Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Who, good as his word, disappeared at once

  As if to leave the stage free. A whole week

  Did Guido spend in study of his part,

  Then played it fearless of a failure. One,

  Struck the year’s clock whereof the hours are days,

  And off was rung o’ the little wheels the chime

  “Goodwill on earth and peace to man:” but, two,

  Proceeded the same bell and, evening come,

  The dreadful five felt finger-wise their way

  Across the town by blind cuts and black turns

  To the little lone suburban villa; knocked —

  “Who may be outside?” called a well-known voice.

  “A friend of Caponsacchi’s bringing friends

  “A letter.”

  That’s a test, the excusers say:

  Ay, and a test conclusive, I return.

  What? Had that name brought touch of guilt or taste

  Of fear with it, aught to dash the present joy

  With memory of the sorrow just at end, —

  She, happy in her parents’ arms at length

  With the new blessing of the two weeks’ babe, —

  How had that name’s announcement moved the wife?

  Or, as the other slanders circulate,

  Were Caponsacchi no rare visitant

  On nights and days whither safe harbour lured,

  What bait had been i’ the name to ope the door?

  The promise of a letter? Stealthy guests

  Have secret watchwords, private entrances:

  The man’s own self might have been found inside

  And all the scheme made frustrate by a word.

  No: but since Guido knew, none knew so well,

  The man had never since returned to Rome

  Nor seen the wife’s face more than villa’s front,

  So, could not be at hand to warn or save, —

  For that, he took this sure way to the end.

  “Come in,” bade poor Violante cheerfully,

  Drawing the door-bolt: that death was the first,

  Stabbed through and through. Pietro, close on her heels,

  Set up a cry — ”Let me confess myself!

  “Grant but confession!” Cold steel was the grant.

  Then came Pompilia’s turn.

  Then they escaped.

  The noise o’ the slaughter roused the neighbourhood.

  They had forgotten just the one thing more

  Which saves i’ the circumstance, the ticket to wit

  Which puts post-horses at a traveller’s use:

  So, all on foot, desperate through the dark

  Reeled they like drunkards along open road,

  Accomplished a prodigious twenty miles

  Homeward, and gained Baccano very near,

  Stumbled at last, deaf, dumb, blind through the feat,

  Into a grange and, one dead heap, slept there

  Till the pursuers hard upon their trace

  Reached them and took them, red from head to heel,

  And brought them to the prison where they lie.

  The couple were laid i’ the church two days ago,

  And the wife lives yet by miracle.

  All is told.

  You hardly need ask what Count Guido says,

  Since something he must say. “I own the deed — ”

  (He cannot choose, — but — ) “I declare the same

  “Just and inevitable, — since no way else

  “Was left me, but by this of taking life,

  “To save my honour which is more than life.

  “I exercised a husband’s rights.” To which

  The answer is as prompt — ”There was no fault

  “In any one o’ the three to punish thus:

  “Neither i’ the wife, who kept all faith to you,

  “Nor in the parents, whom yourself first duped,

  “Robbed and maltreated, then turned out of doors.

  “You wronged and they endured wrong; yours the fault.

  “Next, had endurance overpassed the mark

  “And turned resentment needing remedy, —

  “Nay, put the absurd impossible case, for once —

  “You were all blameless of the blame alleged

  “And they blameworthy where you fix all blame,

  “Still, why this violation of the law?

  “Yourself elected law should take its course,

  “Avenge wrong, or show vengeance not your right;

  “Why, only when the balance in law’s hand

  “Trembles against you and inclines the way

  “O’ the other party, do you make protest,

  “Renounce arbitrament, flying out of court,

  “And crying ‘Honour’s hurt the sword must cure?’

  “Aha, and so i’ the middle of each suit

  “Trying i’ the courts, — and you had three in play

  “With an appeal to the Pope’s self beside, —

  “What, you may chop and change and right your wrongs

  “Leaving the law to lag as she thinks fit?”

  That were too temptingly commodious, Count!

  One would have still a remedy in reserve

  Should reach the safest oldest sinner, you see!

  One’s honour forsooth? Does that take hurt alone

  From the extreme outrage? I who have no wife,

  Being yet sensitive in my degree

  As Guido, — must discover hurt elsewhere

  Which, half compounded-for in days gone by,

  May profitably break out now afresh,

  Need cure from my own expeditious hands.

  The lie that was, as it were, imputed me

  When you objected to my contract’s clause, —

  The theft as good as, one may say, alleged,

  When you, co-heir in a will, excepted, Sir,

  To my administration of effects,

  — Aha, do you think law disposed of these?

  My honour’s touched and shall deal death around!

  Count, that were too commodious, I repeat!

  If any law be imperative on us all,

  Of all are you the enemy: out with you

  From the common light and air and life of man!

  Tertium Quid

  TRUE, Excellency — as his Highness says,

  Though she’s not dead yet, she’s as good as stretched

  Symmetrical beside the other two;

  Though he’s not judged yet, he’s the same as judged,

  So do the facts abound and superabound:

  And nothing hinders, now, we lift the case

  Out of the shade into the shine, allow

  Qualified persons to pronounce at last,

  Nay, edge in an authoritative word

  Between this rabble’s-brabble of dolts and fools

  Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.

  “Now for the Trial!” they roar: “the Trial to test

  “The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike

  “I’ the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!”

  Law’s a machine from which, to please the mob,

  Truth the divinity must needs descend

  And clear things at the play’s fifth act — aha!

  Hammer into their noddles who was who

  And what was what. I tell the simpletons

  “Could law be competent to such a feat

  “‘Twere done already: what begins next week

  “Is end o’ the Trial, last link of a chain

  “Whereof the first was forged three years ago

  “When law addressed herself to set wrong right,

  “And proved so slow in taking the first step

  “That ever some new grievance, — tort, retort,

  “On one or the other side, — o’ertook i’ the game,

  “Retarded sentence, till this deed of death

  “Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat />
  “Crammed to the edge with cargo — or passengers?

  “‘Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!

  “‘Huc appelle!’ — passengers, the word must be.”

  Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.

  To hear the rabble and brabble, you’d call the case

  Fused and confused past human finding out.

  One calls the square round, t’other the round square —

  And pardonably in that first surprise

  O’ the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:

  But now we’ve used our eyes to the violent hue

  Can’t we look through the crimson and trace lines?

  It makes a man despair of history,

  Eusebius and the established fact — fig’s end!

  Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away

  With the leash of lawyers, two on either side —

  One barks, one bites, — Masters Arcangeli

  And Spreti, — that’s the husband’s ultimate hope

  Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,

  Bound to do barking for the wife: bow — wow!

  Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here

  Would settle the matter as sufficiently

  As ever will Advocate This and Fiscal That

  And Judge the Other, with even — a word and a wink —

  We well know who for ultimate arbiter.

  Let us beware o’ the basset-table — lest

  We jog the elbow of Her Eminence,

  Jostle his cards, — he’ll rap you out a . . st!

  By the window-seat! And here’s the Marquis too!

  Indulge me but a moment: if I fail

  — Favoured with such an audience, understand! —

  To set things right, why, class me with the mob

  As understander of the mind of man!

  The mob, — now, that’s just how the error comes!

  Bethink you that you have to deal with plebs,

  The commonalty; this is an episode

  In burgess-life, — why seek to aggrandise,

  Idealise, denaturalise the class?

  People talk just as if they had to do

  With a noble pair that . . . Excellency, your ear!

  Stoop to me, Highness, — listen and look yourselves!

  This Pietro, this Violante, live their life

  At Rome in the easy way that’s far from worst

  Even for their betters, — themselves love themselves,

  Spend their own oil in feeding their own lamp

  That their own faces may grow bright thereby.

  They get to fifty and over: how’s the lamp?

  Full to the depth o’ the wick, — moneys so much;

  And also with a remnant, — so much more

  Of moneys, — which there’s no consuming now,

  But, when the wick shall moulder out some day,

  Failing fresh twist of tow to use up dregs,

  Will lie a prize for the passer-by, — to-wit

  Any one that can prove himself the heir,

  Seeing the couple are wanting in a child:

  Meantime their wick swims in the safe broad bowl

  O’ the middle rank, — not raised a beacon’s height

  For wind to ravage, nor swung till lamp graze ground

  As watchman’s cresset, he pokes here and there,

  Going his rounds to probe the ruts i’ the road

  Or fish the luck o’ the puddle. Pietro’s soul

  Was satisfied when crony smirked, “No wine

  “Like Pietro’s, and he drinks it every day!”

  His wife’s heart swelled her boddice, joyed its fill

  When neighbours turned heads wistfully at church,

  Sighed at the load of lace that came to pray.

  Well, having got through fifty years of flare,

  They burn out so, indulge so their dear selves,

  That Pietro finds himself in debt at last,

  As he were any lordling of us all:

  And, for the dark begins to creep on day,

  Creditors grow uneasy, talk aside,

  Take counsel, then importune all at once.

  For if the good fat rosy careless man,

  Who has not laid a ducat by, decease —

  Let the lamp fall, no heir at hand to catch —

  Why, being childless, there’s a spilth i’ the street

  O’ the remnant, there’s a scramble for the dregs

  By the stranger: so, they grant him no longer day

  But come in a body, clamour to be paid.

  What’s his resource? He asks and straight obtains

  The customary largess, dole dealt out

  To what we call our “poor dear shame-faced ones,”

  In secret once a month to spare the shame

  O’ the slothful and the spendthrift, — pauper-saints

  The Pope puts meat i’ the mouth of, ravens they,

  And providence he — just what the mob admires!

  That is, instead of putting a prompt foot

  On selfish worthless human slugs whose slime

  Has failed to lubricate their path in life,

  Why, the Pope picks the first ripe fruit that falls

  And gracious puts it in the vermin’s way.

  Pietro could never save a dollar? Straight

  He must be subsidised at our expense:

  And for his wife — the harmless household sheep

  One ought not to see harassed in her age —

  Judge, by the way she bore adversity,

  O’ the patient nature you ask pity for!

  How long, now, would the roughest marketman,

  Handling the creatures huddled to the knife,

  Harass a mutton ere she made a mouth

  Or menaced biting? Yet the poor sheep here,

  Violante, the old innocent burgess-wife,

  In her first difficulty showed great teeth

  Fit to crunch up and swallow a good round crime.

  She meditates the tenure of the Trust,

  Fidei commissum is the lawyer-phrase,

  These funds that only want an heir to take —

  Goes o’er the gamut o’ the creditor’s cry

  By semitones from whine to snarl high up

  And growl down low, one scale in sundry keys, —

  Pauses with a little compunction for the face

  Of Pietro frustrate of its ancient cheer, —

  Never a bottle now for friend at need, —

  Comes to a stop on her own frittered lace

  And neighbourly condolences thereat,

  Then makes her mind up, sees the thing to do:

  And so, deliberately snaps house-book clasp,

  Posts off to vespers, missal beneath arm,

  Passes the proper San Lorenzo by,

  Dives down a little lane to the left, is lost

  In a labyrinth of dwellings best unnamed,

  Selects a certain blind one, black at base,

  Blinking at top, — the sign of we know what, —

  One candle in a casement set to wink

  Streetward, do service to no shrine inside, —

  Mounts thither by the filthy flight of stairs,

  Holding the cord by the wall, to the tip-top,

  Gropes for the door i’ the dark, ajar of course,

  Raps, opens, enters in: up starts a thing

  Naked as needs be — ”What, you rogue, ‘tis you?

  “Back, — how can I have taken a farthing yet?

  “Mercy on me, poor sinner that I am!

  “Here’s . . . why, I took you for Madonna’s self

  “With all that sudden swirl of silk i’ the place!

  “What may your pleasure be, my bonny dame?”

  Your Excellency supplies aught left obscure?

  One of those women that abound in Rome,

  Whose needs oblige them eke out one poor trade

  By another vile one: her o
stensible work

  Was washing clothes, out in the open air

  At the cistern by Citorio; but true trade —

  Whispering to idlers when they stopped and praised

  The ankles she let liberally shine

  In kneeling at the slab by the fountain-side,

  That there was plenty more to criticise

  At home, that eve, i’ the house where candle blinked

  Decorously above, and all was done

  I’ the holy fear of God and cheap beside.

  Violante, now, had seen this woman wash,

  Noticed and envied her propitious shape,

  Tracked her home to her house-top, noted too,

  And now was come to tempt her and propose

  A bargain far more shameful than the first

  Which trafficked her virginity away

  For a melon and three pauls at twelve years old.

  Five minutes’ talk with this poor child of Eve,

  Struck was the bargain, business at an end —

  “Then, six months hence, that person whom you trust,

  “Comes, fetches whatsoever babe it be;

  “I keep the price and secret, you the babe,

  “Paying beside for mass to make all straight:

  “Meantime, I pouch the earnest-money-piece.”

  Downstairs again goes fumbling by the rope

  Violante, triumphing in a flourish of fire

  From her own brain, self-lit by such success, —

  Gains church in time for the “Magnificat”

  And gives forth “My reproof is taken away,

  “And blessed shall mankind proclaim me now,”

  So that the officiating priest turns round

  To see who proffers the obstreperous praise:

  Then home to Pietro, the enraptured-much

  But puzzled-more when told the wondrous news —

  How orisons and works of charity,

  (Beside that pair of pinners and a coif,

  Birthday surprise last Wednesday was five weeks)

  Had borne fruit in the Autumn of his life, —

  They, or the Orvieto in a double dose.

  Anyhow, she must keep house next six months,

  Lie on the settle, avoid the three-legged stool,

  And, chiefly, not be crossed in wish or whim,

  And the result was like to be an heir.

  Accordingly, when time was come about,

  He found himself the sire indeed of this

  Francesca Vittoria Pompilia and the rest

  O’ the names whereby he sealed her his next day.

  A crime complete in its way is here, I hope?

  Lies to God, lies to man, every way lies

  To nature and civility and the mode:

  Flat robbery of the proper heirs thus foiled

  O’ the due succession, — and, what followed thence,

  Robbery of God, through the confessor’s ear