What rites obscene—­their idol-god, an Ass!’
  So went the word forth, so acceptance found,
  So century re-echoed century,
  Cursed the accursed,—­and so, from sire to son,
  You Romans cried, ’The offscourings of our race
  Corrupt within the depths there:  fitly, fiends
  Perform a temple-service o’er the dead: 
  Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!’
  So groaned your generations:  till the time
  Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike,—­
  Thro’ crevice peeped into by curious fear,—­
  Some object even fear could recognise
  I’ the place of spectres; on the illumined wall,
  To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about,
  Narrow and short, a corpse’s length, no more: 
  And by it, in the due receptacle,
  The little rude brown lamp of earthenware,
  The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood,
  The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left
  Pro Christo.  Then the mystery lay clear: 
  The abhorred one was a martyr all the time,
  A saint whereof earth was not worthy.  What? 
  Do you continue in the old belief? 
  Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be? 
  Is it so certain, not another cell
  O’ the myriad that make up the catacomb,
  Contains some saint a second flash would show? 
  Will you ascend into the light of day
  And, having recognised a martyr’s shrine,
  Go join the votaries that gape around
  Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?”
  (iv. 219).

With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do rule in the world.  Consider all the doings at Arezzo, before and after the consummation of the tragedy.  What of the Aretine archbishop, to whom Pompilia cried “Protect me from the fiend!”—­

  “No, for thy Guido is one heady, strong,
  Dangerous to disquiet; let him bide! 
  He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse
  The darkness of his den with; so, the fawn
  Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies,
  —­Come to me, daughter,—­thus I throw him back!”

Then the monk to whom she went, imploring him to write to Rome:—­

  “He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world
  And shudders to the marrow, ’Save this child? 
  Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here! 
  Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark
  His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?’”

Worst of all, the Convent of the Convertites, women to whom she was consigned for help,

  “They do help; they are prompt to testify
  To her pure life and saintly dying days. 
  She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich! 
  What does the body that lives through helpfulness
  To women for Christ’s sake?  The kiss turns bite,
  The dove’s note changes to the crow’s