"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: Before his palace, in the sun, He sat to see his people pass, And judge them every one" --and as she tells the manner of his judging, Luigi again exclaims: "That king should still judge, sitting in the sun!" But the song goes on-- "His councillors, to left and right, Looked anxious up--but no surprise Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes, Where the very blue had turned to white"; and those eyes kept their tranquillity even when, as legend tells, a Python one day "scared the breathless city," but coming, "with forked tongue and eyes on flame," to where the king sat, and seeing the sweet venerable goodness of him, did not dare "Approach that threshold in the sun, Assault the old king smiling there . . . Such grace had kings when the world begun!" "And such grace have they, now that the world ends!" cries Luigi bitterly, for at Vienna the Python _is_ the king, and brave men lurk in corners "lest they fall his prey." . . . He hesitates no more-- "'Tis God's voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!"