o counsel and to
comfort her--was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over
the terrace; she reproached him: why did he delay the help his heart
yearned to give? He answered with his fears for her, but she broke in,
never doubting him though he should doubt himself:

"'I know you: when is it that you will come?'"

"To-morrow at the day's dawn," he replied; and all was arranged--the
place, the time; she came, she did not speak, but glided into the
carriage, while he cried to the driver:

". . . 'By San Spirito,
To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!'"

When she was dying of Guido's twenty-two dagger-thrusts, this was how
Pompilia thought of that long flight:

"I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die:
'Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!'
Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand
Holding my hand across the world . . ."

And he, telling the judges of it at the murder-trial, cried that he
never could lie quiet in his grave unless he "mirrored them plain the
perfect soul Pompilia."

"You must know that a man gets drunk with truth
Stagnant inside him. Oh, they've killed her, Sirs!
Can I be calm?"

But he must be calm: he must show them that soul.

"The glory of life, the beauty of the world,
The splendour of heaven . . . well, Sirs, does no one move?
Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,
And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I" . . .

--for thus he flings defiance at them. Why do they not smile as they
smiled at the earlier adultery-trial, when they gave him "the jocular
piece of punishment," now that he stands before them "in this sudden
smoke from hell"?

"Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?"

For if they had but seen _then_ what Guido Franceschini was! If they
would but have been serious! Pompilia would not now be

"Gasping away the latest breath of all,
This minute, while I talk--not while you laugh?"

How can the end of this deed surprise them? Pompilia and he had shown
them what its beginning meant--but all in vain. He, the priest, had left
her to "law's watch and ward," and now she is dying--"there and thus she
lies!" Do they understand _now_ that he was not unworthy of Christ when
he tried to save her? His part is done--all that he had been able to do;
he wants no more with earth, except to "show Pompilia who was true"--

"The snow-white soul tha