Chapter 7

Chiappino is best understood by comparison with Luitolfo, his fellow-townsman and friend. Luitolfo has a gentle, genial nature; Chiappino, if we may judge him by his mood at the time of the action, an ill-conditioned one. Luitolfo's gentleness is allied to physical timidity, but his moral courage is always equal to the occasion. Chiappino is a man more of words than of deeds, and wants both the courage and the rectitude which ill-conditioned people often possess. Faenza is governed by a provost from Ravenna. The present provost is a tyrant; and Chiappino has been agitating in a somewhat purposeless manner against him. He has been fined for this several times, and is now sentenced to exile, and confiscation of all his goods.

Luitolfo has helped him until now by paying his fines; but this is an additional grievance to him, for he is in love with Eulalia, the woman whom his friend is going to marry, and declares that he has only refrained from urging his own suit, because he was bound by this pecuniary obligation not to do so. He is not too delicate, however, to depreciate Luitolfo's generosity, and generally run him down with the woman who is to be his wife; and this is what he is doing in the first scene, under cover of taking leave of her, and while her intended husband is interceding with the provost in his behalf. A hurried knock, which they recognise as Luitolfo's, gives a fresh impulse to his spite; and he begins sneering at the milk-and-watery manner in which Luitolfo has probably been pleading his cause, and the awful fright in which he has run home, on seeing that the provost "shrugged his shoulders" at the intercession.

Luitolfo _is_ frightened, for his friendship for Chiappino has been carrying him away; and on finding that entreaties were of no use, he has struck at the provost, and, as he thinks, killed him. A crowd which he imagines to be composed of the Provost's attendants has followed him from the palace. Torture stares him in the face; and his physical sensitiveness has the upper hand again. For a moment Chiappino becomes a hero; he is shamed into nobleness. He flings his own cloak over Luitolfo, gives him his passport, hurries him from the house, assumes his friend's blood-stained garment, and claims his deed. But he has scarcely done so when he perceives their mistake. Luitolfo's fears have distorted a friendly crowd into a hostile one; and the throng which Chiappino has nerved himself to defy is the populace of Faenza applauding him as its saviour. He postpones the duty of undeceiving it under pretence of the danger being not yet over. The next step will be to refuse to do so. His moral collapse, the "tragedy" of his "soul," has begun.

In the second act, a month later, this is complete. The papal legate, Ogniben, has ridden on his mule in to Faenza to find out what was wanted. "He has not come to punish; there is no harm done: for the provost was not killed after all. He has known twenty-three leaders of revolts," and therefore, so we understand, is not disposed to take such persons too seriously. He has made friends with Chiappino, accepting him in this character, and lured him on with the hope of becoming provost himself; and Chiappino again rising--or falling--to the situation, has discovered patriotic reasons for accepting the post. He has outgrown his love, as well as modified his ideas of civic duty; and he disposes of the obligations of friendship, by declaring (to Eulalia) that the blow imputed to him was virtually his, because Luitolfo would fain have avoided striking it, while he would have struck it if he could. The legate draws him out in a humorous dialogue; satirizes his flimsy sophistries under cover of endorsing them, and leads him up to a final self-exposure.

This occurs when he reminds Chiappino in the hearing of the crowd of the private agreement they have come to: that he is to have the title and privileges of Provost on the one hand, and pay implicit obedience to Rome, in the person of her legate, on the other; but with the now added condition, that if the actual assailant of the late provost is discovered, he shall be dealt with as he deserves. At which new view of the situation Chiappino is silent; and Luitolfo, who had missed all the reward of his deed, characteristically comes forward to receive its punishment. The legate orders him to his own house; advises Chiappino, with a little more joking at his expense, to leave the town for a short time; takes possession of the key of the provost's palace, to which he does _not_ intend to give a new inmate; bids a cheery goodbye to every one, and rides away as he came. He has

"known _four_ and twenty leaders of revolts." (vol. iii. p. 302.)

The tragedy of "LURIA" is supposed to be enacted at some period of the fifteenth century; being an episode in the historical struggle between Florence and Pisa. It occupies one day; and the five acts correspond respectively to its "Morning," "Noon," "Afternoon," "Evening," and "Night." The day is that of a long-expected encounter which is to end the war. The Florentine troops are commanded by the Moorish mercenary Luria. He is encamped between the two cities; and with, or near him, are his Moorish friend and confidant Husain; Puccio--the officer whom he has superseded; Braccio--Commissary of the Republic; his secretary Jacopo, or Lapo; and a noble Florentine lady, Domizia.

Luria is a consummate general, a brave fighter, and a humane man. Every soldier of the army is devoted to him, and the triumph of the Republic seems secured. But the men who trust him to win the victory cannot trust him not to misuse it. They are afraid that his strength will be turned against themselves so soon as it has disposed of their foreign foe: and Braccio is on the spot, in order to watch his movements, to register every deed that can give the slightest hold for an accusation--in short, to supply the Signoria with the materials for a trial, which is proceeding step by step with Luria's successful campaign, and is to crush him the moment this is completed. Everyone but Husain is more or less his enemy. For Lapo is almost blindly devoted to his chief. Puccio is jealous of the stranger for whom he has been set aside. Domizia is making him an instrument of revenge. Her brothers have been faithful as he is, and condemned as he is to be. They accepted their sentence because it was the mother-city who passed it. She encourages Luria to encounter the same ingratitude, because she believes he will resist and punish it.

He is not unwarned of his danger. The Pisan general, Tiburzio, has discovered the conspiracy against him, and brings him, shortly before the battle, an intercepted letter from Braccio to the Signoria, in which he is convinced that he may read his fate. He urges him to open it; to desert the perfidious city, and to adopt Pisa's cause. But Luria's loyalty is unshaken. He tears up the letter in the presence of Braccio, Puccio, and Domizia: and only when the battle has been fought and won demands the secret of its contents. At the word "trial" he is carried away by a momentary indignation; but this subsides into a tender regret that "his Florentines" should have so misjudged him; that he should have given them cause to do it. He has laboured for their city, not only with the obedience of a son, but with the devotion of a lover. His Eastern fancy has been enslaved by her art, her intellect: by the life of educated thought which so far removed her from the blind unrest, and the animal strength of his savage world; Domizia's attractions have added to the spell. He has never guarded his love for Florence against doubt, for he never dreamed that it could be doubted. He cannot find it in his heart to chastise her now.

Temptation besets him on every side; for the armies of both Florence and Pisa are at his command. Husain and Domizia urge him on to revenge. Tiburzio entreats him to give to Pisa the head with which Florence will only decorate a gateway. Him he thanks and dismisses. To the others he prepares his answer. Alone for the last time; with eyes fixed on the setting sun--his "own orb" so much nearer to him in his Eastern home, and which will shine for him there no more--he drains a phial of poison: the one thing he has brought from his own land to help him in the possible adversity. Death was to be his refuge in defeat. He will die on his triumph-day instead.

They all gather round him once more: Puccio grateful and devoted; for he has seen that though discredited by Florence, Luria was still working for her success--Tiburzio, who returns from Florence, where he has tendered his submission to Luria's arms, and borne his heartfelt testimony to Luria's honour--Domizia, who has learned from Luria that there are nobler things than retaliation: and now entreats him to forego his vengeance against her city, as she foregoes her own--Braccio, repentant for the wrong done, and beseeching that Luria will not "punish Florence." But they cannot avert the one punishment which that gentle spirit could inflict. He lies dead before them.

"IN A BALCONY" is a dramatic fragment, equivalent to the third or fourth act, of what might prove a tragedy or a drama, as the author designed. The personages are "Norbert" and "Constance," a young man and woman; and the "Queen," a woman of a certain age. Constance is a relation and protégée of the Queen--as we imagine, a poor one. She is loved by Norbert; and he has entered the Queen's service, for the opportunity of wooing and winning her. His diplomatic exertions have been strenuous. They have secured to his royal mistress the possession of a double crown. The "Balcony" echoes with the sound of festivities which are intended to mark the event.

Constance returns Norbert's affection. He thinks the moment come for pleading his and her cause with their sovereign. But Constance entreats him to temporize: either to defer the proposal for her hand, or to make it in so indirect a manner, that the Queen may only see in it a tribute to herself. He has allowed her to think that he served her for her own sake; she must not be undeceived too roughly. Her heart has starved amidst the show of devotion: its hunger must not be roused by the touch of a living love in which she has no part. A shock of this kind would be painful to her--dangerous to themselves.

Norbert is an honest man, possessed of all the courage of his love: and he finds it hard to believe that the straightforward course would not be the best; but he yields to the dictates of feminine wisdom; and having consented to play a part, plays it with fatal success. The Queen is a more unselfish woman than her young cousin suspects. She has guessed Norbert's love for Constance, and is prepared to sanction it; but her own nature is still only too capable of responding to the faintest touch of affection: and at the seeming declaration that that love is her's, her joy carries all before it. She is married; but as she declares she will dissolve her marriage, merely formal as it has always been; she will cast convention to the winds, and become Norbert's wife. She opens her heart to Constance; tells her how she has yearned for love, and how she will repay it. Constance knows, as she never knew, what a mystery of pain and passion has been that outwardly frozen life; and in a sudden impulse of pity and compunction, she determines that if possible its new happiness shall be permanent--its delusions converted into truth.

She meets Norbert again; makes him talk of his future; discovers that he only dreams of it as bound up with the political career he has already entered upon; and though she sees that every vision of this future begins and ends in her, she sees, as justly, that its making or marring is in the Queen's hands. Here is a second motive for self-sacrifice. Norbert has no suspicion of what he has done. The Queen appears before Constance has had time to inform him of it; and the latter has now no choice but to let him learn it from the Queen's own lips. She draws her on, accordingly, under plea of Norbert's diffidence, to speak of what she believes him to have asked of her, and what she knows to be already granted. She tries to prompt his reply.

But Norbert will not be prompted. He is slow to understand what is expected of him, very indignant when he does so; and in terror lest he should still be misunderstood--in unconsciousness of the torture he is inflicting--he asserts and re-asserts his respect for the one woman, his absorbing passion for the other. The Queen goes out. Her looks and silence have been ominous. The shadow of a great dread falls upon the scene. The dance-music stops. Heavy footsteps are heard approaching. Norbert and Constance stand awaiting their doom. But they are united as they have never yet been, and they can defy it; for her love has shown itself as capable of all sacrifice--his as above temptation.

Various theories have been formed as to the kind of woman Mr. Browning meant Constance to be; but a careful and unbiassed reading of the poem can leave no doubt on the subject. He has given her, not the courage of an exclusively moral nature, but all the self-denial of a devoted one, growing with the demands which are made upon it. How single-hearted is her attempt to sacrifice Norbert's love, is sufficiently shown by one sentence, addressed to him after his interview with the Queen:

"You were mine. Now I give myself to you." (vol. vii. p. 28.)

"THE RING AND THE BOOK." 1868-69.

From the dramas, we pass naturally to the dramatic monologues; poems embodying a lengthened argument or soliloquy, and to which there is already an approach in the tragedies themselves. The dramatic monologue repeats itself in the finest poems of the "Men and Women," and "Dramatis Personæ;" and Mr. Browning's constructive power thus remains, as it were, diffused, till it culminates again in "The Ring and the Book:" at once his greatest constructive achievement, and the triumph of the monologue form. From this time onwards, the monologue will be his prevailing mode of expression, but each will often form an independent work. "The Ring and the Book" is thus our next object of interest.

Mr. Browning was strolling one day through a square in Florence, the Piazza San Lorenzo, which is a standing market for old clothes, old furniture, and old curiosities of every kind, when a parchment-covered book attracted his eye, from amidst the artistic or nondescript rubbish of one of the stalls. It was the record of a murder which had taken place in Rome, and bore inside it an inscription which Mr. Browning thus transcribes:--

"... A Roman murder-case: Position of the entire criminal cause Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman, With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay, Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, At Rome on February Twenty-Two, Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight: Wherein it is disputed if, and when, Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape The customary forfeit." (vol. viii. p. 6.)

The book proved, on examination, to contain the whole history of the case, as carried on in writing, after the fashion of those days: pleadings and counter-pleadings, the depositions of defendants and witnesses; manuscript letters announcing the execution of the murderer; and the "instrument of the Definitive Sentence" which established the perfect innocence of the murdered wife: these various documents having been collected and bound together by some person interested in the trial, possibly the very Cencini, friend of the Franceschini family, to whom the manuscript letters are addressed. Mr. Browning bought the whole for the value of eightpence, and it became the raw material of what appeared four years later as "The Ring and the Book."

This name is explained as follows:--The story of the Franceschini case, as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle of evidence to its one central truth; and this circle was constructed in the manner in which the worker in Etruscan gold prepares the ornamental circlet which will be worn as a ring. The pure metal is too soft to bear hammer or file; it must be mixed with alloy to gain the necessary power of resistance. The ring once formed and embossed, the alloy is disengaged, and a pure gold ornament remains. Mr. Browning's material was also inadequate to his purpose, though from a different cause. It was too _hard_. It was "pure crude fact," secreted from the fluid being of the men and women whose experience it had formed. In its existing state it would have broken up under the artistic attempt to weld and round it. He supplied an alloy, the alloy of fancy, or--as he also calls it--of one fact more: this fact being the echo of those past existences awakened within his own. He breathed into the dead record the breath of his own life; and when his ring of evidence had re-formed, first in elastic then in solid strength, here delicately incised, there broadly stamped with human thought and passion, he could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognize in what he set before them unadulterated human truth.

All this was not effected at once. The separate scenes of the Franceschini tragedy sprang to life in Mr. Browning's imagination within a few hours of his reading the book. He saw them re-enacted from his terrace at Casa Guidi on a sultry summer night--every place and person projected, as it seemed, against the thundery sky--but his mind did not yet weave them into a whole. The drama lay by him and in him till the unconscious inspiration was complete; and then, one day in London, he felt what he thus describes:--

"A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair, Letting me have my will again with these...." (vol. viii. p. 32.)

and "The Ring and the Book" was born. All this is told in an introductory chapter, which bears the title of the whole work; and here also Mr. Browning reviews those broad facts of the Franceschini case which are beyond dispute, and which constitute, so far as they go, the crude metal of his ring. He has worked into this almost every incident which the chronicle supplies and his book requires no supplement. But the fragmentary view of its contents, which I am reduced to giving, can only be held together by a previous outline of the story.

There lived in Rome in 1679 Pietro and Violante Comparini, an elderly couple of the middle class, fond of show and good living, and who in spite of a fair income had run considerably into debt. They were, indeed at the period in question, in receipt of a papal bounty, employed in the relief of the needy who did not like to beg. Creditors were pressing, and only one expedient suggested itself: they must have a child; and thus enable themselves to draw on their capital, now tied up for the benefit of an unknown heir-at-law. The wife conceived this plan, and also carried it out, without taking her husband into her confidence. She secured beforehand the infant of a poor and not very reputable woman, announced her expectation, half miraculous at her past fifty years, and became, to all appearance, the mother of a girl, the Francesca Pompilia of the story.

When Pompilia had reached the age of thirteen, there was also in Rome Count Guido Franceschini, an impoverished nobleman of Arezzo, and the elder of three brothers, of whom the second, Abate Paolo, and the third, Canon Girolamo also play some part in the story. Count Guido himself belonged to the minor ranks of the priesthood, and had spent his best years in seeking preferment in it. Preferment had not come, and the only means of building up the family fortunes in his own person, was now a moneyed wife. He was poor, fifty years old, and personally unattractive. A contemporary chronicle describes him as short, thin, and pale, and with a projecting nose. He had nothing to offer but his rank; but in the case of a very obscure heiress, this might suffice, and such a one seemed to present herself in Pompilia Comparini. He heard of her at the local centre of gossip, the barber's shop; received an exaggerated estimate of her dowry; and made proposals for her hand; being supported in his suit by the Abate Paul. They did not, on their side, understate the advantages of the connection. They are, indeed, said to have given as their yearly income, a sum exceeding their capital, and Violante was soon dazzled into consenting to it. Old Pietro was more wary. He made inquiries as to the state of the Count's fortune, and declined, under plea of his daughter's extreme youth, to think of him as a son-in-law.

Violante pretended submission, secretly led Pompilia to a church, the very church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where four years later the murdered bodies of all three were to be displayed, and brought her back as Count Guido's wife. Pietro could only accept the accomplished fact; and he so far resigned himself to it, that he paid down an instalment of his daughter's dowry, and made up the deficiency by transferring to the newly-married couple all that he actually possessed. This left him no choice but to live under their roof, and the four removed together to the Franceschini abode at Arezzo. The arrangement proved disastrous; and at the end of a few months Pietro and Violante were glad to return to Rome, though with empty pockets, and on money lent them for the journey by their son-in-law.

We have conflicting testimony as to the cause of this rupture. The Governor of Arezzo, writing to the Abate Paul in Rome, lays all the blame of it on the Comparini, whom he taxes with vulgar and aggressive behaviour; and Mr. Browning readily admits that at the beginning there may have been faults on their side. But popular judgment, as well as the balance of evidence, were in favour of the opposite view; and curious details are given by Pompilia and by a servant of the family, a sworn witness on Pompilia's trial, of the petty cruelties and privations to which both parents and child were subjected.

So much, at all events, was clear; Violante's sin had overtaken her; and it now occurred to her, apparently for the first time, to cast off its burden by confession. The moment was propitious, for the Pope had proclaimed a jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and absolution was to be had for the asking. But the Church in this case made conditions. Absolution must be preceded by atonement. Violante must restore to her legal heirs that of which her pretended motherhood had defrauded them. The first step towards this was to reveal the fraud to her husband; and Pietro lost no time in making use of the revelation. He repudiated Pompilia, and with her all claims on her husband's part. The case was carried into court. The Court decreed a compromise. Pietro appealed from the decree, and the question remained unsettled.

The chief sufferer by these proceedings was Pompilia herself. She already had reason to dread her husband as a tyrant--he to dislike her as a victim; and his discovery of her base birth, with the threatened loss of the greater part of her dowry, could only result, with such a man, in increased aversion towards her. From this moment his one aim seems to have been to get rid of his wife, but in such a manner as not to forfeit any pecuniary advantage he might still derive from their union. This could only be done by convicting her of infielity; and he attacked her so furiously, and so persistently, on the subject of a certain Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi, whom she barely knew, but whose attentions he declared her to have challenged, that at last she fled from Arezzo, with this very man.