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Robert Browning - The Ring And The Book - Chapter II - Half-Rome
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Did Guido overtake them: ’twas day-break;
He came in time enough, not time too much,
Since in the courtyard stood the Canon’s self
Urging the drowsy stable grooms to haste
Harness the horses, have the journey end,
The trifling four-hour’s-running, so reach Rome.
And the other runaway, the wife? Upstairs,
Still on the couch where she had spent the night,
One couch in one room, and one room for both.
So gained they six hours, so were lost thereby. 

Sir, what’s the sequel? Lover and beloved
Fall on their knees? No impudence serves here?
They beat their breasts and beg for easy death,
Confess this, that, and the other?—anyhow
Confess there wanted not some likelihood
To the supposition as preposterous,
That, O Pompilia, thy sequestered eyes
Had noticed, straying o’er the prayer-book’s edge,
More of the Canon than that black his coat,
Buckled his shoes were, broad his hat of brim:
And that, O Canon, thy religious care
Had breathed too soft a benedicite
To banish trouble from a lady’s breast
So lonely and so lovely, nor so lean!
This you expect? Indeed, then, much you err.
Not to such ordinary end as this
Had Caponsacchi flung the cassock far,
Doffed the priest, donned the perfect cavalier;
The die was cast: over shoes over boots:
And just as she, I presently shall show,
Pompilia, soon looked Helen to the life,
Recumbent upstairs in her pink and white,
So, in the inn-yard, bold as ’twere Troy-town,
There strutted Paris in correct costume,
Cloak, cap and feather, no appointment missed,
Even to a wicked-looking sword at side,
He seemed to find and feel familiar at.
Nor wanted words as ready and as big
As the part he played, the bold abashless one.
“I interposed to save your wife from death,
“Yourself from shame, the true and only shame:
“Ask your own conscience else!—or, failing that,
“What I have done I answer, anywhere,
“Here, if you will; you see I have a sword:
“Or, since I have a tonsure as you taunt,
“At Rome, by all means,—priests to try a priest.
“Only, speak where your wife’s voice can reply!”
And then he fingered at the sword again.
So, Guido called, in aid and witness both,
The Public Force. The Commissary came,
Officers also; they secured the priest;
Then, for his more confusion, mounted up
With him, a guard on either side, the stair
To the bed-room where still slept or feigned a sleep
His paramour and Guido’s wife: in burst
The company and bade her wake and rise. 

Her defence? This. She woke, saw, sprang upright
I’ the midst and stood as terrible as truth,
Sprang to her husband’s side, caught at the sword
That hung there useless, since they held each hand
O’ the lover, had disarmed him properly.
And in a moment out flew the bright thing
Full in the face of Guido,—but for help
O’ the guards who held her back and pinioned her
With pains enough, she had finished you my tale
With a flourish of red all round it, pinked her man
Prettily; but she fought them one to six.
They stopped that,—but her tongue continued free:
She spat forth such invective at her spouse,
O’erfrothed him with such foam of murderer,
Thief, pandar—that the popular tide soon turned,
The favour of the very sbirri, straight
Ebbed from the husband, set toward his wife,
People cried “Hands off, pay a priest respect!”
And “persecuting fiend” and “martyred saint”
Began to lead a measure from lip to lip. 

But facts are facts and flinch not; stubborn things,
And the question “Prithee, friend, how comes my purse
“I’ the poke of you?”—admits of no reply.
Here was a priest found out in masquerade,
A wife caught playing truant if no more;
While the Count, mortified in mien enough,
And, nose to face, an added palm in length,
Was plain writ “husband” every piece of him:
Capture once made, release could hardly be.
Beside, the prisoners both made appeal,
“Take us to Rome!”
                        Taken to Rome they were;
The husband trooping after, piteously,
Tail between legs, no talk of triumph now—
No honour set firm on its feet once more
On two dead bodies of the guilty,—nay,
No dubious salve to honour’s broken pate
From chance that, after all, the hurt might seem
A skin-deep matter, scratch that leaves no scar:
For Guido’s first search,—ferreting, poor soul,
Here, there, and everywhere in the vile place
Abandoned to him when their backs were turned,
Found,—furnishing a last and best regale,—
All the love-letters bandied twixt the pair
Since the first timid trembling into life
O’ the love-star till its stand at fiery full.
Mad prose, mad verse, fears, hopes, triumph, despair,
Avowal, disclaimer, plans, dates, names;—was nought
Wanting to prove, if proof consoles at all,
That this had been but the fifth act o’ the piece
Whereof the due proemium, months ago
These playwrights had put forth, and ever since
Matured the middle, added ’neath his nose.
He might go cross himself: the case was clear. 

Therefore to Rome with the clear case; there plead
Each party its best, and leave the law do right,
Let her shine forth and show, as God in heaven,
Vice prostrate, virtue pedestalled at last,
The triumph of truth! What else shall glad our gaze
When once authority has knit the brow
And set the brain behind it to decide
Between the wolf and sheep turned litigants?
“This is indeed a business” law shook head:
“A husband charges hard things on a wife,
“The wife as hard o’ the husband: whose fault here?
“A wife that flies her husband’s house, does wrong:
“The male friend’s interference looks amiss,
“Lends a suspicion: but suppose the wife,
“On the other hand, be jeopardised at home—
“Nay, that she simply hold, ill-groundedly,
“An apprehension she is jeopardised,—
“And further, if the friend partake the fear,
“And, in a commendable charity
“Which trusteth all, trust her that she mistrusts,—
“What do they but obey the natural law?
“Pretence may this be and a cloak for sin,
“And circumstances that concur i’ the close
“Hint as much, loudly—yet scarce loud enough
“To drown the answer ‘strange may yet be true:’
“Innocence often looks like guiltiness.
“The accused declare that in thought, word, and deed,
“Innocent were they both from first to last
“As male-babe haply laid by female-babe
“At church on edge of the baptismal font
“Together for a minute, perfect-pure.
“Difficult to believe, yet possible,
“As witness Joseph, the friend’s patron-saint.
“The night at the inn—there charity nigh chokes
“Ere swallow what they both asseverate;
“Though down the gullet faith may feel it go,
“When mindful of what flight fatigued the flesh
“Out of its faculty and fleshliness,
“Subdued it to the soul, as saints assure:
“So long a flight necessitates a fall
“On the first bed, though in a lion’s den.
“And the first pillow, though the lion’s back:
“Difficult to believe, yet possible.
“Last come the letter’s bundled beastliness—
“Authority repugns give glance to twice,
“Turns head, and almost lets her whip-lash fall;
“Yet here a voice cries ‘Respite!’ from the clouds—
“The accused, both in a tale, protest, disclaim,
“Abominate the horror: ‘Not my hand’
“Asserts the friend—‘Nor mine’ chimes in the wife,
“‘Seeing I have no hand, nor write at all.’
“Illiterate—for she goes on to ask,
“What if the friend did pen now verse now prose,
“Commend it to her notice now and then?
“’Twas pearls to swine: she read no more than wrote,
“And kept no more than read, for as they fell
“She ever brushed the burr-like things away,
“Or, better, burned them, quenched the fire in smoke.
“As for this fardel, filth, and foolishness,
“She sees it now the first time: burn it too!
“While for his part the friend vows ignorance
“Alike of what bears his name and bear hers:
“’Tis forgery, a felon’s masterpiece,
“And, as ’tis the fox still finds the stench,
“Home-manufacturer and the husband’s work.
“Though he confesses, the ingenuous friend,
“That certain missives, letters of a sort,
“Flighty and feeble, which assigned themselves
“To the wife, no less have fallen, far too oft,
“In his path: wherefrom he understood just this—
“That were they verily the lady’s own,
“Why, she who penned them, since he never saw
“Save for one minute the mere face of her,
“Since never had there been the interchange
“Of word with word between them all their life,
“Why, she must be the fondest of the frail,
“And fit she for the ‘apage’ he flung,
“Her letters for the flame they went to feed.
“But, now he sees her face and hears her speech,
“Much he repents him if, in fancy-freak
“For a moment the minutest measurable,
“He coupled her with the first flimsy word
“O’ the self-spun fabric some mean spider-soul
“Furnished forth: stop his films and stamp on him!
“Never was such a tangled knottiness,
“But thus authority cuts the Gordian through,
“And mark how her decision suits the need!
“Here’s troublesomeness, scandal on both sides,
“Plenty of fault to find, no absolute crime:
“Let each side own its fault and make amends!
“What does a priest in cavalier’s attire
“Consorting publicly with vagrant wives
“In quarters close as the confessional
“Though innocent of harm? ’Tis harm enough:
“Let him pay it, and be relegate a good
“Three years, to spend in some place not too far
“Nor yet too near, midway twixt near and far,
“Rome and Arezzo,—Civita we choose,
“Where he may lounge away time, live at large,
“Find out the proper function of a priest,
“Nowise an exile,—that were punishment,
“But one our love thus keeps out of harm’s way
“Not more from the husband’s anger than, mayhap
“His own . . . say, indiscretion, waywardness,
“And wanderings when Easter eves grow warm.
“For the wife,—well, our best step to take with her,
“On her own showing, were to shift her root
“From the old cold shade and unhappy soil
“Into a generous ground that fronts the south:
“Where, since her callow soul, a-shiver late,
“Craved simply warmth and called mere passers-by
“To the rescue, she should have her fill of shine.
“Do house and husband hinder and not help?
“Why then, forget both and stay here at peace,
“Come into our community, enroll
“Herself along with those good Convertites,
“Those sinners saved, those Magdalens re-made,
“Accept their administration, well bestow
“Her body and patiently possess her soul,
“Until we see what better can be done.
“Last for the husband: if his tale prove true,
“Well is he rid of two domestic plagues—
“The wife that ailed, do whatsoever he would,
“And friend of hers that undertook the cure.
“See, what a double load we lift from breast!
“Off he may go, return, resume old life,
“Laugh at the priest here and Pompilia there
“In limbo each and punished for their pains,
“And grateful tell the inquiring neighbourhood—
“In Rome, no wrong but has its remedy.”
The case was closed. Now, am I fair or no
In what I utter? Do I state the facts,
Having forechosen a side? I promised you! 

The Canon Caponsacchi, then, was sent
To change his garb, re-trim his tonsure, tie
The clerkly silk round, every plait correct,
Make the impressive entry on his place
Of relegation, thrill his Civita,
As Ovid, a like sufferer in the cause,
Planted a primrose-patch by Pontus: where,
What with much culture of the sonnet-stave
And converse with the aborigines,
Soft savagery of eyes unused to roll,
And hearts that all awry went pit-a-pat
And wanted setting right in charity,
What were a couple of years to while away?
Pompilia, as enjoined, betook herself
To the aforesaid Convertites, the sisterhood
In Via Lungara, where the light ones live,
Spin, pray, then sing like linnets o’er the flax.
“Anywhere, anyhow, out of my husband’s house
“Is heaven,” cried she,—was therefore suited so.
But for Count Guido Franceschini, he—
The injured man thus righted—found no heaven
I’ the house when he returned there, I engage,
Was welcomed by the city turned upside down
In a chorus of inquiry. “What, back,—you?
“And no wife? Left her with the Penitents?
“Ah, being young and pretty, ’twere a shame
“To have her whipped in public: leave the job
“To the priests who understand! Such priests as yours—
“(Pontifex Maximus whipped Vestals once)
“Our madcap Caponsacchi: think of him!
“So, he fired up, showed fight and skill of fence?
“Ay, you drew also, but you did not fight!
“The wiser, ’tis a word and a blow with him,
“True Caponsacchi, of old Head-i’-the-Sack
“That fought at Fiesole ere Florence was:
“He had done enough, to firk you were too much.
“And did the little lady menace you,
“Make at your breast with your own harmless sword?
“The spitfire! Well, thank God you’re safe and sound,
“Have kept the sixth commandment whether or no
“The lady broke the seventh: I only wish
“I were as saint-like, could contain me so.
“I am a sinner, I fear I should have left
“Sir Priest no nose-tip to turn up at me!”
You, Sir, who listen but interpose no word,
Ask yourself, had you borne a baiting thus?
Was it enough to make a wise man mad?
Oh, but I’ll have your verdict at the end! 

Well, not enough, it seems: such mere hurt falls,
Frets awhile, and aches long, then less and less,
And so is done with. Such was not the scheme
O’ the pleasant Comparini: on Guido’s wound
Ever in due succession, drop by drop,
Came slow distilment from the alembic here
Set on to simmer by Canidian hate,
Corrosives keeping the man’s misery raw.
First fire-drop,—when he thought to make the best
O’ the bad, to wring from out the sentence passed,
Poor, pitiful, absurd although it were,
Yet what might eke him out result enough
And make it worth his while he had the right
And not the wrong i’ the matter judged at Rome.
Inadequate her punishment, no less
Punished in some slight sort his wife had been;
Then, punished for adultery, what else?
On such admitted crime he thought to seize,
And institute procedure in the courts
Which cut corruption of this kind from man,
Cast loose a wife proved loose and castaway:
He claimed in due form a divorce at least. 

This claim was met now by a counterclaim:
Pompilia sought divorce from bed and board
Of Guido, whose outrageous cruelty,
Whose mother’s malice and whose brother’s hate
Were just the white o’ the charge, such dreadful depths
Blackened its centre,—hints of worse than hate,
Love from that brother, by that Guido’s guile,
That mother’s prompting. Such reply was made,
So was the engine loaded, wound up, sprung
On Guido, who received the bolt in breast;
But no less bore up, giddily perhaps.
He had the Abate Paolo still in Rome,
Brother and friend and fighter on his side:
They rallied in a measure, met the foe
Manlike, joined battle in the public courts,
As if to shame supine law from her sloth:
And waiting her award, let beat the while
Arezzo’s banter, Rome’s buffoonery,
On this ear and on that ear, deaf alike,
Safe from worse outrage. Let a scorpion nip,
And never mind till he contorts his tail!
But there was sting i’ the creature; thus it struck.
Guido had thought in his simplicity—
That lying declaration of remorse,
That story of the child which was no child
And motherhood no motherhood at all,
—That even this sin might have its sort of good
Inasmuch as no question could be more,
Call it false, call the story true, no claim
Of further parentage pretended now:
The parents had abjured all right, at least,
I’ the woman still his wife: to plead right now
Were to declare the abjuration false:
He was relieved from any fear henceforth
Their hands might touch, their breath defile again
Pompilia with his name upon her yet.
Well, no: the next news was, Pompilia’s health
Demanded change after full three long weeks
Spent in devotion with the Sisterhood,—
Rendering sojourn,—so the court opined,—
Too irksome, since the convent’s walls were high
And windows narrow, nor was air enough
Nor light enough, but all looked prison-like,
The last thing which had come in the court’s head.
Propose a new expedient therefore,—this!
She had demanded—had obtained indeed,
By intervention of whatever friends
Or perhaps lovers—(beauty in distress
In one whose tale is the town-talk beside,
Never lacks friendship’s arm about her neck)—
Not freedom, scarce remitted penalty,
Solely the transfer to some private place
Where better air, more light, new food might be—
Incarcerated (call it, all the same)
At some sure friend’s house she must keep inside,
Be found in at requirement fast enough,—
Domus pro carcere, in Roman style.
You keep the house i’ the main, as most men do
And all good women: but free otherwise,
Should friends arrive, to lodge and entertain.
And such a domum, such a dwelling-place,
Having all Rome to choose from, where chose she?
What house obtained Pompilia’s preference?
Why, just the Comparini’s—just, do you mark,
Theirs who renounced all part and lot in her
So long as Guido could be robbed thereby,
And only fell back on relationship
And found their daughter safe and sound again
So soon as that might stab him: yes, the pair
Who, as I told you, first had baited hook
With this poor gilded fly Pompilia-thing,
Then caught the fish, pulled Guido to the shore
And gutted him,—now found a further use
For the bait, would trail the gauze wings yet again
I’ the way of what new swimmer passed their stand.
They took Pompilia to their hiding-place—
Not in the heart of Rome as formerly,
Under observance, subject to control—
But out o’ the way,—or in the way, who knows?
That blind mute villa lurking by the gate
At Via Paulina, not so hard to miss
By the honest eye, easy enough to find
In twilight by marauders: where perchance
Some muffled Caponsacchi might repair,
Employ odd moments when he too tried change,
Found that a friend’s abode was pleasanter
Than relegation, penance, and the rest. 

Come, here’s the last drop does its worst to wound,
Here’s Guido poisoned to the bone, you say,
Your boasted still’s full strain and strength: not so!
One master-squeeze from screw shall bring to birth
The hoard i’ the heart o’ the toad, hell’s quintessence.
He learned the true convenience of the change,
And why a convent wants the cheerful hearts
And helpful hands which female straits require,
When, in the blind mute villa by the gate,
Pompilia—what? sang, danced, saw company?
—Gave birth, Sir, to a child, his son and heir,
Or Guido’s heir and Caponsacchi’s son.
I want your word now: what do you say to this?
What would say little Arezzo and great Rome,
And what did God say and the devil say
One at each ear o’ the man, the husband, now
The father? Why, the overburdened mind
Broke down, what was a brain became a blaze.
In fury of the moment—(that first news
Fell on the Count among his vines, it seems,
Doing his farm-work)—why, he summoned steward,
Called in the first four hard hands and stout hearts
From field and furrow, poured forth his appeal,
Not to Rome’s law and gospel any more,
But this clown with a mother or a wife,
That clodpole with a sister or a son:
And, whereas law and gospel held their peace,
What wonder if the sticks and stones cried out? 

All five soon somehow found themselves at Rome,
At the villa door: there was the warmth and light—
The sense of life so just an inch inside—
Some angel must have whispered “One more chance!” 

He gave it: bade the others stand aside:
Knocked at the door,—“Who is it knocks?” cried one.
“I will make,” surely Guido’s angel said,
“One final essay, last experiment,
“Speak the word, name the name from out all names
“Which, if,—as doubtless strong illusions are,
“And strange disguisings whence even truth seems false,
“And, for I am a man, I dare not do
“God’s work until assured I see with God,—
“If I should bring my lips to breathe that name
“And they be innocent,—nay, by one touch
“Of innocence redeemed from utter guilt,—
“That name will bar the door and bid fate pass,
“I will not say ‘It is a messenger,
“‘A neighbour, even a belated man,
“‘Much less your husband’s friend, your husband’s self:’
“At such appeal the door is bound to ope.
“But I will say”—here’s rhetoric and to spare!
Why, Sir, the stumbling-block is cursed and kicked,
Block though it be; the name that brought offence
Will bring offence: the burnt child dreads the fire
Although that fire feed on a taper-wick
Which never left the altar nor singed fly:
And had a harmless man tripped you by chance,
How would you wait him, stand or step aside,
When next you heard he rolled your way? Enough. 

“Giuseppe Caponsacchi!” Guido cried;
And open flew the door: enough again.
Vengeance, you know, burst, like a mountain-wave
That holds a monster in it, over the house,
And wiped its filthy four walls free again
With a wash of hell-fire,—father, mother, wife,
Killed them all, bathed his name clean in their blood,
And, reeking so, was caught, his friends and he,
Haled hither and imprisoned yesternight
O’ the day all this was.
                        Now the whole is known,
And how the old couple come to lie in state
Though hacked to pieces,—never, the experts say,
So thorough a study of stabbing—while the wife
Viper-like, very difficult to slay,
Writhes still through every ring of her, poor wretch,
At the Hospital hard by—survives, we’ll hope,
To somewhat purify her putrid soul
By full confession, make so much amends
While time lasts; since at day’s end die she must.
For Caponsacchi,—why, they’ll have him here,
The hero of the adventure, who so fit
To tell it in the coming Carnival?
’Twill make the fortune of whate’er saloon
Hears him recount, with helpful cheek, and eye
Hotly indignant now, now dewy-dimmed,
The incidents of flight, pursuit, surprise,
Capture, with hints of kisses all between—
While Guido, the most unromantic spouse,
No longer fit to laugh at since the blood
Gave the broad farce an all too brutal air,
Why, he and those our luckless friends of his
May tumble in the straw this bitter day—
Laid by the heels i’ the New Prison, I hear,
To bide their trial, since trial, and for the life,
Follows if but for form’s sake: yes, indeed! 

But with a certain issue: no dispute,
“Try him,” bids law: formalities oblige:
But as to the issue,—look me in the face!—
If the law thinks to find them guilty, Sir,
Master or men—touch one hair of the five,
Then I say in the name of all that’s left
Of honour in Rome, civility i’ the world
Whereof Rome boasts herself the central source,—
There’s an end to all hope of justice more.
Astræa’s gone indeed, let hope go too!
Who is it dares impugn the natural law?
Deny God’s word “the faithless wife shall die?”
What, are we blind? How can we fail to see,
This crowd of miseries make the man a mark,
Accumulate on one devoted head
For our example, yours and mine who read
Its lesson thus—“Henceforward let none dare
“Stand, like a natural in the public way,
“Letting the very urchins twitch his beard
“And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so,
“Of the male-Grissel or the modern Job!”
Had Guido, in the twinkling of an eye,
Summed up the reckoning, promptly paid himself,
That morning when he came up with the pair
At the wayside inn,—exacted his just debt
By aid of what first mattock, pitchfork, axe
Came to hand in the helpful stable-yard,
And with that axe, if providence so pleased,
Cloven each head, by some Rolando-stroke,
In one clean cut from crown to clavicle,
—Slain the priest-gallant, the wife-paramour,
Sticking, for all defence, in each skull’s cleft
The rhyme and reason of the stroke thus dealt,
To-wit, those letters and last evidence
Of shame, each package in its proper place,—
Bidding, who pitied, undistend the skulls,—
I say, the world had praised the man. But no!
That were too plain, too straight, too simply just!
He hesitates, calls law forsooth to help.
And law, distasteful to who calls in law
When honour is beforehand and would serve,
What wonder if law hesitate in turn,
Plead her disuse to calls o’ the kind, reply
Smiling a little “’Tis yourself assess
“The worth of what’s lost, sum of damage done:
“What you touched with so light a finger-tip,
“You whose concern it was to grasp the thing,
“Why must law gird herself and grapple with?
“Law, alien to the actor whose warm blood
“Asks heat from law whose veins run lukewarm milk,—
“What you dealt lightly with, shall law make out
“Heinous forsooth?”
                    Sir, what’s the good of law
In a case o’ the kind? None, as she all but says.
Call in law when a neighbour breaks your fence,
Cribs from your field, tampers with rent or lease,
Touches the purse or pocket,—but wooes your wife?
No: take the old way trod when men were men!
Guido preferred the new path,—for his pains,
Stuck in a quagmire, floundered worse and worse
Until he managed somehow scramble back
Into the safe sure rutted road once more,
Revenged his own wrong like a gentleman.
Once back ’mid the familiar prints, no doubt
He made too rash amends for his first fault,
Vaulted too loftily over what barred him late,
And lit i’ the mire again,—the common chance,
The natural over-energy: the deed
Maladroit yields three deaths instead of one,
And one life left: for where’s the Canon’s corpse?
All which is the worse for Guido, but, be frank—
The better for you and me and all the world,
Husbands of wives, especially in Rome.
The thing is put right, in the old place,—ay,
The rod hangs on its nail behind the door,
Fresh from the brine: a matter I commend
To the notice, during Carnival that’s near,
Of a certain what’s-his-name and jackanapes
Somewhat too civil of eves with lute and song
About a house here, where I keep a wife.
(You, being his cousin, may go tell him so.)
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