"You must know that a man gets drunk with truth
Stagnant inside him. Oh, they've killed her, Sirs!
Can I be calm?"
But he must be calm: he must show them that soul.
"The glory of life, the beauty of the world,
The splendour of heaven . . . well, Sirs, does no one move?
Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,
And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I" . . .
—for thus he flings defiance at them. Why do they not smile as they smiled at the earlier adultery-trial, when they gave him "the jocular piece of punishment," now that he stands before them "in this sudden smoke from hell"?
"Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?"
For if they had but seen then what Guido Franceschini was! If they would but have been serious! Pompilia would not now be
"Gasping away the latest breath of all,
This minute, while I talk—not while you laugh?"
How can the end of this deed surprise them? Pompilia and he had shown them what its beginning meant—but all in vain. He, the priest, had left her to "law's watch and ward," and now she is dying—"there and thus she lies!" Do they understand now that he was not unworthy of Christ when he tried to save her? His part is done—all that he had been able to do; he wants no more with earth, except to "show Pompilia who was true"—
"The snow-white soul that angels fear to take
Untenderly . . . Sirs,
Only seventeen!"