Oh! It was a day worth living, with the wind chasing down from the Apennines, and sending little cohorts of white clouds flying before the sun, and the soft, southern air, telling of Naples, Sicily, Greece, caressing us. On the shore sounded the notes of the shepherds piping to their sheep. Around our bow was the lapping music of the old, old river. Behind us, into a golden haze, faded the domes and campaniles of the undying city. If we had been Hellenes of Attica, like mad Alcibiades full of the pagan sparkle and glory, never could the “joy of life” have come more to us than it came upon that day. And I think Marianna knew in part my thoughts, when the general banter flagged a little, and we sat together listening to the water and the oars. “Confess to me, Gualtiero,” she broke softly in at last, “are you not glad your mother was an Italian?” “I thank all Olympus and its gods.” “Yet you have visited your dreary north. Was it not very dreadful?” “I went only as a young boy. What I recall is not unpleasant.” “Come tell me, _caro mio_; I have known you so long, yet you tell little enough of yourself. I know that you are rich, are a nobleman in your own right both in Italy and Germany. What is this German inheritance, Lich-ten-stein, and Re-gen-stein?” (She puckered her lips, pronouncing each syllable as if it hurt her.) “Where is it? When did your father get it?” “A long story,” I began listlessly, leaning back on the cushions and gazing more at Madonna’s face than at the gliding river bank. “I have had no patience to learn it all. But the tale of my house is this. I am a Lichtenstein; and anywhere north of the Alps there is not a herald or pursuivant who will not tell you that many Dukes and Markgrafs have no better blood than ours. Well--the older line has kept the paternal principality near Austria. The younger line--whereof I am the chief--acquired by marriage a castle in the Harz, nigh to the centre of Germany--Regenstein. Therefore I am called the Graf von Lichtenstein zum Regenstein, or more briefly, in the speech of the country, the Graf von Regenstein.” “I understand. But what is Regenstein? A black rocky tower amid a desert?” “By no means. I spent three years within it as a boy. I remember the great turrets, with their spirelike roofs; the gray stretches of impenetrable walls; the clouds of dusky rooks above every pinnacle; huge halls where great fires roared, and shot out a ruddy glare upon the bearskin rugs and the antlers and array of spears upon the wall. The folk of the castle were gruff, unlike our sleek fellows here, all oiled and bowing,--but honest and kindly. Around the castle, to every side, stretched a deep wood such as is nowhere in Italy; sentinel beeches and ancient firs; and not far off ran a stream. In winter it was very cold. My father and his friends sat by the chimney place at their beer all day long,--save when the foresters reported a wild boar close to the castle--”