-to judge. But these records tell him how
Stephen cursed Formosus; how Romanus and Theodore reinstated the
sanctity of Formosus and cursed Stephen; and how John reinstated Stephen
and cursed Formosus. They could not all be right. There is no guarantee
for infallibility--no test of justice--to be found here.

How, then, would he defend his condemnation of Guido if he himself were
now summoned to the judgment-seat? The question is self-answered: no
defence would be needed; for God sees into the heart. He appraises the
seed of act, which is its motive; not "leafage and branchage, vulgar
eyes admire." The Pope knows that his motives will stand the scrutiny of
God. How, finally, could he plead his cause with a man like himself:
with the man Antonio Pignatelli, his very self? He must, once for all,
marshal the facts, and let them plead for him.

Next follows the Pope's version of the story, which differs from those
preceding it, in being the summing up of a spiritual judge, who deals
not only with facts but with conditions, and who looks at the thing
done, in its special reference to the person who did it. As seen in this
light, the blacks of the picture are blacker, the whites, whiter, than
they appear from the ordinary point of view. Guido has been doubly
wicked because his birth, his breeding, and his connection with the
Church, had surrounded him with incitements to good, and with
opportunities for it. Pompilia is doubly virtuous because she is a mere
"chance-sown," "cleft-nurtured" human weed, owing all her goodness to
herself. With Guido, the bad end is secured by the worst means. Not
satisfied to murder his wife, he must use a jagged instrument with which
to torture her flesh. Not satisfied to torment her in the body, he must
imperil her soul by placing desperate temptation in her way. With
Pompilia the right virtue is always employed for the good end. She is
submissive where only her own life is at stake; brave, when a life
within her own calls on her for protection. Guido's accomplices: his
brothers, his mother, the four youths who helped him to kill his wife:
the Governor, and the Archbishop, who abetted his ill-treatment of her,
have alike sinned against their age, their character, or their
associations.

Caponsacchi has not been faultless. He has failed somewhat in the
dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the
oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade. But the more
d