m? Would it be good for her?
He passed two days in a ceaseless internal conflict, and then determined
to see her once more, but only to comfort and advise.

She stood again awaiting him at her window. Again she spoke, reproaching
him for the suspense she had undergone. Her manner dispelled all doubt,
and he did for her what she desired. The journey, which he describes in
detail, was to him one spontaneous and continued revelation of her
purity and truth. Then came the trial and his banishment. He was
compelled to leave her to the protection of the law; to the good offices
of the Court which confronts him now--of the men who, as he reminds
them, laughed in their sleeve at the young priest's escapade, and at the
transparent excuses with which he had taxed their credulity,--of the men
who, in consideration for his youth, merely sent him to disport himself
elsewhere, leaving the woman he had striven to protect, to the husband
who was to murder her.

The news which summons him from Civita Vecchia has fallen on him like a
thunderbolt. His being is shaken to its foundations. He strives to
contain himself in outward deference to the Court, but a storm of
suppressed sorrow and indignation rages beneath all his words: now
uttering itself in pitying tender reverence for Pompilia's memory; now
in scorn of those who would defame her; now in anger at himself, who is
casting suspicion on her innocence by the very passion with which he
defends it, now in defiance of those who choose to call the passion by
the vulgar name of love. He tears up the flimsy calumnies which have
been launched against her and himself; flinging them back in short,
contemptuous utterances in the teeth of whosoever may believe them; begs
his judges to forget his violence; and makes a last attempt to convince
himself and them that no selfish desire underlies it. Pompilia is
dying: he too is dead--to the world. What can she be to him but a
dream--a thinker's dream--of a life not consecrated to the Church, but
spent, as with her, in one constant domestic revelation of the eternal
goodness and truth--a dream from which he will pass content.... And here
the whole edifice of self-control and self-deception breaks down, and
the agonized heart sends forth its cry:--

"O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" (vol. ix. p. 166.)

The third speaker is POMPILIA. Her evidence is the story of her life. It
is given from her deathbed; and its half-dreamy reminiscences