[38] In Catania, the veil of St. Agatha is the only antidote to
Etna.
[39] Allusion to the torches, before which the Colosseum and the
Antiques and the glaciers, which are both, are seen magically
gleaming.
[40] As the Queen of Heaven, Juno is always, by the ancients,
clothed in a blue veil.--_Hagedorn on Painting._
[41] An old machine that fires many shots at once.
[42] In Italy the stars look not silvery, but golden.
[43] In a tempestuous atmosphere, little flames are emitted by
orange-lilies, gold-flowers, sunflowers, Indian pinks, &c.
[44] Probably on fluttering gold plates after the birds.
FIFTH JUBILEE?
GRAND-ENTRY.--DR. SPHEX.--THE DRUMMING CORPSE.--THE LETTER OF THE
KNIGHT.--RETROGRADATION OF THE DYING-DAY.--JULIENNE.--THE STILL
GOOD-FRIDAY OF OLD AGE.--THE HEALTHY AND BASHFUL HEREDITARY
PRINCE.--ROQUAIROL.--THE BLINDNESS.--SPHEX'S PREDILECTION FOR
TEARS.--THE FATAL BANQUET.--THE DOLOROSO OF LOVE.
28. CYCLE.
When he came to the fork of the road, of which the right prong points to
Lilar, Albano, with a somewhat heavy heart, spurred his horse across,
and flew up the hill, till the bright city, like an illuminated St.
Peter's dome, blazed far and wide in this spring night of his fancies.
It lay, like a giant, with its shoulders (the upper city) resting on the
heights, and stretched its other half (the lower city) down into the
valley. It was noon, and not a cloud in heaven; at noonday a city stands
before you in full, white disk, whereas a village does not, until
evening, come out of its first quarter into full light. It was well
fortified, not by Rimpler or Vauban, but by a blooming palisade of
lindens. The long wall of the palaces of the mountain-city gleamed from
above a welcome to our Albano, and the statues, on their Italian roofs,
directed themselves towards him as way-guides and criers of joy; over
all the palaces ran the iron framework of the lightning-rods, like a
throne-scaffolding of the thunder, with golden sceptre-points; down
along the side of the mountain lay camped the lower city, by the side of
the stream between shady avenues, with its gay façades towards the
streets, and its white back turned toward Nature; carpenters were
hammering away like a forge on the green-sward among the peeled trunks
of trees, and the children were clattering round with the birch-bark;
cloth-makers were stretching out green cloths like bird-nets in the sun;
from the distance came white-covered carriers'-wagons jogging along the
country-road, and by the sides of the way shorn sheep were grazing under
the warm shadow of the rich, bright linden-blossoms,--and over all these
groups the noonday chime of bells from the dear, familiar towers (those
relics and light-houses that gleamed out of the dusk of his earlier
days), floated like one all-embracing and animating soul, and called
together the friendly throngs of people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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