g in this book
and elsewhere mastered all the details, conceived the idea of writing
the history of the crime in a series of monodramatic revelations on the
part of the individuals more or less directly concerned. The more he
considered the plan the more it shaped itself to a great accomplishment,
and early in 1866 he began the most ambitious work of his life.

An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as "one of the most
extraordinary feats of which we have any record in literature." But
poetry is not mental gymnastics. All this insistence upon "extraordinary
feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Hercules, not as
Apollo: in a word, it is not criticism. The story is one of vulgar fraud
and crime, romantic to us only because the incidents occurred in Italy,
in the picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago. The old
bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparini, manage to wed their
thirteen-year-old putative daughter to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo.
They expect the exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and
other tangible advantages. He, impoverished as he is, looks for a
splendid dowry. No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes
the scapegoat, when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties
stands revealed. Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia
suffers. When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave
her husband, whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. Since the child is
to be the inheritor of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it to the
tender mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of Arezzo,
Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In due course she gives birth
to a son. She has scarce time to learn the full sweetness of her
maternity ere she is done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who
has held himself thrall to an imperative patience, till his hold upon
the child's dowry should be secure, hires four assassins, and in the
darkness of night betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter
the house of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with
slaying them, also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido
is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory, for she
was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story.
Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply
avenged the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection with
the priest