believes it his mission to kill the Austrian Emperor. She entreats him
to desist; and has nearly conquered his resolution by the mention of the
girl he loves, when Pippa passes--singing. Something in her song revives
his flagging patriotism. He rushes from the tower, thus escaping the
police, who were on his track; and the virtuous, though mistaken motive,
secures his liberty, and perhaps his life.

Monsignore and his "Intendant" are conferring in the palace by the
Duomo; and the irony of the situation is now at its height. Pippa's
fancy has been aspiring to three separate existences, which would each
in its own way have been wrecked without her. The divinely-guarded one
which she especially covets is at this moment bent on her destruction.
For she is the child of the brother at whose death the Bishop has
connived, and whose wealth he is enjoying. She is still in his way, and
he is listening to a plan for removing her also, when Pippa
passes--singing. Something in her song stings his conscience or his
humanity to life. He starts up, summons his attendants, has his former
accomplice bound hand and foot, and the sequel may be guessed.

The scene is varied by groups of students, of poor girls, and of
Austrian policemen, all joking and chatting in characteristic fashion,
and all playing their part in the story; and also by the appearance of
Bluphocks, an English adventurer and spy, who is in league with the
police for the detection of Luigi, and with the Intendant for Pippa's
ruin; and the saving effect of Pippa's songs is the more dramatic that
it becomes on one occasion the means of betraying herself. She goes home
at sunset, unconscious of all she has effected and escaped, and
wondering how near she may ever come to touching for good or evil the
lives with which her fancy has been identifying her. "So far, perhaps,"
she says to herself, "that the silk she will wind to-morrow may some day