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manded from him. He describes himself and his four faithful adherents "reeling Romeward."

They arrive on Christmas eve, and the good count tells how his righteous wrath was held in check by the associations of that holy season:

Festive bells-everywhere the Feast o' the Babe,

Joy upon earth, peace and goodwill to man!

I am baptised. I started, and let drop

The dagger!

But, after a struggle, he overcomes these softer emotions, and steels himself for the discharge of his dreadful task.

He suggests that had Pompilia come to the door instead of the hated Violante, he might have relented, even at the last,

Had but Pompilia's self, the tender thing,

Who once was good and pure, was once my lamb,
And lay in my bosom; had the well-known shape
Fronted me in the doorway,-stood there faint

With the recent pang perhaps of giving birth

To what might, though by miracle, seem my child

and so on-half cant, half the one glimmer of tenderness in that seared soul.

And now, having heard the husband, let us hear the wife; let us bend above the hospital bed, and listen to the sweet, low voice as it begins with childlike, artless tale (Book VII) :—

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, full three weeks;
"Tis writ so in the church's register.

Lorenzo in Lucina; all my names

At length, so many names for one poor child:
Francesca Camilla Victoria Angela

Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!

Also 'tis writ that I was married there
Four years ago; and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two-
Omitting all about the mode of death-

This in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been the mother of a son

Exactly two weeks.

Awhile she babbles on about her boy, explaining how she had called him "Gaetano" after the newest made of the Saints, in the hope that a less busy patron might be more interested in his protégé than ever the old Saints had been in her.

Then going back, she briefly tells the story of her luckless marriage, and how Violante had bound her to silence-" Girl-brides never breathe a word." Then comes the miserable life at Arezzo; her husband's hate and brutality; the abominable woman, called her maid, who brings the forged letters, and is for ever whispering the name of Caponsacchi in her ears. In her wretchedness she longs for death, till, of a sudden, the consciousness of approaching motherhood transforms her entire being.

It had got half through April. I arose

One vivid daybreak, who had gone to bed

In the old way, my wont those last three years,
Careless until, the cup drained, I should die.

My sole thought

Being still, as night came,

"Done another day!

How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"

When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep

With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,

Light in me, light without me, everywhere

Change!

And now, to the amazement of the woman who had

been Guido's vile instrument in plotting her downfall, she bids her summon the priest to her side. The interview that follows is described with the utmost delicacy and tenderness. She speaks right out what she required of him

You serve God specially, as priests are bound,
And care about me, stranger as I am,
So far as wish my good,-that miracle
I take to intimate He wills you serve
By saving me,-what else can he direct?
Here is the service. Since a long while now
I am in course of being put to death:
While death concerned nothing but me, I bowed
The head and bade, in heart, my husband strike.
Now I imperil something more, it seems,
Something that's trulier me than this myself,
Something I trust in God and you to save.

You go to Rome they tell me: take me there,
Put me back with my people!

And so the plan of flight was arranged and carried through. The journey and the scene at Castelnuovo are lightly touched on; and then her thoughts flit onward to the happy time when her child was born. I ask you what more exquisite picture than this has it ever entered the heart of poet to conceive, or been given to his pen to pourtray. [Read lines 1676 to 1695.]

The sweet pathetic voice is sinking lower, and the end is nigh. Some one perhaps whispers Guido's name, and asks if she can forgive before her death. Forgive! she can do much more than that

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.

She dies in perfect charity with him, nay, excusing him

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!

She will not blame him even for hating her—
He was so made; he nowise made himself:

I could not love him, but his mother did.

And now, having with sweet child-like trust commended her babe to God, she would use her failing breath to thank those who had been so kind to her

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.

But, as oft happens, the expiring embers are kindled into a final glow; surely, now, if ever, by the inspiration of a breath Divine! [Read lines 1771 to end.]

Meanwhile (Book VI), Guiseppe Caponsacchi is standing before the judges, trembling with wrathful scorn, choking with manifold emotions, exalted, horrified, amazed! These judges are not smiling and smirking now, but very grave! What do they want of him? Why would they hear the story again that they had treated with such good-humoured incredulity six months ago? Or had they merely sent for him to tell him that his relegation to Civita was at an end, and that he was a free man once more? Then the passion of scorn and despair bursts forth

Thank you! I am rehabilitated then,

A very reputable priest. But she

The glory of life, the beauty of the world,
The splendour of heaven.

move?

Well sirs, does no one

Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,

And the beauty, I say, and the splendour, still I say,
Who priest and trained to live my whole life long
On beauty and splendour, solely at their source,
God;-have thus recognised my food in her,
You tell me, that's fast dying as we talk,
Pompilia! How does lenity to me,

Remit one deathbed pang to her? Come, smile!
The proper wink at the hot-headed youth

Who lets his soul show through transparent words,
The mundane love that's sin and scandal too!

You are all struck acquiescent now, it seems:
It seems the oldest, gravest signor here,

Even the redoubtable Tomati, sits

Chopfallen!

But anon his mood changes, and he consents to tell the story the judges are now ready enough to listen to with respect. He tells of his frivolous youth, of how lightly he was encouraged to think of his priestly vows by those who were his superiors in the church. Then he describes the change that came over him after he saw Pompilia for the first time. He grew disgusted with the hollow frivolity of his self-indulgent life, and when his patron, the Archbishop, half seriously and half jokingly, asks the meaning of it all, and if he was turning Molinist? the young priest replies, "Sir, what if I turned Christian?"

He tells of the forged letters that were brought to him by the odious woman, but by which he was never for a moment imposed upon. Then comes his account of that first meeting. She had, as we already know, actually sent for him; but he had gone to the appointed place thinking to confront Guido and to make an end of these filthy plots. But there, to his amazement, was Pompilia.

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