book I

have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so young--I had no mother.'"

Such ardour well might stir us to agreement, were it not that Dickens chose for its warmest expression the very centre of our disbelief: Mildred's _recurrence_ to that cry. . . . The cry itself--I cannot be alone in thinking--rings false, and the recurrence, therefore, but heaps error upon error. When I imagine an ardent girl in such a situation, almost anything she could have been made to say would to me seem more authentic than this. The first utterance, moreover, occurs before she knows that Tresham has learnt the truth--it occurs, in soliloquy, immediately after an interview with her lover.

"I was so young, I loved him so, I had No mother, God forgot me, and I fell."

_I fell_ . . . No woman, in any extremity, says that; that is what is said by others of her. And _God forgot me_--is this the thought of one who "loves him so"? . . . The truth is that we have here the very commonplace of the theatre: the wish to have it both ways, to show, yet not to reveal--the "dramatic situation," in short, set out because it _is_ dramatic, not because it is true. We cannot suppose that Browning meant Earl Mertoun for a mere seducer, ravishing from a maiden that which she did not desire to give--yet the words he here puts in Mildred's mouth bear no other interpretation. Either she is capable of passion, or she is not. If she _is_, sorrow for the sorrow that her recklessness may cause to others will indeed put pain and terror in her soul, but she will not, can not, say that "God forgot her": those words are alien to the passionate. If she is _not_, if Mertoun is the mere seducer . . . but the suggestion is absurd. We know that he is like herself, as herself should have been shown us, young love incarnate, rushing to its end mistakenly--wrong, high, and pure. These errors are the errors of quick souls, of souls that, too late realising all, yet feel themselves unstained, and know that not God forgot them, but they this world in which we dwell.

In her interview with Tresham after the servant's revelation, I find the same untruth. He delivers a long rhapsody on brothers' love, saying that it exceeds all other in its unselfishness. Her sole rejoinder--and here she does for one second attain to authenticity--is the question: "What is this for?" He, after some hesitation, tells her what he knows, calls upon her to confess, she standing silent until, at end of the arraignment, he demands the lover's name. Listen to her answer:

". . . Thorold, do you devise Fit expiation for my guilt, if fit There be! 'Tis nought to say that I'll endure And bless you--that my spirit yearns to purge Her stains off in the fierce renewing fire: But do not plunge me into other guilt! Oh, guilt enough . . ."

She of course refuses the name. He tells her to pronounce, then, her own punishment.

Again her answer, in the utter falseness to all truth of its abasement, well-nigh sickens the soul:

"Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt me thus! To die here in this chamber, by that sword, Would seem like punishment; so should I glide Like an arch-cheat, into extremest bliss!"

Comment upon that seems to me simply impossible. This is the woman to whom, but a page or two back, young Mertoun has sung the exquisite song, known to most readers of Browning's lyrics:

"There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest, And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest" . . .

Already in that hour with her, Mertoun must have learnt that some of those high words were turned to slighter uses when they sang of Mildred Tresham. In that hour he has spoken of the "meeting that appalled us both" (namely, the meeting with her brother, when he was to ask for her hand), saying that it is over and happiness begins, "such as the world contains not." When Mildred answers him with, "This will not be," we could accept, believingly, were only the sense of doom what her reply brought with it. But "this will not be," because they do not "deserve the whole world's best of blisses."

"Sin has surprised us, so will punishment."

And how strange, how sad for a woman is it, to see with what truth and courage Browning can make Mertoun speak! Each word that _he_ says can be brave and clear for all its recognition of their error; no word that _she_ says. . . . Her creator does not understand her; almost, thus, we do feel Mildred to be real, so quick is our resentment of the unrealities heaped on her. Imagining beforehand the moment when she shall receive in presence of them all "the partner of my guilty love" (is not here the theatre in full blast?), the deception she must practise--called by her, in the vein so cruelly assigned her, "this planned piece of deliberate wickedness" . . . imagining all this, she foresees herself unable to pretend, pouring forth "all our woeful story," and pictures them aghast, "as round some cursed fount that should spirt water and spouts blood." . . . "I'll not!" she cries--

". . . 'I'll not affect a grace That's gone from me--gone once, and gone for ever!'"

"Gone once, and gone for ever." True, when the grace _is_ gone; but surely not from her, in any real sense, had it gone--and would she not, in the deep knowledge of herself which comes with revelation to the world, have felt that passionately? There are accusations of ourselves which indeed arraign ourselves, yet leave us our best pride. To me, not the error which made her prey to penitence was Mildred Tresham's "fall," but those crude cries of shame.

We take refuge in her immaturity, and in the blighting influence of her brother--that prig of prigs, that "monomaniac of family pride and conventional morality,"[90:1] Thorold, Earl Tresham; but not thus can we solace ourselves for Browning's failure. What a girl he might have given us in Mildred, had he listened only to himself! But, not yet in full possession of that self, he set up as an ideal the ideal of others, trying dutifully to see it as they see it, denying dutifully his deepest instinct; and, thus apostate, piled insincerity on insincerity, until at last no truth is anywhere, and we read on with growing alienation as each figure loses all of such reality as it ever had, and even Gwendolen, the "golden creature"--his own dauntless, individual woman, seeing and feeling truly through every fibre of her being--is lost amid the fog, is stifled in the stifling atmosphere, and only at the last, when Mildred and her brother are both dead, can once more say the word which lights us back to truth:

"Ah, Thorold, we can but--remember you!"

It was indeed all _they_ could do; but we, more fortunate, can forget him, imaging to ourselves the Mildred that Browning could have given us--the Mildred of whom her brother is made to say:

"You cannot know the good and tender heart, Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy, How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind, How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free As light where friends are . . ."

There she is, as Browning might have shown her! "Control's not for this lady," Tresham adds--the sign-manual of a Browning woman. As I have said, he can display this lovely type through others, can sing it in his own person, as in the exquisite dewdrop lyric; but once let her speak for herself--he obeys the world and its appraisals, and the truth departs from him; we have the Mildred Tresham of the theatre, of "the partner of my guilty love," of "Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt me thus!" of (in a later scene) "I think I might have urged some little point in my defence to Thorold"; of that last worst unreality of all, when Thorold has told her of his murder of her lover, and she cries:

". . . I--forgive not, But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls! There! Do not think too much upon the past! The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud While it stood up between my friend and you; You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know; I may dispose of it: I give it you! It loves you as mine loves!"

True, she is to die, and so is to rejoin her lover; but, thus rejoined, will "blots upon the 'scutcheon" seem to them the all-sufficient claim for Thorold's deed--Thorold who dies with these words on his lips:

". . . You hold our 'scutcheon up. Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood Must wash one blot away; the first blot came And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye All's gules again: no care to the vain world From whence the red was drawn!"

And on Austin's cry that "no blot shall come!" he answers:

"I said that: yet it did come. Should it come, Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!"

_Vengeance_: how do they who are met again in the spirit-world regard that word, that "God"?

FOOTNOTES:

[90:1] Berdoe. _Browning Cyclopædia._

IV

BALAUSTION

IN "BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE" AND "ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY"

To me, Balaustion is the queen of Browning's women--nay, I am tempted to proclaim her queen of every poet's women. For in her meet all lovelinesses, and to make her dearer still, some are as yet but in germ (what a mother she will be, for example); so that we have, with all the other beauties, the sense of the unfolding rose--"enmisted by the scent it makes," in a phrase of her creator's which, though in the actual context it does not refer to her, yet exquisitely conveys her influence on these two works. "Rosy Balaustion": she is that, as well as "superb, statuesque," in the admiring apostrophes from Aristophanes, during the long, close argument of the _Apology_. In that piece, the Bald Bard himself is made to show her to us; and though it follows, not precedes, the _Adventure_, I shall steal from him at once, presenting in his lyric phrases our queen before we crown her.

He comes to her home in Athens on the night when Balaustion learns that her adored Euripides is dead. She and her husband, Euthukles, are "sitting silent in the house, yet cheerless hardly," musing on the tidings, when suddenly there come torch-light and knocking at the door, and cries and laughter: "Open, open, Bacchos[94:1] bids!"--and, heralded by his chorus and the dancers, flute-boys, all the "banquet-band," there enters, "stands in person, Aristophanes." Balaustion had never seen him till that moment, nor he her:

"Forward he stepped: I rose and fronted him";

and as thus for the first time they meet, he breaks into a pæan of admiration:

"'You, lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face, Victory's self upsoaring to receive The poet? Right they named you . . . some rich name, Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants, Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end In _ion_' . . ."

and trying to recall that name "in _ion_," he guesses two or three at random, seizing thus the occasion to express her effect on him:

"'Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise, Korakinidion, for the coal-black hair, Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness?'"

But none of these is right; "it was some fruit-flower"; and at last it comes: _Balaustion_, Wild-Pomegranate-Bloom, and he exclaims in ecstasy, "Thanks, Rhodes!"--for her fellow-countrymen had found this name for her, so apt in every way that her real name was forgotten, and as Balaustion she shall live and die.

"Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness"; and for all her intellect and ardour, it is greatly _this_ that makes Balaustion queen--the lovely eager sweetness, the tenderness, the "darlingness": Aristophanes guessed almost right!

+ + + + +

How did she win the name of Wild-Pomegranate-Flower? We learn it from herself in the _Adventure_. Let us hear: let us feign ourselves members of the little band of friends, all girls, with their charming, chiming names: "Petalé, Phullis, Charopé, Chrusion"--to whom she cries in the delightful opening:

"About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song I, when a girl, heard in Kameiros once, And after, saved my life by? Oh, so glad To tell you the adventure!"

Part of the adventure is historical. In the second stage of the Peloponnesian War (that famous contention between the Athenians and the inhabitants of Peloponnesus which began on May 7, 431 B.C. and lasted twenty-seven years), the Athenian General, Nikias, had suffered disaster at Syracuse, and had given himself up, with all his army, to the Sicilians. But the assurances of safety which he had received were quickly proved false. He was no sooner in the hands of the enemy than he was shamefully put to death with his naval ally, Demosthenes; and his troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of Athens, and resolved to side with Sparta. Balaustion[96:1] was there, and she passionately protested against this decision, crying to "who would hear, and those who loved me at Kameiros"[96:2]:

". . . No! Never throw Athens off for Sparta's sake-- Never disloyal to the life and light Of the whole world worth calling world at all!

* * * * *

To Athens, all of us that have a soul, Follow me!"

and thus she drew together a little band, "and found a ship at Kaunos," and they turned

"The glad prow westward, soon were out at sea, Pushing, brave ship with the vermilion cheek, Proud for our heart's true harbour."

But they were pursued by pirates, and, fleeing from these, drove unawares into the harbour of that very Syracuse where Nikias and Demosthenes had perished, and in whose quarries their countrymen were slaves. The inhabitants refused them admission, for they had heard, as the ship came into harbour, Balaustion singing "that song of ours which saved at Salamis." She had sprung upon the altar by the mast, and carolled it forth to encourage the oarsmen; and now it was vain to tell the Sicilians that these were Rhodians who had cast in their lot with the Spartan League, for the Captain of Syracuse answered:

"Ay, but we heard all Athens in one ode . . . You bring a boatful of Athenians here";

and Athenians they would not have at Syracuse, "with memories of Salamis" to stir up the slaves in the quarry.

No prayers, no blandishments, availed the Rhodians; they were just about to turn away and face the pirates in despair, when somebody raised a question, and

". . . 'Wait!' Cried they (and wait we did, you may be sure). 'That song was veritable Aischulos, Familiar to the mouth of man and boy, Old glory: how about Euripides? Might you know any of his verses too?'"

Browning here makes use of the historical fact that Euripides was reverenced far more by foreigners and the non-Athenian Greeks than by the Athenians--for Balaustion, "the Rhodian," had been brought up in his worship, though she knew and loved the other great Greek poets also; and already it was known to our voyagers that the captives in the quarries had found that those who could "teach Euripides to Syracuse" gained indulgence far beyond what any of the others could obtain. Thus, when the question sounded, "Might you know any of his verses too?" the captain of the vessel cried:

"Out with our Sacred Anchor! Here she stands, Balaustion! Strangers, greet the lyric girl!

* * * * *

Why, fast as snow in Thrace, the voyage through, Has she been falling thick in flakes of him,

* * * * *

And so, although she has some other name, We only call her Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion; since, where'er the red bloom burns

* * * * *

You shall find food, drink, odour all at once."

He called upon her to save their little band by singing a strophe. But she could do better than that--she could recite a whole play:

"That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his, ALKESTIS!"

Only that very year had it reached "Our Isle o' the Rose"; she had seen it, at Kameiros, played just as it was played at Athens, and had learnt by heart "the perfect piece." Now, quick and subtle for all her enthusiasm, she remembers to tell the Sicilians how, besides "its beauty and the way it makes you weep," it does much honour to their own loved deity:

"Herakles, whom you house i' the city here Nobly, the Temple wide Greece talks about; I come a suppliant to your Herakles! Take me and put me on his temple-steps To tell you his achievement as I may."

"Then," she continues, in a passage which rings out again in the _Apology_:

"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts, And poetry is power--they all outbroke In a great joyous laughter with much love: 'Thank Herakles for the good holiday! Make for the harbour! Row, and let voice ring: _In we row bringing in Euripides!_'"

So did the Rhodians land at Syracuse. And the whole city, hearing the cry "In we row," which was taken up by the crowd around the harbour-quays, came rushing out to meet them, and Balaustion, standing on the topmost step of the Temple of Herakles, told the play:

"Told it, and, two days more, repeated it, Until they sent us on our way again With good words and great wishes."

That was her Adventure. Three things happened in it "for herself": a rich Syracusan brought her a whole talent as a gift, and she left it on the tripod as thank-offering to Herakles; a band of the captives--"whom their lords grew kinder to, Because they called the poet countryman"--sent her a crown of wild-pomegranate-flower; and the third thing . . . Petalé, Phullis, Charopé, Chrusion, hear of this also--of the youth who, all the three days that she spoke the play, was found in the gazing, listening audience; and who, when they sailed away, was found in the ship too, "having a hunger to see Athens"; and when they reached Piræus, once again was found, as Balaustion landed, beside her. February's moon is just a-bud when she tells her comrades of this youth; and when that moon rounds full:

"We are to marry. O Euripides!"

* * * * *

Everyone who speaks of _Balaustion's Adventure_ will quote to you that ringing line, for it sums up the high, ardent girl who, even in the exultation of her love, must call upon the worshipped Master. It is this passion for intellectual beauty which sets Balaustion so apart, which makes her so complete and stimulating. She has a mind as well as a heart and soul; she is priestess as well as goddess--Euthukles will have a wife indeed! Every word she speaks is stamped with the Browning marks of gaiety, courage, trust, and with how many others also: those of high-heartedness, deep-heartedness, the true patriotism that cherishes most closely the soul of its country; and then generosity, pride, ardour--all enhanced by woman's more peculiar gifts of gentleness, modesty, tenderness, insight, gravity . . . for Balaustion is like many women in having, for all her gaiety, more sense of happiness than sense of humour. It often comes to me as debatable if this be not the most attractive of deficiencies! Certainly Balaustion persuades us of its power; for in the _Apology_, her refusal of the Aristophanic Comedy is firm-based upon that imputed lack in women. No man, thus poised, could have convinced us of his reality; while she convinces us not only of her reality, but of her rightness. Again, we must applaud our poet's wisdom in choosing woman for the Bald Bard's accuser; she is as potent in this part as in that of Euripides' interpreter.

But what a girl Balaustion is, as well as what a woman! Let us see her with the little band of friends about her, as in the exquisite revocation (in the _Apology_) of the first adventure's telling:

". . . O that Spring, That eve I told the earlier[101:1] to my friends! Where are the four now, with each red-ripe mouth I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still, Outsmoothing galingale and watermint?

* * * * *

Under the grape-vines, by the streamlet-side, Close to Baccheion; till the cool increase, And other stars steal on the evening star, And so, we homeward flock i' the dusk, we five!"

Then, in the _Adventure_, comes the translation by Browning of the _Alkestis_ of Euripides, which Balaustion is feigned to have spoken upon the temple steps at Syracuse. With this we have here no business, though so entire is his "lyric girl," so fully and perfectly by him conceived, that not a word of the play but might have been Balaustion's own. This surely is a triumph of art--to imagine such a speaker for such a piece, and to blend them both so utterly that the supreme Greek dramatist and this girl are indivisible. What a woman was demanded for such a feat, and what a poet for both! May we not indeed say now that Browning was our singer? Whom but he would have done this--so crowned, so trusted, us, and so persuaded men that women can be great?

"Its beauty, and the way it makes you weep": yes--and the way it makes you thrill with love for Herakles, never before so god-like, because always before too much the apotheosis of mere physical power. But read of him in the _Alkestis_ of Euripides, and you shall feel him indeed divine--"this grand benevolence." . . . We can hear the voice of Balaustion deepen, quiver, and grow grave with gladdened love, as Herakles is fashioned for us by these two men's noble minds.

+ + + + +

When she had told the "perfect piece" to her girl-friends, a sudden inspiration came to her:

"I think I see how . . . You, I, or anyone might mould a new Admetos, new Alkestis";

and saying this, a flood of gratitude for the great gift of poetry comes full tide across her soul:

". . . Ah, that brave Bounty of poets, the one royal race That ever was, or will be, in this world! They give no gift that bounds itself and ends I' the giving and the taking: theirs so breeds I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes The man who only was a man before, That he grows god-like in his turn, can give-- He also; share the poet's privilege, Bring forth new good, new beauty from the old. . . . So with me: For I have drunk this poem, quenched my thirst, Satisfied heart and soul--yet more remains! Could we too make a poem? Try at least, Inside the head, what shape the rose-mists take!"

And, trying thus, Balaustion, Feminist, portrays the perfect marriage.

Admetos, in Balaustion's and Browning's _Alkestis_, will not let his wife be sacrificed for him:

"Never, by that true word Apollon spoke! All the unwise wish is unwished, oh wife!"

and he speaks, as in a vision, of the purpose of Zeus in himself.

"This purpose--that, throughout my earthly life, Mine should be mingled and made up with thine-- And we two prove one force and play one part And do one thing. Since death divides the pair, 'Tis well that I depart and thou remain Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh: Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more, So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh, Bend yet awhile, a very flame above The rift I drop into the darkness by-- And bid remember, flesh and spirit once Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake. Never be that abominable show Of passive death without a quickening life-- Admetos only, no Alkestis now!"

It is so that the man speaks to and of the woman, in Balaustion's and Browning's _Alkestis_.

And the woman, answering, declares that the reality of their joint existence lies not in her, but in him:

". . . 'What! thou soundest in my soul To depths below the deepest, reachest good By evil, that makes evil good again, And so allottest to me that I live, And not die--letting die, not thee alone, But all true life that lived in both of us? Look at me once ere thou decree the lot!'

* * * * *

Therewith her whole soul entered into his, He looked the look back, and Alkestis died."

But when she reaches the nether world--"the downward-dwelling people"--she is rejected as a deceiver: "This is not to die," says the Queen of Hades, for her death is a mockery, since it doubles the life of him she has left behind:

"'Two souls in one were formidable odds: Admetos must not be himself and thou!'

* * * * *

And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit, The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look; And lo, Alkestis was alive again."

How do our little squabbles--the "Sex-War"--look to us after this?

+ + + + +

When next we meet with Balaustion, in _Aristophanes' Apology_, she is married to her Euthukles, and they are once more speeding across the waters--this time back to Rhodes, from Athens which has fallen.

Many things have happened in the meantime, and Balaustion, leaving her adoptive city, with "not sorrow but despair, not memory but the present and its pang" in her deep heart, feels that if she deliberately invites the scene, if she embodies in words the tragedy of Athens, she may free herself from anguish. Euthukles shall write it down for her, and they will go back to the night they heard Euripides was dead: "One year ago, Athenai still herself." Together she and Euthukles had mused, together glorified their poet. Euthukles had met the audience flocking homeward from the theatre, where Aristophanes had that night won the prize which Euripides had so seldom won. They had stopped him to hear news of the other poet's death: "Balaustion's husband, the right man to ask"--but he had refused them all satisfaction, and scornfully rated them for the crown but now awarded. "Appraise no poetry," he had cried: "price cuttlefish!"

Balaustion had seen, since she had come to live in Athens, but one work of Aristophanes, the _Lysistrata_; and now, in breathless reminiscent anger, recalls the experience. It had so appalled her, "that bestiality so beyond all brute-beast imagining," that she would never see again a play by him who in the crowned achievement of this evening had drawn himself as Virtue laughingly reproving Vice, and Vice . . . Euripides! Such a piece it was which had "gained the prize that day we heard the death."

Yet, musing on that death, her wrath had fallen from her.

"I thought, 'How thoroughly death alters things! Where is the wrong now, done our dead and great?'"

Euthukles, divining her thought, told her that the mob had repented when they learnt the news. He had heard them cry: "Honour him!" and "A statue in the theatre!" and "Bring his body back,[106:1] bury him in Piræus--Thucydides shall make his epitaph!"

But she was not moved to sympathy with the general cry.

"Our tribute should not be the same, my friend. Statue? Within our hearts he stood, he stands!"

and, for his mere mortal body:

"Why, let it fade, mix with the elements There where it, falling, freed Euripides!"

_She_ knew, that night, a better way to hail his soul's new freedom. This, by

"Singing, we two, its own song back again Up to that face from which flowed beauty--face Now abler to see triumph and take love Than when it glorified Athenai once."

Yes: they two would read together _Herakles_, the play of which Euripides himself had given her the tablets, in commemoration of the Adventure at Syracuse. After that, on her first arrival in Athens, she had gone to see him, "held the sacred hand of him, and laid it to my lips"; she had told him "how Alkestis helped," and he, on bidding her farewell, had given her these tablets, with the stylos pendant from them still, and given her, too, his own psalterion, that she might, to its assisting music, "croon the ode bewailing age."

All was prepared for the reading, when (as we earlier learnt) there came the torch-light and the knocking at their door, and Aristophanes, fresh from his triumph, entered with the banquet-band, to hail the "house, friendly to Euripides."

He knew, declared Aristophanes, that the Rhodian hated him most of mortals, but he would not blench. The others blenched--no word could they utter, nor one laugh laugh. . . . So he drove them out, and stood alone confronting

"Statuesque Balaustion pedestalled On much disapprobation and mistake."

He babbled on for a while, defiantly and incoherently, and at length she turned in dumb rebuke, which he at once understood.

"True, lady, I am tolerably drunk";

for it was the triumph-night, and merriment had reigned at the banquet, reigned and increased

"'Till something happened' . . . Here he strangely paused";

but soon went on to tell the way in which the news had reached them there. . . . While Aristophanes spoke, Balaustion searched his face; and now (recalling, on the way to Rhodes, that hour to Euthukles), she likens the change which she then saw in it to that made by a black cloud suddenly sailing over a stretch of sparkling sea--such a change as they are in this very moment beholding.

"Just so, some overshadow, some new care Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face, And left there only such a dark surmise-- No wonder if the revel disappeared, So did his face shed silence every side! I recognised a new man fronting me."

At once he perceived her insight, and answered it: "So you see myself? Your fixed regard can strip me of my 'accidents,' as the sophists say?" But neither should this disconcert him:

"Thank your eyes' searching; undisguised I stand: The merest female child may question me. Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!"

She, searching thus his face, had learnt already that "what she had disbelieved most proved most true." Drunk though he was,

"There was a mind here, mind a-wantoning At ease of undisputed mastery Over the body's brood, those appetites. Oh, but he grasped them grandly!"

It was no "ignoble presence": the broad bald brow, the flushed cheek, great imperious fiery eyes, wide nostrils, full aggressive mouth, all the pillared head:

"These made a glory, of such insolence-- I thought--such domineering deity . . . Impudent and majestic . . ."

Instantly on her speaking face the involuntary homage had shown; and it was to this that Aristophanes, keen of sight as she, had confidently addressed himself when he told her to speak boldly. And in the very spirit of her face she did speak:

"Bold speech be--welcome to this honoured hearth, Good Genius!"

Here sounds the essential note of generous natures. Proved mistaken, their instant impulse is to rejoice in defeat, if defeat means victory for the better thing. Thus, as Balaustion speaks, her ardour grows with every word. He is greater than she had supposed, and so she must even rhapsodise--she must crowd praise on praise, until she ends with the exultant cry:

"O light, light, light, I hail light everywhere! No matter for the murk that was--perchance That will be--certes, never should have been Such orb's associate!"

Mark that Aristophanes has not yet _said_ anything to justify her change of attitude: the seeing of him is enough to draw from her this recantation--for she trusts her own quick insight, and so, henceforth trusts him.

Now begins the long, close argument between them which constitutes _Aristophanes' Apology_. It is (from him) the defence of comedy as he understands and practises it--broad and coarse when necessary; violent and satiric against those who in any way condemn it. Euripides had been one of these, and Balaustion now stands for him. . . . In the long run, it is the defence of "realism" against "idealism," and, as such, involves a whole philosophy of life. We cannot follow it here; all we may do is to indicate the points at which it reveals, as she speaks in it, the character of Balaustion, and the growing charm which such revelation has for her opponent.

At every turn of his argument, Aristophanes is sure of her comprehension. He knows that he need not adapt himself to a feebler mind: "You understand," he says again and again. At length he comes, in his narration, to the end of their feast that night, and tells how, rising from the banquet interrupted by the entrance of Sophocles with tidings of Euripides dead, he had cried to his friends that they must go and see

"The Rhodian rosy with Euripides! . . . And here you stand with those warm golden eyes! Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn One's nature bottom-upwards, show the base . . . Anyhow, I have followed happily The impulse, pledged my genius with effect, Since, come to see you, I am shown--myself!"

She instantly bids him, as she has honoured him, that he do honour to Euripides. But, seized by perversity, he declares that if she will give him the _Herakles_ tablets (which he has discerned, lying with the other gifts of Euripides), he will prove to her, by this play alone, the "main mistake" of her worshipped Master.

She warmly interrupts, reproving him. Their house _is_ the shrine of that genius, and he has entered it, "fresh from his worst infamy"--yet she has withheld the words she longs to speak, she has inclined, nay yearned, to reverence him:

"So you but suffer that I see the blaze And not the bolt--the splendid fancy-fling, Not the cold iron malice, the launched lie."

If he does _this_, if he shows her

"A mere man's hand ignobly clenched against Yon supreme calmness,"

she will interpose:

"Such as you see me! Silk breaks lightning's blow!"

But Aristophanes, at that word of "calmness," exclaims vehemently. Death is the great unfairness! Once a man dead, the survivors croak, "Respect him." And so one must--it is the formidable claim, "immunity of faultiness from fault's punishment." That is why _he_, Aristophanes, has always attacked the living; he knew how they would hide their heads, once dead! Euripides had chosen the other way; "men pelted him, but got no pellet back"; and it was not magnanimity but arrogance that prompted him to such silence. Those at whom Aristophanes or he should fling mud were by that alone immortalised--and Euripides, "that calm cold sagacity," knew better than to do them such service.

As he speaks thus, Balaustion's "heart burns up within her to her tongue." She exclaims that the baseness of Aristophanes' attack, of his "mud-volleying" at Euripides, consists in the fact that both men had, at bottom, the same ideals; they both extended the limitations of art, both were desirous from their hearts that truth should triumph--yet Aristophanes, thus desiring, poured out his supremacy of power against the very creature who loved all that _he_ loved! And she declares that such shame cuts through all his glory. Comedy is in the dust, laid low by him:

"Balaustion pities Aristophanes!"

Now she has gone too far--she has spoken too boldly.

"Blood burnt the cheek-bone, each black eye flashed fierce: 'But this exceeds our license!'"

--so he exclaims; but then, seizing his native weapon, stops ironically to search out an excuse for her. He finds it soon. She and her husband are but foreigners; they are "uninstructed"; the born and bred Athenian needs must smile at them, if he do not think a frown more fitting for such ignorance. But strangers are privileged: Aristophanes will condone. They want to impose their squeamishness on sturdy health: that is at the bottom of it all. Their Euripides had cried "Death!"--deeming death the better life; he, Aristophanes, cries "Life!" If the Euripideans condescend to happiness at all, they merely "talk, talk, talk about the empty name," while the thing itself lies neglected beneath their noses; they

"think out thoroughly how youth should pass-- Just as if youth stops passing, all the same!"

* * * * *

As he proceeds, in the superb defence of his own methods, he sees Balaustion grow ever more indignant. But he conjures her to wait a moment ere she "looses his doom" on him--and at last, drawing to an end, declares that after all the ground of difference between him and her is slight. In so far as it does exist, however, he claims to have won. Euripides, for whom she stands, is beaten in this contest, yet he, Aristophanes, has not even put forth all his power! If she will not acknowledge final defeat:

"Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!"

--and he urges her to use it all, to "let the whole rage burst in brave attack."

It is evident how he has been moved, despite his boasting--how eagerly he awaits her use of the rosy strength. . . . But she begins meekly enough. She is a woman, she says, and claims no quality "beside the love of all things lovable"; in _that_, she does claim to stand pre-eminent. But men may use, justifiably, different methods from those which women most admire, and so far and because she is a foreigner, as he reminds her, she may be mistaken in her blame of him. Yet foreigners, strangers, will in the ultimate issue be the judges of this matter, and shall they find Aristophanes any more impeccable than she does? (She now begins to put forth the rosy strength!) What is it that he has done? He did not invent comedy! Has he improved upon it? No, she declares. One of his aims is to discredit war. That was an aim of Euripides also; and has Aristophanes yet written anything like the glorious Song to Peace in the _Cresphontes_?

"Come, for the heart within me dies away, So long dost thou delay!"

She gives this forth, in the old "Syracusan" manner, and is well aware that he can have no answer for her. Again (she proceeds), Euripides discredited war by showing how it outrages the higher feelings: by what method has Aristophanes discredited it? By the obscene allurements of the _Lysistrata_! . . . Thus she takes him through his works, and finally declares that only in "more audaciously lying" has he improved upon the earlier writers of comedy. He has genius--she gladly grants it; but he has debased his genius. The mob indeed has awarded him the crowns: is such crowning the true guerdon?

"Tell him, my other poet--where thou walk'st Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!"

But as to the immortality of either, who shall say? And is even _that_ the question? No: the question is--did both men wish to waft the white sail of good and beauty on its way? Assuredly. . . . And so she cries at the last: "Your nature too is kingly"; and this is for her the sole source of ardour--she "trusts truth's inherent kingliness"; and the poets are of all men most royal. She never would have dared approach this poet so:

"But that the other king stands suddenly, In all the grand investiture of death, Bowing your knee beside my lowly head --Equals one moment! --Now arise and go. Both have done homage to Euripides!"

But he insists that her defence has been oblique--it has been merely an attack on himself. She must defend her poet more directly, or Aristophanes will do no homage. At once she answers that she will, that she has the best, the only, defence at hand. She will read him the _Herakles_, read it as, at Syracuse, she spoke the _Alkestis_.

"Accordingly I read the perfect piece."

It ends with the lament of the Chorus for the departure of Herakles:

"The greatest of all our friends of yore We have lost for evermore!"

and when Balaustion has chanted forth that strophe, there falls a long silence, on this night of losing a friend.

Aristophanes breaks it musingly. "'Our best friend'--who has been the best friend to Athens, Euripides or I?" And he answers that it is himself, for he has done what he knew he _could_ do, and thus has charmed "the Violet-Crowned"; while Euripides had challenged failure, and had failed. Euripides, he cries, remembering an instance, has been like Thamyris of Thrace, who was blinded by the Muses for daring to contend with them in song; _he_, Aristophanes, "stands heart-whole, no Thamyris!" He seizes the psalterion--Balaustion must let him use it for once--and sings the song, from Sophocles, of Thamyris marching to his doom.

He gives some verses,[117:1] then breaks off in laughter, having, as he says, "sung content back to himself," since he is _not_ Thamyris, but Aristophanes. . . . They shall both be pleased with his next play; it shall be serious, "no word more of the old fun," for "death defends," and moreover, Balaustion has delivered her admonition so soundly! Thus he departs, in all friendliness:

"Farewell, brave couple! Next year, welcome me!"

It is "next year," and Balaustion and Euthukles are fleeing across the water to Rhodes from Athens. This year has seen the death of Sophocles; and the greatest of all the Aristophanic triumphs in the _Frogs_. It was all _him_, Balaustion says:

"There blazed the glory, there shot black the shame"

--it showed every facet of his genius, and in it Bacchos himself was "duly dragged through the mire," and Euripides, after all the promises, was more vilely treated than ever before.

"So, Aristophanes obtained the prize, And so Athenai felt she had a friend Far better than her 'best friend,' lost last year."

But then, what happened? The great battle of Ægos Potamos was fought and lost, and Athens fell into the hands of the Spartans. The conqueror's first words were, "Down with the Piræus! Peace needs no bulwarks." At first the stupefied Athenians had been ready to obey--but when the next decree came forth, "No more democratic government; _we_ shall appoint your oligarchs!" the dreamers were stung awake by horror; they started up a-stare, their hands refused their office.

"Three days they stood, stared--stonier than their walls."

Lysander, the Spartan general, angered by the dumb delay, called a conference, issued decree. Not the Piræus only, but all Athens should be destroyed; every inch of the "mad marble arrogance" should go, and so at last should peace dwell there.

* * * * *

Balaustion stands, recalling this to Euthukles, who writes her words . . . and now, though she does not name it so, she tells the third "supreme adventure" of her life. When that decree had sounded, and the Spartans' shout of acquiescence had died away:

"Then did a man of Phokis rise--O heart! . . . _Who_ was the man of Phokis rose and flung A flower i' the way of that fierce foot's advance"

--the "choric flower" of the _Elektra_, full in the face of the foe?

"You flung that choric flower, my Euthukles!"

--and, gazing down on him from her proud rosy height, while he sits gazing up at her, she chants again the words she spoke to her girl-friends at the Baccheion:

"So, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts, And poetry is power, and Euthukles Had faith therein to, full-face, fling the same-- Sudden, the ice-thaw! The assembled foe, Heaving and swaying with strange friendliness, Cried 'Reverence Elektra!'--cried . . . 'Let stand Athenai'! . . ."

--and Athens was saved through Euripides,

"Through Euthukles, through--more than ever--me, Balaustion, me, who, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Felt my fruit triumph, and fade proudly so!"

* * * * *

But next day, Sparta woke from the spell. Harsh Lysander decreed that though Athens might be saved, the Piræus should not. Comedy should destroy the Long Walls: the flute-girls should lead off in the dance, should time the strokes of spade and pickaxe, till the pride of the Violet-Crowned lay in the dust. "Done that day!" mourns Balaustion:

"The very day Euripides was born."

But _they_ would not see the passing of Athenai; they would go, fleeing the sights and sounds,

"And press to other earth, new heaven, by sea That somehow ever prompts to 'scape despair"

--and wonderfully, at the harbour-side they found that old grey mariner, whose ship she had saved in the first Adventure! The ship was still weather-wise: it should

"'Convey Balaustion back to Rhodes, for sake Of her and her Euripides!' laughed he,"

--and they embarked. It should be Rhodes indeed: to Rhodes they now are sailing.

Euripides lies buried in the little valley "laughed and moaned about by streams,"

"Boiling and freezing, like the love and hate Which helped or harmed him through his earthly course. They mix in Arethusa by his grave."

But, just as she had known, this revocation _has_ consoled her. Now she will be able to forget. Never again will her eyes behold Athenai, nor in imagination see "the ghastly mirth that mocked her overthrow"; but she and Euthukles are exiles from the dead, not from the living, Athens:

"That's in the cloud there, with the new-born star!"

There is no despair, there can be none; for does not the soul anticipate its heaven here on earth:

"Above all crowding, crystal silentness, Above all noise, a silver solitude . . . Hatred and cark and care, what place have they In yon blue liberality of heaven? How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!"

They are entering Rhodes now, and every wave and wind seems singing out the same:

"All in one chorus--what the master-word They take up? Hark! 'There are no gods, no gods! Glory to GOD--who saves Euripides!'"

. . . There she is, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion--and Triumphant Woman. What other man has given us this?--and even Browning only here. Nearly always, for man's homage, woman must in some sort be victim: she must suffer ere he can adore. But Balaustion triumphs, and we hail her--and we hail her poet too, who dared to make her great not only in her love, but in her own deep-hearted, ardent self.

"This mortal shall put on individuality." Of all men Browning most wished women to do that.

FOOTNOTES:

[94:1] I follow Browning's spellings throughout.

[96:1] The character of Balaustion is wholly imaginary.

[96:2] A town of the island of Rhodes.

[101:1] In the _Apology_, she tells "the second supreme adventure": her interview with Aristophanes, and the recital to him of the _Herakles_ of Euripides.

[106:1] Euripides died at the Court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia.

[117:1] Browning never finished his translation of this splendid song.

V

POMPILIA

IN "THE RING AND THE BOOK"

I said, in writing of Balaustion: "Nearly always, for man's homage, woman must in some sort be victim: she must suffer ere he can adore."

I should have said that this _has been_ so: for the tendency to-day is to demonstrate rather the power than the weakness of woman. True that in the "victim," that weakness was usually shown to be the very source of that power: through her suffering not only she, but they who stood around and saw the anguish, were made perfect. That this theory of the outcome of suffering is an eternal verity I am not desirous to deny; but I do deplore that, in literature, women should be made so disproportionately its exemplars; and I deplore it not for feminist reasons alone. Once we regard suffering in this light of a supreme uplifting influence, we turn, as it were, our weapons against ourselves--we exclaim that men too suffer in this world and display the highest powers of endurance: why, then, do they so frequently, in their imaginative works, present themselves as makers of women's woes? For women make men suffer often; yet how relatively seldom men show this! Thus, paradoxically enough, we may come to declare that it is to themselves that men are harsh, and to us generous. "Chivalry from women!"--how would that sound as a war-cry?

Not all in jest do I so speak, though such recognition of male generosity leaves existent a certain sense of weariness which assails me--and if me, then probably many another--when I find myself reading of the immemorial "victim." It is this which makes Balaustion supreme for my delight. There is a woman with every noble attribute of womanhood at its highest, who suffers at no hands but those of the Great Fates, as one might say--the fates who rule the destiny of nations. . . . We turn now to her direct antithesis in this regard of suffering--we turn to Pompilia, victim first of the mediocre, ignorant, small-souled, then of the very devil of malignant baseness; such a victim, moreover, first and last, for the paltriest of motives--money. And money in no large, imaginative sense, but in the very lowest terms in which it could be at all conceived as a theme for tragedy. A dowry, and a tiny one: _this_ created "that old woe" which "steps on the stage" again for us in _The Ring and the Book_.

"Another day that finds her living yet, Little Pompilia, with the patient brow And lamentable smile on those poor lips, And, under the white hospital-array, A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again, Alive i' the ruins. 'Tis a miracle. It seems that when her husband struck her first, She prayed Madonna just that she might live So long as to confess and be absolved; And whether it was that, all her sad life long Never before successful in a prayer, This prayer rose with authority too dread-- Or whether because earth was hell to her, By compensation when the blackness broke, She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue, To show her for a moment such things were,"

--the prayer was granted her.

So, musing on the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express itself--"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" demands the imagined spokesman; and, summing up, he exclaims:

"Who did it shall account to Christ-- Having no pity on the harmless life And gentle face and girlish form he found, And thus flings back. Go practise if you please With men and women. Leave a child alone For Christ's particular love's sake!"

Then, burning with pity and indignation, he proceeds to tell the story of Pompilia as he sees it, feels it--and as Browning, in the issue, makes us see and feel it too.

In _The Ring and the Book_, Browning tells us this story--this "pure crude fact" (for fact it actually is)--_ten times over_, through nine different persons, Guido Franceschini, the husband, speaking twice. Stated thus baldly, the plan may sound almost absurd, and the prospect of reading the work appear a tedious one; but once begin it, and neither impression survives for a moment. Each telling is at once the same and new--for in each the speaker's point of view is altered. We get, first of all, Browning's own summary of the "pure crude fact"; then the appearance of that fact to:

1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia.

2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her.

3. "Tertium Quid," neutral.

4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial.

5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), at the trial.

6. Pompilia, on her death-bed.

7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the defence.

8. The Public Prosecutor's speech.

9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him after the trial.

10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers before execution.

Only the speeches of the two lawyers are wholly tedious; the rest of the survey is absorbing. Not a point which can be urged on any side is omitted, as that side presents itself; yet in the event, as I have said, one overmastering effect stands forth--the utter loveliness and purity of Pompilia. "She is the heroine," says Mr. Arthur Symons,[126:1] "as neither Guido nor Caponsacchi can be called the hero. . . . With hardly [any] consciousness of herself, [she] makes and unmakes the lives and characters of those about her"; and in this way he compares her story with Pippa's: "the mere passing of an innocent child."

And so, here, have we not indeed the victim? But though I spoke of weariness, I must take back the words; for here too we have indeed the beauty and the glory of suffering, and here the beauty and the glory of manhood. Guido, like all evil things, is Nothingness: he serves but to show forth what purity and love, in Pompilia, could be; what bravery and love, in Caponsacchi, the "warrior-priest," could do. This girl has not the Browning-mark of gaiety, but she has both the others--this "lady young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad," who answered without fear the call of the unborn life within her, and trusted without question "the appointed man."

The "pure crude fact," detailed by Browning, was found in the authentic legal documents bound together in an old, square, yellow parchment-covered volume, picked up by him, "one day struck fierce 'mid many a day struck calm," on a stall in the Piazza San Lorenzo of Florence. He bought the pamphlet for eightpence, and it gave to him and us the great, unique achievement of this wonderful poem:

"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore, Prime nature with an added artistry."

+ + + + +

Pompilia, called Comparini, was in reality "nobody's child." This, which at first sight may seem of minor importance to the issue, is actually at the heart of all; for, as I have said, it was the question of her dowry which set the entire drama in motion. The old Comparini couple, childless, of mediocre class and fortunes, had through silly extravagance run into debt, and in 1679 were hard pressed by creditors. They could not draw on their capital, for it was tied up in favour of the legal heir, an unknown cousin. But if they had a child, that disability would be removed. Violante Comparini, seeing this, resolved upon a plan. She bought beforehand for a small sum the expected baby of a disreputable woman, giving herself out to her husband, Pietro, and their friends as almost miraculously pregnant--for she was past fifty. In due time she became the apparent mother of a girl, Pompilia. This girl was married at thirteen to Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished nobleman, fifty years old, of Arezzo. He married her for her reported dowry, and she was sold to him for the sake of his rank. Both parties to the bargain found themselves deceived (Pompilia was, of course, a mere chattel in the business), for there was no dowry, and Guido, though he _had_ the rank, had none of the appurtenances thereof which had dazzled the fancy of Violante. Pietro too was tricked, and the marriage carried through against his will. The old couple, reduced to destitution by extracted payment of a part of the dowry, were taken to the miserable Franceschini castle at Arezzo, and there lived wretchedly, in every sense, for a while; but soon fled back to Rome, leaving the girl-wife behind to aggravated woes. About three years afterwards she also fled, intending to rejoin the Comparini at Rome. She was about to become a mother. The organiser and companion of her flight was a young priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, who was a canon at Arezzo. Guido followed them, caught them at Castelnuovo, a village on the outskirts of Rome, and caused both to be arrested. They were confined in the "New Prisons" at Rome, and tried for adultery. The result was a compromise--they were pronounced guilty, but a merely nominal punishment ("the jocular piece of punishment," as the young priest called it) was inflicted on each. Pompilia was relegated for a time to a convent; Caponsacchi was banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. As the time for Pompilia's confinement drew near, she was permitted to go to her reputed parents' home, which was a villa just outside the walls of the city. A few months after her removal there, she became the mother of a son, whom the old people quickly removed to a place of concealment and safety. A fortnight later--on the second day of the New Year--Count Guido, with four hired assassins, came to the villa, and all three occupants were killed: Pietro and Violante Comparini, and Pompilia his wife. For these murders, Guido and his hirelings were hanged at Rome on February 22, 1698.

But now we must return upon our steps, if we would know "the truth of this."

When the old Comparini reached Rome, after their flight from Arezzo, the Pope had just proclaimed jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and absolution for any sin was to be had for the asking--atonement, however, necessarily preceding. Violante, remorseful for the sacrifice of their darling, and regarding the woe as retribution for her original lie about the birth, resolved to confess; but since absolution was granted only if atonement preceded it, she must be ready to restore to the rightful heir that which her pretended motherhood had taken from him. She therefore confessed to Pietro first, and he instantly seized the occasion for revenge on Guido, though that was not (or at any rate, according to the Other Half-Rome, may not have been) his only motive.

"What? All that used to be, may be again?

* * * * *

What, the girl's dowry never was the girl's, And unpaid yet, is never now to pay? Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia child That used to be my own with her great eyes-- Will she come back, with nothing changed at all?"

He repudiated Pompilia publicly, and with her, of course, all claims from her husband. Taken into Court, the case (also bound up in the square yellow book) was, after appeals and counter-appeals, left undecided.

It was this which loosed all Guido's fury on Pompilia. He had already learned to hate her for her shrinking from him; now, while he still controlled her person, and wreaked the vilest cruelties and basenesses upon it, he at the same time resolved to rid himself of her in any fashion whatsoever which should leave him still a legal claimant to the disputed dowry.[130:1] There was only one way thus to rid himself, and that was to prove her guilty of adultery. He concentrated on it. First, his brother, the young Canon Girolamo, who lived at the castle, was incited to pursue her with vile solicitations. She fled to the Archbishop of Arezzo and implored his succour. He gave none. Then she went to the Governor: he also "pushed her back." She sought out a poor friar, and confessed her "despair in God"; he promised to write to her parents for her, but afterwards flinched, and did nothing. . . . Guido's plan was nevertheless hanging fire; a supplementary system of persecution must be set up. She was hourly accused of "looking love-lures at theatre and church, in walk, at window"; but this, in the apathy which was descending on her, she baffled by "a new game of giving up the game."[131:1] She abandoned theatre, church, walk, and window; she "confounded him with her gentleness and worth," he "saw the same stone strength of white despair":

"How does it differ in aught, save degree, From the terrible patience of God?"

--and more and more he hated her.

But at last, at the theatre one night, Pompilia--

"Brought there I knew not why, but now know well"[131:2]

--saw, for the first time, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, "the young frank personable priest"[131:3]--and seeing him as rapt he gazed at her, felt

". . . Had there been a man like that, To lift me with his strength out of all strife Into the calm! . . . Suppose that man had been instead of this?"

* * * * *

Caponsacchi had hitherto been very much "the courtly spiritual Cupid" that Browning calls him. His family, the oldest in Arezzo and once the greatest, had wide interest in the Church, and he had always known that he was to be a priest. But when the time came for "just a vow to read!" he stopped awestruck. Could he keep such a promise? He knew himself too weak. But the Bishop smiled. There were two ways of taking that vow, and a man like Caponsacchi, with "that superior gift of making madrigals," need not choose the harder one.

"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!"

He was good enough for _that_, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fashion rule"--a fribble and a coxcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the place, amused or no . . .

"When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself A lady young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad"

--and it was (he remembered) like seeing a burden carried to the Altar in his church one day, while he "got yawningly through Matin-Song." The burden was unpacked, and left--

"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked There was the Rafael!"

Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she turned,

"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"

and thought the thought that we have learned--for instinctively and surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that man":

". . . Silent, grave, Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."

Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day, Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze. _He_ would not signify, but there was Pompilia:

"Spare her, because he beats her as it is, She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."

It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse--he felt that he must leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him there was done with--the social successes, the intrigue, song-making; and his patron was already displeased. These things were what he was there to do, and he was going to church instead! "Are you turning Molinist?" the patron asked. "I answered quick" (says Caponsacchi in his narrative)

"Sir, what if I turned Christian?"

--and at once announced his resolve to go to Rome as soon as Lent was over. One evening, before he went, he was sitting thinking how his life "had shaken under him"; and

"Thinking moreover . . . oh, thinking, if you like, How utterly dissociated was I A priest and celibate, from the sad strange wife Of Guido . . . . . . I had a whole store of strengths Eating into my heart, which craved employ, And she, perhaps, need of a finger's help-- And yet there was no way in the wide world To stretch out mine."

Her smile kept glowing out of the devotional book he was trying to read, and he sat thus--when suddenly there came a tap at the door, and on his summons, there glided in "a masked muffled mystery," who laid a letter on the open book, and stood back demurely waiting.

It was Margherita, the "kind of maid" of Count Guido, and the letter purported to be from Pompilia, offering her love. Caponsacchi saw through the trick at once: the letter was written by Guido. He answered it in such a way that it would save _her_ from all anger, and at the same time infuriate the "jealous miscreant" who had written it:

". . . What made you--may one ask?-- Marry your hideous husband?"

But henceforth such letters came thick and fast. Caponsacchi was met in the street, signed to in church; slips were found in his prayer-book, they dropped from the window if he passed. . . . At length there arrived a note in a different manner. This warned him _not_ to come, to avoid the window for his life. At once he answered that the street was free--he should go to the window if he chose, and he would go that evening at the Ave. His conviction was that he should find the husband there, not the wife--for though he had seen through the trick, it did not occur to him that it was more than a device of jealousy to trap them, already suspected after that mutual gaze at the theatre. What it really was, he never guessed at all.

Meanwhile--turning now to Pompilia's dying speech to the nuns who nursed her--the companion persecution had been going on at the castle. Day after day, Margherita had dinned the name of Caponsacchi into the wife's ears. How he loved her, what a paragon he was, how little she owed fidelity to the Count who used _her_, Margherita, as his pastime--ought she not at least to see the priest and warn him, if nothing more? Guido might kill him! Here was a letter from him; and she began to impart it:

"I know you cannot read--therefore, let me! '_My idol_'" . . .

The letter was not from Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, divining this as surely as she had divined that he did not throw the comfits, took it from the woman's hands and tore it into shreds. . . . Day after day such moments added themselves to all the rest of the misery, and at last, at end of her strength, she swooned away. As she was coming to again, Margherita stooped and whispered _Caponsacchi_. But still, though the sound of his name was to the broken girl as if, drowning, she had looked up through the waves and seen a star . . . still she repudiated the servant's report of him: had she not that once beheld him?

"Therefore while you profess to show him me, I ever see his own face. Get you gone!"

But the swoon had portended something; and on "one vivid daybreak," half through April, Pompilia learned what that something was. . . . Going to bed the previous night, the last sound in her ears had been Margherita's prattle. "Easter was over; everyone was on the wing for Rome--even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope, was going there." Pompilia had heard it, as she might have heard rain drop, thinking only that another day was done:

"How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"

But with the daybreak, what was the clear summons that seemed to pierce her slumber?

". . . Up I sprang alive, Light in me, light without me, everywhere Change!"

The exquisite morning was there--the broad yellow sunbeams with their "myriad merry motes," the glittering leaves of the wet weeds against the lattice-panes, the birds--

"Always with one voice--where are two such joys?-- The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth, Stood on the terrace--o'er the roofs such sky! My heart sang, 'I too am to go away, I too have something I must care about, Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!

* * * * *

Not to live now would be the wickedness.'"[137:1]

Pope Innocent XII--"the great good old Pope," as Browning calls him in the summary of