“I thought you would not slay impenitence,
      But teazed, from men you slew, contrition first,—­
      I thought you had a conscience ... 
                        Would you send
      A soul straight to perdition, dying frank
      An atheist?”

How much of truth there is in it all we need not attempt to decide.  It is not likely that Guido could pretend to be much worse than he really was, though he unquestionably heightens the key of his crime, working up to a pitch of splendid ferocity almost sublime, from a malevolence rather mean than manly.  At the last, struck suddenly, as he sees death upon him, from his pretence of defiant courage, he hurls down at a blow the whole structure of lies, and lays bare at once his own malignant cowardice and the innocence of his murdered wife:—­is it with a touch of remorse, of saving penitence?

      “Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,—­
      I use up my last strength to strike once more
      Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,
      To trample underfoot the whine and wile
      Of beast Violante,—­and I grow one gorge
      To loathingly reject Pompilia’s pale
      Poison my hasty hunger took for food. 
      A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,
      No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent,
      But sustenance at root, a bucketful. 
      How else lived that Athenian who died so,
      Drinking hot bull’s blood, fit for men like me? 
      I lived and died a man, and take man’s chance,
      Honest and bold:  right will be done to such. 
      Who are these you have let descend my stair? 
      Ha, their accursed psalm!  Lights at the sill! 
      Is it ‘Open’ they dare bid you?  Treachery! 
      Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while
      Out of the world of words I had to say? 
      Not one word!  All was folly—­I laughed and mocked! 
      Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie,
      Is—­save me notwithstanding!  Life is all! 
      I was just stark mad,—­let the madman live
      Pressed by as many chains as you please pile! 
      Don’t open!  Hold me from them!  I am yours,
      I am the Granduke’s,—­no, I am the Pope’s! 
      Abate,—­Cardinal,—­Christ,—­Maria,—­God, ... 
      Pompilia, will you let them murder me?”

The coward’s agony of the fear of death has never been rendered in words so truthful or so terrible.

Last of all comes the Epilogue, entitled The Book and the Ring, giving an account of Count Guido’s execution, in the form of contemporary letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian’s sermon on Pompilia, and other documents needed to wind off the threads of the story.

The Ring and the Book was the first important work which Browning wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double shrine:  at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication.  I quote the invocation:  the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living.