This speech set a hot seal upon Albano's mouth; it seemed exactly as if his father had found him out, and took his old pleasure in damping, like a fate, all enthusiasm, and giving all expectations, even gloomy ones, the lie. The offended, self-inflaming spirit remained now fast covered from Gaspard and Bouverot. But to his Dian he showed all on the morning after. He knew how this friend, with the arm of an artist and a youth at once, bore and waved the banner of freedom, and therefore he broke before him the dark seal of his previous melancholy. He confessed to his most beloved teacher his full-grown purpose, so soon as the unholy war against Gallic liberty, which now hung out its pitchy torch in all streets of the city of God, burst into flames, to repair to the side of freedom, and to fall himself sooner than see her fall. "Truly, you are a brave man," said Dian. "Had I not child and profession hanging upon my neck, by Heaven, I myself would join you. An old fellow like that yonder sees much and hears badly. He shall not nose out anything, nor his beast of a _Barigello_ neither." He meant the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, whom he, with an artist's obstinacy, eternally abominated, because the Counsellor painted worse and criticised better than himself. "Dian, your word is finely said; yes, indeed, age makes one physically and morally _far-sighted_ for one's self, and _deaf_ to others," said Albano. "Have I spoken well, Albano? But truly such is the fact," said he, very much pleased, in his diffidence with respect to his language, at the praise of its beauty.