_Bluphocks._[3] 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 fagot, 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 hocus-pocussed 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 pocket-full 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! _2d Pol._ 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.