me, in a perfect rage, 'Well, very well, Linda, _one day_, be sure, thine eye will be wet for me.' Then I know well that he means no good, and I spare him from an anxious dread on that account; for shall two, brother and sister, sink in their bloom? He would long ago have travelled after her, had he not daily hoped she was coming back. Ah, could I tear my loving heart out of my breast, and put it into hers instead of the other, that so she might love him with all my love, Albano, right gladly would I do it. But the paper comes to an end on this side, and mother wishes on the other to write a greeting. Farewell! is the wish of Thy faithful sister, Rabette." "How goes it with my most precious son? Is he prosperous, still good and well? Does he still think of his true foster-parents? This in the name of his father and in her own, asks and wishes, His faithful mother, Albina von W." "P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return. A." "P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has painted _you know who_, and _scenes_, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess often this winter. R." As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look once in the magic-face of that Heroine.