“And we’re unclean and must be purified.
“Here is a wife makes holiday from home,
“A priest caught playing truant to his church,
“In masquerade moreover: both allege
“Enough excuse to stop our lifted scourge
“Which else would heavily fall. On the other hand,
“Here is a husband, ay and man of mark, (1390)
“Who comes complaining here, demands redress
“As if he were the pattern of desert—
“The while those plaguy allegations frown,
“Forbid we grant him the redress he seeks.
“To all men be our moderation known!
“Rewarding none while compensating each,
“Hurting all round though harming nobody,
“Husband, wife, priest, scot-free not one shall ’scape,
“Yet priest, wife, husband, boast the unbroken head
“From application of our excellent oil: (1400)
“So that whatever be the fact, in fine,
“It makes no miss of justice in a sort.
“First, let the husband stomach as he may,
“His wife shall neither be returned him, no—
“Nor branded, whipped, and caged, but just consigned
“To a convent and the quietude she craves;
“So is he rid of his domestic plague:
“What better thing can happen to a man?
“Next, let the priest retire—unshent, unshamed,
“Unpunished as for perpetrating crime, (1410)
“But relegated (not imprisoned, Sirs!)
“Sent for three years to clarify his youth
“At Civita, a rest by the way to Rome:
“There let his life skim off its last of lees
“Nor keep this dubious colour. Judged the cause:
“All parties may retire, content, we hope.”
That’s Rome’s way, the traditional road of law;
Whither it leads is what remains to tell.
The wife to her convent, brother Paolo (1420)
To the arms of brother Guido with the news
And this beside—his charge was countercharged;
The Comparini, his old brace of hates,
Were breathed and vigilant and venomous now—
Had shot a second bolt where the first stuck,
And followed up the pending dowry-suit
By a procedure should release the wife
From so much of the marriage-bond as barred
Escape when Guido turned the screw too much
On his wife’s flesh and blood, as husband may. (1430)
No more defence, she turned and made attack,
Claimed now divorce from bed and board, in short:
Pleaded such subtle strokes of cruelty,
Such slow sure siege laid to her body and soul,
As, proved,—and proofs seemed coming thick and fast,—
Would gain both freedom and the dowry back
Even should the first suit leave them in his grasp:
So urged the Comparini for the wife.
Guido had gained not one of the good things
He grasped at by his creditable plan (1440)
O’ the flight and following and the rest: the suit
That smouldered late was fanned to fury new,
This adjunct came to help with fiercer fire,
While he had got himself a quite new plague—
Found the world’s face an universal grin
At this last best of the Hundred Merry Tales
Of how a young and spritely clerk devised
To carry off a spouse that moped too much,
And cured her of the vapours in a trice:
And how the husband, playing Vulcan’s part, (1450)
Told by the Sun, started in hot pursuit
To catch the lovers, and came halting up,
Cast his net and then called the Gods to see
The convicts in their rosy impudence—
Whereat said Mercury, “Would that I were Mars!”
Oh it was rare, and naughty all the same!
Brief, the wife’s courage and cunning,—the priest’s show
Of chivalry and adroitness,—last not least,
The husband—how he ne’er showed teeth at all,
Whose bark had promised biting; but just sneaked (1460)
Back to his kennel, tail ’twixt legs, as ’twere,—
All this was hard to gulp down and digest.
So pays the devil his liegeman, brass for gold.
But this was at Arezzo: here in Rome
Brave Paolo bore up against it all—
Battled it out, nor wanting to himself
Nor Guido nor the House whose weight he bore
Pillar-like, not by force of arm but brain.
He knew his Rome, what wheels we set to work;
Plied influential folk, pressed to the ear (1470)
Of the efficacious purple, pushed his way
To the old Pope’s self,—past decency indeed,—
Praying him take the matter in his hands
Out of the regular court’s incompetence;
But times are changed and nephews out of date
And favouritism unfashionable: the Pope
Said “Render Cæsar what is Cæsar’s due!”
As for the Comparini’s counter-plea,
He met that by a counter- plea again,
Made Guido claim divorce—with help so far (1480)
By the trial’s issue: for, why punishment
However slight unless for guiltiness
However slender?—and a molehill serves
Much as a mountain of offence this way.
So was he gathering strength on every side
And growing more and more to menace—when
All of a terrible moment came the blow
That beat down Paolo’s fence, ended the play
O’ the foil and brought Mannaia on the stage.
Months spent in peace among the Convert nuns:
This,—being, as it seemed, for Guido’s sake
Solely, what pride might call imprisonment
And quote as something gained, to friends at home,—
This naturally was at Guido’s charge:
Grudge it he might, but penitential fare,
Prayers, preachings, who but he defrayed the cost?
So, Paolo dropped, as proxy, doit by doit
Like heart’s blood, till—what’s here? What notice comes?
The Convent’s self makes application bland (1500)
That, since Pompilia’s health is fast o’ the wane,
She may have leave to go combine her
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