While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were sunk into the night, and which lay stretching away like a second night, immeasurable and gloomy, he saw now and then a dissolving splendor sweep over it, which flowed on ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed itself in the air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows through the glimmering waves. There drew near a bark, with its sail taken in, because the wind blew off shore. Female forms appeared on board, among which, one of royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the torch-glare streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As they sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either side under the dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess were coming, around whom the sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out on shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it seemed, servants had been waiting to make everything easy. A smaller person, provided with a double opera-glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and went away with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew a white veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two virgins, gravely and like a princess, to the spot where Albano and the music were. Albano stood near to her; two great black eyes, filled with fire and resting upon life with inward earnestness, streamed through the veil, which betrayed the proud, straight forehead and nose. In the whole appearance there was to him something familiar and yet great; she stood before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with a heavenly countenance bent down over his cradle and looked in with smiles and blessings, and whom the spirit now recognizes again with its old love. He thought perhaps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye with complacency and attention on the play of two virgins, who, neatly clad in silk, with gold-edged silken aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang sweetly with Italian half-voice[97] to the graceful joy. "It is all done in fact," said an old man to the strange lady, "to the honor of the Holy Virgin and St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes. At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the moon over Vesuvius.