“Leave to confess and save my sinful soul,
“Then do your pleasure on the body of me!”
—“Nay, father, soul with body must take its chance!” (1380)
He presently got his portion and lay still.
And last, Pompilia rushes here and there
Like a dove among lightnings in her brake,
Falls also: Guido’s, this last husband’s-act.
He lifts her by the long dishevelled hair,
Holds her away at arms’ length with one hand,
While the other tries if life come from the mouth—
Looks out his whole heart’s hate on the shut eyes,
Draws a deep satisfied breath, “So—dead at last!”
Throws down the burthen on dead Pietro’s knees, (1390)
And ends all with “Let us away, my boys!”
Tumbled the neighbours—for the shrieks had pierced
To the mill and the grange, this cottage and that shed.
Soon followed the Public Force: pursuit began
Though Guido had the start and chose the road:
So, that same night was he, with the other four,
Overtaken near Baccano,—where they sank
By the way-side, in some shelter meant for beasts,
And now lay heaped together, nuzzling swine, (1400)
Each wrapped in bloody cloak, each grasping still
His unwiped weapon, sleeping all the same
The sleep o’ the just,—a journey of twenty miles
Bringing just and unjust to a level, you see.
The only one i’ the world that suffered aught
By the whole night’s toil and trouble, flight and chase,
Was just the officer who took them, Head
O’ the Public Force,—Patrizj, zealous soul,
Who, having duty to sustain the flesh,
Got heated, caught a fever and so died: (1410)
A warning to the over-vigilant,
—Virtue in a chafe should change her linen quick,
Lest pleurisy get start of providence.
(That’s for the Cardinal, and told, I think!)
Well, they bring back the company to Rome.
Says Guido, “By your leave, I fain would ask
“How you found out ’twas I who did the deed?
“What put you on my trace, a foreigner,
“Supposed in Arezzo,—and assuredly safe
“Except for an oversight: who told you, pray?” (1420)
“Why, naturally your wife!” Down Guido drops
O’ the horse he rode,—they have to steady and stay,
At either side the brute that bore him, bound,
So strange it seemed his wife should live and speak!
She had prayed—at least so people tell you now—
For but one thing to the Virgin for herself,
Not simply, as did Pietro ’mid the stabs,—
Time to confess and get her own soul saved—
But time to make the truth apparent, truth
For God’s sake, lest men should believe a lie: (1430)
Which seems to have been about the single prayer
She ever put up, that was granted her.
With this hope in her head, of telling truth,—
Being familiarised with pain, beside,—
She bore the stabbing to a certain pitch
Without a useless cry, was flung for dead
On Pietro’s lap, and so attained her point.
Her friends subjoin this—have I done with them?—
And cite the miracle of continued life
(She was not dead when I arrived just now) (1440)
As attestation to her probity.
The self-command and even the final prayer,
Our candour must acknowledge explainable
As easily by the consciousness of guilt.
So, when they add that her confession runs
She was of wifehood one white innocence
In thought, word, act, from first of her short life
To last of it; praying i’ the face of death,
That God forgive her other sins—not this (1450)
She is charged with and must die for, that she failed
Anyway to her husband: while thereon
Comments the old Religious—“ So much good,
“Patience beneath enormity of ill,
“I hear to my confusion, woe is me,
“Sinner that I stand, shamed in the walk and gait
“I have practised and grown old in, by a child!”—
Guido’s friends shrug the shoulder, “Just this same
“Prodigious absolute calm in the last hour
“Confirms us,—being the natural result (1460)
“Of a life which proves consistent to the close.
“Having braved heaven and deceived earth throughout,
“She braves still and deceives still, gains thereby
“Two ends, she prizes beyond earth or heaven:
“First sets her lover free, imperilled sore
“By the new turn things take: he answers yet
“For the part he played: they have summoned him indeed:
“The past ripped up, he may be punished still:
“What better way of saving him than this?
“Then,—thus she dies revenged to the uttermost (1470)
“On Guido, drags him with her in the dark,
“The lower still the better, do you doubt?
“Thus, two ways, does she love her love to the end,
“And hate her hate,—death, hell is no such price
“To pay for these,—lovers and haters hold.”
But there’s another parry for the thrust.
“Confession,” cry folks—“ a confession, think!
“Confession of the moribund is true!”
Which of them, my wise friends? This public one,
Or the private other we shall never know? (1480)
The private may contain,—your casuists teach,—
The acknowledgment of, and the penitence for,
That other public one, so people say.
However it be,—we trench on delicate ground,
Her Eminence is peeping o’er the cards,—
Can one find nothing in behalf of this
Catastrophe? Deaf folks accuse the dumb!
You criticise the drunken reel, fool’s-speech,
Maniacal gesture of the man,—we grant!
But who poured poison in his cup, we ask? (1490)
Recall the list of his excessive wrongs,
First cheated in his wife, robbed by her kin,
Rendered anon the laughing-stock o’ the world
By the story, true or false, of
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