'We were near Rebursa. The rocky chain, with its sharp and broken peaks turned to the right following the winding Saurgo, rising tier on tier towards the massive summit of Mount Caran. On the left of the road, the soil was smooth and undulating like the large dunes of a seashore, becoming further off a succession of hills, tawny and humped like camels of the desert. '"Look, look!" I cried, seeing another silver cloud of blossom. "Can you not see it, Antonello?" 'He did not look at the almond trees with my eyes; he looked, but with a faint smile, wondering probably at the childlike joy awakened in me at the sight of the first flowers. Yet, what fairer spectacle could this rude and stony country offer to us? '"If my sisters only were here!" cried Oddo, to whom my pleasure communicated itself. "Oh, if they were here!" 'His voice was full of regret. '"They need to be brought where flowers bloom," said Antonello, softly. '"Look, look!" I cried again, giving myself up to my delight with fuller ease, now that I saw some reflection of it at least awakened in these poor shut souls. "I am glad these flowers are mine, Oddo." '"My sisters must come to them," sighed Antonello, like one who speaks in a dream of sleep. 'It seemed as if his feverish eyes refreshed themselves with that vision of things so pure.... 'They both looked at me, somewhat confused, faintly smiling, as if they had been brought unexpectedly before some extraordinary sight which stupefied them, yet filled them with delicious sensations. They had shown me their malady, had revealed to me their suffering, had spoken to me of that melancholy prison whence they had come and whither they would return; and I, on the common highway open to all, had invited them to recognise and celebrate the spring--the spring which they had both forgotten, which they seemed to see now for the first time after many years, which they gazed at with a mingling of fear and joy as at a miracle.' Is not this delicate in expression as the sprays of the almond blossoms themselves?