Part 1 (1/2)

The Old Yellow Book.

by Anonymous.

INTRODUCTION

The _Old Yellow Book_ is a soiled and b.l.o.o.d.y page from the criminal annals of Rome two centuries ago, saved apparently by mere chance for the one great artist of modern literature who could best use it, and who has raised this record of a forgotten crime to a permanent place in that ideal world of man's creation where Caponsacchi and Pompilia have joined the company of Paolo and Francesca, of the Red Cross Knight, of Imogen, of Marguerite and Faust, and of Don Quixote.

One June day of 1860, Robert Browning pa.s.sed from the Casa Guidi home to enjoy the busy life of Florence. There, ”pushed by the hand ever above my shoulder,” he entered the Piazza of San Lorenzo:

crammed with booths, Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time.

He had brought home from such wanderings many a rare old tapestry, or picture, or carving from the long artistic past of the city. This day his eye caught the soiled, vellum-covered volume, crowded between its insignificant neighbours. ”One glance at the lettered back,” declares the poet, ”and Stall! a lira made it mine.” All the way home and all day long, he pored over these pages, until by nightfall he had so mastered the facts of the case that the whole tragedy lay plain before his mind's eye.

The book led him, and leads us, back to the morning of January 3, 1698, when all Rome was astir with the sensation of a brutal a.s.sa.s.sination. The aged Comparini, cut to pieces in their own home in the very heart of Rome on the evening before by a band of a.s.sa.s.sins, were now exposed to the view of an excited mob of the curious and idle. Pompilia, desperately wounded, lay a-dying. A police captain and posse were in pursuit of the criminals, one of whom was a n.o.bleman who had held office in the household of one of the great cardinals. Toward night the criminals were brought back to the city, and were followed through the streets to the prison doors by a great throng.

Just seven weeks later and again Rome was throbbing with excitement.

Unwonted crowds were pressing into the Piazza del Popolo, where gallows and scaffold had been prepared. At last, up the Corso filed the Brotherhood of Death with their black gowns and great cross, and behind them, in separate carts, the five criminals. In the midst of a sea of upturned faces Guido and his fellows met their end, and the curtain fell.

The _Old Yellow Book_ is the record of the court procedure of those seven intervening weeks, and shows us the whole legal battle fought to save Guido, while Rome looked on with the fascinated interest which has always attended the great murder trials. It includes the lawyers'

arguments for and against the accused, together with a part of the evidence brought into court, and some additional miscellaneous data on the case. All this had evidently been a.s.sembled by the Florentine lawyer, Cencini, to whom certain letters included are addressed. He seems to have been interested in the case as a precedent on an important and much disputed point of law, ”whether and when a husband may kill an adulterous wife.” Cencini may also have had some professional relation with the Franceschini family at Arezzo. At any rate, he set the material in order, provided t.i.tle-page and index, and a transcript of the record in a criminal case against Pompilia in the Tuscan courts (pp. 5-7), and bound it securely in the vellum cover which conveyed it to the poet's hands more than a century and a half later.

Whatever meaning this volume may have as a legal precedent, it had for Browning, and has for the lay reader, a deep human interest as the incomplete record of a sordid series of intrigues for certain properties, ending at last in a fearful crime.

Guido Franceschini, scion of a n.o.ble but impoverished Tuscan family, had sought his fortunes in Rome, and had attained a secretarys.h.i.+p in the household of Cardinal Lauria. His brother, the Abate Paolo, a shrewd and effective man, rose much higher, at last attaining important office among the Knights of St. John. Guido, less astute and less ingratiating, reached middle life with but scant success, and at last was left unprovided. With the a.s.sistance of Abate Paolo, he planned to recoup his fortunes by a bourgeois marriage. Though past forty years of age and of unattractive appearance, he won, by his n.o.ble name and subtle intrigue and falsification, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the Comparini, of the well-to-do middle cla.s.s of Rome.

After the marriage in December 1693, Pompilia and her parents accompanied Guido back to Arezzo, where, in the ruinous Franceschini _palazzo_, the Comparini had ample opportunity to repent their folly.

Bitter contentions soon arose, and at last the Comparini fled from the brutalities of their son-in-law, and returned to Rome. There they published broadcast the sordid poverty and the ign.o.ble brutality of their persecutors, probably printing and circulating the affidavit of the servant (pp. 49-53). Guido seems to have retorted by circulating the forged letter from Pompilia (pp. 56, 57). But they struck a more deadly blow at the pride of the Franceschini when they revealed that Pompilia was not their own child, but was of ignominious parentage.

And in the spring of 1694 they brought suit before Judge Tomati for the recovery of the dowry monies paid to Franceschini--a bitter humiliation to the greedy poverty of the Franceschini. It must have been a scandalous suit, bringing dishonour to both parties as their domestic difficulties were exposed to the throngs of the curious. In this trial were adduced the letters of the governor (pp. 89, 90) and of the Bishop of Arezzo (p. 99). The Comparini lost their suit, but appealed to the Rota, and their case was pending for several years, during which time they may have baited the Franceschini with spiteful scandals.

In the meantime, the child-wife, Pompilia, was left in desperate plight--despised and hated by her husband's family. Her situation grew intolerable. Guido had evidently determined to rid himself of her without relaxing his grip on her property. His brutalities were systematic and cunning. At last she was driven to flee for her life, and on April 29, 1697, made her escape under the protection of Caponsacchi, a gallant young priest. It was a desperate step, gravely reprehensible in the eyes of the world. The fugitives pressed toward Rome, but Guido overtook them at Castelnuovo, fifteen miles short of their destination, and had them arrested.

At Rome, criminal charges of flight and adultery were brought against them. This Process of Flight, as it is repeatedly called in the _Yellow Book_, continued all through the summer. It was for their defence in this case that Pompilia and Caponsacchi made their affidavits (pp. 90 and 95), giving their motives for the flight. At the same time Guido urged the evidence of the love-letters (pp.

99-106), which he claimed to have found at the time of the arrest of the fugitives. In September, judgment was rendered against Caponsacchi--relegation for three years to Civita Vecchia--a punishment commensurate with indiscretion rather than with crime.

Pompilia was unsentenced, but was retained for a month in safekeeping in the nunnery delle Scalette, and was then permitted to return to the home of her foster-parents, the Comparini, though still technically a prisoner in this home (p. 159). Here on December 18 a boy was born.

On Christmas Eve, Guido reached Rome with four young rustics, whom he had hired to a.s.sist him in the a.s.sa.s.sination. For a week he lurked in the villa of his brother, Abate Paolo, who had left Rome. Then, on the evening of January 2, he won entrance to the home of the Comparini by using the name of Caponsacchi. The parents were instantly stabbed to death, and Pompilia was cut to pieces with twenty-two wounds. Leaving her for dead, Guido and his cut-throats fled, as the outcries of the victims had given the alarm. That night they travelled afoot nearly twenty miles, but were pursued by the police, and were arrested with the b.l.o.o.d.y arms still in their possession.

Such was the crime, and the _Old Yellow Book_ is the record of the legal battle over the a.s.sa.s.sins, which was fought through the criminal courts of Rome, presided over by Vice-governor Venturini. The prosecution and defence alike were conducted by officers of the court, two lawyers on each side, the Procurator and Advocate of the Poor for the defendants, and the Procurator and Advocate of the Fisc against them. As the fact of the crime was definitely ascertained, the legal battle turned entirely on the justification or condemnation of the motive of the crime. The defence maintained that the a.s.sa.s.sination had been for honour's sake, and the unwritten law, to which appeal is made in generation after generation, was urged at every point. That Guido had suffered unspeakable ignominy cannot be denied; that his wife had been untrue to him even in the perilous flight with Caponsacchi is unproved, as the courts had evidently held in the Process of Flight.

The prosecution, on the other hand, reiterated in every argument their reading of Guido's motive--greed. Greed had led him to marry Pompilia.

Greed had occasioned his disgraceful wranglings with the Comparini.

Defeated greed had made him torture his wife into scandalous flight, and calculating greed had led him to commit the murder at a time and in a manner to save the whole property to himself. Still further, said the prosecution, not only was his motive bad, but the crime was committed in a way which involved him in half a dozen accessory crimes, each of them capital. Such is the drift of the argument, which is fortified at every point by citation of precedent from the legal procedure of all ages. Altogether it is a highly skilled legal battle according to the technical limitations of the game, while the simple appeals to equity and to common human feeling hardly enter at all.