was not his doing; the
little dandiprat Spreti was the real man."

And this is not all. "Of course Rome must have its joke at the advocate
with the case that proved itself: but here is a piece of impertinence he
was not prepared for. The barefoot Augustinian, whose report of
Pompilia's dying words took all the freshness out of the best points of
his defence, has been preaching on the subject; and the sermon is flying
about Rome in print." Next follows an extract from it. The friar warns
his hearers not to trust to human powers of discovering the truth. "It
is not the long trial which has revealed Pompilia's innocence; God from
time to time puts forth His hand, and He has done so here. But earth is
not heaven, nor all truth intended to prevail. One dove returned to the
ark. How many were lost in the wave? One woman's purity has been rescued
from the world. 'How many chaste and noble sister-fames' have lacked
'the extricating hand?' And we must wait God's time for such truth as is
destined to appear. When Christians worshipped in the Catacomb, one man,
no worse than the rest, though no less foolish, will have pointed to its
mouth, and said, 'Obscene rites are practised in that darkness. The
devotees of an execrable creed skulk there out of sight.' Not till the
time was ripe, did lightning split the face of the rock, and lay bare a
nook--

"Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more:
And by it, in the due receptacle,
The little rude brown lamp of earthenware,
The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood,
The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left
_Pro Christo_." (vol. x. p. 265)

"And how does human law, in its 'inadequacy' and 'ineptitude' defend the
just? How has it attempted to clear Pompilia's fame? By submitting, as
its best resource, that wickedness was bred in her flesh and bone. For
himself he cannot judge, unless by the assurance of Christ, if he have
not lost much by renouncing the world: for he has lost love, and
knowledge, and perhaps the means of bringing goodness from its ideal
conception into the actual life of man. But the bubble, fame--worldly
praise and appreciation--he has done well to set these aside."

"And what is all this preaching," resumes Bottinius, "but a way of
courting fame? The inflation of it! and the spite! and the Molinism! As
its first pleasant consequence, Gomez, who had intended to appeal from
the absurd decision of the