The Princess, with her company, saw with pleasure the new-comers. The old Prince Lauria welcomed his grandson courteously and with reserve. His innumerable servants spoke among them almost all the languages of Europe. Albano immediately asked the Knight after his teacher Dian, that graft of a Greek upon a Roman; but the most human thing was precisely that which Gaspard, as is always the case with great men, had not thought of. They sent to his residence, which was near; he was not at home. They sat down to dine. The Prince immediately entertained them with his favorite show-dish, the political progress of the world, and gave the latest news of the French Revolution. Gazettes of the times were to him Eternities, news was his antiques; he took all the newspapers of Europe, and therefore kept for each a German, Russian, English, Polish servant, to translate it for him. By the side of his satirical coldness toward all men and things, the political and Italian zeal appeared the stronger, with which he defended the French against the Knight, who composedly despised them; and, indulging himself after his manner, even in bad puns, conceded to the old Romans the _Forum_ and to the modern the _Campo Vaccino_, and even to the ancient Gauls the field of Mars, and to the modern French a field of March. Albano could not conceive of there being any joking so near the _Forum_, and thought every word must be great in this city. The cold Lauria spoke warmly for France, like a minister, regarding only nations, not individuals, and his sentiment pleased the youth. Then the Princess led the stream of conversation to Rome's high art. Fraischdörfer dissected the Colossus into limbs, and weighed them in the narrowest scales. Bouverot engraved the giant in historical copperplate. The Princess spoke with much warmth, but without point. Gaspard melted all up together, as it were, into a Corinthian brass, and comprehended all without being comprehended. On his coldly but strongly up-shooting life-fountain he let the world play and dance like a ball. Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept his inspiration, sacrificing to the unearthly gods of the past round about him, after the old fashion, namely, with silence. Well might and could _he_ have discoursed also, but quite otherwise, in odes, with the whole man, with streams which mount and grow upwards. He looked more and more longingly out of the window at the moon in the pure rain-blue and at single columns of the Forum; out of doors there gleamed for him the greatest world. At last he rose up, indignant and impatient, and stole down into the glimmering glory and stepped before the Forum; but the moonlit night, that decorative painter, which works with irregular strokes, made almost the very stage of the scene irrecognizable to him.