Into this golden age of his heart fell also his acquaintance with Rousseau and Shakespeare, of whom the former exalted him above his century, and the latter above this life. I will not say here how Shakespeare ruled, sovereign, in his heart,--not through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting him up out of the loud kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity. When one dips his head at night under water, there is an awful stillness round about him; into a similar supernatural stillness of the under-world does Shakespeare introduce us. What many schoolmasters may blame in Dian is this, that he gave the youth all books indiscriminately, without any exact course of reading. But Alban asked, in later years: "Is such a course anything but folly? Is it possible? For does Fate ever arrange the appearance of new books, or systems, or teachers, or outward circumstances, or conversations, so according to paragraphs, that one needs nothing more than to transcribe all that passes upon the memory, and he shall have the order into the bargain? Does not every head need and make its own? And does more depend on the order in which the meats follow each other, or on the digestion of them?" 26. CYCLE. While Dian was causing a nobler temple to go up in the heavens than the stone one in the village, the Princess, whose _castrum doloris_ this was to be, died; they had, therefore, to deposit her remains for a time in the accommodations of a Pestitz church. This changed one or two thousand things. The Crown-prince of Hohenfliess, Luigi, must now, will he nill he, come back from Italy, to the princely chair, in which the old man, bent up with years, had, for a long time, diminutive and speechless, been rather lying than sitting,--although the Minister standing behind the princely arm-chair took off his figure and voice in a sufficiently lively manner. Don Gaspard, who had not listened to any of the previous letters of Albano, now despatched to him the following orders, which rushed like fiery wine through his veins: "On my way back from Italy we meet, in thy birthplace, _Isola Bella_. Thou wilt be sent for." Even readers who have not had a week's practice in folding and sealing letters of a diplomatic corps, will easily observe that the Knight of the Fleece is thinking to bring his son acquainted with the young prince, and to establish and insure their first Pestitz connections.