Blockhead Bottini giving cause enough!
But no,—we’ll take it as spontaneously
Confessed: we’ll have the murder beyond doubt.
Ah, fortunate (the poet’s word reversed)
Inasmuch as we know our happiness!
Had the antagonist left dubiety, (360)
Here were we proving murder a mere myth,
And Guido innocent, ignorant, absent,—ay,
Absent! He was—why, where should Christian be?—
Engaged in visiting his proper church,
The duty of us all at Christmas-time;
When Caponsacchi, the seducer, stung
To madness by his relegation, cast
About him and contrived a remedy:
To stave off what opprobrium broke afresh,
By the birth o’ the babe, on him the imputed sire, (370)
He came and quietly sought to smother up
His shame and theirs together,—killed the three,
And fled—(go seek him where you please to search)—
Just at the moment, Guido, touched by grace,
Devotions ended, hastened to the spot,
Meaning to pardon his convicted wife,
“Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace!”—
Who thus arrived i’ the nick of time to catch
The charge o’ the killing, though great-heartedly
He came but to forgive and bring to life. (380)
Doubt ye the force of Christmas on the soul?
“Is thine eye evil because mine is good?”
But for the full confession round and sound!
Thus would you have some kingly alchemist,—
Whose concern should not be with proving brass
Transmutable to gold, but triumphing,
Rather, above his gold changed out of brass,
Not vulgarly to the mere sight and touch,
But in the idea, the spiritual display, (390)
Proud apparition buoyed by winged words
Hovering above its birth- place in the brain,—
Here would you have this excellent personage
Forced, by the gross need, to gird apron round,
Plant forge, light fire, ply bellows,—in a word,
Demonstrate—when a faulty pipkin’s crack
May disconcert you his presumptive truth!
Here were I hanging to the testimony
Of one of these poor rustics—four, ye Gods!
Whom the first taste of friend the Fiscal’s cord (400)
Might drive into undoing my whole speech,
Shaming truth so!
Not so much at those peasants’ lack of heart;
But—Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
Bear pain no better! Everybody knows
It used once, when my father was a boy,
To form a proper, nay, important point
I’ the education of our well-born youth,
To take the torture handsomely at need, (410)
Without confessing in this clownish guise,
Each noble had his rack for private use,
And would, for the diversion of a guest,
Bid it be set up in the yard of arms,
To take thereon his hour of exercise,—
Command the varletry stretch, strain their best,
While friends looked on, admired my lord could smile
’Mid tugging which had caused an ox to roar.
Men are no longer men!
No longer Farinacci, let men add,
If I one more time fly from point proposed!
So, Vindicatio,—here begins the same!—
Honoris causa; so we make our stand:
Honour in us had injury, we shall prove.
Or if we fail to prove such injury
More than misprision of the fact,—what then?
It is enough, authorities declare,
If the result, the deed in question now,
Be caused by confidence that injury (430)
Is veritable and no figment: since,
What, though proved fancy afterward, seemed fact
At the time, they argue shall excuse result.
That which we do, persuaded of good cause
For what we do, hold justifiable!—
The casuists bid: man, bound to do his best,
They would not have him leave that best undone
And mean to do the worst,—though fuller light
Show best was worst and worst would have been best.
Act by the present light, they ask of man. (440)
Ultra quod hic non agitur, besides
It is not anyway our business here,
De probatione adulterii,
To prove what we thought crime was crime indeed,
Ad irrogandam pænam, and require
Its punishment: such nowise do we seek:
Sed ad effectum, but ’tis our concern,
Excusandi, here to simply find excuse,
Occisorem, for who did the killing-work,
Et ad illius defensionem (mark (450)
The difference!) and defend the man, just that.
Quo casu levior probatio
Exuberaret, to which end far lighter proof
Suffices than the prior case would claim:
It should be always harder to convict,
In short, than to establish innocence,
Therefore we shall demonstrate first of all
That Honour is a gift of God to man
Precious beyond compare,—which natural sense
Of human rectitude and purity,— (460)
Which white, man’s soul is born with, brooks no touch:
Therefore, the sensitivest spot of all,
Woundable by a wafture breathed from black,
Is,—honour within honour, like the eye
Centred i’ the ball,—the honour of our wife.
Touch us o’ the pupil of our honour, then,
Not actually,—since so you slay outright,—
But by a gesture simulating touch,
Presumable mere
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