# Pippa Passes/II

II.—NOON.
Scene.—Over Orcana. The house of Jules, who crosses its threshold with Phene: she is silent, on which Jules begins—
Bluphocks. So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop’s Intendant’s money shall be honestly earned:—now, don’t make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop’s name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors: we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to, was the Armenian: for I have travelled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there ’s a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used ​absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity; ’t was the Grand Rabbi’s abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac—(these are vowels, you dogs,—follow my stick’s end in the mud—Celarent, Darii, Ferio!) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c,—I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you ’ll say—“How Moses hocuspocussed Egypt’s land with fly and locust,”—or, “How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish,”—or, “How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam.” In no wise! “Shackabrack—Boach—somebody or other—Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of—Stolen Goods!” So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge—mean to live so—and die—As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon’s wherry, With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate’s supper, And never an obolus… (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant—I possess a burning pocketful of zwanzigers) …To pay the Stygian Ferry!
1st Policeman. There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [To the rest.] I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!
2nd Policeman. Old Luca Gaddi’s, that owns the ​silk-mills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never molest such a household, they mean well.
Bluphocks. Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name. Pippa—that is, short for Felippa—rhyming to Panurge consults Hertrippa—Believest thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name.
2nd Policeman. Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a zwanziger! Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon’s over or nearly so.
3rd Policeman. Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What ’s there beside a simple signature? (That English fool’s busy watching.)
2nd Policeman. Flourish all round—“Put all possible obstacles in his way;” oblong dot at the end—“Detain him till further advices reach you;” scratch at bottom—“Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;” ink-spirt on right-hand side (which is the case here)—“Arrest him at once.” Why and wherefore, I don’t concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna—well and good, the passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-night—there has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding ​intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.