Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  “Suffers the penalty, led blindfold thus

  “By love of what he thought his flesh and blood

  “To alienate his all in her behalf, —

  “Tell him too such contract is null and void!

  “Last, he who personates your son-in-law,

  “Who with sealed eyes and stopped ears, tame and mute,

  “Took at your hand that bastard of a whore

  “You called your daughter and he calls his wife, —

  “Tell him, and bear the anger which is just!

  “Then, penance so performed, may pardon be!”

  Who could gainsay this just and right award?

  Nobody in the world: but, out o’ the world,

  Who knows? — might timid intervention be

  From any makeshift of an angel-guide,

  Substitute for celestial guardianship,

  Pretending to take care of the girl’s self:

  “Woman, confessing crime is healthy work,

  “And telling truth relieves a liar like you,

  “But what of her my unconsidered charge?

  “No thought of, while this good befalls yourself,

  “What in the way of harm may find out her?”

  No least thought, I assure you: truth being truth,

  Tell it and shame the devil!

  Said and done:

  Home went Violante and disbosomed all:

  And Pietro who, six months before, had borne

  Word after word of such a piece of news

  Like so much cold steel inched through his breast-blade,

  Now at its entry gave a leap for joy,

  As who — what did I say of one in a quag? —

  Should catch a hand from heaven and spring thereby

  Out of the mud, on ten toes stand once more.

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

  “My money mine again, my house, my land,

  “My chairs and tables, all mine evermore?

  “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 —

  “He who drove us forth, why should he keep her

  “When proved as very a pauper as himself?

  “Will she come back, with nothing changed at all,

  “And laugh ‘But how you dreamed uneasily!

  “‘I saw the great drops stand here on your brow —

  “‘Did I do wrong to wake you with a kiss?’

  “No, indeed, darling! No, for wide awake

  “I see another outburst of surprise:

  “The lout-lord, bully-beggar, braggart-sneak,

  “Who not content with cutting purse, crops ear —

  “Assuredly it shall be salve to mine

  “When this great news red-letters him, the rogue!

  “Ay, let him taste the teeth o’ the trap, this fox,

  “Give us our lamb back, golden fleece and all,

  “Let her creep in and warm our breasts again!

  “What care for the past? — we three are our old selves,

  “Who know now what the outside world is worth.”

  And so, he carried case before the courts;

  And there Violante, blushing to the bone,

  Made public declaration of her fault,

  Renounced her motherhood, and prayed the law

  To interpose, frustrate of its effect

  Her folly, and redress the injury done.

  Whereof was the disastrous consequence,

  That though indisputably clear the case

  (For thirteen years are not so large a lapse,

  And still six witnesses survived in Rome

  To prove the truth o’ the tale) — yet, patent wrong

  Seemed Guido’s; the first cheat had chanced on him:

  Here was the pity that, deciding right,

  Those who began the wrong would gain the good.

  Guido pronounced the story one long lie

  Lied to do robbery and take revenge:

  Or say it were no lie at all but truth,

  Then, it both robbed the right heirs and shamed him

  Without revenge to humanise the deed:

  What had he done when first they shamed him thus?

  But that were too fantastic: losels they,

  And leasing this world’s-wonder of a lie,

  They lied to blot him though it brand themselves.

  So answered Guido through the Abate’s mouth.

  Wherefore the court, its customary way,

  Inclined to the middle course the sage affect —

  They held the child to be a changeling, — good:

  But, lest the husband got no good thereby,

  They willed the dowry, though not hers at all,

  Should yet be his, if not by right then grace —

  Part-payment for the plain injustice done.

  But then, that other contract, Pietro’s work,

  Renunciation of his own estate,

  That must be cancelled — give him back his goods,

  He was no party to the cheat at least!

  So ran the judgment: — whence a prompt appeal

  On both sides, seeing right is absolute.

  Cried Pietro, “Is Pompilia not my child?

  “Why give her my child’s dowry?” — ”Have I right

  “To the dowry, why not to the rest as well?”

  Cried Guido, or cried Paolo in his name:

  Till law said “Reinvestigate the case!”

  And so the matter pends, unto this day.

  Hence new disaster — that no outlet seemed;

  Whatever the fortune of the battle-field,

  No path whereby the fatal man might march

  Victorious, wreath on head and spoils in hand,

  And back turned full upon the baffled foe, —

  Nor cranny whence, desperate and disgraced,

  Stripped to the skin, he might be fain to crawl

  Worm- like, and so away with his defeat

  To other fortune and the novel prey.

  No, he was pinned to the place there, left alone

  With his immense hate and, the solitary

  Subject to satisfy that hate, his wife.

  “Cast her off? Turn her naked out of doors?

  “Easily said! But still the action pends,

  “Still dowry, principal and interest,

  “Pietro’s possessions, all I bargained for, —

  “Any good day, be but my friends alert,

  “May give them me if she continue mine.

  “Yet, keep her? Keep the puppet of my foes —

  “Her voice that lisps me back their curse — her eye

  “They lend their leer of triumph to — her lip

  “I touch and taste their very filth upon?”

  In short, he also took the middle course

  Rome taught him — did at last excogitate

  How he might keep the good and leave the bad

  Twined in revenge, yet extricable, — nay

  Make the very hate’s eruption, very rush

  Of the unpent sluice of cruelty relieve

  His heart first, then go fertilise his field.

  What if the girl-wife, tortured with due care,

  Should take, as though spontaneously, the road

  It were impolitic to thrust her on?

  If, goaded, she broke out in full revolt,

  Followed her parents i’ the face o’ the world,

  Branded as runaway not castaway,

  Self-sentenced and self-punished in the act?

  So should the loathed form and detested face

  Launch themselves into hell and there be lost

  While he looked o’er the brink with folded arms;

  So should the heaped-up shames go shuddering back

  O’ the head o’ the heapers, Pietro and his wife,


  And bury in the breakage three at once:

  While Guido, left free, no one right renounced,

  Gain present, gain prospective, all the gain,

  None of the wife except her rights absorbed.

  Should ask law what it was law paused about —

  If law were dubious still whose word to take,

  The husband’s — dignified and derelict,

  Or the wife’s — the . . . what I tell you. It should be.

  Guido’s first step was to take pen, indite

  A letter to the Abate, — not his own,

  His wife’s, — she should re-write, sign, seal, and send.

  She liberally told the household-news,

  Rejoiced her vile progenitors were fled,

  Revealed their malice — how they even laid

  A last injunction on her, when they fled,

  That she should forthwith find a paramour,

  Complot with him to gather spoil enough

  Then burn the house down, — taking previous care

  To poison all its inmates overnight, —

  And so companioned, so provisioned too,

  Follow to Rome and all join fortunes gay.

  This letter, traced in pencil-characters,

  Guido as easily got retraced in ink

  By his wife’s pen, guided from end to end,

  As it had been just so much Hebrew, Sir:

  For why? That wife could broider, sing perhaps,

  Pray certainly, but no more read than write

  This letter “which yet write she must,” he said,

  “Being half courtesy and compliment,

  “Half sisterliness: take the thing on trust!”

  She had as readily re-traced the words

  Of her own death-warrant, — in some sort ‘twas so.

  This letter the Abate in due course

  Communicated to such curious souls

  In Rome as needs must pry into the cause

  Of quarrel, why the Comparini fled

  The Franceschini, whence the grievance grew,

  What the hubbub meant: “Nay, — see the wife’s own word,

  “Authentic answer! Tell detractors too

  “There’s a plan formed, a programme figured here

  “ — Pray God no after-practice put to proof,

  “This letter cast no light upon, one day!”

  So much for what should work in Rome, — back now

  To Arezzo, go on with the project there,

  Forward the next step with as bold a foot,

  And plague Pompilia to the height, you see!

  Accordingly did Guido set himself

  To worry up and down, across, around,

  The woman, hemmed in by her household-bars, —

  Chased her about the coop of daily life,

  Having first stopped each outlet thence save one

  Which, like bird with a ferret in her haunt,

  She needs must seize as sole way of escape

  Though there was tied and twittering a decoy

  To seem as if it tempted, — just the plume

  O’ the popinjay, and not a respite there

  From tooth and claw of something in the dark, —

  Giuseppe Caponsacchi.

  Now begins

  The tenebrific passage of the tale:

  How hold a light, display the cavern’s gorge?

  How, in this phase of the affair, show truth?

  Here is the dying wife who smiles and says

  “So it was, — so it was not, — how it was,

  “I never knew nor ever care to know — ”

  Till they all weep, physician, man of law,

  Even that poor old bit of battered brass

  Beaten out of all shape by the world’s sins,

  Common utensil of the lazar-house —

  Confessor Celestino groans “‘Tis truth,

  “All truth, and only truth: there’s something else,

  “Some presence in the room beside us all,

  “Something that every lie expires before:

  “No question she was pure from first to last.”

  So far is well and helps us to believe:

  But beyond, she the helpless, simple-sweet

  Or silly-sooth, unskilled to break one blow

  At her good fame by putting finger forth, —

  How can she render service to the truth?

  The bird says “So I fluttered where a springe

  “Caught me: the springe did not contrive itself,

  “That I know: who contrived it, God forgive!”

  But we, who hear no voice and have dry eyes,

  Must ask, — we cannot else, absolving her, —

  How of the part played by that same decoy

  I’ the catching, caging? Was himself caught first?

  We deal here with no innocent at least,

  No witless victim, — he’s a man of the age

  And a priest beside, — persuade the mocking world

  Mere charity boiled over in this sort!

  He whose own safety too, — (the Pope’s apprised —

  Good-natured with the secular offence,

  The pope looks grave on priesthood in a scrape)

  Our priest’s own safety therefore, may-be life,

  Hangs on the issue! You will find it hard.

  Guido is here to meet you with fixed foot,

  Stiff like a statue — ”Leave what went before!

  “My wife fled i’ the company of a priest,

  “Spent two days and two nights alone with him:

  “Leave what came after!” He is hard to throw.

  Moreover priests are merely flesh and blood;

  When we get weakness, and no guilt beside,

  We have no such great ill-fortune: finding grey,

  We gladly call that white which might be black,

  Too used to the double-dye. So, if the priest,

  Moved by Pompilia’s youth and beauty, gave

  Way to the natural weakness. . . . Anyhow

  Here be facts, charactery; what they spell

  Determine, and thence pick what sense you may!

  There was a certain young bold handsome priest

  Popular in the city, far and wide

  Famed, for Arezzo’s but a little place, .

  As the best of good companions, gay and grave

  At the decent minute; settled in his stall,

  Or sideling, lute on lap, by lady’s couch,

  Ever the courtly Canon: see in such

  A star shall climb apace and culminate,

  Have its due handbreadth of the heaven at Rome,

  Though meanwhile pausing on Arezzo’s edge,

  As modest candle ‘mid the mountain fog,

  To rub off redness and rusticity

  Ere it sweep chastened, gain the silver-sphere.

  Whether through Guido’s absence or what else,

  This Caponsacchi, favourite of the town,

  Was yet no friend of his nor free o’ the house,

  Though both moved in the regular magnates’ march —

  Each must observe the other’s tread and halt

  At church, saloon, theatre, house of play.

  Who could help noticing the husband’s slouch,

  The black of his brow — or miss the news that buzzed

  Of how the little solitary wife

  Wept and looked out of window all day long?

  What need of minute search into such springs

  As start men, set o’ the move? — machinery

  Old as earth, obvious as the noonday sun.

  Why, take men as they come, — an instance now, —

  Of all those who have simply gone to see

  Pompilia on her deathbed since four days,

  Half at the least are, call it how you please,

  In love with her — I don’t except the priests

  Nor even the old confessor whose eyes run

  Over at what he
styles his sister’s voice

  Who died so early and weaned him from the world.

  Well, had they viewed her ere the paleness pushed

  The last o’ the red o’ the rose away, while yet

  Some hand, adventurous ‘twixt the wind and her,

  Might let the life run back and raise the flower

  Rich with reward up to the guardian’s face, —

  Would they have kept that hand employed the same

  At fumbling on with prayer-book pages? No!

  Men are men: why then need I say one word

  More than this, that our man the Canon here

  Saw, pitied, loved Pompilia?

  This is why;

  This startling why: that Caponsacchi’s self —

  Whom foes and friends alike avouch, for good

  Or ill, a man of truth whate’er betide,

  Intrepid altogether, reckless too

  How his own fame and fortune, tossed to the winds,

  Suffer by any turn the adventure take,

  Nay, more — not thrusting, like a badge to hide,

  ‘Twixt shirt and skin a joy which shown is shame —

  But flirting flag-like i’ the face o’ the world

  This tell-tale kerchief, this conspicuous love

  For the lady, — oh, called innocent love, I know!

  Only, such scarlet fiery innocence

  As most men would try muffle up in shade, —

  ‘Tis strange then that this else abashless mouth

  Should yet maintain, for truth’s sake which is God’s,

  That it was not he made the first advance,

  That, even ere word had passed between the two,

  Pompilia penned him letters, passionate prayers,

  If not love, then so simulating love

  That he, no novice to the taste of thyme,

  Turned from such over-luscious honey-clot

  At end o’ the flower, and would not lend his lip

  Till . . . but the tale here frankly outsoars faith:

  There must be falsehood somewhere. For her part,

  Pompilia quietly constantly avers

  She never penned a letter in her life

  Nor to the Canon nor any other man,

  Being incompetent to write and read:

  Nor had she ever uttered word to him, nor he

  To her till that same evening when they met,

  She on her window-terrace, he beneath

  I’ the public street, as was their fateful chance,

  And she adjured him in the name of God

  Find out and bring to pass where, when and how

  Escape with him to Rome might be contrived.

  Means found, plan laid and time fixed, she avers,

  And heart assured to heart in loyalty,

  All at an impulse! All extemporised

  As in romance-books! Is that credible?

  Well, yes: as she avers this with calm mouth