The Ring and the Book (Volume 2) - Paperback

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VI. GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHL Answer you, Sirs ? Do I understand aright ? Have patience ! In this sudden smoke from hell,? So things disguise themselves,?I cannot see My own hand held thus broad before my face And know it again. Answer you ? Then that means 5 Tell over twice what I, the first time, told Six months ago : 't was here, I do believe, Fronting you same three in this very room, I stood and told you : yet now no one laughs, Who then . . nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did, 10 As good as laugh, what in a judge we style Laughter?no levity, nothing indecorous, lords ! Only,?I think I apprehend the mood : VOL. II. M There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk, The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth, 15 The titter stifled in the hollow palm Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose, When I first told my tale : they meant, you know, " The sly one, all this we are bound believe! " Well, he can say no other than what he says. 20 " We have been young, too,?come, there 's greater guilt! " Let him but decently disembroil himself, " Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,? " We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch ! " And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast 25 As if I were a phantom : now 't is?" Friend, " Collect yourself!"?no laughing matter more? " Counsel the Court in this extremity, " Tell us again ! "?tell that, for telling which, I got the jocular piece of punishment, 30 Was sent to lounge a little in the place Whence now of a sudden here you summon me To take the intelligence from just?your lips You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,? That she I helped eight months since to escape 35 Her husband, is retaken by the same, Three days ...