“He has been ensnared by his opportunities from first to last.  He failed to save himself from retribution, only because he was drunk with the sudden freedom from this hateful load.  And Pompilia haunts him still.  Her stupid purity will freeze him even in death.  It will rob him of his hell—­where the fiend in him would burn up in fiery rapture—­where some Lucrezia might meet him as his fitting bride—­where the wolf-nature frankly glutted would perhaps leave room for some return to human form.  For she cannot hate.  It would grieve her to know him there; and—­if there be a hell—­it will be barred to him in consideration for her.”

“The Cardinal, the Abate, they too are petrifactions in their way!  He may rave another twelve hours, and it will be useless.”  Yet he makes one more effort to move them.  He reminds the Cardinal of the crimes he has committed—­of the help he will need when a new Pope is to be elected; of the possible supporter who may then be in his grave.  Then fiercely turning on them both; “the Cardinal have a chance indeed, when there is an Albano in the case!  The Abate be alive a year hence, with that burning hollow cheek and that hacking cough!—­Well, he will die bold and honest as he has lived.”

At this juncture he becomes aware that the fatal moment has arrived.  Steps and lights are on the stairs.  The defiant spirit is quenched.  “He has laughed and mocked and said no word of all he had to say.”  In wild terror he pleads for life—­bare life.  A final vindication of his wife’s goodness bursts from him in the words,

       “Abate,—­Cardinal,—­Christ,—­Maria,—­God,—­
       Pompilia, will you let them murder me?” (vol. x. p. 243.)

The concluding part of the work reverses the idea of the first, and is entitled

THE BOOK AND THE RING.  It completes the record of the Franceschini case, and gives the concluding touches to the circle of evidence which now assumes its final dramatic form.  We have first an account of the execution, conveyed in a gossiping letter from a Venetian gentleman on a visit to Rome, and who reports it as the last news of the week, and the occasion of his having lost a bet.  The writer also discusses the Pope’s health, the relative merits of his present physician and a former one; the relative chances of various candidates for the Papacy; and the Pope’s possible motives for setting aside “justice, prudence, and esprit de corps,” in the manner testified by his recent condemnation of a man of rank.  His political likes and dislikes are thrown into the scale, but his predilection for the mob is considered to have turned it.  “He allows the people to question him when he takes his walks; and it is said that some of them asked him, on the occasion of his last, whether the privilege of murder was altogether reserved for noblemen.”  “The Austrian ambassador had done his best to avert bloodshed, and pleaded hard for the life of one whom, as he urged, he ’may have dined at table with!’ and felt so aggrieved by the Pope’s answer, that he all but refused to come to the execution, and would barely look at it when he came.”  Various details follow, some of which my readers already know.