ut Luigi to the police, in
whose pay he is, and to make acquaintance with Pippa in return for money
already given by a private employer--for Bluphocks is the creature of
anyone's purse.

As Pippa reaches the turret, a thought of days long, long before it
fell to ruin makes her choose from her store of songs that which tells
how--

"A king lived long ago,
In the morning of the world
When earth was nigher heaven than now;"

and coming to be very old, was so serene in his sleepy mood, "so safe
from all decrepitude," and so beloved of the gods--

"That, having lived thus long, there seemed
No need the king should ever die."

Her clear note penetrates to the spot where Luigi and his mother are
talking, as so often before. He is bound this night for Vienna, there to
kill the hated Emperor of Austria, who holds his Italy in thrall; for
Luigi is a Carbonarist, and has been chosen for this "lesser task" by
his leaders. His mother is urging him not to go. First she had tried the
direct appeal, but this had failed; then argument, but this failed too;
and as she stood at end of her own resources, the one hope that remained
was her son's delight in living--that sense of the beauty and glory of
the world which was so strong in him that he felt

"God must be glad one loves his world so much."

This joy breaks out at each turn of the mother's discourse. While Luigi
is striving to make plain to her the "grounds for killing," he thinks to
hear the cuckoo, and forgets all his array of facts; for April and June
are coming! The mother seizes at once on this, and joins to it a still
more powerful persuasion. In June, not only summer's loveliness, but
Chiara, the girl he is to marry, is coming: she who gazes at the stars
as he does--and how her blue eyes lift to them

"As if life were one long and sweet surprise!"

In June she comes--and with the reiteration, Luigi falters, for he
recollects that in this June they were to see together "the Titian at
Treviso." . . . His mother has almost won, when a "low noise" outside,
which Luigi has first mistaken for the cuckoo, next for the renowned
echo in the turret . . . that low noise is heard again--"the voice of
Pippa, singing."

And, listening to the song which tells what kings were in the morning of
the world, Luigi cries--

"No need that sort of king should ever die!"

And she begins again--

"Among the rocks his city was:
Befor