instrument with which to torture her flesh.  Not satisfied to torment her in the body, he must imperil her soul by placing desperate temptation in her way.  With Pompilia the right virtue is always employed for the good end.  She is submissive where only her own life is at stake; brave, when a life within her own calls on her for protection.  Guido’s accomplices:  his brothers, his mother, the four youths who helped him to kill his wife:  the Governor, and the Archbishop, who abetted his ill-treatment of her, have alike sinned against their age, their character, or their associations.

Caponsacchi has not been faultless.  He has failed somewhat in the dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade.  But the more disciplined soldier of the Church would have erred in the opposite direction.  The ear which listens only for the voice of authority becomes obtuse to the cry of suffering.  The spirit which only moves to command becomes unfit for spontaneous work.  Caponsacchi, standing aloof like a man of pleasure, has proved himself the very champion of God, ready to spring into the arena, at the first thud of the false knight’s glove upon the ground.  He has shown himself possessed of the true courage which does not shrink from temptation, and does not succumb to it.  Such transgressions as his reflect rather on the limits imposed than on the impatience which transgressed them.  He must submit to a slight punishment.  He must work—­be unhappy—­bear life.  But he ranks next in grace to Pompilia—­the “rose” which the old Pope “gathers for the breast of God.”  Of Count Guido’s other victims, Pietro and Violante, the worst that can be said is this:  they have halted between good and evil; and, as the way of the world is, suffered through both.  The balance of justice once more confirms the Pope’s decree.

Yet at this very moment his will relaxes.  A sudden dread is upon him—­a chill such as comes with the sudden clouding of a long clear sky.  The ordeal of a deeper and stranger doubt is yet to be faced.  He has judged, as he believed, by the light of Divine truth.  Has he been mistaken?

Step by step he tests and reconstructs his belief, tracing it back to its beginning.  God, the Infinite, exists.  Man, the atom, comprehends him as the conditions of his intelligence permit, but so far truly.  Man’s mind, like a convex glass, reflects him, in an image, smaller or less small, adequate so far as it goes.  As revealed in the order of nature, God is perfect in intelligence and in power; but not so in love; and there has come into the mouths and hearts of men, a tale and miracle of Divine love which makes the evidence of his perfection complete.  The Pope believes that tale, whether true in itself, or like man’s conception of the infinite, true only for the human mind.  He accepts its enigmas as a test of faith:  as a sign that life is meant for a training and a passage:  as a guarantee of our moral growth, and of the good which evil may produce.