He bethought him how late he would be, and without turning his head for a second look, or giving another thought to the arrivals, slipped past the two maids, who stood in the doorway talking in a language unknown to him, while the Countess's man handed them bundles from the carriages drawn up to the door. Paula, on entering the apartment, let her little gloved hands drop at her sides, and looking around with wide, quick eyes, gave a long sigh of pleasure. "Here I can breathe--here I can breathe indeed!" she said to her companion, in their Northern tongue; then turning to the doctor, she assured him in French that she found it charming, as she had found everything in Italy--that she thanked him for his goodness. The doctor and the landlady both watched her with a half smile and slightly raised eyebrows as she walked quickly through the rooms, exclaiming at every window with delight at sight of the fawn-colored, warm-looking river flowing below and flashing back the sunshine, and the low hills clothed in their early green. Her companion followed her with an unusual solemn dignity of manner, intended to counterbalance Paula's unaccustomed vivacity, and give the people of the house, if possible, an adequate impression of the two as a whole. "Oh, look--look, Cousin Veronika!" exclaimed the younger woman from the balcony, over the parapet of which she had been leaning venturously far--"look at that dear old bridge; it is the Jeweller's Bridge; I recognize it. _N'est-ce pas, cher docteur?_ Oh, what a sky! But have you any patients at all in this city, doctor? Is it possible to be ill here? Do persons die? Of what? I will never believe it!" "My dear lady," said the gray doctor, his kindly face lighting as if with the reflection of her childish excitement, "will you be advised by me? Will you sit down on this commodious divan and rest a little, while you take what the signora has brought for you--this little glass of our white _vin santo_? It will do you good. You must be tired, very tired." "Oh no! no, doctor! It is like magic. I do not understand it. I feel like another. I shall not be tired here, ever. You must come and see me every day indeed, but not as a doctor--as my good, good friend. Tell me, is it still standing, the house where Dante lived? Have you a book--I mean, could you advise me a book--in which there is everything of the story about him and Beatrice? It must be sweet to think of when one is in their city." "I will do myself the pleasure of sending you the _Vita Nova_," he said; then, solicitously, "but accommodate yourself, my dearest lady, and drink this--" "_Vita Nova?_ Does that mean new life? New life!" she said, as if to herself, suddenly half stretching her arms up in the air and smiling in indeterminate happiness at the ceiling, whereon the shining river cast a restless, quivering brightness. "Yes, send it me; I want to read it. I will drink this to please you, signor, but not that I am tired. Here is to New Life!"