And kicked the conjuror! Whereas you and I,
Being wise with after-wit, had clapped our hands;
Nay, added, in the old fool’s interest,
“Strangle the black-eyed babe, so far so good,
“But on condition you relieve the man
“O’ the wife and throttle him Violante too—
“She is the mischief!”
She, whose trick brought the babe into the world,
She it was, when the babe was grown a girl, (250)
Judged a new trick should reinforce the old,
Send vigour to the lie now somewhat spent
By twelve years’ service; lest Eve’s rule decline
Over this Adam of hers, whose cabbage-plot
Throve dubiously since turned fools’-paradise,
Spite of a nightingale on every stump.
Pietro’s estate was dwindling day by day,
While he, rapt far above such mundane care,
Crawled all-fours with his baby pick-a-back,
Sat at serene cats’-cradle with his child, (260)
Or took the measured tallness, top to toe,
Of what was grown a great girl twelve years old:
Till sudden at the door a tap discreet,
A visitor’s premonitory cough,
And poverty had reached him in her rounds.
Had learned to dandle and forgot to dig,
And who must but Violante cast about,
Contrive and task that head of hers again?
She who had caught one fish, could make that catch (270)
A bigger still, in angler’s policy:
So, with an angler’s mercy for the bait,
Her minnow was set wriggling on its barb
And tossed to the mid-stream; that is, this grown girl
With the great eyes and bounty of black hair
And first crisp youth that tempts a jaded taste,
Was whisked i’ the way of a certain man, who snapped.
Was head of an old noble house enough,
Not over-rich, you can’t have everything, (280)
But such a man as riches rub against,
Readily stick to,—one with a right to them
Born in the blood: ’twas in his very brow
Always to knit itself against the world,
So be beforehand when that stinted due
Service and suit: the world ducks and defers.
As such folks do, he had come up to Rome
To better his fortune, and, since many years,
Was friend and follower of a cardinal;
Waiting the rather thus on providence, (290)
That a shrewd younger poorer brother yet,
The Abate Paolo, a regular priest,
Had long since tried his powers and found he swam
With the deftest on the Galilean pool:
But then he was a web-foot, free o’ the wave,
And no ambiguous dab-chick hatched to strut,
Humbled by any fond attempt to swim
When fiercer fowl usurped his dunghill top—
A whole priest, Paolo, no mere piece of one
Like Guido tacked thus to the Church’s tail! (300)
Guido moreover, as the head o’ the house,
Claiming the main prize, not the lesser luck,
The centre lily, no mere chickweed fringe.
Got promise, missed performance—what would you have?
No petty post rewards a nobleman
For spending youth in splendid lackey-work,
And there’s concurrence for each rarer prize;
When that falls, rougher hand and readier foot
Push aside Guido spite of his black looks. (310)
The end was, Guido, when the warning showed,
The first white hair i’ the glass, gave up the game,
Determined on returning to his town,
Making the best of bad incurable
Patching the old palace up and lingering there
The customary life out with his kin,
Where honour helps to spice the scanty bread.
To go his journey and be wise at home,
In the right mood of disappointed worth, (320)
Who but Violante sudden spied her prey
(Where was I with that angler- simile?)
And threw her bait, Pompilia, where he sulked—
A gleam i’ the gloom!
Wrung out this sweet drop from the bitter Past,
Bore off this rose-bud from the prickly brake,
To justify such torn clothes and scratched hands,
And, after all, brought something back from Rome?
Would not a wife serve at Arezzo well (330)
To light the dark house, lend a look of youth
To the mother’s face grown meagre, left alone
And famished with the emptiness of hope,
Old Donna Beatrice? Wife you want
Would you play family representative,
Carry you elder-brotherly, high and right
O’er what may prove the natural petulance
Of the third brother, younger, greedier still,
Girolamo, also a fledgeling
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