Confessor Celestino groans “’Tis truth,
“All truth, and only truth: there’s something else, (800)
“Some presence in the room beside us all,
“Something that every lie expires before:
“No question she was pure from first to last.”
So far is well and helps us to believe:
But beyond, she the helpless, simple- sweet
Or silly-sooth, unskilled to break one blow
At her good fame by putting finger forth,—
How can she render service to the truth?
The bird says “So I fluttered where a springe
“Caught me: the springe did not contrive itself, (810)
“That I know: who contrived it, God forgive!”
But we, who hear no voice and have dry eyes,
Must ask,—we cannot else, absolving her,—
How of the part played by that same decoy
I’ the catching, caging? Was himself caught first?
We deal here with no innocent at least,
No witless victim,—he’s a man of the age
And a priest beside,—persuade the mocking world
Mere charity boiled over in this sort!
He whose own safety too,—(the Pope’s apprised— (820)
Good-natured with the secular offence,
The pope looks grave on priesthood in a scrape)
Our priest’s own safety therefore, may-be life,
Hangs on the issue! You will find it hard.
Guido is here to meet you with fixed foot,
Stiff like a statue—“Leave what went before!
“My wife fled i’ the company of a priest,
“Spent two days and two nights alone with him:
“Leave what came after!” He is hard to throw.
Moreover priests are merely flesh and blood; (830)
When we get weakness, and no guilt beside,
We have no such great ill-fortune: finding grey,
We gladly call that white which might be black,
Too used to the double-dye. So, if the priest,
Moved by Pompilia’s youth and beauty, gave
Way to the natural weakness. … Anyhow
Here be facts, charactery; what they spell
Determine, and thence pick what sense you may!
There was a certain young bold handsome priest
Popular in the city, far and wide (840)
Famed, for Arezzo’s but a little place, .
As the best of good companions, gay and grave
At the decent minute; settled in his stall,
Or sideling, lute on lap, by lady’s couch,
Ever the courtly Canon: see in such
A star shall climb apace and culminate,
Have its due handbreadth of the heaven at Rome,
Though meanwhile pausing on Arezzo’s edge,
As modest candle ’mid the mountain fog,
To rub off redness and rusticity (850)
Ere it sweep chastened, gain the silver-sphere.
Whether through Guido’s absence or what else,
This Caponsacchi, favourite of the town,
Was yet no friend of his nor free o’ the house,
Though both moved in the regular magnates’ march—
Each must observe the other’s tread and halt
At church, saloon, theatre, house of play.
Who could help noticing the husband’s slouch,
The black of his brow—or miss the news that buzzed
Of how the little solitary wife (860)
Wept and looked out of window all day long?
What need of minute search into such springs
As start men, set o’ the move?—machinery
Old as earth, obvious as the noonday sun.
Why, take men as they come,—an instance now,—
Of all those who have simply gone to see
Pompilia on her deathbed since four days,
Half at the least are, call it how you please,
In love with her—I don’t except the priests
Nor even the old confessor whose eyes run (870)
Over at what he styles his sister’s voice
Who died so early and weaned him from the world.
Well, had they viewed her ere the paleness pushed
The last o’ the red o’ the rose away, while yet
Some hand, adventurous ’twixt the wind and her,
Might let the life run back and raise the flower
Rich with reward up to the guardian’s face,—
Would they have kept that hand employed the same
At fumbling on with prayer-book pages? No!
Men are men: why then need I say one word (880)
More than this, that our man the Canon here
Saw, pitied, loved Pompilia?
This startling why: that Caponsacchi’s self—
Whom foes and friends alike avouch, for good
Or ill, a man of truth whate’er betide,
Intrepid altogether, reckless too
How his own fame and fortune, tossed to the winds,
Suffer by any turn the adventure take,
Nay, more—not thrusting, like a badge to hide, (890)
’Twixt shirt and skin a joy which shown is shame—
But flirting flag-like i’ the face o’ the world
This tell-tale kerchief, this conspicuous love
For the lady,—oh, called innocent love, I know!
Only, such scarlet fiery innocence
As most men would try muffle up in shade,—
’Tis strange then that this else abashless mouth
Should yet maintain, for truth’s sake which is God’s,
That it was not he made the first advance,
That, even ere word had passed between the two, (900)
Pompilia penned him letters, passionate prayers,
If not love, then so simulating love
That he, no novice to the taste of thyme,
Turned from such over-luscious honey-clot
At end o’ the flower, and would not lend his lip
Till … but the tale here frankly outsoars faith:
There must be falsehood somewhere. For her part,
Pompilia quietly constantly avers
She never penned a letter in her life
Nor to the Canon nor any other man, (910)
Being incompetent to write and read:
Nor had she ever uttered word to him, nor he
To her till that same evening when they met,
She on her window-terrace, he beneath
I’ the public street, as was their fateful chance,
And she adjured him in the name of God
Find out and bring to pass where, when and how
Escape with him to Rome might be contrived.
Means found,
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