Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ... THE RING AND THE BOOK. VII. POMPILIA. I Am just seventeen years and five months old, And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks; 'T is writ so in the church's register, Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names At length, so many names for one poor child, 5 --Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia Comparini, --laughable! Also 't is writ that I was married there Four years ago: and they will add, I hope, When they insert my death, a word or two, -- 10 VOL. III. B Omitting all about the mode of death, -- This, in its place, this which one cares to know, That I had been a mother of a son Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace O' the Curate, not through any claim I have; 15 Because the boy was bor n at, so baptized Close to, the Villa, in the proper church: A pretty church, I say no word against, Yet stranger-like, --while this Lorenzo seems My own particular place, I always say. 20 I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high As the bed here, what the marble lion meant, With half his body rushing from the wall, Eating the figure of a prostrate man-- (To the right, it is, of entry by the door) 25 An ominous sign to one baptized like me, Married, and to be buried there, I hope. And they should add, to have my life complete, He is a boy and Gaetan by name-- Gaetano, for a reason, --if the friar Don Celestine will ask this grace for me Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was 30 Baptized me: he remembers my whole life As I do his grey hair. All these few things 35 I know are true, --will you remember them? Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me, To count my wounds, --twenty-two dagger-wounds, Five deadly, but I do not suffer much-- Or too much pain, --and am to die to-night. 40 Oh how good God is that my babe was born, --Better than born, baptized an
