Dearest friend, how beautiful was the place and the time. Around us, in their majesty, reposed the Pyrenees, half robed in night and half in day, not stooping, like man, beneath the load of years, but erect--forever; and I felt why the great ancients had thought the mountains were a breed of giants. On the mountain heads hung wreaths of roses cloud-woven; but each time that a star appeared upon the clear, deep sea of ether and sparkled on its azure waves, a rose from the mountain's chaplet faded and dropped away. The Mittaghorn, alone, like a higher spirit, gazed long after the sinking lonely sun, and glowed with ecstasy. Down beneath us an amphitheatre of lemon-trees, by its perfumes, brought us back to the veiled earth, and made a dusky paradise of it. And Gione, in calm rapture, struck the chords of her guitar, and softly did Nadine's voice accompany the gliding tones. The nightingale in the rose-hedges by the lake awoke, and the plaintive tones from its tiny heart pierced deep into the great heart of man; and shining glowworms flew from rose-bush to rose-bush, but in the mirror of the lake they were but as golden sparks, floating over pale yellow flowers. But when we looked again towards the heavens, lo! all its stars were gleaming, and in place of rose-woven wreaths, the mountains were clad in extinguished rainbows, and the giant of the Pyrenees was crowned with stars instead of roses. O my beloved Victor! in this moment it was with each of our enraptured souls as if from its oppressed heart earth's load had dropped away; as if from her mother's arms, the earth were giving us, matured in the Father arms of the infinite Creator; as if our little life were over! To ourselves, we seemed the immortal, the exalted. We fancied that our speech of man's immortality had been the prophecy of our own, as with two great and noble men.[32] But though we entered the brilliant rooms, the storm of new joys could not destroy the old ones. We were not yet able to be without the great night around us, and we ascended the platform, that from this little throne we might better contemplate the higher throne of creation beneath the eternal canopy; although kneeling would have been a higher ascension for the moved soul. There were night-violets in a glass box, which traced Gione's name in blooming colors. I remembered the glowworms and millipeds. I let the former fly down upon the rose-bushes in confused star-pictures; with the latter I fired Gione's beautiful flower namesake.