Unlike other fathers, Gaspard had been, since the first battle about war, the same as ever, yes, almost better than ever; with his old respect for every strong individuality, he took it quite agreeably that the sun of the youth entered so perceptibly into the signs of summer, and soared above the earth higher as well as warmer. He gave him the nearest proof of his undiminished regard in the fact, that, amidst the gradual preparations for returning to Pestiz, he answered in the affirmative to a quite unexpected wish of his son's for--separation. That is to say, Albano, who now, like ivy, wandered with all his blossoms and twigs among the monuments of the heroic past, and twined himself faster and faster around them, would not part from Rome without having seen Naples. To reinforce his own longing came also Dian's inspiration for the daughter-land of his father-land, for the splendor of its sky and earth, for its Grecian ruins, which the Architect preferred to the Roman. "In Rome," Dian had said, "you have the past; in Naples, on the other hand, the bold present. I will accompany you to and fro, and we will go home together. For you are not, to be sure, as yet, properly speaking, versed in the beautiful, but in nature, in the heroic and in effect. Naples is the place, then." The Knight--although the whole object of the journey had been already gained by Albano's having regained his spirits--consented without hesitation to the appendix of a second, on the condition that he should not stay behind longer than a month. But just at this time, when his inner world seemed at liberty to tune itself so harmoniously, came hostile discords nearer and nearer, which at a distance he still took for harmonies. The discord evolved itself slowly out of his indefinite connection with the Princess, because every such connection with women decided itself uncomfortably at last, seldomer ending in love than in hatred.