Book I

--when in his turn he speaks to us, gives his highest praise, "where all he praises," to this trait in her whom he calls "My rose, I gather for the breast of God."

"Oh child, that didst despise thy life so much When it seemed only thine to keep or lose, How the fine ear felt fall the first low word 'Value life, and preserve life for My sake!'

* * * * *

Thou, at first prompting of what I call God, And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend, Accept the obligation laid on thee, Mother elect, to save the unborn child. . . . Go past me, And get thy praise--and be not far to seek Presently when I follow if I may!"

"Now" (says the sympathetic Other Half-Rome), "begins the tenebrific passage of the tale." As we have seen, Pompilia had tried all other means of escape, even before the great call came to her. Her last appeal had been made to two of Guido's kinsmen, on the wing for Rome like everyone else--Conti being one. Both had refused, but Conti had referred her to Caponsacchi--not evilly like Margherita, but jestingly, flippantly. Nevertheless, that name had come to take a half-fateful sense to her ears . . . and the Other Half-Rome thus images the moment in which she resolved to appeal to him.

"If then, all outlets thus secured save one, At last she took to the open, stood and stared With her wan face to see where God might wait-- And there found Caponsacchi wait as well For the precious something at perdition's edge, He only was predestinate to save . . .

* * * * *

Whatever way in this strange world it was, Pompilia and Caponsacchi met, in fine, She at her window, he i' the street beneath, And understood each other at first look."

For suddenly (she tells us) on that morning of Annunciation, she turned on Margherita, ever at her ear, and said, "Tell Caponsacchi he may come!" "How plainly" (says Pompilia)--

"How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade O' the face of her--the doubt that first paled joy, Then final reassurance I indeed Was caught now, never to be free again!"

But she cared not; she felt herself strong for everything.

"After the Ave Maria, at first dark, I will be standing on the terrace, say!"

She knew he would come, and prayed to God all day. At "an intense throe of the dusk" she started up--she "dared to say," in her dying speech, that she was divinely pushed out on the terrace--and there he waited her, with the same silent and solemn face, "at watch to save me."

+ + + + +

He had come, as he defiantly had said, and not the husband met him, but, at the window, with a lamp in her hand, "Our Lady of all the Sorrows." He knelt, but even as he knelt she vanished, only to reappear on the terrace, so close above him that she could almost touch his head if she bent down--"and she did bend, while I stood still as stone, all eye, all ear."

First she told him that she could neither read nor write, but that the letters said to be from him had been read to her, and seemed to say that he loved her. She did not believe that he meant that as Margherita meant it; but "good true love would help me now so much" that at last she had resolved to see him. Her whole life was so strange that this but belonged to the rest: that an utter stranger should be able to help her--he, and he alone! She told him her story. There was a reason now at last why she must fly from "this fell house of hate," and she would take from Caponsacchi's love what she needed: enough to save her life with--

". . . Take me to Rome! Take me as you would take a dog, I think, Masterless left for strangers to maltreat: Take me home like that--leave me in the house Where the father and mother are" . . .

She tells his answer thus:

"He replied-- The first word I heard ever from his lips, All himself in it--an eternity Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth O' the soul that then broke silence--'I am yours.'"

* * * * *

But when he had left her, irresolution swept over him. First, the Church seemed to rebuke--the Church who had smiled on his silly intrigues! Now she changed her tone, it appeared:--

"Now, when I found out first that life and death Are means to an end, that passion uses both, Indisputably mistress of the man Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice."

But that soon passed: the word was God's; this was the true self-sacrifice. . . . But might it not injure her--scandal would hiss about her name. Would not God choose His own way to save her? And _he_ might pray. . . . Two days passed thus. But he must go to counsel and to comfort her--was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over the terrace; she reproached him: why did he delay the help his heart yearned to give? He answered with his fears for her, but she broke in, never doubting him though he should doubt himself:

"'I know you: when is it that you will come?'"

"To-morrow at the day's dawn," he replied; and all was arranged--the place, the time; she came, she did not speak, but glided into the carriage, while he cried to the driver:

". . . 'By San Spirito, To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!'"

When she was dying of Guido's twenty-two dagger-thrusts, this was how Pompilia thought of that long flight:

"I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die: 'Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!' Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand Holding my hand across the world . . ."

And he, telling the judges of it at the murder-trial, cried that he never could lie quiet in his grave unless he "mirrored them plain the perfect soul Pompilia."

"You must know that a man gets drunk with truth Stagnant inside him. Oh, they've killed her, Sirs! Can I be calm?"

But he must be calm: he must show them that soul.

"The glory of life, the beauty of the world, The splendour of heaven . . . well, Sirs, does no one move? Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say, And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I" . . .

--for thus he flings defiance at them. Why do they not smile as they smiled at the earlier adultery-trial, when they gave him "the jocular piece of punishment," now that he stands before them "in this sudden smoke from hell"?

"Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?"

For if they had but seen _then_ what Guido Franceschini was! If they would but have been serious! Pompilia would not now be

"Gasping away the latest breath of all, This minute, while I talk--not while you laugh?"

How can the end of this deed surprise them? Pompilia and he had shown them what its beginning meant--but all in vain. He, the priest, had left her to "law's watch and ward," and now she is dying--"there and thus she lies!" Do they understand _now_ that he was not unworthy of Christ when he tried to save her? His part is done--all that he had been able to do; he wants no more with earth, except to "show Pompilia who was true"--

"The snow-white soul that angels fear to take Untenderly . . . Sirs, Only seventeen!"

Then he begins his story of

". . . Our flight from dusk to clear, Through day and night and day again to night Once more, and to last dreadful dawn of all."

Thinking how they sat in silence, both so fearless and so safe, waking but now and then to consciousness of the wonder of it, he cries:

"You know this is not love, Sirs--it is faith, The feeling that there's God."

By morning they had passed Perugia; Assisi was opposite. He met her look for the first time since they had started. . . . At Foligno he urged her to take a brief rest, but with eyes like a fawn's,

"Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels The probing spear o' the huntsman,"

she had cried, "On, on to Rome, on, on"--and they went on. During the night she had a troubled dream, waving away something with wild arms; and Caponsacchi prayed (thinking "Why, in my life I never prayed before!") that the dream might go, and soon she slept peacefully. . . . When she woke, he answered her first look with the assurance that Rome was within twelve hours; no more of the terrible journey. But she answered that she wished it could last for ever: to be "with no dread"--

"Never to see a face nor hear a voice-- Yours is no voice; you speak when you are dumb; Nor face, I see it in the dark" . . .

--such tranquillity was such heaven to her!

"This one heart" (she said on her death-bed):

"This one heart gave me all the spring! I could believe himself by his strong will Had woven around me what I thought the world We went along in . . . For, through the journey, was it natural Such comfort should arise from first to last?"

As she looks back, new stars bud even while she seeks for old, and all is Caponsacchi:

"Him I now see make the shine everywhere."

Best of all her memories--"oh, the heart in that!"--was the descent at a little wayside inn. He tells of it thus. When the day was broad, he begged her to descend at the post-house of a village. He told the woman of the house that Pompilia was his sister, married and unhappy--would she comfort her as women can? And then he left them together:

"I spent a good half-hour, paced to and fro The garden; just to leave her free awhile . . . I might have sat beside her on the bench Where the children were: I wish the thing had been, Indeed: the event could not be worse, you know: One more half-hour of her saved! She's dead now, Sirs!"

As they again drove forward, she asked him if, supposing she were to die now, he would account it to be in sin? The woman at the inn had told her about the trees that turn away from the north wind with the nests they hold; she thought she might be like those trees. . . . But soon, half-sleeping again, and restless now with returning fears, she seemed to wander in her mind; once she addressed him as "Gaetano." . . . Afterwards he knew that this name (the name of a newly-made saint) was that which she destined for her child, if she was given a son:

"One who has only been made a saint--how long? Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps, To guard a namesake than those old saints grow, Tired out by this time--see my own five saints!"[146:1]

For "little Pompilia" had been given five names by her pretended parents:

". . . so many names for one poor child --Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia Comparini--laughable!"[146:1] . . .

But now Caponsacchi himself grew restless, nervous: here was Castelnuovo, as good as Rome:

"Say you are saved, sweet lady!"

She awoke. The sky was fierce with the sunset colours--suddenly she cried out that she must not die:

"'Take me no farther, I should die: stay here! I have more life to save than mine!' She swooned. We seemed safe: what was it foreboded so?"

He carried her,

"Against my heart, beneath my head bowed low, As we priests carry the paten,"

into the little inn and to a couch, where he laid her, sleeping deeply. The host urged him to leave her in peace till morn.

"Oh, my foreboding! But I could not choose."

All night he paced the passage, throbbing with fear from head to foot, "filled with a sense of such impending woe" . . . and at the first pause of night went to the courtyard, ordered the horses--the last moment came, he must awaken her--he turned to go:

". . . And there Faced me Count Guido."

Oh, if he had killed him then! if he had taken the throat in "one great good satisfying gripe," and abolished Guido with his lie! . . . But while he mused on the irony of such a miscreant calling _her_ his wife,

"The minute, oh the misery, was gone;"

--two police-officers stood beside, and Guido was ordering them to take her.

Caponsacchi insisted that _he_ should lead them to the room where she was sleeping. He was a priest and privileged; when they came there, if the officer should detect

"Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge Between us and the mad dog howling there!"

They all went up together. There she lay,

"O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self, Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun That filled the window with a light like blood."

At Guido's loud order to the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"--for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, since _he_ was in it--and she cried to him to stand away, she chose hell rather than "embracing any more."

Caponsacchi tried to go to her, but now the room was full of the rabble pouring in at the noise--he was caught--"they heaped themselves upon me." . . . Then, when she saw "my angel helplessly held back," then

"Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,"

--and she sprang at her husband, seized the sword that hung beside him,

"Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy O' the blade. 'Die,' cried she, 'devil, in God's name!' Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one . . . Dead-white and disarmed she lay."

She said, dying, that this, her first and last resistance, had been invincible, for she had struck at the lie in Guido; and thus not "the vain sword nor weak speech" had saved her, but Caponsacchi's truth:--

"You see, I will not have the service fail! I say the angel saved me: I am safe! . . . What o' the way to the end?--the end crowns all"

--for even though she now was dying, there had been the time at the convent with the quiet nuns, and then the safety with her parents, and then:

"My babe was given me! Yes, he saved my babe: It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like thing, Through that Arezzo noise and trouble . . . But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live And give my bird the life among the leaves God meant him! Weeks and months of quietude, I could lie in such peace and learn so much, Know life a little, I should leave so soon. Therefore, because this man restored my soul All has been right . . . For as the weakness of my time drew nigh, Nobody did me one disservice more, Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love I lay in the arms of, till my boy was born, Born all in love, with nought to spoil the bliss A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much."

For, thinking of her happy childhood before the marriage, already she has said that only that childhood, and the prayer that brought her Caponsacchi, and the "great fortnight" remain as real: the four bad years between

"Vanish--one quarter of my life, you know."

In that room in the inn they parted. They were borne off to separate cells of the same ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome.

"Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me The last time in this life: not one sight more, Never another sight to be! And yet I thought I had saved her . . . It seems I simply sent her to her death. You tell me she is dying now, or dead."

But then it flashes to his mind that this may be a trick to make him confess--it would be worthy of them; and the great cry breaks forth:

"No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead! That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye, That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!) That vision in the blood-red daybreak--that Leap to life of the pale electric sword Angels go armed with--that was not the last O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find-- Know the manoeuvre! . . . Let me see for myself if it be so!"

* * * * *

But it is true. Twenty-two dagger-thrusts--

"Two days ago, when Guido, with the right, Hacked her to pieces" . . .

Oh, should they not have seen at first? That very flight proved the innocence of the pair who thus fled: these judges should have recognised the accepted man, the exceptional conduct that rightly claims to be judged by exceptional rules. . . . But it is all over. She is dying--dead perhaps. He has done with being judged--he is guiltless in thought, word, and deed; and she . . .

". . . For Pompilia--be advised, Build churches, go pray! You will find me there, I know, if you come--and you will come, I know. Why, there's a judge weeping! Did not I say You were good and true at bottom? You see the truth-- I am glad I helped you: she helped me just so."

Once more he flashes forth in her defence, in rage against Guido--but the image of her, "so sweet and true and pure and beautiful," comes back to him:

"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see we are So very pitiable, she and I, Who had conceivably been otherwise"

--and at the thought of _how_ "otherwise," of what life with such a woman were for a free man, and of his life henceforth, a priest, "on earth, as good as out of it," with the memory of her, only the memory . . . for she is dying, dead perhaps . . . the whole man breaks down, and he goes from the place with one wild, anguished call to heaven:

"Oh, great, just, good God! Miserable me!"

I have chosen to reveal Pompilia chiefly through Caponsacchi's speech for two reasons. First, because there is nothing grander in our literature than that passionate and throbbing monologue; second, because to show this type of woman _through_ another speaker is the way in which Browning always shows her best. As I said when writing of Mildred Tresham, directly such a woman speaks for herself, in Browning's work, he forces the note, he takes from her (unconsciously) a part of the beauty which those other speakers have shown forth. So with Pompilia, though not in the same degree as with Mildred, for here the truth _is_ with us--Pompilia is a living soul, not a puppet of the theatre. Yet even here the same strange errors recur. She has words indeed that reach the inmost heart--poignant, overpowering in tenderness and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to delineate it; and the particular one chosen--of marriage as a coin, "a dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"--is actually inept, since the essence of her is that she does not know anything at all about the "coin," so certainly does not know that it is or may be "dirty."

Again, here is an ignorant child, whose deep insight has come to her through love alone. She feels, in the weakness of her nearing death, and the bliss of spiritual tranquillity, that all the past with Guido is a terrific dream: "It is the good of dreams--so soon they go!" Beautiful: but Browning could not leave it in that beautiful and true simplicity. She must philosophise:

"This is the note of evil: for good lasts" . . .

Pompilia was incapable of that: she could "say" the thing, as she says it in that image of the dream--but she would have left it alone, she would have made no maxim out of it. And the maxim, when it _is_ made, says no more than the image had said.

Once again: her plea for Guido. That she should forgive him was essential, but the pardon should have been blind pardon. No reason can confirm it; and we should but have loved her more for seeking none. To put in her mouth the plea that Guido had been deceived in his hope of enrichment by marriage, and that his anger, thus to some extent justified, was aggravated by her "blindness," by her not knowing "whither he sought to drive" her with his charges of light conduct,

"So unaware, I only made things worse" . . .

--this is bad through and through; this is the excess of ingenuity which misled Browning so frequently. There is no loveliness of pardon here; but something that we cannot suffer for its gross humility. The aim of Guido, in these charges, was filthiest evil: it revolts to hear the victim, now fully aware--for the plea is based on her awareness--blame herself for not "apprehending his drift" (could _she_ have used that phrase?), and thus, in the madness of magnanimity, seem to lose all sense of good and evil. It is over-subtle; it is not true; it has no beauty of any kind. But Browning could not "leave things alone"; he had to analyse, to subtilise--and this, which comes so well when it is analytic and subtle minds that address us, makes the defect of his work whenever an innocent and ignorant girl is made to speak in her own person.

I shall not multiply instances; my aim is not destructive. But I think the unmeasured praise of Browning by some of his admirers has worked against, not for, him. It irritates to read of the "perfection" of this speech--which has beauties so many and so great that the faults may be confessed, and leave it still among the lovely things of our literature.

I turn now gladly to those beauties. Chief is the pride and love of the new-made mother--never more exquisitely shown, and here the more poignantly shown because she is on her death-bed, and has not seen her little son again since the "great fortnight." She thinks how well it was that he had been taken from her before that awful night at the Villa:

"He was too young to smile and save himself;"

--for she does not dream, not then remembering the "money" which was at the heart of all her woe, that _he_ would have been spared for that money's sake. . . . But she had not seen him again, and now will never see him. And when he grows up and comes to be her age, he will ask what his mother was like, and people will say, "Like girls of seventeen," and he will think of some girl he knows who titters and blushes when he looks at her. . . . That is not the way for a mother!

"Therefore I wish someone will please to say I looked already old, though I was young;"

--and she begs to be told that she looks "nearer twenty." Her name too is not a common one--that may help to keep apart

"A little the thing I am from what girls are."

But how hard for him to find out anything about her:

"No father that he ever knew at all, Nor never had--no, never had, I say!"

--and a mother who only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him--that was why she chose the new one; _he_ would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling fast to that:

"Sheer dreaming and impossibility-- Just in four days too! All the seventeen years, Not once did a suspicion visit me How very different a lot is mine From any other woman's in the world. The reason must be, 'twas by step and step It got to grow so terrible and strange. These strange woes stole on tip-toe, as it were . . . Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay, And I was found familiarised with fear."

First there was the amazement of finding herself disowned by Pietro and Violante. Then:

"So with my husband--just such a surprise, Such a mistake, in that relationship! Everyone says that husbands love their wives, Guard them and guide them, give them happiness; 'Tis duty, law, pleasure, religion: well-- You see how much of this comes true with me!"

Next, "there is the friend." . . . People will not ask her about him; they smile and give him nicknames, and call him her lover. "Most surprise of all!" It is always that word: how he loves her, how she loves him . . . yet he is a priest, and she is married. It all seems unreal, like the childish game in which she and her little friend Tisbe would pretend to be the figures on the tapestry:--

"You know the figures never were ourselves. . . . Thus all my life."

Her life is like a "fairy thing that fades and fades."

"--Even to my babe! I thought when he was born, Something began for me that would not end, Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay For evermore, eternally, quite mine."

And hers he is, but he is gone, and it is all so confused that even _he_ "withdraws into a dream as the rest do." She fancies him grown big,

"Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me, Frowns with the others: 'Poor imprudent child! Why did you venture out of the safe street? Why go so far from help to that lone house? Why open at the whisper and the knock?'"

* * * * *

That New Year's Day, when she had been allowed to get up for the first time, and they had sat round the fire and talked of him, and what he should do when he was big--

"Oh, what a happy, friendly eve was that!"

And next day, old Pietro had been packed off to church, because he was so happy and would talk so much, and Violante thought he would tire her. And then he came back, and was telling them about the Christmas altars at the churches--none was so fine as San Giovanni--

". . . When, at the door, A tap: we started up: you know the rest."

Pietro had done no harm; Violante had erred in telling the lie about her birth--certainly that was wrong, but it was done with love in it, and even the giving her to Guido had had love in it . . . and at any rate it is all over now, and Pompilia has just been absolved, and thus there "seems not so much pain":

"Being right now, I am happy and colour things. Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all Softened and bettered; so with other sights: _To me at least was never evening yet_ _But seemed far beautifuller than its day_,[158:1] For past is past."

Then she falls to thinking of that real mother, who had sold her before she was born. Violante had told her of it when she came back from the nuns, and was waiting for her boy to come. That mother died at her birth:

"I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart That I at least might try be good and pure . . . And oh, my mother, it all came to this?"

Now she too is dying, and leaving her little one behind. But _she_ is leaving him "outright to God":

"All human plans and projects come to nought: My life, and what I know of other lives Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care!"

She will lay him with God. And her last breath, for gratitude, shall spend itself in showing, now that they will really listen and not say "he was your lover" . . . her last breath shall disperse the stain around the name of Caponsacchi.

". . . There, Strength comes already with the utterance!"

* * * * *

Now she tells what we know; some of it we have learnt already from her lips. She goes back over the years in "that fell house of hate"; then, the seeing of him at the theatre, the persecution with the false letters, the Annunciation-morning, the summons to him, the meeting, the escape:

"No pause i' the leading and the light!

* * * * *

And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!"

But once more, mother-like, she reverts to her boy:

". . . We poor Weak souls, how we endeavour to be strong! I was already using up my life-- This portion, now, should do him such a good, This other go to keep off such an ill. The great life: see, a breath, and it is gone!"

Still, all will be well: "Let us leave God alone." And now she will "withdraw from earth and man to her own soul," will "compose herself for God" . . . but even as she speaks, the flood of gratitude to her one friend again sweeps back, and she exclaims,

"Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breath Shall bear away my soul in being true![159:1] He is still here, not outside with the world, Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!

* * * * *

I feel for what I verily find--again The face, again the eyes, again, through all, The heart and its immeasurable love Of my one friend, my only, all my own, Who put his breast between the spears and me. Ever with Caponsacchi! . . . O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death! Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread-- My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!

* * * * *

Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain? What I see, oh, he sees, and how much more!

* * * * *

Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God? Say--I am all in flowers from head to foot! Say--not one flower of all he said and did, But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place At this supreme of moments!"

She has recognised the truth. This _is_ love--but how different from the love of the smilings and the whisperings, the "He is your lover!" He is a priest, and could not marry; but she thinks he would not have married if he could:

"Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,

* * * * *

In heaven we have the real and true and sure."

In heaven, where the angels "know themselves into one"; and are never married, no, nor given in marriage:

". . . They are man and wife at once When the true time is . . . So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of his light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."

* * * * *

Who would analyse this child would tear a flower to pieces. Pompilia is no heroine, no character; but indeed a "rose gathered for the breast of God":

"Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin."

FOOTNOTES:

[126:1] _Introduction to the Study of Browning_, 1886, p. 152.

[130:1] Abandoning for the moment intermediate events, it was _this_ which moved Guido to the triple murder: for once the old couple and Pompilia dead, with the question of his claim to the dowry still undecided as it was, his child, the new-born babe, might inherit all.

[131:1] Guido's second speech, wherein he tells the truth, in the hope that his "impenitence" may defer his execution.

[131:2] Her dying speech.

[131:3] Browning's summary.