d on to Asolo.

+ + + + +

What was the noise that broke out as Pippa finished her song? The loud
call which came first was Monsignor's, summoning his guards from an
outer chamber to gag and bind his steward. This steward had been supping
alone with the Bishop, who had come not only (as Pippa said in the
morning, choosing him as the ideal person for her pretending) "to bless
the home of his dead brother," but also to take possession of that
brother's estate. . . . He knows the steward to be a rascal; but he
himself, the "holy and beloved priest," is a good deal of a rascal too;
he has connived at his brother's death, and had connived at his mode of
life. Now the steward is preparing to blackmail the Bishop, as he had
blackmailed the Bishop's brother. Both are aware that the dead man had a
child; Monsignor believes that this child was murdered by the steward at
the instigation of a younger brother, who wished to succeed to the
estates. He urges the man to confess; otherwise he shall be arrested by
Monsignor's people who are in the outer room. "Did you throttle or stab
my brother's infant--come now?"[77:1]

But the steward has yet another card to play; moreover, so many enemies
now surround him that his life is probably forfeited anyhow, so he will
tell the truth. And the truth is that the child was not murdered by him
or anyone else. The child--the girl--is close at hand; he sees her every
day, he saw her this morning. Now, shall he make away with her for
Monsignor? Not "the stupid obvious sort of killing . . . of course there
is to be no killing; but at Rome the courtesans perish off every three
years, and he can entice her thither, has begun operations
already"--making use of a certain Bluphocks, an Englishman. Monsignor
will not _formally_ assent, of course . . . but will he give the steward
time to cross the Alps? The girl is "but a little black-eyed pretty
singing Felippa,[77:2] gay silk-winding girl"; some women are to pass
off Bluphocks as a somebody, and once Pippa entangled--it will be best
accomplished through her singing. . . . Well, Monsignor has listened;
Monsignor conceives--is it a bargain?

It was precisely as the steward asked that question that Pippa finished
her song of a maiden's lesson and its ending, and Monsignor leaped up
and shouted to his guards. . . . The singing by which "little black-eyed
pretty Felippa" was to be entangled had rescued instead the soul of her