Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 95
Forgotten in a month; or never, or now, revenge!
But a wound to the soul? That rankles worse and worse.
Shall I comfort you, explaining — ”Not this once
“But now it may be some five hundred times
“I called you ruffian, pandar, liar, and rogue:
“The injury must be less by lapse of time?”
The wrong is a wrong, one and immortal too,
And that you bore it those five hundred times,
Let it rankle unrevenged five hundred years,
Is just five hundred wrongs the more and worse!
Men, plagued this fashion, get to explode this way,
If left no other.
”But we left this man
“Many another way, and there’s his fault,”
‘Tis answered — ”He himself preferred our arm
“O’ the law to fight his battle with. No doubt
“We did not open him an armoury
“To pick and choose from, use, and then reject.
“He tries one weapon and fails, — he tries the next
“And next: he flourishes wit and common sense,
“They fail him, — he plies logic doughtily,
“It fails him too, — thereon, discovers last
“He has been blind to the combustibles —
“That all the while he is a-glow with ire,
“Boiling with irrepressible rage, and so
“May try explosives and discard cold steel, —
“So hire assassins, plot, plan, execute!
“Is this the honest self-forgetting rage
“We are called to pardon? Does the furious bull
“Pick out four helpmates from the grazing herd
“And journey with them over hill and dale
“Till he find his enemy?”
What rejoinder? save
That friends accept our bull-similitude.
Bull-like, — the indiscriminate slaughter, rude
And reckless aggravation of revenge,
Were all i’the way o’ the brute who never once
Ceases, amid all provocation more,
To bear in mind the first tormentor, first
Giver o’ the wound that goaded him to fight:
And, though a dozen follow and reinforce
The aggressor, wound in front and wound in flank,
Continues undisturbedly pursuit,
And only after prostrating his prize
Turns on the pettier, makes a general prey.
So Guido rushed against Violante, first
Author of all his wrongs, fons et origo
Malorum — increasingly drunk, — which justice done?
He finished with the rest. Do you blame a bull?
In truth you look as puzzled as ere I preached!
How is that? There are difficulties perhaps
On any supposition, and either side.
Each party wants too much, claims sympathy
For its object of compassion, more than just.
Cry the wife’s friends, “O the enormous crime
“Caused by no provocation in the world!”
“Was not the wife a little weak?” — inquire —
“Punished extravagantly, if you please,
“But meriting a little punishment?
“One treated inconsiderately, say,
“Rather than one deserving not at all
“Treatment and discipline o’ the harsher sort?”
No, they must have her purity itself,
Quite angel — and her parents angels too
Of an aged sort, immaculate, word and deed,
At all events, so seeming, till the fiend,
Even Guido, by his folly, forced from them
The untoward avowal of the trick o’ the birth,
Would otherwise be safe and secret now.
Why, here you have the awfulest of crimes
For nothing! Hell broke loose on a butterfly!
A dragon born of rose-dew and the moon!
Yet here is the monster! Why, he’s a mere man —
Born, bred, and brought up in the usual way.
His mother loves him, still his brothers stick
To the good fellow of the boyish games;
The Governor of his town knows and approves,
The Archbishop of the place knows and assists:
Here he has Cardinal This to vouch for the past,
Cardinal That to trust for the future, — match
And marriage were a Cardinal’s making, — in short,
What if a tragedy be acted here
Impossible for malice to improve,
And innocent Guido with his innocent four
Be added, all five, to the guilty three,
That we of these last days be edified
With one full taste o’ the justice of the world?
The long and the short is, truth is what I show: —
Undoubtedly no pains ought to be spared
To give the mob an inkling of our lights.
It seems unduly harsh to put the man
To the torture, as I hear the court intends,
Though readiest way of twisting out the truth;
He is noble, and he may be innocent:
On the other hand, if they exempt the man
(As it is also said they hesitate
On the fair ground, presumptive guilt is weak
I’ the case of nobility and privilege), —
What crime that ever was, ever will be,
Deserves the torture? Then abolish it!
You see the reduction ad absurdum, Sirs?
Her Excellency must pronounce, in fine!
What, she prefers going and joining play?
Her Highness finds it late, intends retire?
I am of their mind: only, all this talk, talked,
‘Twas not for nothing that we talked, I hope?
Both know as much about it, now, at least,
As all Rome: no particular thanks, I beg!
(You’ll see, I have not so advanced myself,
After my teaching the two idiots here!)
Count Guido Franceschini
THANKS, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of . . . why, ‘tis wine,
Velletri, — and not vinegar and gall,
So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!
Oh, but one sip’s enough! I want my head
To save my neck, there’s work awaits me still.
How cautious and considerate . . . aie, aie, aie,
Not your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart
An ordinary matter. Law is law.
Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,
From racking, but, since law thinks otherwise,
I have been put to the rack: all’s over now,
And neither wrist — what men style, out of joint:
If any harm be, ‘tis the shoulder-blade,
The left one, that seems wrong i’ the socket, — Sirs,
Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,
Being past my prime of life, and out of health.
In short I thank you, — yes, and mean the word.
Needs must the Court be slow to understand
How this quite novel form of taking pain,
This getting tortured merely in the flesh,
Amounts to almost an agreeable change
In my case, me fastidious, plied too much
With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)
To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,
And, in and out my heart, the play o’ the probe.
Four years have I been operated on
I’ the soul, do you see — its tense or tremulous part —
My self-respect, my care for a good name,
A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,
That looked up to my face when days were dim,
And fancied they found light there — no one spot,
Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.
That, and not this you now oblige me with,
That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!
The poor old noble House that drew the rags
O’ the Franceschini’s once superb array
Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by, —
Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out
And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!
Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence
Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,
The father I have some slight feeling for,
Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends
Then proud to cap and kiss the patron’s shoe,
Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,
Properly push his child to wall one day!
Mimic the tetchy humour, furtive glance
And brow where half was furious half fatigued,
O’ the same son got to be of middle age,
Sour, saturnine, — your humble servant here; —
When things go cross and the young wife, he finds
Take to the window at a whistle’s bid,
And yet demurs thereon, preposterous fool! —
Whereat the worthies judge he wants advice
And beg to civilly ask what’s evil here,
Perhaps remonstrate on the habit they deem
He’s given unduly to, of beating her
� Oh, sure he beats her — why says John so else,
Who is cousin to George who is sib to Tecla’s self
Who cooks the meal and combs the lady’s hair?
What? ‘Tis my wrist you merely dislocate
For the future when you mean me martyrdom?
— Let the old mother’s economy alone,
How the brocade-strips saved o’ the seamy side
O’ the wedding-gown buy raiment for a year?
— How she can dress and dish up — lordly dish
Fit for a duke, lamb’s head and purtenance —
With her proud hands, feast household so a week?
No word o’ the wine rejoicing God and man
The less when three-parts water? Then, I say,
A trifle of torture to the flesh, like yours,
While soul is spared such foretaste of hell-fire,
Is naught. But I curtail the catalogue
Through policy, — a rhetorician’s trick, —
Because I would reserve some choicer points
O’ the practice, more exactly parallel —
(Having an eye to climax) with what gift,
Eventual grace the Court may have in store
I’ the way of plague — my crown of punishments.
When I am hanged or headed, time enough
To prove the tenderness of only that,
Mere heading, hanging, — not their counterpart,
Not demonstration public and precise
That I, having married the mongrel of a drab,
Am bound to grant that mongrel-brat, my wife,
Her mother’s birthright-licence as is just, —
Let her sleep undisturbed, i’ the family style,
Her sleep out in the embraces of a priest,
Nor disallow their bastard as my heir!
Your sole mistake, — dare I submit so much
To the reverend Court? — has been in all this pains
To make a stone roll down hill, — rack and wrench
And rend a man to pieces, all for what?
Why — make him ope mouth in his own defence,
Show cause for what he has done, the irregular deed,
(Since that he did it, scarce dispute can be)
And clear his fame a little, beside the luck
Of stopping even yet, if possible,
Discomfort to his flesh from noose or axe —
For that, out come the implements of law!
May it content my lords the gracious Court
To listen only half so patient-long
As I will in that sense profusely speak,
And — fie, they shall not call in screws to help!
I killed Pompilia Franceschini, Sirs;
Killed too the Comparini, husband, wife,
Who called themselves, by a notorious lie,
Her father and her mother to ruin me.
There’s the irregular deed: you want no more
Than right interpretation of the same,
And truth so far — am I to understand?
To that then, with convenient speed, — because
Now I consider, — yes, despite my boast,
There is an ailing in this omoplat
May clip my speech all too abruptly close,
Whatever the good-will in me. Now for truth!
I’ the name of the indivisible Trinity!
Will my lords, in the plentitude of their light,
Weigh well that all this trouble has come on me
Through my persistent treading in the paths
Where I was trained to go, — wearing that yoke
My shoulder was predestined to receive,
Born to the hereditary stoop and crease?
Noble, I recognised my nobler still,
The church, my suzerain; no mock-mistress, she;
The secular owned the spiritual: mates of mine
Have thrown their careless hoofs up at her call
“Forsake the clover and come drag my wain!”
There they go cropping: I protruded nose
To halter, bent my back of docile beast,
And now am whealed, one wide wound all of me,
For being found at the eleventh hour o’ the day
Padding the mill-track, not neck-deep in grass:
— My one fault, I am stiffened by my work,
— My one reward, I help the Court to smile!
I am representative of a great line,
One of the first of the old families
In Arezzo, ancientest of Tuscan towns.
When my worst foe is fain to challenge this,
His worst exception runs — not first in rank
But second, noble in the next degree
Only; not malice ‘self maligns me more.
So, my lord opposite has composed, we know,
A marvel of a book, sustains the point
That Francis boasts the primacy ‘mid saints;
Yet not inaptly hath his argument
Obtained response from yon my other lord
In thesis published with the world’s applause
— Rather ‘tis Dominic such post befits:
Why, at the worst, Francis stays Francis still,
Second in rank to Dominic it may be,
Still, very saintly, very like our Lord;
And I at least descend from a Guido once
Homager to the Empire, nought below —
Of which account as proof that, none o’ the line
Having a single gift beyond brave blood,
Or able to do aught but give, give, give
In blood and brain, in house and land and cash,
Not get and garner as the vulgar may,
We become poor as Francis or our Lord.
Be that as it likes you, Sirs, — whenever it chanced
Myself grew capable anyway of remark,
(Which was soon — penury makes wit premature)
This struck me, I was poor who should be rich
Or pay that fault to the world which trifles not
When lineage lacks the flag yet lifts the pole:
Therefore I must make more forthwith, transfer
My stranded self, born fish with gill and fin
Fit for the deep sea, now le
ft bare-backed
In slush and sand, a show to crawlers vile
Reared of the low-tide and aright therein.
The enviable youth with the old name,
Wide chest, stout arms, sound brow and pricking veins,
A heartful of desire, man’s natural load,
A brainful of belief, the noble’s lot, —
All this life, cramped and gasping, high and dry
I’ the wave’s retreat, — the misery, good my lords,
Which made you merriment at Rome of late, —
It made me reason, rather — muse, demand
— Why our bare dropping palace, in the street
Where such-an-one whose grandfather sold tripe
Was adding to his purchased pile a fourth
Tall tower, could hardly show a turret sound?
Why Beatrice Countess, whose son I am,
Cowered in the winter-time as she spun flax,
Blew on the earthen basket of live ash.
Instead of jaunting forth in coach and six
Like such-another widow who ne’er was wed?
I asked my fellows, how came this about?
“Why, Jack, the suttler’s child, perhaps the camp’s,
“Went to the wars, fought sturdily, took a town
“And got rewarded as was natural.
“She of the coach and six — excuse me there!
“Why, don’t you know the story of her friend?
“A clown dressed vines on somebody’s estate,
“His boy recoiled from muck, liked Latin more,
“Stuck to his pen, and got to be a priest,
“Till one day . . . don’t you mind that telling tract
“Against Molinos, the old Cardinal wrote?
“He penned and dropped it in the patron’s desk
“Who, deep in thought and absent much of mind,
“Licensed the thing, allowed it for his own;
“Quick came promotion, — suum cuique, Count!
“Oh, he can pay for coach and six, be sure!”
“ — Well, let me go, do likewise: war’s the word —
“That way the Franceschini worked at first,
“I’ll take my turn, try soldiership.” — ”What, you?
“The eldest son and heir and prop o’ the house,
“So do you see your duty? Here’s your post,
“Hard by the hearth and altar. (Roam from roof,
“This youngster, play the gypsy out of doors,
“And who keeps kith and kin that fall on us?)
“Stand fast, stick tight, conserve your gods at home!”
“ — Well then, the quiet course, the contrary trade!
“We had a cousin amongst us once was Pope,
“And minor glories manifold. Try the Church,
“The tonsure, and, — since heresy’s but half-slain
“Even by the Cardinal’s tract he thought he wrote, —