They stepped silently back into daylight. But Albano's waves of emotion never fell suddenly; they expanded themselves into broad rings. His eye was not yet dry when he came into the heavenly vale,--into that resting-place of the wishes, where dreams might have gone round freely, without sleep. Chariton--from her earnestness much more busy--had, after a questioning glance at Liana to know whether she might, (namely, let certain machines play,) hastened on before them. They passed through the blooming veil, which retired as they approached;--and Albano beheld now the youthful dream of an enchanted valley in Spain, that entangled one in a net of scents and shadows, set out livingly on the earth before him. On the mountains bloomed orange-walks, the stands hidden in the higher terrace,--everything which bears great blossoms on its twigs, from the Linden even to the grape-vine and the apple-tree, drank down below at the brook, or climbed or crowned the two long mountains, which wound, with their blossoms, around the flowers of the low ground, and mutually inclined themselves, to promise an endless valley; fountains placed on the slopes of the mountains threw behind one another silver rainbows over the trees into the brook; in the east burned the gold globe beside the sun,--the last mirror of his dying evening-glance. "Receive my thanks, thou noble old man!" Albano was continually repeating. Liana went with him along the western ridge as far as a bank covered with blossoms, under the arch that fluttered above, where one may survey the first and second windings of the vale, and, over in the north, high pines, and behind them, the spire of a church-tower, and below, an auricula meadow, while Chariton, opposite them on the eastern height, behind a statue of a Muse,--for the Nine Muses beamed from the green Tempe,--seemed to be winding up weights and pressing springs. "My brother," Liana, in a low tone, broke the silence, going on meanwhile with the knitting-work which she had taken from her friend, "wishes very much to see you." The soul of Albano, now awakened with all its holy faculties, felt itself wholly like her, and free from embarrassment, and he said, "Even in my childhood I loved your _Charles_ like a brother; I have as yet no friend." The tenderly-moved souls did not remark that the word Charles came from the letter.