, in the old family house. He is repaid with howls of
disappointment. Pietro and Violante want splendour and good-living. They
haven't married their daughter to a nobleman and gone to live in his
palace, to be duller than they were at home, and have less to eat and
drink. They abuse the mother, who won't give up her place in the
household, and try to sneer the young brother-priest out of his respect
for old-fashioned ways. They go back to Rome, trumpeting their wrongs:
and, once there, spring a mine upon the luckless Count. They refuse to
pay the remainder of Pompilia's dowry, on the ground that she is not
their child. Violante Comparini has cheated her husband into accepting a
base-born girl as his own, and a well-born gentleman into marrying her,
but was ready to have qualms of conscience as soon as it should be
convenient to tell the truth; and now the moment has come."

"Count Guido, left alone with his nameless and penniless wife, still
hopes for the best. Pompilia is not guilty of her mock parents' sins.
She has been honest enough to take part against them when writing to her
brother-in-law in Rome.[26] He and she may still live in peace together.
But now the old story begins again--that of the elderly husband and the
young wife. Canon Caponsacchi throws comfits at Pompilia in the theatre;
brushes against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under
her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks
up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count
is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox
prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a
drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and
everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to
Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the
night together. She brazens the matter out, covers her husband with
invective, and threatens him with his own sword. He gives both in
charge, and follows them to Rome, where he seeks redress from the law.
But he does not obtain redress, though the couple's guilt is made as
clear as day by a packet of love letters which they had left behind
them. They swear that they did not write the letters, and the Court
believes them. 'They have done wrong, of course, but there is no proof
of crime;' and they are let off with a mere show of punishment."

"The Count returns to Arezzo to find the