Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/481

 "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 465 The good young priest was Caponsacchi ; Pompilia got refuge with her putative parents, Pietro and Violante, in a solitary villa in a lone garden quarter ; eight months afterwards, at the new year, Guido and his four cut-throats killed all three, "aged, they, seventy each, and she seventeen," preserving only her two-weeks-old infant, who might bring their property into Guide's hands. The murderers were hotly pressed and captured that same night, tried, and con- demned; Guido, having taken minor orders many enough, claimed privilege of clergy, and appealed to the Pope, the good Pope Innocent XII. : — " Innocent by name And nature too, and eighty-six years old, Antonio Pignatelli of Naples, Pope Who has trod many lands, known many deeds, Probed many hearts, beginning with his own, And now was far in readiness for God." He, having mastered the whole case, confirmed the judgment, and with his own hand ordered execution on the morrow, Saturday, February 22, 1698. But let the poet himself relate the catastrophes as revealed to him in the vision : — " But through the blackness I saw Rome again, And where a solitary villa stood In a lone garden quarter: it was eve, The second of the year, and oh so cold ! Ever and anon there flittered through the air A snowflake, and a scanty couch of snow Crusted the grass-walk and the garden-mould. All was grave, silent, sinister, — when, ha ? Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad 2 G