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Robert Browning - The Ring And The Book - Chapter VIII - Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis
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AH, my Giacinto, he’s no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we’re eight?
Seven and one’s eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
—Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo -as -avi -atum -are -ans,
Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood,
Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry)
And chews Corderius with his morning crust!
Look eight years onward, and he’s perched, he’s perched,
Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,
Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?
—Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case
Like this, papa shall triturate full soon
To smooth Papinianian pulp!
                                            It trots
Already through my head, though noon be now,
Does supper-time and what belongs to eye.
Dispose, O Don, o’ the day, first work then play!
—The proverb bids. And “then” means, won’t we hold
Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,
Cinuolo’s birth-night, Cinicello’s own,
That makes gruff January grin perforce!
For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth
Escaping from so many hearts at once—
When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,
Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort
To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key
O’ the box beneath his pillow every night,—
Which box may hold a parchment (some one thinks)
Will show a scribbled something like a name
“Cinino, Ciniccino,” near the end,
“To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,
“Estates, tenements, hereditaments,
“When I decease as honest grandsire ought:”
Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps—
Shan’t my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!
Then, uncles, one or the other, well i’ the world,
May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind,
Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There’s cookery in a certain dwelling-place!
Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,
Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,
And so find door, put galligaskin off
At entry of a decent domicile
Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love,
All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!
                                                    Well,
Let others climb the heights o’ the court, the camp!
How vain are chambering and wantonness,
Revel and rout and pleasures that make mad!
Commend me to home-joy, the family board,
Altar and hearth! These, with a brisk career,
A source of honest profit and good fame,
Just so much work as keeps the brain from rust,
Just so much play as lets the heart expand,
Honouring God and serving man,—I say,
These are reality, and all else,—fluff,
Nutshell and naught,—thank Flaccus for the phrase!
Suppose I had been Fisc, yet bachelor! 
Why, work with a will, then! Wherefore lazy now?
Turn up the hour-glass, whence no sand-grain slips
But should have done its duty to the saint
O’ the day, the son and heir that’s eight years old!
Let law come dimple Cinoncino’s cheek,
And Latin dumple Cinarello’s chin,
The while we spread him fine and toss him flat
This pulp that makes the pancake, trim our mass
Of matter into Argument the First,
Prime Pleading in defence of our accused,
Which, once a-waft on paper wing, shall soar,
Shall signalise before applausive Rome
What study, and mayhap some mother-wit,
Can do toward making Master fop and Fisc
Old bachelor Bottinius bite his thumb.
Now, how good God is! How falls plumb to point
This murder, gives me Guido to defend
Now, of all days i’ the year, just when the boy
Verges on Virgil, reaches the right age
For some such illustration from his sire,
Stimulus to himself! One might wait years
And never find the chance which now finds me!
The fact is, there’s a blessing on the hearth,
A special providence for fatherhood!
Here’s a man, and what’s more, a noble, kills
—Not sneakingly but almost with parade—
Wife’s father and wife’s mother and wife’s self
That’s mother’s self of son and heir (like mine!)
—And here stand I, the favoured advocate,
Who pluck this flower o’ the field, no Solomon
Was ever clothed in glorious gold to match,
And set the same in Cinoncino’s cap!
I defend Guido and his comrades—I!
Pray God, I keep me humble: not to me—
Non nobis, Domine, sed tibi laus!
How the fop chuckled when they made him Fisc!
We’ll beat you, my Bottinius, all for love,
All for our tribute to Cinotto’s day!
Why, ’sbuddikins, old Innocent himself
May rub his eyes at the bustle,—ask “What’s this
“Rolling from out the rostrum, as a gust
“O’ the Pro Milone had been prisoned there,
“And rattled Rome awake?” Awaken Rome,
How can the Pope doze on in decency?
He needs must wake up also, speak his word,
Have his opinion like the rest of Rome,
About this huge, this hurly-burly case:
He wants who can excogitate the truth,
Give the result in speech, plain black and white,
To mumble in the mouth and make his own
—A little changed, good man, a little changed!
No matter, so his gratitude be moved,
By when my Giacintino gets of age,
Mindful of who thus helped him at a pinch,
Archangelus Procurator Pauperum—
And proved Hortensius Redivivus!
                                                    Whew!
To earn the Est-est, merit the minced herb
That mollifies the liver’s leathery slice,
With here a goose-foot, there a cock’s-comb stuck,
Cemented in an element of cheese!
I doubt if dainties do the grandsire good:
Last June he had a sort of strangling . . . bah!
He’s his own master, and his will is made.
So, liver fizz, law flit and Latin fly
As we rub hands o’er dish by way of grace!
May I lose cause if I vent one word more
Except,—with fresh-cut quill we ink the white,—
P-r-o-pro Guidone et Sociis. There! 

Count Guido married—or, in Latin due,
What? Duxit in uxorem?—commonplace!
Tædas jugales iniit, subiit,—ha!
He underwent the matrimonial torch?
Connubio stabili sibi junxit,—hum!
In stable bond of marriage bound his own?
That’s clear of any modern taint: and yet . . .  

Virgil is little help to who writes prose.
He shall attack me Terence with the dawn,
Shall Cinuccino! Mum, mind business, Sir!
Thus circumstantially evolve we facts,
Ita se habet ideo series facti:
He wedded,—ah, with owls for augury!
Nupserat, heu sinistris avibus,
One of the blood Arezzo boasts her best,
Dominus Guido, nobili genere ortus,
Pompiliæ. . . .  

                        But the version afterward!
Curb we this ardour! Notes alone, to-day,
The speech to-morrow and the Latin last:
Such was the rule in Farinacci’s time.
Indeed I hitched it into verse and good.
Unluckily, law quite absorbs a man,
Or else I think I too had poetised.
“Law is the pork substratum of the fry,
“Goose-foot and cock’s-comb are Latinity,”—
And in this case, if circumstance assist,
We’ll garnish law with idiom, never fear!
Out-of-the-way events extend our scope:
For instance, when Bottini brings his charge,
“That letter which you say Pompilia wrote,
“To criminate her parents and herself
“And disengage her husband from the coil,—
“That, Guido Franceschini wrote, say we:
“Because Pompilia could nor read nor write,
“Therefore he pencilled her such letter first,
“Then made her trace in ink the same again.”
—Ha, my Bottini, have I thee on hip?
How will he turn this nor break Tully’s pate?
“Existimandum” (don’t I hear the dog!)
“Quod Guido designaverit elementa
“Dictæ epistolæ, quæ fuerint
“(Superinducto ab ea calamo)
“Notata atramento”—there’s a style!—
“Quia ipsa scribere nesciebat.” Boh!
Now, my turn! Either, Insulse!—I outburst,
Stupidly put! Inane is the response,
Inanis est responsio, or the like—
To-wit, that each of all those characters,
Quod singula elementa epistolæ,
Had first of all been traced for her by him,
Fuerant per eum prius designata,
And then, the ink applied a-top of that,
Et deinde, superinducto calamo,
The piece, she says, became her handiwork,
Per eam, efformata, ut ipsa asserit.
Inane were such response! (a second time
Her husband outlined her the whole, forsooth?
Vir ejus lineabat epistolam?
What, she confesses that she wrote the thing,
Fatetur eam scripsisse, (scorn that scathes!)
That she might pay obedience to her lord?
Ut viro obtemperaret, apices
(Here repeat charge with proper varied phrase)
Eo designante, ipsaque calamum
Super inducente? By such argument,
Ita pariter, she seeks to show the same,
(Ay, by Saint Joseph and what saints you please)
Epistolam ostendit, medius fidius,
No voluntary deed but fruit of force!
Non voluntarie sed coacte scriptam!
That’s the way to write Latin, friend my Fisc!
Bottini is a beast, one barbarous:
Look out for him when he attempts to say
“Armed with a pistol, Guido followed her!”
Will not I be beforehand with my Fisc,
Cut away phrase by phrase from underfoot!
Guido Pompiliam—Guido thus his wife
Following with igneous engine, shall I have?
Armis munitus igneis persequens—
Arma sulphurea gestans, sulphury arms,
Or, might one style a pistol—popping-piece?
Armatus breviori sclopulo?
We’ll let him have been armed so, though it make
Somewhat against us: I had thought to own—
Provided with a simple travelling-sword,
Ense solummodo viatorio
Instructus: but we’ll grant the pistol here:
Better we lost the cause than lacked the gird
At the Fisc’s Latin, lost the Judge’s laugh!
It’s Venturini that decides for style.
Tommati rather goes upon the law.
So, as to law,— 

                        Ah, but with law ne’er hope
To level the fellow,—don’t I know his trick!
How he draws up, ducks under, twists aside!
He’s a lean-gutted hectic rascal, fine
As pale-haired red-eyed ferret which pretends
’Tis ermine, pure soft snow from tail to snout.
He eludes law by piteous looks aloft,
Lets Latin glance off as he makes appeal
To the saint that’s somewhere in the ceiling-top,—
Do you suppose that I don’t see the beast?
Plague of the ermine-vermin! For it takes,
It takes, and here’s the fellow Fisc, you see,
And Judge, you’ll not be long in seeing next!
Confound the fop—he’s now at work like me:
Enter his study, as I seem to do,
Hear him read out his writing to himself!
I know he writes as if he spoke: I hear
The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck shot-forth,
—I see him strain on tiptoe, soar and pour
Eloquence out, nor stay nor stint at all—
Perorate in the air, and so, to press
With the product! What abuse of type is here!
He’ll keep clear of my cast, my logic-throw,
Let argument slide, and then deliver swift
Some bowl from quite an unguessed point of stand—
Having the luck o’ the last word, the reply!
A plaguy cast, a mortifying stroke:
You face a fellow—cries “So, there you stand?
“But I discourteous jump clean o’er your head!
“You play ship-carpenter, not pilot so,—
“Stop rat-holes, while a sea sweeps through the breach,—
“Hammer and fortify at puny points!
“Do, clamp and tenon, make all tight and safe!
“’Tis here and here and here you ship a sea,
“No good of your stopped leaks and littleness!” 

Yet what do I name “little and a leak?”
The main defence o’ the murder’s used to death,
By this time, dry bare bones, no scrap to pick:
Safer I worked at the new, the unforeseen,
The nice bye-stroke, the fine and improvised,
Point that can titillate the brain o’ the Bench
Torpid with over-teaching, by this time!
As if Tommati, that has heard, reheard
And heard again, first this side and then that,—
Guido and Pietro, Pietro and Guido din
And deafen, full three years, at each long ear,—
Don’t want amusement for instruction now,
Won’t rather feel a flea run o’er his ribs,
Than a daw settle heavily on his head!
Oh, I was young and had the trick of fence,
Knew subtle pass and push with careless right—
The left arm ever quietly behind back
With the dagger in ’t: not both hands to blade!
Puff and blow, put the strength out, Blunderbore!
That’s my subordinate, young Spreti, now,
Pedant and prig,—he’ll pant away at proof,
That’s his way! 

                    Now for mine—to rub some life
Into one’s choppy fingers this cold day!
I trust Cinuzzo ties on tippet, guards
The precious throat on which so much depends!
Guido must be all goose-flesh in his hole,
Despite the prison-straw: bad Carnival
For captives! no sliced fry for him, poor Count! 

Carnival-time,—another providence!
The town a-swarm with strangers to amuse,
To edify, to give one’s name and fame
In charge of, till they find, some future day,
Cintino come and claim it, his name too,
Pledge of the pleasantness they owe papa—
Who else was it, cured Rome of her great qualms,
When she must needs have her own judgment?—ay
Since all her topping wits had set to work,
Pronounced already on the case: mere boys,
Twice Cineruggiolo’s age and half his sense,
As good as tell me, when I cross the court,
“Master Arcangeli!” (plucking at my gown)
“We can predict, we comprehend your play,
“We’ll help you save your client.” Tra-la-la!
I’ve travelled ground, from childhood till this hour,
To have the town anticipate my track!
The old fox takes the plain and velvet path,
The young hound’s predilection,—prints the dew,
Don’t he, to suit their pulpy pads of paw?
No! Burying nose deep down i’ the briery bush,
Thus I defend Count Guido.
                                    Where are we weak?
First, which is foremost in advantage too,
Our murder,—we call, killing,—is a fact
Confessed, defended, made a boast of: good!
To think the Fisc claimed use of torture here,
And got thereby avowal plump and plain
That gives me just the chance I wanted,—scope
Not for brute-force but ingenuity,
Explaining matters, not denying them!
One may dispute,—as I am bound to do,
And shall,—validity of process here:
Inasmuch as a noble is exempt
From torture which plebeians undergo
In such a case: for law is lenient, lax,
Remits the torture to a nobleman
Unless suspicion be of twice the strength
Attaches to a man born vulgarly:
We don’t card silk with comb that dresses wool.
Moreover, ’twas severity undue
In this case, even had the lord been lout.
What utters, on this head, our oracle,
Our Farinacci, my Gamaliel erst,
In those immortal “Questions?” What I quote:
Of all the tools at Law’s disposal, sure
“That named Vigiliarum is the best—
“That is, the worst—to whoso has to bear:
“Lasting, as it may do, from some seven hours
“To ten, (beyond ten, we’ve no precedent;
“Certain have touched their ten but, bah, they died!)
“It does so efficaciously convince
“That,—speaking by much observation here,—
“Out of each hundred cases, by my count,
“Never I knew of patients beyond four
“Withstand its taste, or less than ninety-six
“End by succumbing: only martyrs four,
“Of obstinate silence, guilty or no,—against
“Ninety-six full confessors, innocent
“Or otherwise,—so shrewd a tool have we!”
No marvel either: in unwary hands,
Death on the spot is no rare consequence:
As indeed all but happened in this case
To one of ourselves, our young tough peasant-friend
The accomplice called Baldeschi: they were rough,
Dosed him with torture as you drench a horse,
Not modify your treatment to a man:
So, two successive days he fainted dead,
And only on the third essay, gave up,
Confessed like flesh and blood. We could reclaim,—
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,
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,
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.
Doubt ye the force of Christmas on the soul?
“Is thine eye evil because mine is good?” 

So, doubtless, had I needed argue here
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,
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
Might drive into undoing my whole speech,
Shaming truth so!
                            I wonder, all the same,
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,
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! 

                                        —And advocates
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
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.
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
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,—
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 menace of such taint,—
This were our warrant for eruptive ire
“To whose dominion I impose no end.” 

(Virgil, now, should not be too difficult
To Cinoncino,—say the early books . . . 
Pen, truce to further gambols! Poscimur!) 

Nor can revenge of injury done here
To the honour proved the life and soul of us,
Be too excessive, too extravagant:
Such wrong seeks and must have complete revenge.
Show we this, first, on the mere natural ground:
Begin at the beginning, and proceed
Incontrovertibly. Theodoric,
In an apt sentence Cassiodorus cites,
Propounds for basis of all household law—
I hardly recollect it, but it ends,
“Bird mates with bird, beast genders with his like,
“And brooks no interference:” bird and beast?
The very insects . . . if they wive or no,
How dare I say when Aristotle doubts?
But the presumption is they likewise wive,
At least the nobler sorts; for take the bee
As instance,—copying King Solomon,—
Why that displeasure of the bee to aught
That savours of incontinency, makes
The unchaste a very horror to the hive?
Whence comes it bees obtain the epithet
Of castæ apes? notably “the chaste?”
Because, ingeniously saith Scaliger,
(The young one—see his book of Table-talk)
“Such is their hatred of immodest act,
“They fall upon the offender, sting to death.”
I mind a passage much confirmative
I’ the Idyllist (though I read him Latinized)
“Why,” asks a shepherd, “is this bank unfit
“For celebration of our vernal loves?”
“Oh swain,” returns the wiser shepherdess,
“Bees swarm here, and would quick resent our warmth!”
Only cold-blooded fish lack instinct here,
Nor gain nor guard connubiality:
But beasts, quadrupedal, mammiferous,
Do credit to their beasthood: witness him,
That Ælian cites, the noble elephant,
(Or if not Ælian, somebody as sage)
Who seeing much offence beneath his nose,
His master’s friend exceed in courtesy
The due allowance to that master’s wife,
Taught them good manners and killed both at once,
Making his master and all men admire.
Indubitably, then, that master’s self
Favoured by circumstance, had done the same
Or else stood clear rebuked by his own beast.
Adeo, ut qui honorem spernit, thus,
Who values his own honour not a straw,—
Et non recuperare curat, nor
Labours by might and main to salve its wound,
Se ulciscendo, by revenging him,
Nil differat a belluis, is a brute,
Quinimo irrationabilior
Ipsismet belluis, nay, contrariwise,
Much more irrational than brutes themselves,
Should be considered, reputetur! How?
If a poor animal feel honour smart,
Taught by blind instinct nature plants in him,
Shall man,—confessed creation’s master-stroke,
Nay, intellectual glory, nay, a god,
Nay, of the nature of my Judges here,—
Shall man prove the insensible, the block,
The blot o’ the earth he crawls on to disgrace?
(Come, that’s both solid and poetic)—man
Derogate, live for the low tastes alone,
Mean creeping cares about the animal life? 

May Gigia have remembered, nothing stings
Fried liver out of its monotony
Of richness like a root of fennel, chopped
Fine with the parsley: parsley-sprigs, I said—
Was there need I should say “and fennel too?”
But no, she cannot have been so obtuse!
To our argument! The fennel will be chopped. 

From beast to man next mount we,—ay, but, mind,
Still mere man, not yet Christian,—that, in time!
Not too fast, mark you! ’Tis on Heathen grounds
We next defend our act: then, fairly urge—
If this were done of old, in a green tree,
Allowed in the Spring rawness of our kind,
What may be licensed in the Autumn dry,
And ripe, the latter harvest-tide of man?
If, with his poor and primitive half-lights,
The Pagan, whom our devils served for gods,
Could stigmatise the breach of marriage-vow
As that which blood, blood only might efface,—
Absolve the husband, outraged, whose revenge
Anticipated law, plied sword himself,—
How with the Christian in full blaze of day?
Shall not he rather double penalty,
Multiply vengeance, than, degenerate,
Let privilege be minished, droop, decay?
Therefore set forth at large the ancient law!
Superabundant the examples be
To pick and choose from. The Athenian Code,
Solon’s, the name is serviceable,—then,
The Laws of the Twelve Tables, that fifteenth,—
“Romulus” likewise rolls out round and large.
The Julian; the Cornelian; Gracchus’ Law:
So old a chime, the bells ring of themselves!
Spreti can set that going if he please,
I point you, for my part, the belfry out,
Intent to rise from dusk, diluculum,
Into the Christian day shall broaden next. 

First, the fit compliment to His Holiness
Happily reigning: then sustain the point—
All that was long ago declared as law
By the early Revelation, stands confirmed
By Apostle and Evangelist and Saint,—
To-wit—that Honour is the supreme good.
Why should I baulk Saint Jerome of his phrase?
Ubi honor non est, where no honour is,
Ibi contemptus est; and where contempt,
Ibi injuria frequens; and where that,
The frequent injury, ibi et indignatio;
And where the indignation, ibi quies
Nulla; and where there is no quietude,
Why, ibi, there, the mind is often cast
Down from the heights where it proposed to dwell,
Mens a proposito sœpe dejicitur.
And naturally the mind is so cast down,
Since harder ’tis, quum difficilius sit,
Iram cohibere, to coerce one’s wrath,
Quam miracula facere, than work miracles,—
Saint Gregory smiles in his First Dialogue:
Whence we infer, the ingenuous soul, the man
Who makes esteem of honour and repute,
Whenever honour and repute are touched,
Arrives at term of fury and despair,
Loses all guidance from the reason-check:
As in delirium, or a frenzy-fit,
Nor fury nor despair he satiates,—no,
Not even if he attain the impossible,
O’erturn the hinges of the universe
To annihilate—not whose caused the smart
Solely, the author simply of his pain,
But the place, the memory, vituperii,
O’ the shame and scorn: quia,—says Solomon,
(The Holy Spirit speaking by his mouth
In Proverbs, the sixth chapter near the end)
—Because, the zeal and fury of a man,
Zelus et furor viri, will not spare,
Non parcet, in the day of his revenge,
In die vindictæ, nor will acquiesce,
Nec acquiescet, through a person’s prayers,
Cujusdam precibus,—nec suscipiet,
Nor yet take, pro redemptione, for
Redemption, dona plurium, gifts of friends,
Nor money-payment to compound for ache.
Who recognises not my client’s case?
Whereto, as strangely consentaneous here,
Adduce Saint Bernard in the Epistle writ
To Robertulus, his nephew: Too much grief.
Dolor quippe nimius non deliberat,
Does not excogitate propriety,
Non verecundatur, nor knows shame at all,
Non consulit rationem, nor consults
Reason, non dignitatis metuit
Damnum, nor dreads the loss of dignity;
Modum et ordinem, order and the mode,
Ignorat, it ignores: why, trait for trait,
Was ever portrait limned so like the life?
(By Cavalier Maratta, shall I say?
I hear he’s first in reputation now.)
Yes, that of Samson in the Sacred Text:
That’s not so much the portrait as the man
Samson in Gaza was the antetype
Of Guido at Rome: for note the Nazarite!
Blinded he was,—an easy thing to bear,
Intrepidly he took imprisonment,
Gyves, stripes, and daily labour at the mill:
But when he found himself, i’ the public place,
Destined to make the common people sport,
Disdain burned up with such an impetus
I’ the breast of him that, all of him on fire,
Moriatur, roared he, let my soul’s self die,
Anima mea, with the Philistines!
So, pulled down pillar, roof, and death and all,
Multosque plures interfecit, ay,
And many more he killed thus, moriens,
Dying, quam vivus, than in his whole life,
Occiderat, he ever killed before.
Are these things writ for no example, Sirs?
One instance more, and let me see who doubts!
Our Lord Himself, made up of mansuetude,
Sealing the sum of sufferance up, received
Opprobrium, contumely, and buffeting
Without complaint: but when He found Himself
Touched in His honour never so little for once,
Then outbroke indignation pent before—
“Honorem meum nemini dabo!” “No,
“My honour I to nobody will give!”
And certainly the example so hath wrought,
That whosoever, at the proper worth,
Apprises worldly honour and repute,
Esteems it nobler to die honoured man
Beneath Mannaia, than live centuries
Disgraced in the eye o’ the world. We find Saint Paul
No miscreant to this faith delivered once:
“Far worthier were it that I died,” cries he,
Expedit mihi magis mori, “than
“That any one should make my glory void,”
Quam ut gloriam meam quis evacuet!
See, ad Corinthienses: whereupon
Saint Ambrose makes a comment with much fruit,
Doubtless my Judges long since laid to heart,
So I desist from bringing forward here—
(I can’t quite recollect it.) 

                                        Have I proved
Satis superque, both enough and to spare,
That Revelation old and new admits
The natural man may effervesce in ire,
O’erflood earth, o’erfroth heaven with foamy rage,
At the first puncture to his self-respect?
Then, Sirs, this Christian dogma, this law-bud
Full-blown now, soon to bask the absolute flower
Of Papal doctrine in our blaze of clay,—
Bethink you, shall we miss one promise-streak,
One doubtful birth of dawn crepuscular,
One dew-drop comfort to humanity,
Now that the chalice teems with noonday wine?
Yea, argue Molinists who bar revenge—
Referring just to what makes out our case!
Under old dispensation, argue they,
The doom of the adulterous wife was death,
Stoning by Moses’ law. “Nay, stone her not,
“Put her away!” next legislates our Lord;
And last of all, “Nor yet divorce a wife!”
Ordains the Church, “she typifies ourself,
The Bride no fault shall cause to fall from Christ.”
Then, as no jot nor tittle of the Law
Has passed away—which who presumes to doubt?
As not one word of Christ is rendered vain—
Which, could it be though heaven and earth should pass?
—Where do I find my proper punishment
For my adulterous wife, I humbly ask
Of my infallible Pope,—who now remits
Even the divorce allowed by Christ in lieu
Of lapidation Moses licensed me?
The Gospel checks the Law which throws the stone,
The Church tears the divorce-bill Gospel grants,
The wife sins and enjoys impunity!
What profits me the fulness of the days,
The final dispensation, I demand,
Unless Law, Gospel, and the Church subjoin.
“But who hath barred thee primitive revenge,
“Which, like fire damped and dammed up, burns more fierce?
“Use thou thy natural privilege of man,
“Else wert thou found like those old ingrate Jews,
“Despite the manna-banquet on the board,
“A-longing after melons, cucumbers,
“And such like trash of Egypt left behind!”
(There was one melon, had improved our soup,
But did not Cinoncino need the rind
To make a boat with? So I seem to think.) 

Law, Gospel, and the Church—from these we leap
To the very last revealment, easy rule
Befitting the well-born and thorough-bred
O’ the happy day we live in,—not the dark
O’ the early rude and acorn-eating race.
“Behold,” quoth James, “we bridle in a horse
“And turn his body as we would thereby!”
Yea, but we change the bit to suit the growth,
And rasp our colt’s jaw with a rugged spike
We hasten to remit our managed steed
Who wheels round at persuasion of a touch.
Civilisation bows to decency,
The acknowledged use and wont, the manners,—mild
But yet imperative law,—which make the man.
Thus do we pay the proper compliment
To rank, and that society of Rome,
Hath so obliged us by its interest,
Taken our client’s part instinctively,
As unaware defending its own cause.
What dictum doth Society lay down
I’ the case of one who hath a faithless wife?
Wherewithal should the husband cleanse his way?
Be patient and forgive? Oh, language fails—
Shrinks from depicturing his punishment!
For if wronged husband raise not hue and cry,
Quod si maritus de adulterio non
Conquereretur, he’s presumed a—foh!
Presumitur leno: so, complain he must.
But how complain? At your tribunal, lords?
Far weightier challenge suits your sense, I wot!
You sit not to have gentlemen propose
Questions gentility can itself discuss.
Did not you prove that to our brother Paul?
The Abate, quum judicialiter.
Prosequeretur, when he tried the law,
Guidonis causam, in Count Guido’s case,
Accidit ipsi, this befell himself,
Quod risum moverit et cachinnos, that
He moved to mirth and cachinnation, all
Or nearly all, fere in omnibus
Etiam sensatis et cordatis, men
Strong-sensed, sound-hearted, nay, the very Court,
Ipsismet in judicibus, I might add,
Non tamen dicam. In a cause like this,
So multiplied were reasons pro and con,
Delicate, intertwisted and obscure,
That law were shamed to lend a finger-tip
To unravel, readjust the hopeless twine,
While, half-a-dozen steps outside the court,
There stood a foolish trifler with a tool
A-dangle to no purpose by his side,
Had clearly cut the tangle in a trice.
Asserunt enim unanimiter
Doctores, for the Doctors all assert,
That husbands, quod mariti, must be held
Viles, cornuti reputantur, vile
And branching forth a florid infamy,
Si propriis manibus, if with their own hands,
Non sumunt, they take not straightway revenge,
Vindictam, but expect the deed be done
By the Court—expectant illam fieri
Per judices, qui summopere rident, which
Gives an enormous guffaw for reply,
Et cachinnantur. For he ran away,
Deliquit enim, just that he might ’scape
The censure of both counsellors and crowd,
Ut vulgi et Doctorum evitaret
Censuram, and lest so he superadd
To loss of honour ignominy too,
Et sic ne istam quoque ignominiam
Amisso honori superadderet.
My lords, my lords, the inconsiderate step
Was—we referred ourselves to law at all!
Twit me not with, “Law else had punished you!”
Each punishment of the extra-legal step,
To which the high-born preferably revert,
Is ever for some oversight, some slip
I’ the taking vengeance, not for vengeance’ self.
A good thing done unhandsomely turns ill;
And never yet lacked ill the law’s rebuke.
For pregnant instance, let us contemplate
The luck of Leonardus,—see at large
Of Sicily’s Decisions sixty-first.
This Leonard finds his wife is false: what then?
He makes her own son snare her, and entice
Out of the town-walls to a private walk,
Wherein he slays her with commodity.
They find her body half-devoured by dogs:
Leonard is tried, convicted, punished, sent
To labour in the galleys seven years long:
Why? For the murder? Nay, but for the mode!
Malus modus occidendi, ruled the Court,
An ugly mode of killing, nothing more!
Another fructuous sample,—see “De Re
“Criminali,” in Matthæus’ divine piece.
Another husband, in no better plight,
Simulates absence, thereby tempts the wife;
On whom he falls, out of sly ambuscade,
Backed by a brother of his, and both of them
Armed to the teeth with arms that law had blamed.
Nimis dolose, overwilily,
Fuisse operatum, was it worked,
Pronounced the law: had all been fairly done
Law had not found him worthy, as she did,
Of four years’ exile. Why cite more? Enough
Is good as a feast—(unless a birthday-feast
For one’s Cinuccio: so, we’ll finish here)
My lords, we rather need defend ourselves
Inasmuch as for a twinkling of an eye
We hesitatingly appealed to law,—
Rather than deny that, on mature advice,
We blushingly bethought us, bade revenge
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! 

                                    Pause and breathe!
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,
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,
“Nor Christian, no nor votarist of the mode,
“Were free at all to push revenge so far!” 

No, indeed? Why, thou very sciolist!
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?
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
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
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. 

But even,—prove the pair not culpable,
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.
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,
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
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,
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,
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. 

                                        Ay,
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 a story, long was in my head.
What prepositions take the accusative?
Ad to or at—who saw the cat?—down to
Ob, for, because of, keep her claws off! Ah,
Law in a man takes the whole liberty!
The muse is fettered,—just as Ovid found! 

And now, sea widens and the coast is clear.
What of the dubious act you bade excuse?
Surely things brighten, brighten, till at length
Remains—so far from act that needs defence—
Apology to make for act delayed
One minute, let alone eight mortal months
Of hesitation! “Why procrastinate?”
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