died with the name of Jesus on his
lips. He wore the same clothes in which he had committed the crime: a
close-fitting garment (_juste-au-corps_) of grey cloth, a loose black
shirt (_camiciuola_), a goat's hair cloak, a white hat, and a cotton
cap.

The attempt made by him to defraud his accomplices, poor and helpless as
they were, has been accepted by Mr. Browning as an indication of
character which forbade any lenient interpretation of his previous acts.
Pompilia, on the other hand, is absolved, by all the circumstances of
her protracted death, from any doubt of her innocence which previous
evidence might have raised. Ten different persons attest, not only her
denial of any offence against her husband, but, what is of far more
value, her Christian gentleness, and absolute maiden modesty, under the
sufferings of her last days, and the medical treatment to which they
subjected her. Among the witnesses are a doctor of theology (Abate
Liberate Barberito), the apothecary and his assistant, and a number of
monks or priests; the first and most circumstantial deposition being
that of an Augustine, Fra Celestino Angelo di Sant' Anna, and
concluding with these words: "I do not say more, for fear of being taxed
with partiality. I know well that God alone can examine the heart. But I
know also that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; and
that my great St. Augustine says: 'As the life was, so is its end.'"

It needed all the evidence in Pompilia's favour to secure the full
punishment of her murderer, strengthened, as he was, by social and
ecclesiastical position, and by the acknowledged rights of marital
jealousy. We find curious proof of the sympathies which might have
prejudiced his wife's cause, in the marginal notes appended to her
depositions, and which repeatedly introduce them as lies.

"F. _Lie concerning the arrival at Castelnuovo._"

"H. _New lies to the effect that she did not receive the lover's
letters, and does not know how to write_," &c., &c.[25]

The significant question, "Whether and when a husband may kill his
unfaithful wife," was in the present case not thought to be finally
answered, till an appeal had been made from the ecclesiastical tribunal
to the Pope himself. It was Innocent XII. who virtually sentenced Count
Franceschini and his four accomplices to death.

When Mr. Browning wrote "The Ring and the Book," his mind was made up on
the merits of the Franceschini case; and the unity of p