an equivalent in her for an educated intelligence.  Her intuition is so keen that she sees through the false worldliness of Caponsacchi to the real man beneath, and her few words call it into goodness and honour for ever.  Her clear sense of truth sees all the threads of the net of villany in which she has been caught, and the only means to break through it, to reveal and bring it into condemnation.  Fortitude, courage, intuition and intelligence are all made to arise out of her natural saintliness and love.  She is always the immortal child.

For a time she has passed on earth through the realms of pain; and now, stabbed to her death, she looks back on the passage, and on all who have been kind and unkind to her—­on the whole of the falsehood and villany.  And the royal love in her nature is the master of the moment.  She makes excuses for Violante’s lie.  “She meant well, and she did, as I feel now, little harm.”  “I am right now, quite happy; dying has purified me of the evil which touched me, and I colour ugly things with my own peace and joy.  Every one that leaves life sees all things softened and bettered.”  As to her husband, she finds that she has little to forgive him at the last.  Step by step she goes over all he did, and even finds excuses for him, and, at the end, this is how she speaks, a noble utterance of serene love, lofty intelligence, of spiritual power and of the forgiveness of eternity.

    For that most woeful man my husband once,
    Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath,
    I—­pardon him?  So far as lies in me,
    I give him for his good the life he takes,
    Praying the world will therefore acquiesce. 
    Let him make God amends,—­none, none to me
    Who thank him rather that, whereas strange fate
    Mockingly styled him husband and me wife,
    Himself this way at least pronounced divorce,
    Blotted the marriage bond:  this blood of mine
    Flies forth exultingly at any door,
    Washes the parchment white, and thanks the blow
    We shall not meet in this world nor the next,
    But where will God be absent?  In His face
    Is light, but in His shadow healing too: 
    Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed! 
    And as my presence was importunate,—­
    My earthly good, temptation and a snare,—­
    Nothing about me but drew somehow down
    His hate upon me,—­somewhat so excused
    Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,—­
    May my evanishment for evermore
    Help further to relieve the heart that cast
    Such object of its natural loathing forth! 
    So he was made; he nowise made himself: 
    I could not love him, but his mother did. 
    His soul has never lain beside my soul: 
    But for the unresisting body,—­thanks! 
    He burned that garment spotted by the flesh. 
    Whatever he touched is rightly ruined:  plague
    It caught, and disinfection it had craved
    Still but for Guido; I am saved through him
    So as by fire; to him—­thanks and farewell!