Cried Guido, or cried Paolo in his name:
Till law said “Reinvestigate the case!”
And so the matter pends, unto this day.
Whatever the fortune of the battle-field, (690)
No path whereby the fatal man might march
Victorious, wreath on head and spoils in hand,
And back turned full upon the baffled foe,—
Nor cranny whence, desperate and disgraced,
Stripped to the skin, he might be fain to crawl
Worm- like, and so away with his defeat
To other fortune and the novel prey.
No, he was pinned to the place there, left alone
With his immense hate and, the solitary
Subject to satisfy that hate, his wife. (700)
“Cast her off? Turn her naked out of doors?
“Easily said! But still the action pends,
“Still dowry, principal and interest,
“Pietro’s possessions, all I bargained for,—
“Any good day, be but my friends alert,
“May give them me if she continue mine.
“Yet, keep her? Keep the puppet of my foes—
“Her voice that lisps me back their curse—her eye
“They lend their leer of triumph to—her lip
“I touch and taste their very filth upon?” (710)
Rome taught him—did at last excogitate
How he might keep the good and leave the bad
Twined in revenge, yet extricable,—nay
Make the very hate’s eruption, very rush
Of the unpent sluice of cruelty relieve
His heart first, then go fertilise his field.
What if the girl-wife, tortured with due care,
Should take, as though spontaneously, the road
It were impolitic to thrust her on? (720)
If, goaded, she broke out in full revolt,
Followed her parents i’ the face o’ the world,
Branded as runaway not castaway,
Self-sentenced and self-punished in the act?
So should the loathed form and detested face
Launch themselves into hell and there be lost
While he looked o’er the brink with folded arms;
So should the heaped-up shames go shuddering back
O’ the head o’ the heapers, Pietro and his wife,
And bury in the breakage three at once: (730)
While Guido, left free, no one right renounced,
Gain present, gain prospective, all the gain,
None of the wife except her rights absorbed.
Should ask law what it was law paused about—
If law were dubious still whose word to take,
The husband’s—dignified and derelict,
Or the wife’s—the … what I tell you. It should be.
A letter to the Abate,—not his own,
His wife’s,—she should re- write, sign, seal, and send. (740)
She liberally told the household-news,
Rejoiced her vile progenitors were fled,
Revealed their malice—how they even laid
A last injunction on her, when they fled,
That she should forthwith find a paramour,
Complot with him to gather spoil enough
Then burn the house down,—taking previous care
To poison all its inmates overnight,—
And so companioned, so provisioned too,
Follow to Rome and all join fortunes gay. (750)
This letter, traced in pencil-characters,
Guido as easily got retraced in ink
By his wife’s pen, guided from end to end,
As it had been just so much Hebrew, Sir:
For why? That wife could broider, sing perhaps,
Pray certainly, but no more read than write
This letter “which yet write she must,” he said,
“Being half courtesy and compliment,
“Half sisterliness: take the thing on trust!”
She had as readily re-traced the words (760)
Of her own death-warrant,—in some sort ’twas so.
This letter the Abate in due course
Communicated to such curious souls
In Rome as needs must pry into the cause
Of quarrel, why the Comparini fled
The Franceschini, whence the grievance grew,
What the hubbub meant: “Nay,—see the wife’s own word,
“Authentic answer! Tell detractors too
“There’s a plan formed, a programme figured here
“—Pray God no after-practice put to proof, (770)
“This letter cast no light upon, one day!”
To Arezzo, go on with the project there,
Forward the next step with as bold a foot,
And plague Pompilia to the height, you see!
Accordingly did Guido set himself
To worry up and down, across, around,
The woman, hemmed in by her household-bars,—
Chased her about the coop of daily life,
Having first stopped each outlet thence save one (780)
Which, like bird with a ferret in her haunt,
She needs must seize as sole way of escape
Though there was tied and twittering a decoy
To seem as if it tempted,—just the plume
O’ the popinjay, and not a respite there
From tooth and claw of something in the dark,—
Giuseppe Caponsacchi.
The tenebrific passage of the tale:
How hold a light, display the cavern’s gorge? (790)
How, in this phase of the affair, show truth?
Here is the dying wife who smiles and says
“So it was,—so it was not,—how it was,
“I never knew nor ever care to know—”
Till they all weep, physician, man of law,
Even that poor old bit of battered brass
Beaten out of all shape by the world’s sins,
Common utensil of the
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