Caponsacchi tried to go to her, but now the room was full of the rabble pouring in at the noise—he was caught—"they heaped themselves upon me." . . . Then, when she saw "my angel helplessly held back," then
"Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,"
—and she sprang at her husband, seized the sword that hung beside him,
"Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy
O' the blade. 'Die,' cried she, 'devil, in God's name!'
Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one
. . . Dead-white and disarmed she lay."
She said, dying, that this, her first and last resistance, had been invincible, for she had struck at the lie in Guido; and thus not "the vain sword nor weak speech" had saved her, but Caponsacchi's truth:—
"You see, I will not have the service fail!
I say the angel saved me: I am safe! . . .
What o' the way to the end?—the end crowns all"
—for even though she now was dying, there had been the time at the convent with the quiet nuns, and then the safety with her parents, and then:
"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 . . .
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,
Know life a little, I should leave so soon.
Therefore, because this man restored my soul
All has been right . . .
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 nought to spoil the bliss
A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much."
For, thinking of her happy childhood before the marriage, already she has said that only that childhood, and the prayer that brought her Caponsacchi, and the "great fortnight" remain as real: the four bad years between
"Vanish—one quarter of my life, you know."