The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part prayed; many believed now the Devil was in the play. Among the spectators lay a man with his face to the earth, and continually cried, "God have mercy on me!" But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, privately a little superstitious, said his understanding was at a stand-still here. But Albano explained how a complot of ghosts had been long twitching and drawing at his life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly thrust his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was firmly resolved immediately to cross over from Naples to Ischia, to see his sister. "Verily," he added, "in this mother country of wonder, fantasy, and everything great, one as easily believes in fair, enriching miracles of fate, as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles of spirits." Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of Ischia; "Because otherwise," he added, "when Albano had delivered his letters in Naples, and had been drawn in to the _Ricevimenti_,[94] or on Posilippo and Vesuvius, then there would be no getting away." On the day following they departed from Mola. The lovely sea played hide-and-seek with them on their way, and only the golden sky never veiled itself. Naples' goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar with its fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks at _Campania Felice_, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the broad garden, full of gardens, and even at the rough Appian Way, which its old name made softer. But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night--if indeed waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian Saturday night--to reach _Aversa_. Albano insisted upon their continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath. "She had come," she said, "from _Santa Agata_; her name was only _Agata_, and not _Santa_." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he was now--with his love of hovering about every fair form--himself quite in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night. 109. CYCLE