From hour to hour Schoppe grew more and more out of humor with the father; he thanked God now--when he considered how the Knight's treatment had beat upon and washed over this fruit-bearing island--that Albano had not only the heat, but also the hardness of a rock. Dr. Sphex, equally fond of his art and his reputation, watched like a threatening Esculapius-serpent over the pillow, and grew more hilarious. Schoppe lingered there, nerved against any degree of severity. The Knight took leave of every one in his son's name, and sent all soft hearts home; for the foster-mother, Albina and others, were not suffered so much as to see the sleeper,--because tears were to him a cold, disagreeable Scotch mist. The Princess and her retinue were already streaming along with the gay pennons of hope on their way to the shining Italy. The evening was now irrevocably set for departure, especially as, in the night, the sleeping Liana was to be carried into the bed-chamber, which men never again open. Already was the blooming Endymion overspread with smiles and radiance of joy, as a precursive morning-star of his waking day. His soul roamed, smiling, through the sparkling-cave of subterranean treasures, which the genius of dream unlocks; while the common waking eye stood blind before the spirit's Eldorado, so near and yet walled round by sleep. At last an unknown over-measure of bliss opened Albano's eye,--the youth immediately rose with vigor,--threw himself with the rapture of a first recognition on his father's breast, and seemed, in the first dreamy intoxication, not to remember the spent storm behind him, but only the blissful dream,--and in ecstasy related it thus:-- "I sailed in a white skiff on a dark stream which shot along between smooth, high marble walls. Chained to my solitary wave, I flew anxiously through the winding, rocky narrows, into which, at times, a thunderbolt darted. Suddenly the stream whirled round and descended, growing broader and wilder, over a winding stairway. There lay a broad, flat, gray land around me, tinged by the sickle of the sun with a loathsome, lurid, earthy light. Far from me stood a coiled-up Lethe-flood, which crawled round and round itself. On an immense stubble-field innumerable Walkyres,[68] on spider's-threads, shot by to and fro with arrowy swiftness, and sang, 'The fight of life 'tis we that weave'; then they let one flying summer after another soar invisibly to heaven.