Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  “I dare not jeopardise my life for them!”

  Religion and Law lean forward from their chairs,

  “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!” Ay,

  Not only applaud him that he scorned the world,

  But punish should he dare do otherwise.

  If the case be clear or turbid, — you must say!

  Thus, anyhow, it mounted to the stage

  In the law-courts, — let’s see clearly from this point! —

  Where the priest tells his story true or false,

  And the wife her story, and the husband his,

  All with result as happy as before.

  The courts would nor condemn nor yet acquit

  This, that, or the other, in so distinct a sense

  As end the strife to either’s absolute loss:

  Pronounced, in place of something definite,

  “Each of the parties, whether goat or sheep

  “I’ the main, has wool to show and hair to hide.

  “Each has brought somehow trouble, is somehow cause

  “Of pains enough, — even though no worse were proved.

  “Here is a husband, cannot rule his wife

  “Without provoking her to scream and scratch

  “And scour the fields, — causelessly, it may be:

  “Here is that wife, — who makes her sex our plague,

  “Wedlock, our bugbear, — perhaps with cause enough:

  “And here is the truant priest o’ the trio, worst

  “Or best — each quality being conceivable.

  “Let us impose a little mulct on each.

  “We punish youth in state of pupilage

  “Who talk at hours when youth is bound to sleep,

  “Whether the prattle turn upon Saint Rose

  “Or Donna Olimpia of the Vatican:

  “‘Tis talk, talked wisely or unwisely talked,

  “I’ the dormitory where to talk at all,

  “Transgresses, and is mulct: as here we mean.

  “For the wife, — let her betake herself, for rest,

  “After her run, to a House of Convertites —

  “Keep there, as good as real imprisonment:

  “Being sick and tired, she will recover so.

  “For the priest, spritely strayer out of bounds,

  “Who made Arezzo hot to hold him, — Rome

  “Profits by his withdrawal from the scene.

  “Let him be relegate to Civita,

  “Circumscribed by its bounds till matters mend:

  “There he at least lies out o’ the way of harm

  “From foes — perhaps from the too friendly fair.

  “And finally for the husband, whose rash rule

  “Has but itself to blame for this ado, —

  “If he be vexed that, in our judgments dealt,

  “He fails obtain what he accounts his right,

  “Let him go comforted with the thought, no less,

  “That, turn each sentence howsoever he may,

  “There’s satisfaction to extract therefrom.

  “For, does he wish his wife proved innocent?

  “Well, she’s not guilty, he may safely urge,

  “Has missed the stripes dishonest wives endure —

  “This being a fatherly pat o’ the cheek, no more.

  “Does he wish her guilty? Were she otherwise

  “Would she be locked up, set to say her prayers,

  “Prevented intercourse with the outside world,

  “And that suspected priest in banishment,

  “Whose portion is a further help i’ the case?

  “Oh, ay, you all of you want the other thing,

  “The extreme of law, some verdict neat, complete, —

  “Either, the whole o’ the dowry in your poke

  “With full release from the false wife, to boot,

  “And heading, hanging for the priest, beside —

  “Or, contrary, claim freedom for the wife,

  “Repayment of each penny paid her spouse

  “Amends for the past, release for the future! Such

  “Is wisdom to the children of this world;

  “But we’ve no mind, we children of the light,

  “To miss the advantage of the golden mean,

  “And push things to the steel point.” Thus the courts.

  Is it settled so far? Settled or disturbed,

  Console yourselves: ‘tis like . . . an instance, now!

  You’ve seen the puppets, of Place Navona, play, —

  Punch and his mate, — how threats pass, blows are dealt,

  And a crisis comes: the crowd or clap or hiss

  Accordingly as disposed for man or wife —

  When down the actors duck awhile perdue,

  Donning what novel rag-and-feather trim

  Best suits the next adventure, new effect:

  And, — by the time the mob is on the move,

  With something like a judgment pro and con, —

  There’s a whistle, up again the actors pop

  In t’other tatter with fresh-tinseled staves,

  To re-engage in one last worst fight more

  Shall show, what you thought tragedy was farce.

  Note, that the climax and the crown of things

  Invariably is, the devil appears himself,

  Armed and accoutred, horns and hoofs and tail!

  Just so, nor otherwise it proved — you’ll see:

  Move to the murder, never mind the rest!

  Guido, at such a general duck-down,

  I’ the breathing-space, — of wife to convent here,

  Priest to his relegation, and himself

  To Arezzo, — had resigned his part perforce

  To brother Abate, who bustled, did his best,

  Retrieved things somewhat, managed the three suits —

  Since, it should seem, there were three suits-at-law

  Behoved him look to, still, lest bad grow worse:

  First civil suit, — the one the parents brought,

  Impugning the legitimacy of his wife,

  Affirming thence the nullity of her rights:

  This was before the Rota, — Molines,

  That’s judge there, made that notable decree

  Which partly leaned to Guido, as I said, —

  But Pietro had appealed against the same

  To the very court will judge what we judge now —

  Tommati and his fellows, — Suit the first.

  Next civil suit, — demand on the wife’s part

  Of separation from the husband’s bed

  On plea of cruelty and risk to life —

  Claims restitution of the dowry paid,

  Immunity from paying any more:

  This second, the Vicegerent has to judge.

  Third and last suit, — this time, a criminal one, —

  Answer to, and protection from, both these, —

  Guido’s complaint of guilt against his wife

  In the Tribunal of the Governor,

  Venturini, also judge of the present cause.

  Three suits of all importance plaguing him,

  Beside a little private enterprise

  Of Guido’s, — essay at a shorter cut.

  For Paolo, knowing the right way at Rome,

  Had, even while superintending these three suits

  I’ the regular way, each at its proper court,

  Ingeniously made interest with the Pope

  To set such tedious regular forms aside,

  And, acting the supreme and ultimate judge,

  Declare for the husband and against the wife.

  Well, at such crisis and extreme of straits,

  The man at bay, buffeted in this wise,

  Happened the strangest accident of all.

  “Then,” sigh friends, “the last feather broke his back,

  “Made him forget all possible remedies

  “Save one — he rushed to, as the sole relief


  “From horror and the abominable thing.”

  “Or rather,” laugh foes, “then did there befall

  “The luckiest of conceivable events,

  “Most pregnant with impunity for him,

  “Which henceforth turned the flank of all attack,

  “And bade him do his wickedest and worst.”

  — The wife’s withdrawal from the Convertites,

  Visit to the villa where her parents lived,

  And birth there of his babe. Divergence here!

  I simply take the facts, ask what they show.

  First comes this thunderclap of a surprise:

  Then follow all the signs and silences

  Premonitory of earthquake. Paolo first

  Vanished, was swept off somewhere, lost to Rome:

  (Wells dry up, while the sky is sunny and blue.)

  Then Guido girds himself for enterprise,

  Hies to Vittiano, counsels with his steward,

  Comes to terms with four peasants young and bold,

  And starts for Rome the Holy, reaches her

  At very holiest, for ‘tis Christmas Eve,

  And makes straight for the Abate’s dried-up font,

  The lodge where Paolo ceased to work the pipes.

  And then, rest taken, observation made

  And plan completed, all in a grim week,

  The five proceed in a body, reach the place,

  — Pietro’s, by the Paolina, silent, lone,

  And stupefied by the propitious snow, —

  At one in the evening: knock: a voice “Who’s there?”

  “Friends with a letter from the priest your friend.”

  At the door, straight smiles old Violante’s self.

  She falls, — her son-in-law stabs through and through,

  Reaches thro’ her at Pietro — ”With your son

  “This is the way to settle suits, good sire!”

  He bellows “Mercy for heaven, not for earth!

  “Leave to confess and save my sinful soul,

  “Then do your pleasure on the body of me!”

  — ”Nay, father, soul with body must take its chance!”

  He presently got his portion and lay still.

  And last, Pompilia rushes here and there

  Like a dove among lightnings in her brake,

  Falls also: Guido’s, this last husband’s-act.

  He lifts her by the long dishevelled hair,

  Holds her away at arms’ length with one hand,

  While the other tries if life come from the mouth —

  Looks out his whole heart’s hate on the shut eyes,

  Draws a deep satisfied breath, “So — dead at last!”

  Throws down the burthen on dead Pietro’s knees,

  And ends all with “Let us away, my boys!”

  And, as they left by one door, in at the other

  Tumbled the neighbours — for the shrieks had pierced

  To the mill and the grange, this cottage and that shed.

  Soon followed the Public Force: pursuit began

  Though Guido had the start and chose the road:

  So, that same night was he, with the other four,

  Overtaken near Baccano, — where they sank

  By the way-side, in some shelter meant for beasts,

  And now lay heaped together, nuzzling swine,

  Each wrapped in bloody cloak, each grasping still

  His unwiped weapon, sleeping all the same

  The sleep o’ the just, — a journey of twenty miles

  Bringing just and unjust to a level, you see.

  The only one i’ the world that suffered aught

  By the whole night’s toil and trouble, flight and chase,

  Was just the officer who took them, Head

  O’ the Public Force, — Patrizj, zealous soul,

  Who, having duty to sustain the flesh,

  Got heated, caught a fever and so died:

  A warning to the over-vigilant,

  — Virtue in a chafe should change her linen quick,

  Lest pleurisy get start of providence.

  (That’s for the Cardinal, and told, I think!)

  Well, they bring back the company to Rome.

  Says Guido, “By your leave, I fain would ask

  “How you found out ‘twas I who did the deed?

  “What put you on my trace, a foreigner,

  “Supposed in Arezzo, — and assuredly safe

  “Except for an oversight: who told you, pray?”

  “Why, naturally your wife!” Down Guido drops

  O’ the horse he rode, — they have to steady and stay,

  At either side the brute that bore him, bound,

  So strange it seemed his wife should live and speak!

  She had prayed — at least so people tell you now —

  For but one thing to the Virgin for herself,

  Not simply, as did Pietro ‘mid the stabs, —

  Time to confess and get her own soul saved —

  But time to make the truth apparent, truth

  For God’s sake, lest men should believe a lie:

  Which seems to have been about the single prayer

  She ever put up, that was granted her.

  With this hope in her head, of telling truth, —

  Being familiarised with pain, beside, —

  She bore the stabbing to a certain pitch

  Without a useless cry, was flung for dead

  On Pietro’s lap, and so attained her point.

  Her friends subjoin this — have I done with them? —

  And cite the miracle of continued life

  (She was not dead when I arrived just now)

  As attestation to her probity.

  Does it strike your Excellency? Why, your Highness,

  The self-command and even the final prayer,

  Our candour must acknowledge explainable

  As easily by the consciousness of guilt.

  So, when they add that her confession runs

  She was of wifehood one white innocence

  In thought, word, act, from first of her short life

  To last of it; praying i’ the face of death,

  That God forgive her other sins — not this

  She is charged with and must die for, that she failed

  Anyway to her husband: while thereon

  Comments the old Religious — ”So much good,

  “Patience beneath enormity of ill,

  “I hear to my confusion, woe is me,

  “Sinner that I stand, shamed in the walk and gait

  “I have practised and grown old in, by a child!” —

  Guido’s friends shrug the shoulder, “Just this same

  “Prodigious absolute calm in the last hour

  “Confirms us, — being the natural result

  “Of a life which proves consistent to the close.

  “Having braved heaven and deceived earth throughout,

  “She braves still and deceives still, gains thereby

  “Two ends, she prizes beyond earth or heaven:

  “First sets her lover free, imperilled sore

  “By the new turn things take: he answers yet

  “For the part he played: they have summoned him indeed:

  “The past ripped up, he may be punished still:

  “What better way of saving him than this?

  “Then, — thus she dies revenged to the uttermost

  “On Guido, drags him with her in the dark,

  “The lower still the better, do you doubt?

  “Thus, two ways, does she love her love to the end,

  “And hate her hate, — death, hell is no such price

  “To pay for these, — lovers and haters hold.”

  But there’s another parry for the thrust.

  “Confession,” cry folks — ”a confession, think!

  “Confession of the moribund is true!”

  Which of them, my wise friends? This publi
c one,

  Or the private other we shall never know?

  The private may contain, — your casuists teach, —

  The acknowledgment of, and the penitence for,

  That other public one, so people say.

  However it be, — we trench on delicate ground,

  Her Eminence is peeping o’er the cards, —

  Can one find nothing in behalf of this

  Catastrophe? Deaf folks accuse the dumb!

  You criticise the drunken reel, fool’s-speech,

  Maniacal gesture of the man, — we grant!

  But who poured poison in his cup, we ask?

  Recall the list of his excessive wrongs,

  First cheated in his wife, robbed by her kin,

  Rendered anon the laughing-stock o’ the world

  By the story, true or false, of his wife’s birth, —

  The last seal publicly apposed to shame

  By the open flight of wife and priest, — why, Sirs,

  Step out of Rome a furlong, would you know

  What anotherguess tribunal than ours here.

  Mere worldly Court without the help of grace,

  Thinks of just that one incident o’ the flight?

  Guido preferred the same complaint before

  The court of Arezzo, bar of the Granduke, —

  In virtue of it being Tuscany

  Where the offence had rise and flight began, —

  Self-same complaint he made in the sequel here

  Where the offence grew to the full, the flight

  Ended: offence and flight, one fact judged twice

  By two distinct tribunals, — what result?

  There was a sentence passed at the same time

  By Arezzo and confirmed by the Granduke,

  Which nothing baulks of swift and sure effect

  But absence of the guilty (flight to Rome

  Frees them from Tuscan jurisdiction now)

  — Condemns the wife to the opprobrious doom

  Of all whom law just lets escape from death.

  The Stinche, House of Punishment, for life, —

  That’s what the wife deserves in Tuscany:

  Here, she deserves — remitting with a smile

  To her father’s house, main object of the flight!

  The thief presented with the thing he steals!

  At this discrepancy of judgments — mad,

  The man took on himself the office, judged;

  And the only argument against the use

  O’ the law he thus took into his own hands

  Is . . . what, I ask you? — that, revenging wrong,

  He did not revenge sooner, kill at first

  Whom he killed last! That is the final charge.

  Sooner? What’s soon or late i’ the case? — ask we.

  A wound i’ the flesh no doubt wants prompt redress;

  It smarts a little to-day, well in a week,