ng cough!--Well, _he_ will die bold
and honest as he has lived."

At this juncture he becomes aware that the fatal moment has arrived.
Steps and lights are on the stairs. The defiant spirit is quenched. "He
has laughed and mocked and said no word of all he had to say." In wild
terror he pleads for life--bare life. A final vindication of his wife's
goodness bursts from him in the words,

"Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God,--
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" (vol. x. p. 243.)

The concluding part of the work reverses the idea of the first, and is
entitled

THE BOOK AND THE RING. It completes the record of the Franceschini case,
and gives the concluding touches to the circle of evidence which now
assumes its final dramatic form. We have first an account of the
execution, conveyed in a gossiping letter from a Venetian gentleman on a
visit to Rome, and who reports it as the last news of the week, and the
occasion of his having lost a bet. The writer also discusses the Pope's
health, the relative merits of his present physician and a former one;
the relative chances of various candidates for the Papacy; and the
Pope's possible motives for setting aside "justice, prudence, and
esprit de corps," in the manner testified by his recent condemnation of
a man of rank. His political likes and dislikes are thrown into the
scale, but his predilection for the mob is considered to have turned it.
"He allows the people to question him when he takes his walks; and it is
said that some of them asked him, on the occasion of his last, whether
the privilege of murder was altogether reserved for noblemen." "The
Austrian ambassador had done his best to avert bloodshed, and pleaded
hard for the life of one whom, as he urged, he 'may have dined at table
with!' and felt so aggrieved by the Pope's answer, that he all but
refused to come to the execution, and would barely look at it when he
came." Various details follow, some of which my readers already know.

Mr. Browning next speaks of the three manuscript letters bound into the
original book; selects one of these, written by the Count's advocate, de
Archangelis, and gives it, first, in its actual contents, and next, in
an imaginary postscript which we are to think of as destined for the
recipient's private ear. The letter itself is written for the Count's
family and friends; and states, in a tone of solemn regret, that the
justifications brought forward by his cor