"Another day that finds her living yet, Little Pompilia, with the patient brow And lamentable smile on those poor lips, And, under the white hospital-array, A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again, Alive i' the ruins. 'Tis a miracle. It seems that when her husband struck her first, She prayed Madonna just that she might live So long as to confess and be absolved; And whether it was that, all her sad life long Never before successful in a prayer, This prayer rose with authority too dread-- Or whether because earth was hell to her, By compensation when the blackness broke, She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue, To show her for a moment such things were," --the prayer was granted her. So, musing on the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express itself--"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" demands the imagined spokesman; and, summing up, he exclaims: "Who did it shall account to Christ-- Having no pity on the harmless life And gentle face and girlish form he found, And thus flings back. Go practise if you please With men and women. Leave a child alone For Christ's particular love's sake!" Then, burning with pity and indignation, he proceeds to tell the story of Pompilia as he sees it, feels it--and as Browning, in the issue, makes us see and feel it too. In _The Ring and the Book_, Browning tells us this story--this "pure crude fact" (for fact it actually is)--_ten times over_, through nine different persons, Guido Franceschini, the husband, speaking twice. Stated thus baldly, the plan may sound almost absurd, and the prospect of reading the work appear a tedious one; but once begin it, and neither impression survives for a moment. Each telling is at once the same and new--for in each the speaker's point of view is altered. We get, first of all, Browning's own summary of the "pure crude fact"; then the appearance of that fact to: 1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia. 2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her. 3. "Tertium Quid," neutral. 4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial. 5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), at the trial. 6. Pompilia, on her death-bed. 7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the defence. 8. The Public Prosecutor's speech. 9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him after the trial. 10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers before execution.