What would require a cool head, a cold heart,
And a calm hand? You never will escape."

"Escape?" cries Luigi, "to even wish that
would spoil all.

The dying is best part of it. Too much
Have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine,
To leave myself excuse for longer life:

Was not life pressed down, running o'er with joy,
That I might finish with it ere my fellows
Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay?
I was put at the board-head, helped to all
At first; I rise up happy and content.
God must be glad one loves his world so much.
I can give news of earth to all the dead

Who ask me:-last year's sunsets, and great stars
That had a right to come first and see ebb

The crimson wave that drifts the sun away

Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims

That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood, Impatient of the azure23-and that day

In March, a double rainbow stopped the stormMay's warm, slow, yellow moonlit summer nights

Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!”

The mother, however, is not convinced, nor can she be made to feel that it is right for her loved child to sacrifice himself. After trying vainly to point out the foolhardiness of his plot, and the selfishness of a devotion to country that causes him to forget the grief of those who love him, she makes

23. "Impatient of the azure" means "eager for the blue of the sky to fade into the blackness of night."

use of her last resource. The young and beautiful Chiara is to visit them in June. Can Luigi give up the pleasure that he expects from this visit of his betrothed? Will not the expected delight prove stronger than his resolve to die for his country? Let him weaken, perhaps, for a moment: the influence that is abroad this New Year's day, finding its way to his heart through the song of the little peasant girl Pippa, will call him back to what he feels to be his duty:

"Mother.

Chiara will love to see

That Jupiter an evening star next June.

"Luigi. True, mother. Well for those who live through June!

Great noontides, thunder-storms, all glaring pomps24

Which triumph at the heels of June the God

Leading his revel thro' our leafy world.

Yes, Chiara will be here

"Mother.

In June: remember,

Yourself appointed that month for her coming. "Luigi. Was that low noise the echo? "Mother.

The night-wind.

She must be grown-with her blue eyes upturned As if life were one long and sweet surprise:

In June she comes.

"Luigi.

We were to see together

The Titian25 at Treviso.26 There, again!

24. Glaring pomps means brilliant displays or spectacles. 25. Titian (1477-1576) was one of the greatest Italian painters. The artist is figuratively named, instead of one of his works.

26. Treviso, the capital of the province of the same name. The city is eighteen miles northwest of Venice and a little more than the same distance southeast of Asolo. In its medieval cathedral is to be found one of Titian's paintings.

(From without is heard the voice of PIPPA

"A king lived long ago,

In the morning of the world,

singing.)

When earth was nigher heaven than now;
And the king's locks curled,

Disparting o'er a forehead full

As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn
Of some sacrificial bull-28

Only calm as a babe new-born:

For he was got to a sleepy mood,

So safe from all decrepitude,

Age with its bane, so sure gone by

The gods so loved him while he dreamed,
That, having lived thus long, there seemed
No need the king should ever die.

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

"Among the rocks his city was:
Before his palace, in the sun,
He sat to see his people pass,
And judge them every one

From its threshold of smooth stone.
They haled him" many a valley-thief
Caught in the sheep-pens, robber-chief
Swarthy and shameless, beggar-cheat,
Spy-prowler, or rough pirate found
On the sea-sand left aground;
And sometimes clung about his feet,
With bleeding lip and burning cheek,

27. Disparting is an archaic word used to mean parting.

28. The allusion is to the ancient custom of sacrificing bullocks

in religious ceremonies.

29. Haled him means dragged, or pulled, to him.

A woman, bitterest wrong to speak
Of one with sullen thickset brows;
And sometimes from the prison-house
The angry priests a pale wretch brought,
Who through some chink had pushed and
pressed,

On knees and elbows, belly and breast,
Worm-like into the temple,-caught

At last there by the very god,

Who ever in the darkness strode

Backward and forward, keeping watch
O'er his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch!
These, all and every one,

The king judged, sitting in the sun.

"Luigi. That king should still judge sitting in the sun!

"His councillors, on left and right,

Looked anxious up,-but no surprise
Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes,
Where the very blue had turned to white.

'Tis said, a Python30 scared one day

The breathless city, till he came,

With forky tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old king sat to judge alway;
But when he saw the sweepy hair,
Girt with a crown of berries rare
Which the god will hardly give to wear
To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare
In the altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites-

30. The Python, in Greek mythology, was a terrible serpent who was believed to deliver oracles at Delphi. It was slain by Apollo. Hence the term has come to be applied to one who would govern through evil power.

Seeing this, he did not dare

Approach that threshold in the sun,
Assault the old king smiling there.

Such grace had kings when the world begun! (PIPPA passes.)

"Luigi. And such grace have they, now that the world ends!

The Python at the city, on the throne,

And brave men, God would crown for slaying him, Lurk in bye-corners lest they fall his prey. Are crowns yet to be won, in this late time, Which weakness makes me hesitate to reach? 'Tis God's voice calls, how could I stay? Farewell!"

R

NIGHT

ECLINING in his palace near the cathedral, Monsignor the bishop has just been served his evening meal. Meanwhile he is holding an interview with Maffeo, a knavish fellow who has helped one of the bishop's brothers, now dead, to do away with the heir of an elder brother, and thus to obtain a fortune. Monsignor is now demanding the charge of this property. But Maffeo, unwilling to give up his interest in the estate, tries to show the bishop that his wish cannot be carried out, since the heir to the possessions is still living,-is, in fact, "a little, black-eyed, pretty-singing Felippa, gay silk-winding girl." Then, not at all daunted after thus exposing the baseness by which Pippa has been deprived of her father's fortune, and anxious to win the bishop's favor, he proposes a cruel plot for removing the