he helped me just so."

Once more he flashes forth in her defence, in rage against Guido--but
the image of her, "so sweet and true and pure and beautiful," comes back
to him:

"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see we are
So very pitiable, she and I,
Who had conceivably been otherwise"

--and at the thought of _how_ "otherwise," of what life with such a
woman were for a free man, and of his life henceforth, a priest, "on
earth, as good as out of it," with the memory of her, only the
memory . . . for she is dying, dead perhaps . . . the whole man breaks
down, and he goes from the place with one wild, anguished call to
heaven:

"Oh, great, just, good God! Miserable me!"

I have chosen to reveal Pompilia chiefly through Caponsacchi's speech
for two reasons. First, because there is nothing grander in our
literature than that passionate and throbbing monologue; second,
because to show this type of woman _through_ another speaker is the way
in which Browning always shows her best. As I said when writing of
Mildred Tresham, directly such a woman speaks for herself, in Browning's
work, he forces the note, he takes from her (unconsciously) a part of
the beauty which those other speakers have shown forth. So with
Pompilia, though not in the same degree as with Mildred, for here the
truth _is_ with us--Pompilia is a living soul, not a puppet of the
theatre. Yet even here the same strange errors recur. She has words
indeed that reach the inmost heart--poignant, overpowering in tenderness
and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw
together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is
the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the
marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses
its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to
delineate it; and the particular one chosen--of marriage as a coin, "a
dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"--is actually
inept, since the essence of her is that she does not know anything at
all about the "coin," so certainly does not know that it is or may be
"dirty."

Again, here is an ignorant child, whose deep insight has come to her
through love alone. She feels, in the weakness of her nearing death, and
the bliss of spiritual tranquillity, that all the past with Guido is a
terrific dream: "It is the good of dreams--so soon they go!" Beautiful:
but Browning could not