Browning's Heroines Part 16

1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia.

2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her.

3. "Tertium Quid," neutral.

4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial.

5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), at the trial.

6. Pompilia, on her death-bed.

7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the defence.

8. The Public Prosecutor's speech.

9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him after the trial.

10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers before execution.

Only the speeches of the two lawyers are wholly tedious; the rest of the survey is absorbing. Not a point which can be urged on any side is omitted, as that side presents itself; yet in the event, as I have said, one overmastering effect stands forth--the utter loveliness and purity of Pompilia. "She is the heroine," says Mr. Arthur Symons,[126:1] "as neither Guido nor Caponsacchi can be called the hero. . . . With hardly [any] consciousness of herself, [she] makes and unmakes the lives and characters of those about her"; and in this way he compares her story with Pippa's: "the mere pa.s.sing of an innocent child."

And so, here, have we not indeed the victim? But though I spoke of weariness, I must take back the words; for here too we have indeed the beauty and the glory of suffering, and here the beauty and the glory of manhood. Guido, like all evil things, is Nothingness: he serves but to show forth what purity and love, in Pompilia, could be; what bravery and love, in Caponsacchi, the "warrior-priest," could do. This girl has not the Browning-mark of gaiety, but she has both the others--this "lady young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad," who answered without fear the call of the unborn life within her, and trusted without question "the appointed man."

The "pure crude fact," detailed by Browning, was found in the authentic legal doc.u.ments bound together in an old, square, yellow parchment-covered volume, picked up by him, "one day struck fierce 'mid many a day struck calm," on a stall in the Piazza San Lorenzo of Florence. He bought the pamphlet for eightpence, and it gave to him and us the great, unique achievement of this wonderful poem:

"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore, Prime nature with an added artistry."

Pompilia, called Comparini, was in reality "n.o.body's child." This, which at first sight may seem of minor importance to the issue, is actually at the heart of all; for, as I have said, it was the question of her dowry which set the entire drama in motion. The old Comparini couple, childless, of mediocre cla.s.s and fortunes, had through silly extravagance run into debt, and in 1679 were hard pressed by creditors.

They could not draw on their capital, for it was tied up in favour of the legal heir, an unknown cousin. But if they had a child, that disability would be removed. Violante Comparini, seeing this, resolved upon a plan. She bought beforehand for a small sum the expected baby of a disreputable woman, giving herself out to her husband, Pietro, and their friends as almost miraculously pregnant--for she was past fifty.

In due time she became the apparent mother of a girl, Pompilia. This girl was married at thirteen to Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished n.o.bleman, fifty years old, of Arezzo. He married her for her reported dowry, and she was sold to him for the sake of his rank.

Both parties to the bargain found themselves deceived (Pompilia was, of course, a mere chattel in the business), for there was no dowry, and Guido, though he _had_ the rank, had none of the appurtenances thereof which had dazzled the fancy of Violante. Pietro too was tricked, and the marriage carried through against his will. The old couple, reduced to dest.i.tution by extracted payment of a part of the dowry, were taken to the miserable Franceschini castle at Arezzo, and there lived wretchedly, in every sense, for a while; but soon fled back to Rome, leaving the girl-wife behind to aggravated woes. About three years afterwards she also fled, intending to rejoin the Comparini at Rome. She was about to become a mother. The organiser and companion of her flight was a young priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, who was a canon at Arezzo. Guido followed them, caught them at Castelnuovo, a village on the outskirts of Rome, and caused both to be arrested. They were confined in the "New Prisons"

at Rome, and tried for adultery. The result was a compromise--they were p.r.o.nounced guilty, but a merely nominal punishment ("the jocular piece of punishment," as the young priest called it) was inflicted on each.

Pompilia was relegated for a time to a convent; Caponsacchi was banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. As the time for Pompilia's confinement drew near, she was permitted to go to her reputed parents'

home, which was a villa just outside the walls of the city. A few months after her removal there, she became the mother of a son, whom the old people quickly removed to a place of concealment and safety. A fortnight later--on the second day of the New Year--Count Guido, with four hired a.s.sa.s.sins, came to the villa, and all three occupants were killed: Pietro and Violante Comparini, and Pompilia his wife. For these murders, Guido and his hirelings were hanged at Rome on February 22, 1698.

But now we must return upon our steps, if we would know "the truth of this."

When the old Comparini reached Rome, after their flight from Arezzo, the Pope had just proclaimed jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and absolution for any sin was to be had for the asking--atonement, however, necessarily preceding. Violante, remorseful for the sacrifice of their darling, and regarding the woe as retribution for her original lie about the birth, resolved to confess; but since absolution was granted only if atonement preceded it, she must be ready to restore to the rightful heir that which her pretended motherhood had taken from him. She therefore confessed to Pietro first, and he instantly seized the occasion for revenge on Guido, though that was not (or at any rate, according to the Other Half-Rome, may not have been) his only motive.

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

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-- Will she come back, with nothing changed at all?"

He repudiated Pompilia publicly, and with her, of course, all claims from her husband. Taken into Court, the case (also bound up in the square yellow book) was, after appeals and counter-appeals, left undecided.

It was this which loosed all Guido's fury on Pompilia. He had already learned to hate her for her shrinking from him; now, while he still controlled her person, and wreaked the vilest cruelties and basenesses upon it, he at the same time resolved to rid himself of her in any fas.h.i.+on whatsoever which should leave him still a legal claimant to the disputed dowry.[130:1] There was only one way thus to rid himself, and that was to prove her guilty of adultery. He concentrated on it. First, his brother, the young Canon Girolamo, who lived at the castle, was incited to pursue her with vile solicitations. She fled to the Archbishop of Arezzo and implored his succour. He gave none. Then she went to the Governor: he also "pushed her back." She sought out a poor friar, and confessed her "despair in G.o.d"; he promised to write to her parents for her, but afterwards flinched, and did nothing. . . . Guido's plan was nevertheless hanging fire; a supplementary system of persecution must be set up. She was hourly accused of "looking love-lures at theatre and church, in walk, at window"; but this, in the apathy which was descending on her, she baffled by "a new game of giving up the game."[131:1] She abandoned theatre, church, walk, and window; she "confounded him with her gentleness and worth," he "saw the same stone strength of white despair":

"How does it differ in aught, save degree, From the terrible patience of G.o.d?"

--and more and more he hated her.

But at last, at the theatre one night, Pompilia--

"Brought there I knew not why, but now know well"[131:2]

--saw, for the first time, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, "the young frank personable priest"[131:3]--and seeing him as rapt he gazed at her, felt

". . . Had there been a man like that, To lift me with his strength out of all strife Into the calm! . . .

Suppose that man had been instead of this?"

Caponsacchi had hitherto been very much "the courtly spiritual Cupid"

that Browning calls him. His family, the oldest in Arezzo and once the greatest, had wide interest in the Church, and he had always known that he was to be a priest. But when the time came for "just a vow to read!"

he stopped awestruck. Could he keep such a promise? He knew himself too weak. But the Bishop smiled. There were two ways of taking that vow, and a man like Caponsacchi, with "that superior gift of making madrigals,"

need not choose the harder one.

"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!"

He was good enough for _that_, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fas.h.i.+on rule"--a fribble and a c.o.xcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . .

After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the place, amused or no . . .

"When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself A lady young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad"

--and it was (he remembered) like seeing a burden carried to the Altar in his church one day, while he "got yawningly through Matin-Song." The burden was unpacked, and left--

"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked There was the Rafael!"

Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she turned,

"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"

and thought the thought that we have learned--for instinctively and surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that man":

". . . Silent, grave, Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."

Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day, Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze. _He_ would not signify, but there was Pompilia:

"Spare her, because he beats her as it is, She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."

It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse--he felt that he must leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him there was done with--the social successes, the intrigue, song-making; and his patron was already displeased. These things were what he was there to do, and he was going to church instead! "Are you turning Molinist?" the patron asked. "I answered quick" (says Caponsacchi in his narrative)

"Sir, what if I turned Christian?"