While—how do accidents sometimes combine!
Pompilia chose to cloister up her charms
Just in a chamber that o’erlooked the street, (810)
Sat there to pray, or peep thence at mankind.
At last the husband lifted eyebrow,—bent
On day-book and the study how to wring
Half the due vintage from the worn-out vines
At the villa, tease a quarter the old rent
From the farmstead, tenants swore would tumble soon,—
Pricked up his ear a-singing day and night
With “ruin, ruin;”—and so surprised at last—
Why, what else but a titter? Up he jumps. (820)
Back to mind come those scratchings at the grange,
Prints of the paw about the outhouse; rife
In his head at once again are word and wink,
Mum here and budget there, the smell o’ the fox,
The musk o’ the gallant. “Friends, there’s falseness here!”
Is waggery, the world over. Laugh him free
O’ the regular jealous- fit that’s incident
To all old husbands that wed brisk young wives,
And he’ll go duly docile all his days. (830)
“Somebody courts your wife, Count? Where and when?
“How and why? Mere horn-madness: have a care!
“Your lady loves her own room, sticks to it,
“Locks herself in for hours, you say yourself.
“And—what, it’s Caponsacchi means you harm?
“The Canon? We caress him, he’s the world’s,
“A man of such acceptance,—never dream,
“Though he were fifty times the fox you fear,
“He’d risk his brush for your particular chick,
“When the wide town’s his hen-roost! Fie o’ the fool!”
So they dispensed their comfort of a kind. (841)
Guido at last cried “Something is in the air,
“Under the earth, some plot against my peace:
“The trouble of eclipse hangs overhead,
“How it should come of that officious orb
“Your Canon in my system, you must say:
“I say—that from the pressure of this spring
“Began the chime and interchange of bells,
“Ever one whisper, and one whisper more,
“And just one whisper for the silvery last, (850)
“Till all at once a- row the bronze-throats burst
“Into a larum both significant
“And sinister: stop it I must and will.
“Let Caponsacchi take his hand away
“From the wire!—disport himself in other paths
“Than lead precisely to my palace- gate,—
“Look where he likes except one window’s way
“Where cheek on hand, and elbow set on sill,
“Happens to lean and say her litanies
“Every day and all day long, just my wife— (860)
“Or wife and Caponsacchi may fare the worse!”
“I’ll not have that, I’ll punish and prevent!”—
’Tis easy saying. But to a fray, you see,
Two parties go. The badger shows his teeth:
The fox nor lies down sheep-like nor dares fight.
Oh, the wife knew the appropriate warfare well,
The way to put suspicion to the blush!
At first hint of remonstrance, up and out
I’ the face of the world, you found her: she could speak,
State her case,—Franceschini was a name, (871)
Guido had his full share of foes and friends—
Why should not she call these to arbitrate?
She bade the Governor do governance,
Cried out on the Archbishop—why, there now,
Take him for sample! Three successive times,
Had he to reconduct her by main force
From where she took her station opposite
His shut door,—on the public steps thereto,
Wringing her hands, when he came out to see, (880)
And shrieking all her wrongs forth at his foot,—
Back to the husband and the house she fled:
Judge if that husband warmed him in the face
Of friends or frowned on foes as heretofore!
Judge if he missed the natural grin of folk,
Or lacked the customary compliment
Of cap and bells, the luckless husband’s fit!
One merry April morning, Guido woke
After the cuckoo, so late, near noonday, (890)
With an inordinate yawning of the jaws,
Ears plugged, eyes gummed together, palate, tongue
And teeth one mud-paste made of poppy-milk;
And found his wife flown, his scrutoire the worse
For a rummage,—jewelry that was, was not,
Some money there had made itself wings too,—
The door lay wide and yet the servants slept
Sound as the dead, or dosed which does as well.
In short, Pompilia, she who, candid soul,
Had not so much as spoken all her life (900)
To the Canon, nay, so much as peeped at him
Between her fingers while she prayed in church,—
This lamb-like innocent of fifteen years
(Such she was grown to by this time of day)
Had simply put an opiate in the drink
Of the whole household overnight, and then
Got up and gone about her work secure,
Laid hand on this waif and the other stray,
Spoiled the Philistine and marched out of doors
In company of the Canon who, Lord’s love, (910)
What with his daily duty at the church,
Nightly devoir where ladies congregate,
Had something else to mind, assure yourself,
Beside Pompilia, paragon though she be,
Or notice if her nose were sharp or blunt!
Well, anyhow, albeit impossible,
Both of them were together jollily
Jaunting it Rome-ward, half-way there by this,
While Guido was left go and
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