But how festal, how living, is all around him! On the waters which gleam through the groves swans are gliding; the pheasant stalks away into the bushes, deer peep curiously behind him out of the wood through which he has come, and white and black pigeons run busily under the gates, and on the western hills hang bleating sheep by the side of reposing lambs; even the breast of the turtle-dove in some hidden valley trembles with the _languido_ of love. He strode through a long, high-bushed rose-field, that seemed a settlement and plantation of hedge-sparrows and nightingales, which hopped out of the bushes on the growing grass-banks, and ran out in vain after little worms; and the lark sailed away on high over this second world, made for the more innocent of God's creatures, and sank behind the gates into the grain-fields. Intoxicate thyself more and more, good youth, and link thy flowers into a chain as closely as the boy toward whom thou art hastening. For, overhead, on the Italian roof, before whose balustrade-breastwork silver-poplars, girdled about with broad vine-leaves, played, and which, in the spring-night, he had taken for a bower in roses, stood a blooming boy bent forward, who was letting down a chain of marigolds, and kept fastening on new rings to the too short green cable. "My name is Pollux," he answered briskly to Alban's soft question, "but my sister is named Helena,[84] but my little brother is named Echion." "And thy father?" "He is not here now, he is away off there in Rome; just go in to mother Chariton, I am coming immediately." On what fairer day, in what fairer place, with what fairer hearts could he come into the holy family of the beloved Dian, than on this morning, and with this mood?