Luigi and his mother are in the turret on the hillside above Asolo.  He 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 serve to border Ottima’s cloak.  And if it be only this!”

       “All service ranks the same with God—­
       With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
       Are we:  there is no last nor first.” (vol. iii. p. 79.)

These are her last words as she lies down to sleep.

Pippa’s songs are not impressive in themselves.  They are made so in every case by the condition of her hearer’s mind; and the idea of the story is obvious, besides being partly stated in the heroine’s own words.  No man is “great” or “small” in the sight of God—­each life being in its own way the centre of creation.  Nothing should be “great” or “small” in the sight of man; since it depends on personal feeling, or individual circumstance, whether a given thing will prove one or the other.