Paternity, however, is a condition with which his hearers may be supposed to sympathize; and he is absolutely eloquent, when he describes the desire he has cherished for a son, and the burning pain which filled him when he knew that it had been defrauded.  He tells the story of his wife’s intrigue and flight, much as the opinion of Half-Rome has reflected it; but he laces the question of his child’s legitimacy in such a manner as to extract an equal advantage from either view.  In either case it was Pompilia’s crowning iniquity that she gave birth to a child, and placed it beyond his reach; and in either case it was the outraged paternal feeling which inspired his act.

The whole monologue is leavened by a spirit of mock deference for religion, for the Church, and for the law which represents the Church.  Count Guido is led in from the torture, a mass of mock-patient suffering:  wincing as he speaks, but quite in spite of himself—­grateful that his pains are not worse—­begging his judges not to be too much concerned about him; “since, thanks to his age and shaken health, a fainting fit soon came to his relief—­indeed, torture itself is a kind of relief from the moral agonies he has undergone.”  He reminds his judges that the Church was his only mistress for thirty years.  He would have served her, he declares, to the end of his life, but that his fidelity had been so long ignored.  He trusted to the law—­in other words to the Church—­to avenge his honour when he ought to have done so himself.  She deceived his trust, and still he hoped and endured.  When he came to Rome, in his last frenzy of just revenge, he still stayed his hand, because the Feast of the Nativity had begun:  it was the period at which the Church enjoins peace and good-will towards men.  The face of the heavenly infant looked down upon him; he prayed that he might not enter into temptation.  But the days went by, and the Face withered and waned, and the cross alone confronted him.  Then he felt that the hour had come, and he found his way to his wife’s retreat.

The door opened to the name of Caponsacchi.  His worst fears were thus confirmed.  Even so, had he been admitted by Pompilia, weak from her recent sufferings, he might have paused in pity—­by Pietro, he might have paused in contempt; but it was the hag Violante who opened to him:  the cheat, the mock-mother, the source of all his wrongs.  The impulse to stamp out that one detested life involved all three.  And now he triumphs in the deed.  He has cast a foul burden from his life.  He can look his fellow-men in the face again.  Far from admitting that he deserves punishment, he claims the sympathy and the approval of those who have met to judge him:  for he has done their work—­the work of Divine justice and of natural law.  In a final burst of rhetoric he challenges his judges to restore to him his life, his name, his civil rights, and best of all, his son; and together, he declares, they will rebuild the family honour, and revive the old forgotten tradition of domestic purity and peace.  And if one day the son, about to kiss his hand, starts at the marks of violence upon it, he will smile and say, “it was only an accident—­