denunciations in a prison-cell. Her body is wrenched with torture, as
her soul with anguish. She is scarcely human any more. But she hurls at
them unceasingly a cry which will yet reach the world. "Their Pope and
their saints, their heaven and their hell, their--everything they teach,
and everything they say, is lies, and again lies."


"A FORGIVENESS" ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," 1876) might serve
equally as a study for jealousy, self-reproach, contempt, and revenge;
the love which is made to underlie these feelings, and the forgiveness
with which it will be crowned.

It is a story told in confession. He who tells it had once a wife, who
was dearer to him than anything else in the world. He had also public
duties, which he discharged with diligence and with success; but it was
the thought of the wife's love which nerved him to the fulfilment of
these duties, and which rewarded it.

One day he discovered that she was unfaithful to him. A man (whose face
was but imperfectly concealed) was stealing away from his house as he
returned to it; and the wife, confronting him at the same moment, bade
him kill her, but spare the man she loved. He did not kill her--then:
for she had turned his love into contempt. He despised her too much to
inflict even a lesser punishment, which should compromise the dignity,
or disturb the outward calmness, of his life. But from that moment their
union was a form; and while he worked as those do who have something to
forget, and she shared the position which his labours procured for him,
an impassable, if unseen, gulf lay between them.

Three years had passed, when suddenly, one night, the wife begged to