“Count Guido, left alone with his nameless and penniless wife, still hopes for the best.  Pompilia is not guilty of her mock parents’ sins.  She has been honest enough to take part against them when writing to her brother-in-law in Rome.[26] He and she may still live in peace together.  But now the old story begins again—­that of the elderly husband and the young wife.  Canon Caponsacchi throws comfits at Pompilia in the theatre; brushes against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it.  He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, ‘What of that?’ The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed.  He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome.  He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together.  She brazens the matter out, covers her husband with invective, and threatens him with his own sword.  He gives both in charge, and follows them to Rome, where he seeks redress from the law.  But he does not obtain redress, though the couple’s guilt is made as clear as day by a packet of love letters which they had left behind them.  They swear that they did not write the letters, and the Court believes them.  ’They have done wrong, of course, but there is no proof of crime;’ and they are let off with a mere show of punishment.”

“The Count returns to Arezzo to find the whole story known, and himself the laughing-stock of everybody.  He is complimented on his patience under his wife’s attack—­congratulated on having come out of it with a whole skin.  He pushes his claim for a divorce on the obvious ground of infidelity! is met by a counter-claim on the ground of—­cruelty!  One exasperating circumstance fellows another.  At last he hears of the birth of a child, which will be falsely represented as his heir; and then the pent-up passion breaks forth, and in one great avenging wave it washes his name clear.”

“Yet he gives the guilty one a last chance.  He utters the name of Caponsacchi at her door.  If she regrets her offence, that name will bar it.  It proves a talisman at which the door flies open.  The Count and his assistants must be tried for form’s sake.  But if they are condemned, there is no justice left in Rome.  If he had taken his wife’s life at the moment of provocation, he would have been praised for the act.  But he called in the law to do what he was bound to do for himself; and the law has assessed his honour at what seemed to be his own price.  The vengeance, too long delayed, has been excessive in consequence.  It was clumsy into the bargain, since the Canon has escaped alive.  Well, if harm comes, husbands who are disposed to take the new way instead of the old will have had a lesson; and the Count has only himself to thank.”