They walked on a glorious earth, under a glorious heaven. Pure and white swam the sun like a swan through the blue flood,--meadows and villages crowded up close around the distant, low mountain-ridges; a soft wind swayed the green waves of the crop to and fro all over the plain; on the hills shadows lay fast asleep under the wings of white clouds; and behind the summits of the heights the mast-trees of the Rhine ships majestically sailed away. As Albano went along so close by the side of his beloved, the purgatory burning under his Eden fell back deeper and deeper into the earth's core; full of uneasiness and hope, he cast his fiery eye now on the summer, now on the mild vesper-star, which glimmered so near to him out of the spring ether. The good maiden seemed to-day more still, serious, and restless than usual. As they went through a little wood, open on all sides, along the ridge of a hill that ran round the flute-dell, Liana suddenly said to the Count, she heard flutes. Scarcely could he say, he heard only far-off turtle-doves, when she at once collected herself as for something wonderful, fixed her eyes on heaven, smiled, and suddenly looked round toward Albano, and grew red. Then turning to him, she said: "I will be frank; I hear at this moment music within me.[174] Forgive me to-day my weakness and tenderness; it comes from yesterday." "I--you?" said he, passionately; for he, about whom in sicknesses only burning images stormed, was inspired with veneration for a being to whom, as if from her higher world, low tones like golden sunbeams reach down in her pains, and pass veiled through the rough deep. But Liana, as if for the sake of turning aside his enthusiasm, came upon the subject of her friend Caroline, and told how she always hovered before her on such days, and especially on this walk. "In the beginning I sought her out," said Liana, "because she resembled my Linda. She was my instructress, although she was only a few weeks older than I. Her pure, severe, unflinching character, and her readiness to sacrifice herself cheerfully and in silence, made her even, if I may say so, worthy of veneration in the eyes of her mother. She was never seen to weep, tender as she was, for she wished to keep her mother always cheerful. We were going to take the veil in company, for the sake of being always together; I should not live to become old, she said, and I must spend my short life happily and without anxiety; but also in preparation for the next. Ah, she herself went up before me! Night-watching by the sick-bed of her mother, and sorrow for her death, took her away. She received the holy supper, for which we were preparing ourselves together, only on her death-bed. Then did the angel give me this veil, in which I am some time to follow her. O good, good Caroline!" She wept unconcealedly, and pressed, with emotion, Albano's hand. "O, I should not have begun about this! There comes already our friend; we will be right cheerful!"