Back to the simple proper private way
Of decent self-dealt gentlemanly death.
Judges, there is the law, and this beside,
The testimony! Look to it!
So far is only too plain; we must watch,
Bottini will scarce hazard an attack
Here: let’s anticipate the fellow’s play,
And guard the weaker places—warily ask,
What if considerations of a sort, (850)
Reasons of a kind, arise from out the strange
Peculiar unforseen new circumstance
Of this our (candour owns) abnormal act,
To bar the right of us revenging so?
“Impunity were otherwise your meed:
“Go slay your wife and welcome,”—may be urged,—
“But why the innocent old couple slay,
“Pietro, Violante? You may do enough,
“Not too much, not exceed the golden mean:
“Neither brute-beast nor Pagan, Gentile, Jew, (860)
“Nor Christian, no nor votarist of the mode,
“Were free at all to push revenge so far!”
The actual wrong, Pompilia seemed to do,
Was virtual wrong done by the parents here—
Imposing her upon us as their child—
Themselves allow: then, her fault was their fault,
Her punishment be theirs accordingly!
But wait a little, sneak not off so soon!
Was this cheat solely harm to Guido, pray? (870)
The precious couple you call innocent,—
Why, they were felons that law failed to clutch,
Qui ut fraudarent, who that they might rob,
Legitime vocatos, folks law called,
Ad fidei commissum, true heirs to the Trust,
Partum supposuerunt, feigned this birth,
Immemores reos factos esse, blind
To the fact that, guilty, they incurred thereby,
Ultimi supplicii, hanging or aught worse.
Do you blame us that we turn law’s instruments (880)
Not mere self-seekers,—mind the public weal,
Nor make the private good our sole concern?
That having—shall I say—secured a thief,
Not simply we recover from his pouch
The stolen article our property,
But also pounce upon our neighbour’s purse
We opportunely find reposing there,
And do him justice while we right ourselves?
He owes us, for our part, a drubbing say,
But owes our neighbour just a dance i’ the air (890)
Under the gallows: so we throttle him.
The neighbour’s Law, the couple are the Thief,
We are the over-ready to help Law—
Zeal of her house hath eaten us up: for which,
Can it be, Law intends to eat up us,
Crudum Priamum, devour poor Priam raw,
(’Twas Jupiter’s own joke) with babes to boot,
Priamique pisinnos, in Homeric phrase?
Shame!—and so ends the period prettily.
Free as unborn babe from connivance at,
Participation in, their daughter’s fault:
Ours the mistake. Is that a rare event?
Non semel, it is anything but rare,
In contingentia facti, that by chance,
Impunes evaserunt, go scot-free,
Qui, such well-meaning people as ourselves,
Justo dolore moti, who aggrieved
With cause, apposuerunt manus, lay
Rough hands, in innocentes, on wrong heads. (910)
Cite we an illustrative case in point:
Mulier Smirnea quœdam, good my lords,
A gentlewoman lived in Smyrna once,
Virum et filium ex eo conceptum, who
Both husband and her son begot by him,
Killed, interfecerat, ex quo, because,
Vir filium suum perdiderat, her spouse
Had been beforehand with her, killed her son,
Matrimonii primi, of a previous bed.
Deinde accusata, then accused, (920)
Apud Dolabellam, before him that sat
Proconsul, nec duabus cœdibus
Comtaminatam liberare, nor
To liberate a woman doubly- dyed
With murder, voluit, made he up his mind,
Nec condemnare, nor to doom to death,
Justo dolore impulsam, one impelled
By just grief, sed remisit, but sent her up
Ad Areopagum, to the Hill of Mars,
Sapientissimorum judicum (930)
Cœtum, to that assembly of the sage
Paralleled only by my judges here;
Ubi, cognito de causa, where, the cause
Well weighed, responsum est, they gave reply,
Ut ipsa et accusator, that both sides
O’ the suit, redirent, should come back again,
Post centum annos, after a hundred years,
For judgment; et sic, by which sage decree,
Duplici parricidio rea, one
Convicted of a double parricide, (940)
Quamvis etiam innocentem, though in truth
Out of the pair, one innocent at least
She, occidisset, plainly had put to death,
Undequaque, yet she altogether ’scaped,
Evasit impunis. See the case at length
In Valerius, fittingly styled Maximus,
That eighth book of his Memorable Facts.
Nor Cyriacus cites beside the mark:
Similiter uxor quœ mandaverat,
Just so, a lady who had taken care, (950)
Homicidium viri, that her lord be killed,
Ex denegatione debiti,
For denegation of a certain debt,
Matrimonialis, he was loth to pay,
Fuit pecuniaria mulcta, was
Amerced in a pecuniary mulct,
Punita, et ad pœnam, and to pains,
Temporalem, for a certain space of time,
In monasterio, in a convent.
In monasterio! How he manages
In with the ablative, the accusative!
I had hoped to have hitched the villain into verse
For a gift, this very day, a complete list
O’ the prepositions each with proper case,
Telling
| Previous chapter/page | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark | Next chapter/page |