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A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) by Mrs. Sutherland Orr

M >> Mrs. Sutherland Orr >> A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)




From this moment, as she tells us, everything was transformed. For days,
for weeks, Caponsacchi's name had been ringing in her ears: in jealous
explosions on her husband's part; in corrupting advice on the part of
the waiting-woman who brought letters supposed to be sent to her by him;
in declarations of love which her first glance at his face told her he
could not have written. This, too, has all seemed a grotesquely painful
dream. But when she awoke on the April morning in that bounding of the
spirit towards an unknown joy, the name assumed a new meaning for her,
and she said, "Let Caponsacchi come."

She remembers little after that, but the enfolding tenderness which
secured the fulfilment of her hope. She describes nothing after the
"tap" at the door, which was the beginning of the end. She has attained
the crown of her woman's existence, and she can bear no resentment
towards him whose cruelty embittered, and whose vengeance has cut it
short. The motherly heart in her goes out to the wicked husband who was
also once a child, and strives to palliate what he has done. "He was
sinned against as well as sinning. Her poor parents were blind and
unjust in their mode of retaliating upon him. She was blind and foolish
in doing nothing to heal the breach. Her earthly goods have been a
snare to Guido; she herself was an importunate presence to him. By God's
grace he will be the better for having swept her from his path. She
thanks him for destroying in her that bodily life which was his to
pollute, and for leaving her soul free. Her infant shall have been born
of no earthly father. It is the child of its mother's love."

And this love for her child overflows in gratitude to him who saved her
for it--a gratitude which is also something more. She has recoiled from
the idea of being united to a priest by any bond of earthly affection;
but the knowledge is growing upon her that her bond to Caponsacchi _is_
love, though it assumes an ideal character in her innocence, her
ignorance, and the exaltation of feeling which denotes her approaching
death. She has recalled the incidents of her flight, but only to bear
witness to Caponsacchi's virtues: his watchful kindness, his chivalrous
courage, the unselfishness which could risk life and honour without
thought of reward, the priestly dignity which he never set aside. Her
last words contain an invocation to himself which has all the passion of
earthly tenderness, and all the solemnity of a prayer. She addresses him
as her soldier-saint--as the friend "her only, all her own," who is
closest to her now on her final journey; whose love shall sustain, whose
strong hand shall guide her, on the unknown path she is about to tread.
She thinks he would not marry if he could. True marriage is in heaven,
where there is no making of contracts, with gold on one side, power or
youth or beauty on the other, but one is "man and wife at once when the
true time is." Would either of them wish the past undone? Her soul says
"No."

"So, let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." (vol. ix. p. 241.)

We have now the written pleadings of two advocates who figure largely in
the records of the case; the one enlisted on the Count's side, the other
on Pompilia's They are

DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS (procurator of the poor)

JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS (fisc, or public prosecutor).

The subject of these pleadings is the possible justification of the
crime for which Count Franceschini is on trial, but not otherwise the
crime itself; for he has owned to its commission; and though the avowal
has been drawn from him by torture, it is justly accepted as decisive.
All the arguments for and against him hinge therefore on the evidence of
Pompilia's guilt or innocence as established by the previous enquiry;
and as we have seen, the _formal_ result of this enquiry was
unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the
subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de
Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's
outraged honour, and his natural if not legal right to avenge it.

Bottinius, on the other hand, does not admit that the husband's honour
has been attacked; but he defends the wife's conduct, more by
extenuating the acts of which she is accused, than by denying them. His
denials are generally parenthetic: and imply that the whether she did
certain things is much less important than the why and the how; and
though he professes to present her as a pearl of purity, he shows his
standard of female purity to be very low.

Mr. Browning might easily have composed a more genuine defence from the
known facts of the case; but he represents these quibblings and
counter-quibblings as equally beside the mark. The question of the
murderer's guilt was being judged on broader grounds; and the supposed
talkers on either side are aware of this. De Archangelis and Bottinius
both know that their cleverness will benefit no one but themselves, and
for this reason they are as much concerned to show how good a case they
can make out of a doubtful one, as to prove that their case is in itself
good. Each is thinking of his opponent, and how best to parry his
attack; and their arguments are relieved by a brisk exchange of
personalities, in which "de Archangelis" includes his subordinate
"Spreti"--"advocate of the poor"--whose learned contribution to this
paper warfare has probably aroused his jealousy.

Mr. Browning has also displayed the hollowness of the proceedings by
making "de Archangelis" the very opposite of his saturnine and
blood-thirsty client: the last person we could think of as in sympathy
with him. He is a coarse good-natured paterfamilias, whose ambitions are
all centred on an eight-year-old son, whose birthday it is; and his
defence of the murder is concocted under frequent interruptions, from
the thought of Cinuncino (little Giacinto, or Hyacinth), and the fried
liver and herbs which are to form part of his birthday feast. Bottinius
is a vain man, occupied only with himself, and regretting nothing so
much as that he may not display his rhetorical powers, by delivering his
speech instead of writing it.

Count Guido, with his accomplices, has been condemned to death. His
friends have appealed from the verdict, on the ground of his being,
though in a minor degree, a priest. The answer to this appeal rests with
the head of the Church. The next monologue is therefore that of

THE POPE. The reflections here imagined grow out of a double fact.
Innocent the Twelfth refused to shelter Count Franceschini with his
accomplices from the judgment of the law, and thus assumed the
responsibility of his death. He had reached an age at which so heavy a
responsibility could not be otherwise than painful. As Mr. Browning
depicts him, his decision is made. From dawn to dark he has been
studying the case, piecing together its fragmentary truths, trying its
merits with "true sweat of soul." There is no doubt in his mind that
Guido deserves to die. But he has to nerve himself afresh before he
gives the one stroke of his pen, the one touch to his bell, which shall
send this soul into eternity; and that is what we see him doing.

As he says to himself, he is weighed down by years. He lifts the cares
of the whole world on a "loaded branch" for which a bird's nest were a
"superfluous burthen." Yet this strong man cries to him for life: and he
alone has the power to grant it. How easy to reprieve! How hard to deny
to this trembling sinner the moment's respite which may save his soul.
He wants precedent for such a deed; and he seeks it in the records of
the Papacy. It is from the Popes his predecessors that he must learn how
to dare, to suffer, and--to judge. But these records tell him how
Stephen cursed Formosus; how Romanus and Theodore reinstated the
sanctity of Formosus and cursed Stephen; and how John reinstated Stephen
and cursed Formosus. They could not all be right. There is no guarantee
for infallibility--no test of justice--to be found here.

How, then, would he defend his condemnation of Guido if he himself were
now summoned to the judgment-seat? The question is self-answered: no
defence would be needed; for God sees into the heart. He appraises the
seed of act, which is its motive; not "leafage and branchage, vulgar
eyes admire." The Pope knows that his motives will stand the scrutiny of
God. How, finally, could he plead his cause with a man like himself:
with the man Antonio Pignatelli, his very self? He must, once for all,
marshal the facts, and let them plead for him.

Next follows the Pope's version of the story, which differs from those
preceding it, in being the summing up of a spiritual judge, who deals
not only with facts but with conditions, and who looks at the thing
done, in its special reference to the person who did it. As seen in this
light, the blacks of the picture are blacker, the whites, whiter, than
they appear from the ordinary point of view. Guido has been doubly
wicked because his birth, his breeding, and his connection with the
Church, had surrounded him with incitements to good, and with
opportunities for it. Pompilia is doubly virtuous because she is a mere
"chance-sown," "cleft-nurtured" human weed, owing all her goodness to
herself. With Guido, the bad end is secured by the worst means. Not
satisfied to murder his wife, he must use a jagged instrument with which
to torture her flesh. Not satisfied to torment her in the body, he must
imperil her soul by placing desperate temptation in her way. With
Pompilia the right virtue is always employed for the good end. She is
submissive where only her own life is at stake; brave, when a life
within her own calls on her for protection. Guido's accomplices: his
brothers, his mother, the four youths who helped him to kill his wife:
the Governor, and the Archbishop, who abetted his ill-treatment of her,
have alike sinned against their age, their character, or their
associations.

Caponsacchi has not been faultless. He has failed somewhat in the
dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the
oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade. But the more
disciplined soldier of the Church would have erred in the opposite
direction. The ear which listens only for the voice of authority becomes
obtuse to the cry of suffering. The spirit which only moves to command
becomes unfit for spontaneous work. Caponsacchi, standing aloof like a
man of pleasure, has proved himself the very champion of God, ready to
spring into the arena, at the first thud of the false knight's glove
upon the ground. He has shown himself possessed of the true courage
which does not shrink from temptation, and does not succumb to it. Such
transgressions as his reflect rather on the limits imposed than on the
impatience which transgressed them. He must submit to a slight
punishment. He must work--be unhappy--bear life. But he ranks next in
grace to Pompilia--the "rose" which the old Pope "gathers for the breast
of God." Of Count Guido's other victims, Pietro and Violante, the worst
that can be said is this: they have halted between good and evil; and,
as the way of the world is, suffered through both. The balance of
justice once more confirms the Pope's decree.

Yet at this very moment his will relaxes. A sudden dread is upon him--a
chill such as comes with the sudden clouding of a long clear sky. The
ordeal of a deeper and stranger doubt is yet to be faced. He has judged,
as he believed, by the light of Divine truth. Has he been mistaken?

Step by step he tests and reconstructs his belief, tracing it back to
its beginning. God, the Infinite, exists. Man, the atom, comprehends him
as the conditions of his intelligence permit, but so far truly. Man's
mind, like a convex glass, reflects him, in an image, smaller or less
small, adequate so far as it goes. As revealed in the order of nature,
God is perfect in intelligence and in power; but not so in love; and
there has come into the mouths and hearts of men, a tale and miracle of
Divine love which makes the evidence of his perfection complete. The
Pope believes that tale, whether true in itself, or like man's
conception of the infinite, true only for the human mind. He accepts its
enigmas as a test of faith: as a sign that life is meant for a training
and a passage: as a guarantee of our moral growth, and of the good which
evil may produce.

Christianity stands firm. And yet his heart misgives him; for it is not
justified by its results. It is not that the sceptical deny its value:
that those bent on earthly good reject it with open eyes. The surprise
and terror is this: that those who have found the pearl of price--who
have named and known it--will still grovel after the lower gain. Such
the Aretine bishop who sent Pompilia back to her tormentor; the friar
who refused to save her because he feared the world; the nuns who at
first testified to her purity, and were ready to prove her one of
dishonest life, when they learned that she possessed riches which by so
doing they might confiscate to themselves.

Nor is the fault in humanity at large: for love and faith have leapt
forth profusely in the olden time, at the summons of "unacknowledged,"
"uncommissioned" powers of good. Caponsacchi has shown that they do so
still. Before Paul had spoken and Felix heard, Euripides had pronounced
virtue the law of life, and, in his doctrine of hidden forces,
foreshadowed the one God. Euripides felt his way in the darkness. He,
the Pope, walking in the glare of noon, might ask support of him. Where
does the fault lie? It lies in the excess of certainty--in the too great
familiarity with the truth--in that encroachment of earthly natives on
the heavenly, which is begotten by the security of belief. Between night
and noonday there has been the dawn, with its searching illumination,
its thrill of faith, the rapture of self-sacrifice in which anchorite
and martyr foretasted the joys of heaven. Now Christianity is hard
because it has become too easy; because of the "ignoble confidence,"
which will enjoy this world and yet count upon the next: the "shallow
cowardice," which renders the old heroism impossible.

The Pope is discursive, as is the manner of his age; and his reflections
have been, hitherto, rather suggested by the case before him than
directly related to it. But he grasps it again in a burst of prophetic
insight which these very reflections have produced. Heroism has become
impossible,

"Unless ... what whispers me of times to come?
What if it be the mission of that age
My death will usher into life, to shake
This torpor of assurance from our creed?" (vol. x. p. 137.)

What if earthquake be about to try the towers which lions dare no longer
attack: if man be destined to live once more, in the new-born readiness
for death? Is the time at hand, when the new faith shall be broken up as
the old has been; when reported truth shall once more be compared with
the actual truth--the portrait of the Divine with its reality? Is not
perhaps the Molinist[28] himself thus striving after the higher light?

The Pope's fancy conjures up the vision of that coming time. He sees the
motley pageant of the Age of Reason pushing the churchly "masque" aside,
impatient of the slowly-trailing garments, in which he, the last actor
in it, is passing off the scene. He beholds the trials of that
transition stage; the many whose crumbling faith will land them on the
lower platform of the material life; the few, who from habit, will
preserve the Christian level; the fewer still, who, like Pompilia, will
do so in the inspired conviction of the truth. He sees two men, or
rather types of men, both priests, frankly making the new experiment,
and adopting nature as their law. Under her guidance, one, like
Caponsacchi acts, in the main, well; the other, like Guido Franceschini,
wallows in every crime.... The "first effects" of the "new cause" are
apparent in those murdering five, and in their victims.

But the old law is not yet extinct. He (the Church) still occupies the
stage, though his departure be close at hand: so, in a last act of
allegiance to Him who placed him there, he _smites with his whole
strength once more_,

"Ending, so far as man may, this offence." (vol. x. p. 141.)

Yet again his arm is stayed. Voices, whether of friend or foe, are
sounding in his ear. They reiterate the sophistries which have been
enlisted in the Count's defence: the credit of the Church, the
proprieties of the domestic hearth; the educated sense of honour which
is stronger than the moral law; the general relief which will greet the
act of mercy. The Pope listens. For one moment we may fancy that he
yields. "Pronounce then," the imaginary speakers have said. A swift
answer follows:

"I will, Sirs: but a voice other than your's
Quickens my spirit...." (vol. x. p. 146.)

and the death-warrant goes out.

A favourite theory of Mr. Browning's appears in this soliloquy, for the
first time since he stated it in "Sordello," and in a somewhat different
form: that of the inadequacy of words to convey the truth. The Pope
declares (p. 78) that we need

"Expect nor question nor reply
At what we figure as God's judgment-bar!
None of this vile way by the barren words
Which, more than any deed, characterize
Man as made subject to a curse."

and again (p. 79) that

"... these filthy rags of speech, this coil
Of statement, comment, query and response,
Tatters all too contaminate for use,
Have no renewing: He, the Truth, is, too,
The Word."

The scene changes to the prison-cell where Count Guido has received his
final sentence of death. Two former friends and fellow-Tuscans, Cardinal
Acciajuoli and Abate Panciatichi, have come to prepare him for
execution; but the one is listening awe-struck to the only kind of
confession which they can obtain from him, while the other plies his
beads in a desperate endeavour to exorcise the spiritual enemy, "ban"
the diabolical influences, it is conjuring up. The speaker is no longer
Count Guido Franceschini, but

GUIDO. He is indeed another man than he was in his first monologue, for
he has thrown off the mask. His tone is at first conciliatory, even
entreating: for his hearers are men of his own class, and he hopes to
persuade them to one more intercession in his behalf. But it changes to
one of scorn and defiance, as the hopelessness of his case lays hold of
him, and rises, at the end, to a climax of ferocity which is all but
grand.

"Repentance! if he repent for twelve hours, will he die the less on the
thirteenth? He has broken the social law, and is about to pay for it.
What has he to repent of but that he has made a mistake? Religion! who
of them all believes in it? Not the Pope himself; for religion enjoins
mercy; it is meant to temper the harshness of the law: and he destroys
the life which the law has given over to him to save. What man of them
all shows by his acts that he believes; or would be treated otherwise
than as a lunatic if he did? Let those who will, halt between belief and
unbelief. It has not been in him to do so. Give him the certainty of
another world, and he would have lived for it. Owning no such certainty,
he has lived for this one; he has sought its pleasures and avoided its
pains. Only he has carried the thing too far. The world has decreed
limits to every man's pleasure; it limits this for the good of all; and
it has made unlawful the excess of pleasure which turns to someone
else's pain. He has exceeded the lawful amount of pleasure, and he pays
for it by an extra dose of pain."

"There the matter ends. But his judges want more--a few edifying lies
wherewith to show that he did not die impenitent, and stop the mouth of
anyone who may hint, the day after the execution, that old men are too
fond of putting younger ones out of the way. They shall have his
confession; but it must be the truth."

"He killed his wife because he hated her; because, whether it were her
fault or not, she was a stumbling-block in his path. He had been
outraged by her aversion, exasperated by her patience, maddened by her
never putting herself in the wrong. While her parents were with her, she
resisted and clamoured, and then her presence could be endured; but they
were left alone together, and then everything was changed. Day by day,
and all day, he was confronted by her automatic obedience, by her dumb
despair. She rose up and lay down--she spoke or was silent at his
bidding; neither a loosened hair, nor a crumple in the dress, giving
token of resistance; he might have strangled her without her making a
sign. She eloped from him, yet he could not surprise her in the
commission of a sin: and he returned from his pursuit of her, ridiculous
when he should have been triumphant. He took his revenge at last. And
now that he might tell his story and find no one to controvert it--how
he came to claim his wife and child, and found no child, but the lover
by the wife's side; was attacked, defended himself, struck right and
left, and thus did the deed--she survives, by miracle, to confute him,
to condemn him, and worst of all, to forgive him."

"He has been ensnared by his opportunities from first to last. He failed
to save himself from retribution, only because he was drunk with the
sudden freedom from this hateful load. And Pompilia haunts him still.
Her stupid purity will freeze him even in death. It will rob him of his
hell--where the fiend in him would burn up in fiery rapture--where some
Lucrezia might meet him as his fitting bride--where the wolf-nature
frankly glutted would perhaps leave room for some return to human form.
For she cannot hate. It would grieve her to know him there; and--if
there be a hell--it will be barred to him in consideration for her."

"The Cardinal, the Abate, they too are petrifactions in their way! He
may rave another twelve hours, and it will be useless." Yet he makes one
more effort to move them. He reminds the Cardinal of the crimes he has
committed--of the help he will need when a new Pope is to be elected; of
the possible supporter who may then be in his grave. Then fiercely
turning on them both; "the Cardinal have a chance indeed, when there is
an Albano in the case! The Abate be alive a year hence, with that
burning hollow cheek and that hacking cough!--Well, _he_ will die bold
and honest as he has lived."

At this juncture he becomes aware that the fatal moment has arrived.
Steps and lights are on the stairs. The defiant spirit is quenched. "He
has laughed and mocked and said no word of all he had to say." In wild
terror he pleads for life--bare life. A final vindication of his wife's
goodness bursts from him in the words,

"Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God,--
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" (vol. x. p. 243.)

The concluding part of the work reverses the idea of the first, and is
entitled

THE BOOK AND THE RING. It completes the record of the Franceschini case,
and gives the concluding touches to the circle of evidence which now
assumes its final dramatic form. We have first an account of the
execution, conveyed in a gossiping letter from a Venetian gentleman on a
visit to Rome, and who reports it as the last news of the week, and the
occasion of his having lost a bet. The writer also discusses the Pope's
health, the relative merits of his present physician and a former one;
the relative chances of various candidates for the Papacy; and the
Pope's possible motives for setting aside "justice, prudence, and
esprit de corps," in the manner testified by his recent condemnation of
a man of rank. His political likes and dislikes are thrown into the
scale, but his predilection for the mob is considered to have turned it.
"He allows the people to question him when he takes his walks; and it is
said that some of them asked him, on the occasion of his last, whether
the privilege of murder was altogether reserved for noblemen." "The
Austrian ambassador had done his best to avert bloodshed, and pleaded
hard for the life of one whom, as he urged, he 'may have dined at table
with!' and felt so aggrieved by the Pope's answer, that he all but
refused to come to the execution, and would barely look at it when he
came." Various details follow, some of which my readers already know.

Mr. Browning next speaks of the three manuscript letters bound into the
original book; selects one of these, written by the Count's advocate, de
Archangelis, and gives it, first, in its actual contents, and next, in
an imaginary postscript which we are to think of as destined for the
recipient's private ear. The letter itself is written for the Count's
family and friends; and states, in a tone of solemn regret, that the
justifications brought forward by his correspondent arrived too late;
that the Pope thought it inexpedient to postpone the execution, or to
accept the plea of youth urged in favour of the four accomplices; and
that they all died that day. It declares that the Count suffered in an
exemplary manner, amidst the commiseration and respect of all Rome, and
that the honour of his house will lose nothing through the catastrophe.

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