hey must have a child; and
thus enable themselves to draw on their capital, now tied up for the
benefit of an unknown heir-at-law. The wife conceived this plan, and
also carried it out, without taking her husband into her confidence. She
secured beforehand the infant of a poor and not very reputable woman,
announced her expectation, half miraculous at her past fifty years, and
became, to all appearance, the mother of a girl, the Francesca Pompilia
of the story.

When Pompilia had reached the age of thirteen, there was also in Rome
Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished nobleman of Arezzo, and the
elder of three brothers, of whom the second, Abate Paolo, and the third,
Canon Girolamo also play some part in the story. Count Guido himself
belonged to the minor ranks of the priesthood, and had spent his best
years in seeking preferment in it. Preferment had not come, and the only
means of building up the family fortunes in his own person, was now a
moneyed wife. He was poor, fifty years old, and personally
unattractive. A contemporary chronicle describes him as short, thin, and
pale, and with a projecting nose. He had nothing to offer but his rank;
but in the case of a very obscure heiress, this might suffice, and such
a one seemed to present herself in Pompilia Comparini. He heard of her
at the local centre of gossip, the barber's shop; received an
exaggerated estimate of her dowry; and made proposals for her hand;
being supported in his suit by the Abate Paul. They did not, on their
side, understate the advantages of the connection. They are, indeed,
said to have given as their yearly income, a sum exceeding their
capital, and Violante was soon dazzled into consenting to it. Old Pietro
was more wary. He made inquiries as to the state of the Count's fortune,
and declined, under plea of his daughter's extreme youth, to think of
him as a son-in-law.

Violante pretended submission, secretly led Pompilia to a church, the
very church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where four years later the
murdered bodies of all three were to be displayed, and brought her back
as Count Guido's wife. Pietro could only accept the accomplished fact;
and he so far resigned himself to it, that he paid down an instalment of
his daughter's dowry, and made up the deficiency by transferring to the
newly-married couple all that he actually possessed. This left him no
choice but to live under their roof, and the four removed together to
the Franceschini