alls him. His family, the oldest in Arezzo and once the
greatest, had wide interest in the Church, and he had always known that
he was to be a priest. But when the time came for "just a vow to read!"
he stopped awestruck. Could he keep such a promise? He knew himself too
weak. But the Bishop smiled. There were two ways of taking that vow, and
a man like Caponsacchi, with "that superior gift of making madrigals,"
need not choose the harder one.

"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!"

He was good enough for _that_, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit
he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at
his post where beauty and fashion rule"--a fribble and a coxcomb, in
short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . .
After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of
his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a
kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the
place, amused or no . . .

"When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself
A lady young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad"

--and it was (he remembered) like seeing a burden carried to the Altar
in his church one day, while he "got yawningly through Matin-Song." The
burden was unpacked, and left--

"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked
There was the Rafael!"

Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make
the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she
turned,

"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"

and thought the thought that we have learned--for instinctively and
surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that
man":

". . . Silent, grave,
Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."

Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but
promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day,
Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze. _He_
would not signify, but there was Pompilia:

"Spare her, because he beats her as it is,
She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."

It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of
pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse--he felt that he must
leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him there was done
with--the social successes, the intrigue, song-