She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had, namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99] of many Spanish women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided her, after what she had said, but she forbade it. During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution, particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I cannot like him." During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting. Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,--the giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches from pole to pole,--the coasts and promontories glimmered only, like midnight dreams,--clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in splendor,--all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around the shore dark cities,--the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,--soft and bland floated the blue