“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——”
He mixes up references to the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, her Babe, Saint Anne and Herod; with whom he compares Pompilia, the Comparini family, and the Count; and all this with illustrations from the classics not greatly to the honour of women. The view of Bottinius, in short, is that of the bachelor man of the world, with no very lofty ideals about anything. His philosophy is summed up in his last words, “Still, it pays.” He says he feels his strength inadequate to paint Pompilia; but we know this is a professional way of speaking, for he soon relapses into “melting wiles, deliciousest deceits”—very incongruous with our ideas of what Pompilia really was. No doubt, he thinks, there were some friskings, for which Guido naturally threatened the whip, and considers Guido to have been impatient. He supposes that Pompilia smiled upon everybody, till, when three years of married life had run their course, she smiled on Caponsacchi; and as he was a priest, and the court was more or less ecclesiastical, Bottinius makes light of the affair. He will grant that the lady somewhat plied “arts that allure,” “the witchery of gesture,” and the like. This was within the right of beauty, for the purpose of securing a champion. He will grant, for argument’s sake, that she did write to Caponsacchi. What of it?—it was but to say her life was not worth an hour’s purchase. It was not likely that Caponsacchi fell in love—he who might be Pope some day—yet the lady, being in such a case, was bound to offer him nothing short of love, as his great service was to save her. What was she to offer him—money? To escape death she might well have feigned love, and offered such a reward as the Idyl of Moschus makes Venus promise to any who should bring back lost Cupid. As it was wiser to choose a priest for the rescue of her life, if the cleric were young, handsome, and strong, so much the better, surely. Suppose it were true that Pompilia administered an opiate to her husband the night before she left him? Well, that was to protect him from rough usage if he aroused and interfered. This, says Bottinius, is how he would argue if the things which are but fables had been true: of course Guido never slept a wink, and Pompilia, equally of course, knew nothing about opiates. Then, when she started with her rescuer on the road to Rome, even granting what the suborned coachman said about the kissing which he saw—the one long embrace which constituted the journey—a sage and sisterly kiss were surely allowable, and this is probably what was exaggerated by the drowsy, tired driver. Then, when the pale creature, exhausted with the long journey, fainted at the inn, and Caponsacchi carried her to the chamber, what if he “stole a balmy breath, perhaps”? “why curb ardour here?” He could but pity her, and “pity is so near to love!” As Pompilia was asleep, she could neither know nor care. Were he to concede that Pompilia did write the incriminating letters, she, for self-protection, might deny she did so. “Would that I had never learned to write!” said one; Pompilia, splendidly mendacious, merely out-distanced him with, “To read or write I never learned at all!” Bottinius cannot resist a thrust or two at his “fat opponent’s” love of good living; calls him “thou arch-angelic swine,” and reminds him that he had not invited him to last night’s birthday feast, when all sorts of good things were going. Turning to the action of Caponsacchi, he reminds the court that Archbishop and Governor, gentle and simple, did nothing to extricate Pompilia from her troubles; they all went their ways and left her to her fate; Caponsacchi alone, bursting through the impotent sympathy of Arezzo, caught Virtue up, and carried her off. He had not soiled her with the pitch alleged: the marks she bore were the evanescent black and blue of the necessary grasp. Then he must tell a tale how Peter, John, and Judas, being on a journey, were footsore and hungry; how they reached at night an inn for rest where there was but one room; for food but a solitary fowl, a wretched sparrow of a thing. Peter suggested they should all go to sleep till the fowl was ready, then he who had had the happiest dream should eat the entire fowl, as there was not enough for three; so each rested in his straw. When they awoke, John said he had dreamed he was the Lord’s favourite disciple, and claimed the meal. Peter had dreamed he had the keys of heaven and hell, and thought the fowl must clearly be his. But Judas dreamed that he had descended from the chamber where they slept and had eaten the fowl. And so the traitor really had: he had left nothing but the drumstick and the merry-thought; and that is how the bone called merry-thought earned its name, to put us in mind that the best dream is to keep awake sometimes. So, said Bottinius, the great people of Arezzo never meant Innocence to starve while Authority sat at meat. They meant Pompilia to have something—in their dreams; they were willing to help her—in their sleep. Caponsacchi did wiser than dream or sleep: he brought a carriage, while the Archbishop and the Governor wondered what they could do. Then the Advocate bursts into a fit of admiration for the majesty and sanctity of the law, and what it would have done for Guido if only he had been content to wait. He comments on the penance which Pompilia had undergone; and though he cannot believe that Caponsacchi ever went near her when she left the convent, is inclined to ask, Suppose he did? Is it a matter for surprise that he would feel lonely at Civita, and pine a little for the feminine society to which he had been accustomed? And so he goes on denying all the accusations, but always adding, “And suppose it were otherwise?” He says, if he must speak his mind, it had been better that Pompilia had died upon the spot than lived to shame the law. Does he credit her story?—no! Did she lie?—still no! He explains it this way: She had made her confession at the point of death, and was absolved; it was only charity in her to spend her last breath by pretending utter innocence, and thus rehabilitate the character of Caponsacchi. Had she told the naked truth about him, it would have doubtless injured him, and she was not bound to do that; and as the Sacrament had obliterated the sin, she was justified in the course he believes she took.
Notes.—Line 115, The Urbinate: Rafael. l. 116, The Cortonese: Luca da Cortona, Italian painter. l. 117, Ciro Ferri, Italian painter (1634-1689). l. 170, Phryne, a celebrated beauty of Athens. She was the mistress of Praxiteles, who made a statue of her, which was one of his greatest works, and was placed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. l. 226, The Teian: the Greek poet Anacreon was born at Teos, in Ionia. l. 284, The Mantuan == Vergil. l. 394, Commachian eels were anciently, and are still, very celebrated. l. 400, Lernæan snake, the famous hydra which Hercules slew. l. 530, Idyllium Moschi, the first Idyl of the Greek poet Moschus, entitled “Love a Runaway.” l. 541, Myrtilus, the son of Mercury and Phæthusa: for his perfidy he was thrown into the sea, where he perished; Amaryllis, the name of a countryman mentioned by Theocritus and Vergil. l. 873, Demodocus, a musician at the court of Alcinous: the gods gave him the power of song, but denied him the blessing of sight. l. 875, “foisted into that Eighth Odyssey”: see Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey, Book VIII., with the first note thereto. l. 887, Cornelius Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, born in the reign of Nero. l. 893, “Thalassian-pure”: Thalassius was a beautiful young Roman in the reign of Romulus. At the rape of the Sabines, a virgin captured by one of the ravishers was declared to be reserved for Thalassius, and all were eager to reserve her pure for him. l. 968, Hesione, a daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy. It fell to her lot to be exposed to a sea monster. Hercules killed the monster and delivered her, but Laomedon refused to give him the promised reward. l. 989, Hercules and Omphale: Omphale was queen of Lydia, and Hercules loved her so much that he used to spin by her side amongst her women, while she wore the lion’s skin and bore the club of the hero. l. 998, Anti-Fabius, i.e., opposed to the policy of Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who opposed the progress of Hannibal, not by fighting, but by harassing counter-marches and ambuscades; for which he received the name of the delayer. A Fabian policy, therefore, is a waiting policy. Caponsacchi acted promptly. l. 1030, “Sepher Toldoth Yeschu”: the Italians have an endless store of tales and legends of this character. See, for many such, Mr. Crane’s Italian Popular Stories (Macmillan). l. 1109, “Thucydides and his sole joke”: Thucydides was a celebrated Greek historian, born at Athens. He wrote the history of the Peloponnesian war, in which he tells the story of Cylon (l. 126). l. 1345, Maro == Vergil; Aristæus, a son of Apollo, said to have learnt from nymphs the art of the cultivation of olives and management of bees, which he communicated to mankind. l. 1494, Triarii, old soldiers that were kept in reserve to assist in case of hazard. l. 1573, “famed panegyric of Isocrates”: Isocrates was one of the ten Attic orators, and one of the most remarkable men in the literary history of Greece. He was born B.C. 436. His splendid panegyric was delivered B.C. 380, for the purpose of stimulating the people of Greece to unite against the power of Asia.
Book X. [The Pope.] As to a court of final appeal, the case has now come before the Pope, Guido having claimed “benefit of clergy.” The Supreme Pontiff has made a prolonged study of the evidence adduced on the trials, and of the whole circumstances surrounding the case; now he has to decide the fate of the Count and his accomplices in the murder. And that he may give judgment without bias, in the sight of God and of the world, he nerves himself for the task by recalling the history of his predecessors in the Chair of Peter who have, from the Apostle up to Alexander, the last Pope, dared and suffered. How judged this one, how decided that? did he well or ill? He remembers that no infallibility attaches to such a decision as he must give in the case in which he is called upon to act: judgment must be given in his own behoof; so worked his predecessors. And now appeal is made from man’s assize to him acting, speaking in the place of God. He must be just, and dare not let the felon go scot free. It is not possible to reprieve both criminal and Pope. Guido was furnished for his life with all the help a Christian civilisation could bestow: he had intellect, wit, a healthy frame, and all the advantages of family and position. He accepted the law that man is not here to please himself, but God; placed himself under obedience to the Church, which is the embodiment of that principle, and then deliberately clothed himself with the protection of the Church that he might violate the law with impunity. Three-parts consecrate, he sought to do his murder in the Church’s pale. Such a man—religious parasite—proves “irreligiousest of all mankind.” His low instincts make him believe only in “the vile of life.” He is clothed in falsehood, scale on scale. The typical actuating principle of his life was plainly exhibited in his marriage. He was prompted to that by no single motive which should have suggested matrimony. In this he had sunk far below the level of the brute, “whose appetite, if brutish, is a truth.” This lust of money led him to lie, rob and murder; to pursue with insatiate malice the parents of his wife by punishing their child, putting day by day and hour by hour,
“The untried torture to the untouched place,”
goading her to death and bringing damnation by rebound to those who loved her. Ruining the three, he enjoyed luck and liberty, person, rights, fame, worth, all intact; while these poor souls must waste away, be blown about as dust. Such cruelty needed only as its complement, as a masterpiece of hell, the craft of this simulated love intrigue,—these false letters, false to body and soul they figure forth—as though the man had cut out some filthy shapes to fasten below the cherubs on a missal-page. But Pompilia’s ermine-like soul takes no pollution from all this craft. It arose that in the providence of God were born new attributes to two souls. Priest and wife—both champions of truth—developed new safeguards of their noble natures. Then does the law step in, secludes the wife and gives the oppressor a new probation. It only induces Guido to furbish up his tools for a fresh assault. He has a son. To other men the gift brings thankfulness; Guido saw in the babe but a money-bag. Even in the deepest degradation of his sinful career he has another grace vouchsafed from God. When he fled from the scene of the murders, he took with him the money which he had agreed to pay his confederates. They came near to his hiding-place, intending to kill him for the gold, but were too late: the agents of the law were too quick for them. He had another chance of repentance. So stands Guido; and this master of wickedness has for pupils his “fox-faced, horrible brother-brute the Abate,” and his younger brother, neither wolf nor fox, but the hybrid Girolamo, and
“The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
Woman,”
and lastly the four companions in the murder, who acceded at once to the crime, as though they were set to dig a vineyard. Then the Pope recalls the only answer of the Governor to whom Pompilia appealed—a threat and a shrug of the shoulder. He has a severe word for the Archbishop, as a hireling who turned and fled when the wolf pressed on the panting lamb within his reach. It comforts him to turn to Pompilia, “perfect in whiteness,” as he pronounces. It makes him proud in the evening of his life as “gardener of the untoward ground,” that he is privileged to gather this “rose for the breast of God.”
“Go past me
And get thy praise,—and be not far to seek
Presently when I follow if I may!”
Nor very much apart from her can be placed Caponsacchi, his “warrior-priest.” He finds much amiss in this freak of his. He disapproves the masquerade, the change of garb; but it was grandly done—that athlete’s leap amongst the uncaged beasts set upon the martyr-maid in the mid-cirque. Impulsively had he cast every rag to the winds; but he championed God at first blush, and answered ringingly, with his glove on ground, the challenge of the false knight. Where, then, were the Church’s men-at-arms, while this man in mask and motley has to do their work? When temptation came he had taken it by the head and hair, had done his battle, and has praise. Yet he must ruminate. “Work, be unhappy, but bear life, my son!” He turns to God, “reaches into the dark,” “feels what he cannot see”; renews his confidence in the Divine order of the universe, but not without a pause, a shudder, a breathing space while he collects his thoughts and reviews his grounds of faith. The mind of man is a convex glass, gathering to itself