They passed, even now, the popular festival of a belated vintage. The Knight informed himself about everything with the curiosity of a wine-dealer, and with the science of a vine-dresser. So did he botanize universally upon the earth after every spear and sprig of knowledge. Albano wondered at this, since he had heretofore believed that Gaspard sought and strove after nothing but the Paris--and Hesperides-apples of art, because, in his station, he could have no occasion for any other fruits, or need their meat and their kernel, either to enjoy or to plant them. They sank into the depths of the mountains of Tyrol. The heights stood already wrapped in the close, white bier-cloth of winter, and through the valleys the cold storm went to and fro, the only living thing. Albano's longing after the mild land of youth grew, between the storms and the Alps, higher and higher; and Rome's image, the nearer it approached him, assumed more colossal dimensions. Gaspard made the journey go on wings, in order to anticipate the rain-clouds of autumn. In a dark travelling night they worked their passage, as it were, away through the mountains, like their companion, the river Adige, which tears up a giant rock, and heaves it into the mild plain, and softly speeds on its level way. The sun appeared,--and Italy. It had rained. A bland air fluttered from the cypress hills through the valley, and through the vine-festoons of the mulberry-trees, and had forced its way along between blossoms and the fruits of the Seville oranges. The Adige seemed to rest, like a curling giant-snake, upon the motley-colored landscape of country-houses and olive-groves, and to set rainbows upon one another. Life played in the ether; only summer birds floated in the light blue; only the Venus-chariot of pleasure rolled over the soft hills. Albano's full soul gushed out, as it were, into the broad bed which led him from the mild plain to the magnificent Rome! "When we journey back," said Gaspard, "then remember thy approach." They stopped at a village with great stone houses. Albano was looking upon the warm out-o'-door life around him, the uncovered head, the naked breast, and the sparkling eyes of the men, the great sheep with silken wool, the little, black, lively pigs, and the black turkey-cocks, when he suddenly heard his name and a German greeting from a balcony overhead.