BOOK IX., JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS (FISCI ET REV. CAM.

APOSTOL. ADVOCATUS).--Bottinius is the Public Prosecutor, and has to present the case against the Count and his confederates. He is not a family man, and seems to have but a low ideal of feminine virtue. He admires the sex, but from a superior masculine standpoint; their weaknesses are amiable. Of girls he says--

"Know one, you know all Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she. And since all lambs are like in more than fleece, Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks----"

He mixes up references to the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, her Babe, Saint Anne and Herod; with whom he compares Pompilia, the Comparini family, and the Count; and all this with illustrations from the classics not greatly to the honour of women. The view of Bottinius, in short, is that of the bachelor man of the world, with no very lofty ideals about anything. His philosophy is summed up in his last words, "Still, it pays." He says he feels his strength inadequate to paint Pompilia; but we know this is a professional way of speaking, for he soon relapses into "melting wiles, deliciousest deceits"--very incongruous with our ideas of what Pompilia really was. No doubt, he thinks, there were some friskings, for which Guido naturally threatened the whip, and considers Guido to have been impatient. He supposes that Pompilia smiled upon everybody, till, when three years of married life had run their course, she smiled on Caponsacchi; and as he was a priest, and the court was more or less ecclesiastical, Bottinius makes light of the affair. He will grant that the lady somewhat plied "arts that allure," "the witchery of gesture," and the like. This was within the right of beauty, for the purpose of securing a champion. He will grant, for argument's sake, that she did write to Caponsacchi. What of it?--it was but to say her life was not worth an hour's purchase. It was not likely that Caponsacchi fell in love--he who might be Pope some day--yet the lady, being in such a case, was bound to offer him nothing short of love, as his great service was to save her. What was she to offer him--money? To escape death she might well have feigned love, and offered such a reward as the Idyl of Moschus makes Venus promise to any who should bring back lost Cupid. As it was wiser to choose a priest for the rescue of her life, if the cleric were young, handsome, and strong, so much the better, surely. Suppose it were true that Pompilia administered an opiate to her husband the night before she left him? Well, that was to protect him from rough usage if he aroused and interfered. This, says Bottinius, is how he would argue if the things which are but fables had been true: of course Guido never slept a wink, and Pompilia, equally of course, knew nothing about opiates. Then, when she started with her rescuer on the road to Rome, even granting what the suborned coachman said about the kissing which he saw--the one long embrace which constituted the journey--a sage and sisterly kiss were surely allowable, and this is probably what was exaggerated by the drowsy, tired driver. Then, when the pale creature, exhausted with the long journey, fainted at the inn, and Caponsacchi carried her to the chamber, what if he "stole a balmy breath, perhaps"? "why curb ardour here?" He could but pity her, and "pity is so near to love!" As Pompilia was asleep, she could neither know nor care. Were he to concede that Pompilia did write the incriminating letters, she, for self-protection, might deny she did so. "Would that I had never learned to write!" said one; Pompilia, splendidly mendacious, merely out-distanced him with, "To read or write I never learned at all!" Bottinius cannot resist a thrust or two at his "fat opponent's" love of good living; calls him "thou arch-angelic swine," and reminds him that he had not invited him to last night's birthday feast, when all sorts of good things were going. Turning to the action of Caponsacchi, he reminds the court that Archbishop and Governor, gentle and simple, did nothing to extricate Pompilia from her troubles; they all went their ways and left her to her fate; Caponsacchi alone, bursting through the impotent sympathy of Arezzo, caught Virtue up, and carried her off. He had not soiled her with the pitch alleged: the marks she bore were the evanescent black and blue of the necessary grasp. Then he must tell a tale how Peter, John, and Judas, being on a journey, were footsore and hungry; how they reached at night an inn for rest where there was but one room; for food but a solitary fowl, a wretched sparrow of a thing. Peter suggested they should all go to sleep till the fowl was ready, then he who had had the happiest dream should eat the entire fowl, as there was not enough for three; so each rested in his straw. When they awoke, John said he had dreamed he was the Lord's favourite disciple, and claimed the meal. Peter had dreamed he had the keys of heaven and hell, and thought the fowl must clearly be his. But Judas dreamed that he had descended from the chamber where they slept and had eaten the fowl. And so the traitor really had: he had left nothing but the drumstick and the merry-thought; and that is how the bone called merry-thought earned its name, to put us in mind that the best dream is to keep awake sometimes. So, said Bottinius, the great people of Arezzo never meant Innocence to starve while Authority sat at meat. They meant Pompilia to have something--in their dreams; they were willing to help her--in their sleep. Caponsacchi did wiser than dream or sleep: he brought a carriage, while the Archbishop and the Governor wondered what they could do. Then the Advocate bursts into a fit of admiration for the majesty and sanctity of the law, and what it would have done for Guido if only he had been content to wait. He comments on the penance which Pompilia had undergone; and though he cannot believe that Caponsacchi ever went near her when she left the convent, is inclined to ask, Suppose he did? Is it a matter for surprise that he would feel lonely at Civita, and pine a little for the feminine society to which he had been accustomed? And so he goes on denying all the accusations, but always adding, "And suppose it were otherwise?" He says, if he must speak his mind, it had been better that Pompilia had died upon the spot than lived to shame the law. Does he credit her story?--no! Did she lie?--still no! He explains it this way: She had made her confession at the point of death, and was absolved; it was only charity in her to spend her last breath by pretending utter innocence, and thus rehabilitate the character of Caponsacchi. Had she told the naked truth about him, it would have doubtless injured him, and she was not bound to do that; and as the Sacrament had obliterated the sin, she was justified in the course he believes she took.

NOTES.--Line 115, _The Urbinate_: Rafael. l. 116, _The Cortonese_: Luca da Cortona, Italian painter. l. 117, _Ciro Ferri_, Italian painter (1634-1689). l. 170, _Phryne_, a celebrated beauty of Athens. She was the mistress of Praxiteles, who made a statue of her, which was one of his greatest works, and was placed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. l. 226, _The Teian_: the Greek poet Anacreon was born at Teos, in Ionia. l. 284, _The Mantuan_ == Vergil. l. 394, _Commachian eels_ were anciently, and are still, very celebrated. l. 400, _Lernæan snake_, the famous hydra which Hercules slew. l. 530, _Idyllium Moschi_, the first Idyl of the Greek poet Moschus, entitled "Love a Runaway." l. 541, _Myrtilus_, the son of Mercury and Phæthusa: for his perfidy he was thrown into the sea, where he perished; _Amaryllis_, the name of a countryman mentioned by Theocritus and Vergil. l. 873, _Demodocus_, a musician at the court of Alcinous: the gods gave him the power of song, but denied him the blessing of sight. l. 875, "_foisted into that Eighth Odyssey_": see Pope's Homer's _Odyssey_,