"When Somebody's thick head-piece once was bent
On seeing Guido's drop into the bag." (vol. x. p. 256.)
Well, people enjoyed the show, but saw through it all the same; and meanwhile his (the writer's) superb defence goes for nothing; and though argument is solid and subsists
"While obstinacy and ineptitude
Accompany the owner to his tomb;" (vol. x. p. 256.)
his hands and his pockets are empty. Ah well! little Cino will gain by it in the long run. He had been promised that if papa couldn't save the Count's head, he should go and see it chopped off: and when a patroness of his joked the child on his defeat, and on Bottini's ruling the roast, the clever rogue retorted that papa knew better than to baulk the Pope of his grudge, and could have argued Bottini's nose off if he had chosen. Doesn't the fop see that he (de Archangelis) can drive right and left horses with one hand? The Gomez case shall make it up to him."
The two other letters are in the same strain as the first. Both are written on the day of the execution. Both announce it in a condoling manner. Both allude to the justifications which arrived too late: and in one or both, the criminal is spoken of as "poor" Signor Guido. Mr. Browning has preferred, however, representing the other side; and the next which he gives is, like Don Hyacinth's supplement, only such as might have been written. It is supposed to be from Pompilia's advocate Bottinius (or Bottini), and is in keeping with the spirit of his defence. He is clearly jealous of not having had a worse case to plead. "He has won," he says. "How could he do otherwise? with the plain truth on his side, and the Pope ready to steady it on his legs again if he let it drop asleep. Arcangeli may crow over him, as it is, for having been kept by him a month at bay—though even this much was not his doing; the little dandiprat Spreti was the real man."
And this is not all. "Of course Rome must have its joke at the advocate with the case that proved itself: but here is a piece of impertinence he was not prepared for. The barefoot Augustinian, whose report of Pompilia's dying words took all the freshness out of the best points of his defence, has been preaching on the subject; and the sermon is flying about Rome in print." Next follows an extract from it. The friar warns his hearers not to trust to human powers of discovering the truth. "It is not the long trial which has revealed Pompilia's innocence; God from time to time puts forth His hand, and He has done so here. But earth is not heaven, nor all truth intended to prevail. One dove returned to the ark. How many were lost in the wave? One woman's purity has been rescued from the world. 'How many chaste and noble sister-fames' have lacked 'the extricating hand?' And we must wait God's time for such truth as is destined to appear. When Christians worshipped in the Catacomb, one man, no worse than the rest, though no less foolish, will have pointed to its mouth, and said, 'Obscene rites are practised in that darkness. The devotees of an execrable creed skulk there out of sight.' Not till the time was ripe, did lightning split the face of the rock, and lay bare a nook—
"Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more:
And by it, in the due receptacle,