But the twelfth hour banished these spiritual apparitions and the tempest; Albano stepped out into a bluer, cooler, breezier sky,--and the glistening sun looked down with a friendly smile on the affrighted earth, whose bright tears still quivered in all her flower-eyes. And now when in the afternoon Albano heard of the peaceful march of the thunder through Liana's city, then by his faith in her newly-assured life, and by the soft dead-gold of resting fancy, and by the holy stillness of the regenerated bosom, and by the increased fervor of his love, there grew up out of all regions of his soul an evening-red, magic Arcadia,--and never did a man enter upon a fairer one. 23. CYCLE. IT arises not merely from my courtesy towards a reading posterity, my dear Zesara, but also from a real courtesy toward thee, that I so faithfully transcribe all acts in this pastoral of thy life; in thy later days these melodious ones shall echo in thy ears refreshingly out of my book, and in the evening, after thy labors, thou wilt read nothing more gladly than my labors here. The following night deserves its Cycle. Soon after Whitsuntide he was tormented with weekly medical notes upon a new malady of poor Liana, which had begun, just as if he had guessed right, on Sacrament-day. He heard that she was living or suffering in _Lilar_, the pleasure- and residence-garden of the old Prince, in company with her brother, of whose silence the Vienna master had just got up to his thousand and first reason. Now, around Lilar, although not far from Pestitz, his father had drawn no chains of prohibition. Liana's night-lamp might, perhaps, glimmer a welcome, or at all events her harmonica sound one,--yes, her brother might haply be still walking round in the garden,--the June night was, besides, serene and magnificent. Ah, in short, he started. It was late and still; far out of the sleeping village, of which all the lights were extinguished, he could still catch the flute-pieces of the clock in the castle upon the Pestitz mountain. It was a quickener to him, that his road lay for some distance along the Linden-city causeway. He fixed his eyes steadily on the western mountains, where the stars seemed to fall to _her_ like white blossoms. Up on the distant height, the Hercules' cross-way, the right arm ran downward and wound along through groves and meadows to the blooming Lilar. March on, drunk with joy, full of young, light images, through the Italian night, which glimmers and breathes its fragrance around thee, and which, as over Hesperia, not far from the warm moon, hangs out a golden evening-star[42] in the blue west, as if over the dwelling of the beloved soul! To thee and thy young eyes the stars as yet only shed down hopes, no remembrances; thou hast in thy hand a plucked, stiff apple-twig, full of _red_ buds, which, like unhappy beings, become too _pale_ when they bloom out; but thou makest not, as yet, any such applications thereof as we do.