instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." (vol. ix. p. 241.)

We have now the written pleadings of two advocates who figure largely in
the records of the case; the one enlisted on the Count's side, the other
on Pompilia's They are

DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS (procurator of the poor)

JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS (fisc, or public prosecutor).

The subject of these pleadings is the possible justification of the
crime for which Count Franceschini is on trial, but not otherwise the
crime itself; for he has owned to its commission; and though the avowal
has been drawn from him by torture, it is justly accepted as decisive.
All the arguments for and against him hinge therefore on the evidence of
Pompilia's guilt or innocence as established by the previous enquiry;
and as we have seen, the _formal_ result of this enquiry was
unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the
subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de
Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's
outraged honour, and his natural if not legal right to avenge it.

Bottinius, on the other hand, does not admit that the husband's honour
has been attacked; but he defends the wife's conduct, more by
extenuating the acts of which she is accused, than by denying them. His
denials are generally parenthetic: and imply that the whether she did
certain things is much less important than the why and the how; and
though he professes to present her as a pearl of purity, he shows his
standard of female purity to be very low.

Mr. Browning might easily have composed a more genuine defence from the
known facts of the case; but he represents these quibblings and
counter-quibblings as equally beside the mark. The question of the
murderer's guilt was being judged on broader grounds; and the supposed
talkers on either side are aware of this. De Archangelis and Bottinius
both know that their cleverness will benefit no one but themselves, and
for this reason they are as much concerned to show how good a case they
can make out of a doubtful one, as to prove that their case is in itself
good. Each is thinking of his opponent, and how best to parry his
attack; and their arguments are relieved by a brisk exchange of
pe