,--we hear that his young wife was barred,

_Cohibita fuit_, from the old free life,

_Vitam liberiorem ducere._

Demur we? Nowise: heifer brave the hind?

We seek not there should lapse the natural law,

The proper piety to lord and king

And husband: let the heifer bear the yoke!

Only, I crave he cast not patience off,

This hind; for deem you she endures the whip,

Nor winces at the goad, nay, restive, kicks?

What if the adversary's charge be just,

And all untowardly she pursue her way

With groan and grunt, though hind strike ne'er so hard?

If petulant remonstrance made appeal,

Unseasonable, o'erprotracted,--if

Importunate challenge taxed the public ear

When silence more decorously had served

For protestation,--if Pompilian plaint

Wrought but to aggravate Guidonion ire,--

Why, such mishaps, ungainly though they be,

Ever companion change, are incident

To altered modes and novelty of life:

The philosophic mind expects no less,

Smilingly knows and names the crisis, sits

Waiting till old things go and new arrive.

Therefore, I hold a husband but inept

Who turns impatient at such transit-time,

As if this running from the rod would last!

Since, even while I speak, the end is reached:

Success awaits the soon-disheartened man.

The parents turn their backs and leave the house,

The wife may wail but none shall intervene:

He hath attained his object, groom and bride

Partake the nuptial bower no soul can see,

Old things are passed and all again is new,

Over and gone the obstacles to peace,

_Novorum_--tenderly the Mantuan turns

The expression, some such purpose in his eye--

_Nascitur ordo!_ Every storm is laid,

And forth from plain each pleasant herb may peep,

Each bloom of wifehood in abeyance late:

(Confer a passage in the Canticles.)

But what if, as 't is wont with plant and wife,

Flowers--after a suppression to good end,

Still, when they do spring forth--sprout here, spread there,

Anywhere likelier than beneath the foot

O' the lawful good-man gardener of the ground?

He dug and dibbled, sowed and watered,--still

'T is a chance wayfarer shall pluck the increase.

Just so, respecting persons not too much,

The lady, foes allege, put forth each charm

And proper floweret of feminity

To whosoever had a nose to smell

Or breast to deck: what if the charge be true?

The fault were graver had she looked with choice,

Fastidiously appointed who should grasp,

Who, in the whole town, go without the prize!

To nobody she destined donative,

But, first come was first served, the accuser saith.

Put case her sort of ... in this kind ... escapes

Were many and oft and indiscriminate--

Impute ye as the action were prepense,

The gift particular, arguing malice so?

Which butterfly of the wide air shall brag

"I was preferred to Guido"--when 't is clear

The cup, he quaffs at, lay with olent breast

Open to gnat, midge, bee and moth as well?

One chalice entertained the company;

And if its peevish lord object the more,

Mistake, misname such bounty in a wife,

Haste we to advertise him--charm of cheek,

Lustre of eye, allowance of the lip,

All womanly components in a spouse,

These are no household-bread each stranger's bite

Leaves by so much diminished for the mouth

O' the master of the house at supper-time:

But rather like a lump of spice they lie,

Morsel of myrrh, which scents the neighborhood

Yet greets its lord no lighter by a grain.

Nay, even so, he shall be satisfied!

Concede we there was reason in his wrong,

Grant we his grievance and content the man!

For lo, Pompilia, she submits herself;

Ere three revolving years have crowned their course,

Off and away she puts this same reproach

Of lavish bounty, inconsiderate gift

O' the sweets of wifehood stored to other ends:

No longer shall he blame "She none excludes,"

But substitute "She laudably sees all,

Searches the best out and selects the same."

For who is here, long sought and latest found,

Waiting his turn unmoved amid the whirl,

"_Constans in levitate_,"--Ha, my lords?

Calm in his levity,--indulge the quip!--

Since 't is a levite bears the bell away,

Parades him henceforth as Pompilia's choice,

'T is no ignoble object, husband! Doubt'st?

When here comes tripping Flaccus with his phrase,

"Trust me, no miscreant singled from the mob,

_Crede non illum tibi de scelesta_

_Plebe delectum_," but a man of mark,

A priest, dost hear? Why then, submit thyself!

Priest, ay, and very phœnix of such fowl,

Well-born, of culture, young and vigorous,

Comely too, since precise the precept points--

On the selected levite be there found

Nor mole nor scar nor blemish, lest the mind

Come all uncandid through the thwarting flesh!

Was not the son of Jesse ruddy, sleek,

Pleasant to look on, pleasant every way?

Since well he smote the harp and sweetly sang,

And danced till Abigail came out to see,

And seeing smiled and smiling ministered

The raisin-cluster and the cake of figs,

With ready meal refreshed the gifted youth,

Till Nabal, who was absent shearing sheep,

Felt heart sink, took to bed (discreetly done--

They might have been beforehand with him else)

And died--would Guido have behaved as well?

But ah, the faith of early days is gone,

_Heu prisca fides!_ Nothing died in him

Save courtesy, good sense and proper trust,

Which, when they ebb from souls they should o'erflow,

Discover stub, weed, sludge and ugliness.

(The Pope, we know, is Neapolitan

And relishes a sea-side simile.)

Deserted by each charitable wave,

Guido, left high and dry, shows jealous now!

Jealous avouched, paraded: tax the fool

With any peccadillo, he responds,

"Truly I beat my wife through jealousy,

Imprisoned her and punished otherwise,

Being jealous: now would threaten, sword in hand,

Now manage to mix poison in her sight,

And so forth: jealously I dealt, in fine."

Concede thus much, and what remains to prove?

Have I to teach my masters what effect

Hath jealousy, and how, befooling men,

It makes false true, abuses eye and ear,

Turns mere mist adamantine, loads with sound

Silence, and into void and vacancy

Crowds a whole phalanx of conspiring foes?

Therefore who owns "I watched with jealousy

My wife," adds "for no reason in the world!"

What need that, thus proved madman, he remark

"The thing I thought a serpent proved an eel"?--

Perchance the right Comacchian, six foot length,

And not an inch too long for that rare pie

(Master Arcangeli has heard of such)

Whose succulence makes fasting bearable;

Meant to regale some moody splenetic

Who, pleasing to mistake the donor's gift,

Spying I know not what Lernæan snake

I' the luscious Lenten creature, stamps forsooth

The dainty in the dust.

Enough! Prepare,

Such lunes announced, for downright lunacy!

_Insanit homo_, threat succeeds to threat,

And blow redoubles blow,--his wife, the block.

But, if a block, shall not she jar the hand

That buffets her? The injurious idle stone

Rebounds and hits the head of him who flung.

Causeless rage breeds, i' the wife now, rageful cause,

Tyranny wakes rebellion from its sleep.

Rebellion, say I?--rather, self-defence,

Laudable wish to live and see good days,

Pricks our Pompilia now to fly the fool

By any means, at any price,--nay, more,

Nay, most of all, i' the very interest

O' the fool that, baffled of his blind desire

At any price, were truliest victor so.

Shall he effect his crime and lose his soul?

No, dictates duty to a loving wife!

Far better that the unconsummate blow,

Adroitly balked by her, should back again,

Correctively admonish his own pate!

Crime then,--the Court is with me?--she must crush;

How crush it? By all efficacious means;

And these,--why, what in woman should they be?

"With horns the bull, with teeth the lion fights;

To woman," quoth the lyrist quoted late,

"Nor teeth, nor horns, but beauty, Nature gave!"

Pretty i' the Pagan! Who dares blame the use

Of armory thus allowed for natural,--

Exclaim against a seeming-dubious play

O' the sole permitted weapon, spear and shield

Alike, resorted to i' the circumstance

By poor Pompilia? Grant she somewhat plied

Arts that allure, the magic nod and wink,

The witchery of gesture, spell of word,

Whereby the likelier to enlist this friend,

Yea stranger, as a champion on her side?

Such man, being but mere man, ('t was all she knew,)

Must be made sure by beauty's silken bond,

The weakness that subdues the strong, and bows

Wisdom alike and folly. Grant the tale

O' the husband, which is false, were proved and true

To the letter--or the letters, I should say,

Abominations he professed to find

And fix upon Pompilia and the priest,--

Allow them hers--for though she could not write,

In early days of Eve-like innocence

That plucked no apple from the knowledge-tree,

Yet, at the Serpent's word, Eve plucks and eats

And knows--especially how to read and write:

And so Pompilia,--as the move o' the maw,

Quoth Persius, makes a parrot bid "Good day!"

A crow salute the concave, and a pie

Endeavor at proficiency in speech,--

So she, through hunger after fellowship,

May well have learned, though late, to play the scribe:

As indeed, there 's one letter on the list

Explicitly declares did happen here.

"You thought my letters could be none of mine,"

She tells her parents--"mine, who wanted skill;

But now I have the skill, and write, you see!"

She needed write love-letters, so she learned,

"_Negatas artifex sequi voces_"--though

This letter nowise 'scapes the common lot,

But lies i' the condemnation of the rest,

Found by the husband's self who forged them all.

Yet, for the sacredness of argument,

For this once an exemption shall it plead--

Anything, anything to let the wheels

Of argument run glibly to their goal!

Concede she wrote (which were preposterous)

This and the other epistle,--what of it?

Where does the figment touch her candid fame?

Being in peril of her life--"my life,

Not an hour's purchase," as the letter runs,--

And having but one stay in this extreme,

Out of the wide world but a single friend--

What could she other than resort to him,

And how with any hope resort but thus?

Shall modesty dare bid a stranger brave

Danger, disgrace, nay death in her behalf--

Think to entice the sternness of the steel

Yet spare love's loadstone moving manly mind?

--Most of all, when such mind is hampered so

By growth of circumstance athwart the life

O' the natural man, that decency forbids

He stoop and take the common privilege,

Say frank "I love," as all the vulgar do.

A man is wedded to philosophy,

Married to statesmanship; a man is old;

A man is fettered by the foolishness

He took for wisdom and talked ten years since;

A man is, like our friend the Canon here,

A priest, and wicked if he break his vow:

Shall he dare love, who may be Pope one day?

Despite the coil of such encumbrance here,

Suppose this man could love, unhappily,

And would love, dared he only let love show!

In case the woman of his love speaks first,

From what embarrassment she sets him free!

"'T is I who break reserve, begin appeal,

Confess that, whether you love me or no,

I love you!" What an ease to dignity,

What help of pride from the hard high-backed chair

Down to the carpet where the kittens bask,

All under the pretence of gratitude!

From all which, I deduce--the lady here

Was bound to proffer nothing short of love

To the priest whose service was to save her. What?

Shall she propose him lucre, dust o' the mine,

Rubbish o' the rock, some diamond, muckworms prize,

Some pearl secreted by a sickly fish?

Scarcely! She caters for a generous taste.

'T is love shall beckon, beauty bid to breast.

Till all the Samson sink into the snare!

Because, permit the end--permit therewith

Means to the end!

How say you, good my lords?

I hope you heard my adversary ring

The changes on this precept: now, let me

Reverse the peal! _Quia dato licito fine,_

_Ad illum assequendum ordinata_

_Non sunt damnanda media_,--licit end

Enough was found in mere escape from death,

To legalize our means illicit else

Of feigned love, false allurement, fancied fact.

Thus Venus losing Cupid on a day,

(See that _Idyllium Moschi_) seeking help,

In the anxiety of motherhood,

Allowably promised, "Who shall bring report

Where he is wandered to, my wingèd babe,

I give him for reward a nectared kiss;

But who brings safely back the truant's self,

His be a super-sweet makes kiss seem cold!"

Are not these things writ for example-sake?

To such permitted motive, then, refer

All those professions, else were hard explain,

Of hope, fear, jealousy, and the rest of love!

He is Myrtillus, Amaryllis she,

She burns, he freezes,--all a mere device

To catch and keep the man, may save her life,

Whom otherwise nor catches she nor keeps!

Worst, once, turns best now: in all faith, she feigns:

Feigning,--the liker innocence to guilt,

The truer to the life in what she feigns!

How if Ulysses,--when, for public good

He sunk particular qualms and played the spy,

Entered Troy's hostile gate in beggar's garb--

How if he first had boggled at this clout,

Grown dainty o'er that clack-dish? Grime is grace

To whoso gropes amid the dung for gold.

Hence, beyond promises, we praise each proof

That promise was not simply made to break,

Mere moonshine-structure meant to fade at dawn:

We praise, as consequent and requisite,

What, enemies allege, were more than words,

Deeds--meetings at the window, twilight-trysts,

Nocturnal entertainments in the dim

Old labyrinthine palace; lies, we know--

Inventions we, long since, turned inside out.

Must such external semblance of intrigue

Demonstrate that intrigue there lurks perdue?

Does every hazel-sheath disclose a nut?

He were a Molinist who dared maintain

That midnight meetings in a screened alcove

Must argue folly in a matron--since

So would he bring a slur on Judith's self,

Commended beyond women, that she lured

The lustful to destruction through his lust.

Pompilia took not Judith's liberty,

No falchion find you in her hand to smite,

No damsel to convey in dish the head

Of Holofernes,--style the Canon so--

Or is it the Count? If I entangle me

With my similitudes,--if wax wings melt,

And earthward down I drop, not mine the fault:

Blame your beneficence, O Court, O sun,

Whereof the beamy smile affects my flight!

What matter, so Pompilia's fame revive

I' the warmth that proves the bane of Icarus?

Yea, we have shown it lawful, necessary

Pompilia leave her husband, seek the house

O' the parents: and because 'twixt home and home

Lies a long road with many a danger rife,

Lions by the way and serpents in the path,

To rob and ravish,--much behooves she keep

Each shadow of suspicion from fair fame,

For her own sake much, but for his sake more,

The ingrate husband's. Evidence shall be,

Plain witness to the world how white she walks

I' the mire she wanders through ere Rome she reach.

And who so proper witness as a priest?

Gainsay ye? Let me hear who dares gainsay!

I hope we still can punish heretics!

"Give me the man," I say with him of Gath,

"That we may fight together!" None, I think:

The priest is granted me.

Then, if a priest,

One juvenile and potent: else, mayhap,

That dragon, our Saint George would slay, slays him.

And should fair face accompany strong hand,

The more complete equipment: nothing mars

Work, else praiseworthy, like a bodily flaw

I' the worker: as 't is said Saint Paul himself

Deplored the check o' the puny presence, still

Cheating his fulmination of its flash,

Albeit the bolt therein went true to oak.

Therefore the agent, as prescribed, she takes,--

Both juvenile and potent, handsome too,--

In all obedience: "good," you grant again.

Do you? I would you were the husband, lords!

How prompt and facile might departure be!

How boldly would Pompilia and the priest

March out of door, spread flag at beat of drum,

But that inapprehensive Guido grants

Neither premiss nor yet conclusion here,

And, purblind, dreads a bear in every bush!

For his own quietude and comfort, then,

Means must be found for flight in masquerade

At hour when all things sleep--"Save jealousy!"

Right, Judges! Therefore shall the lady's wit

Supply the boon thwart nature balks him of,

And do him service with the potent drug

(Helen's nepenthe, as my lords opine)

Which respites blessedly each fretted nerve

O' the much-enduring man: accordingly,

There lies he, duly dosed and sound asleep,

Relieved of woes or real or raved about.

While soft she leaves his side, he shall not wake;

Nor stop who steals away to join her friend,

Nor do him mischief should he catch that friend

Intent on more than friendly office,--nay,

Nor get himself raw head and bones laid bare

In payment of his apparition!

Thus

Would I defend the step,--were the thing true

Which is a fable,--see my former speech,--

That Guido slept (who never slept a wink)

Through treachery, an opiate from his wife,

Who not so much as knew what opiates mean.

Now she may start: or hist,--a stoppage still!

A journey is an enterprise of cost!

As in campaigns, we fight but others pay,

_Suis expensis, nemo militat_.

'T is Guido's self we guard from accident,

Ensuring safety to Pompilia, versed

Nowise in misadventures by the way,

Hard riding and rough quarters, the rude fare,

The unready host. What magic mitigates

Each plague of travel to the unpractised wife?

Money, sweet Sirs! And were the fiction fact

She helped herself thereto with liberal hand

From out her husband's store,--what fitter use

Was ever husband's money destined to?

With bag and baggage thus did Dido once

Decamp,--for more authority, a queen!

So is she fairly on her route at last,

Prepared for either fortune: nay and if

The priest, now all aglow with enterprise,

Cool somewhat presently when fades the flush

O' the first adventure, clouded o'er belike

By doubts, misgivings how the day may die,

Though born with such auroral brilliance,--if

The brow seem over-pensive and the lip

'Gin lag and lose the prattle lightsome late,--

Vanquished by tedium of a prolonged jaunt

In a close carriage o'er a jolting road,

With only one young female substitute

For seventeen other Canons of ripe age

Were wont to keep him company in church,--

Shall not Pompilia haste to dissipate

The silent cloud that, gathering, bodes her bale?--

Prop the irresoluteness may portend

Suspension of the project, cheek the flight,

Bring ruin on them both? Use every means,

Since means to the end are lawful! What i' the way

Of wile should have allowance like a kiss

Sagely and sisterly administered,

_Sororia saltem oscula?_ We find

Such was the remedy her wit applied

To each incipient scruple of the priest,

If we believe,--as, while my wit is mine

I cannot,--what the driver testifies,

Borsi, called Venerino, the mere tool

Of Guido and his friend the Governor,--

Avowal I proved wrung from out the wretch.

After long rotting in imprisonment,

As price of liberty and favor: long

They tempted, he at last succumbed, and lo

Counted them out full tale each kiss and more,

"The journey being one long embrace," quoth he.

Still, though we should believe the driver's lie,

Nor even admit as probable excuse,

Right reading of the riddle,--as I urged

In my first argument, with fruit perhaps--

That what the owl-like eyes (at back of head!)

O' the driver, drowsed by driving night and day,

Supposed a vulgar interchange of lips,

This was but innocent jog of head 'gainst head,

Cheek meeting jowl as apple may touch pear

From branch and branch contiguous in the wind,

When Autumn blusters and the orchard-rocks:--

That rapid run and the rough road were cause

O' the casual ambiguity, no harm

I' the world to eyes awake and penetrative:--

Say,--not to grasp a truth I can release

And safely fight without, yet conquer still,--

Say, she kissed him, say, he kissed her again!

Such osculation was a potent means,

A very efficacious help, no doubt:

Such with a third part of her nectar did

Venus imbue: why should Pompilia fling

The poet's declaration in his teeth?--

Pause to employ what--since it had success,

And kept the priest her servant to the end--

We must presume of energy enough,

No whit superfluous, so permissible?

The goal is gained: day, night, and yet a day

Have run their round: a long and devious road

Is traversed,--many manners, various men

Passed in review, what cities did they see,

What hamlets mark, what profitable food

For after-meditation cull and store!

Till Rome, that Rome whereof--this voice

Would it might make our Molinists observe,

That she is built upon a rock nor shall

Their powers prevail against her!--Rome, I say,

Is all but reached; one stage more and they stop

Saved: pluck up heart, ye pair, and forward, then!

Ah, Nature--baffled she recurs, alas!

Nature imperiously exacts her due,

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak:

Pompilia needs must acquiesce and swoon,

Give hopes alike and fears a breathing-while.

The innocent sleep soundly: sound she sleeps,

So let her slumber, then, unguarded save

By her own chastity, a triple mail,

And his good hand whose stalwart arms have borne

The sweet and senseless burden like a babe

From coach to couch,--the serviceable strength!

Nay, what and if he gazed rewardedly

On the pale beauty prisoned in embrace,

Stooped over, stole a balmy breath perhaps

For more assurance sleep was not decease--

"_Ut vidi_," "how I saw!" succeeded by

"_Ut perii_," "how I sudden lost my brains!"

--What harm ensued to her unconscious quite?

For, curiosity--how natural!

Importunateness--what a privilege

In the ardent sex! And why curb ardor here?

How can the priest but pity whom he saved?

And pity is so near to love, and love

So neighborly to all unreasonableness!

As to love's object, whether love were sage

Or foolish, could Pompilia know or care,

Being still sound asleep, as I premised?

Thus the philosopher absorbed by thought,

Even Archimedes, busy o'er a book

The while besiegers sacked his Syracuse,

Was ignorant of the imminence o' the point

O' the sword till it surprised him: let it stab,

And never knew himself was dead at all.

So sleep thou on, secure whate'er betide!

For thou, too, hast thy problem hard to solve--

How so much beauty is compatible

With so much innocence!

Fit place, methinks,

While in this task she rosily is lost,

To treat of and repel objection here

Which,--frivolous, I grant,--my mind misgives,

May somehow still have flitted, gadfly-like,

And teased the Court at times--as if, all said

And done, there seemed, the Court might nearly say,

In a certain acceptation, somewhat more

Of what may pass for insincerity,

Falsehood, throughout the course Pompilia took,

Than befits Christian. Pagans held, we know,

Man always ought to aim at good and truth,

Not always put one thing in the same words:

_Non idem semper dicere sed spectare_

_Debemus._ But the Pagan yoke was light;

"Lie not at all," the exacter precept bids:

Each least lie breaks the law,--is sin, we hold.

I humble me, but venture to submit--

What prevents sin, itself is sinless, sure:

And sin, which hinders sin of deeper dye,

Softens itself away by contrast so.

Conceive me! Little sin, by none at all,

Were properly condemned for great: but great,

By greater, dwindles into small again.

Now, what is greatest sin of womanhood?

That which unwomans it, abolishes

The nature of the woman,--impudence.

Who contradicts me here? Concede me, then,

Whatever friendly fault may interpose

To save the sex from self-abolishment

Is three-parts on the way to virtue's rank!

And, what is taxed here as duplicity,

Feint, wile, and trick,--admitted for the nonce,--

What worse do one and all than interpose,

Hold, as it were, a deprecating hand,

Statuesquely, in the Medicean mode,

Before some shame which modesty would veil?

Who blames the gesture prettily perverse?

Thus,--lest ye miss a point illustrative,--

Admit the husband's calumny--allow

That the wife, having penned the epistle fraught

With horrors, charge on charge of crime she heaped

O' the head of Pietro and Violante--(still

Presumed her parents)--having dispatched the same

To their arch-enemy Paolo, through free choice

And no sort of compulsion in the world--

Put case she next discards simplicity

For craft, denies the voluntary act,

Declares herself a passive instrument

I' the husband's hands; that, duped by knavery,

She traced the characters she could not write,

And took on trust the unread sense which, read,

And recognized were to be spurned at once:

Allow this calumny, I reiterate!

Who is so dull as wonder at the pose

Of our Pompilia in the circumstance?

Who sees not that the too-ingenuous soul,

Repugnant even at a duty done

Which brought beneath too scrutinizing glare

The misdemeanors,--buried in the dark,--

Of the authors of her being, was believed,--

Stung to the quick at her impulsive deed,

And willing to repair what harm it worked,

She--wise in this beyond what Nero proved,

Who, when folk urged the candid juvenile

To sign the warrant, doom the guilty dead,

"Would I had never learned to write!" quoth he!

--Pompilia rose above the Roman, cried,

"To read or write I never learned at all!"

O splendidly mendacious!

But time fleets:

Let us not linger: hurry to the end,

Since flight does end, and that disastrously.

Beware ye blame desert for unsuccess,

Disparage each expedient else to praise,

Call failure folly! Man's best effort fails.

After ten years' resistance Troy succumbed:

Could valor save a town, Troy still had stood.

Pompilia came off halting in no point

Of courage, conduct, her long journey through:

But nature sank exhausted at the close,

And, as I said, she swooned and slept all night.

Morn breaks and brings the husband: we assist

At the spectacle. Discovery succeeds.

Ha, how is this? What moonstruck rage is here?

Though we confess to partial frailty now,

To error in a woman and a wife,

Is 't by the rough way she shall be reclaimed?

Who bursts upon her chambered privacy?

What crowd profanes the chaste _cubiculum?_

What outcries and lewd laughter, scurril gibe

And ribald jest to scare the ministrant

Good angels that commerce with souls in sleep?

Why, had the worst crowned Guido to his wish,

Confirmed his most irrational surmise,

Yet there be bounds to man's emotion, checks

To an immoderate astonishment.

'T is decent horror, regulated wrath,

Befit our dispensation: have we back

The old Pagan license? Shall a Vulcan clap

His net o' the sudden and expose the pair

To the unquenchable universal mirth?

A feat, antiquity saw scandal in

So clearly, that the nauseous tale thereof--

Demodocus his nugatory song--

Hath ever been concluded modern stuff

Impossible to the mouth of the grave Muse,

So, foisted into that Eighth Odyssey

By some impertinent pickthank. O thou fool,

Count Guido Franceschini, what didst gain

By publishing thy secret to the world?

Were all the precepts of the wise a waste--

Bred in thee not one touch of reverence?

Admit thy wife--admonish we the fool--

Were falseness' self, why chronicle thy shame?

Much rather should thy teeth bite out thy tongue,

Dumb lip consort with desecrated brow,

Silence become historiographer,

And thou--thine own Cornelius Tacitus!

But virtue, barred, still leaps the barrier, lords!

--Still, moon-like, penetrates the encroaching mist

And bursts, all broad and bare, on night, ye know!

Surprised, then, in the garb of truth, perhaps,

Pompilia, thus opposed, breaks obstacle,

Springs to her feet, and stands Thalassian-pure,

Confronts the foe,--nay, catches at his sword

And tries to kill the intruder, he complains.

Why, so she gave her lord his lesson back,

Crowned him, this time, the virtuous woman's way,

With an exact obedience; he brought sword,

She drew the same, since swords are meant to draw.

Tell not me 't is sharp play with tools on edge!

It was the husband chose the weapon here

Why did not he inaugurate the game

With some gentility of apophthegm

Still pregnant on the philosophic page,

Some captivating cadence still a-lisp

O' the poet's lyre? Such spells subdue the surge,

Make tame the tempest, much more mitigate

The passions of the mind, and probably

Had moved Pompilia to a smiling blush.

No, he must needs prefer the argument

O' the blow: and she obeyed, in duty bound,

Returned him buffet ratiocinative--

Ay, in the reasoner's own interest,

For wife must follow whither husband leads,

Vindicate honor as himself prescribes,

Save him the very way himself bids save!

No question but who jumps into a quag

Should stretch forth hand and pray us "Pull me out

By the hand!" such were the customary cry:

But Guido pleased to bid "Leave hand alone!

Join both feet, rather, jump upon my head:

I extricate myself by the rebound!"

And dutifully as enjoined she jumped--

Drew his own sword and menaced his own life,

Anything to content a wilful spouse.