"No," said Albano, "so soon as a man once pursues and desires anything right earnestly and exclusively, then he is called a coxcomb or a pedant." "O you everlasting readers and readeresses!" cried Julienne, stepping in and seeing him with a book in his hand. "Never has the Princess read preface or note," said Linda, "as I have never yet let any one go." Women who read prefaces and notes are of some significance; with men, at most the opposite were true. "We can set out; all is ready," said Julienne. 112. CYCLE. When they came out into the festive world, how did the cool blue of heaven come floating, fanning down upon them instead of earthly airs! How sparkled the world and the day--and the future! How brightly foamed over in the goblet of life the draught of love made for each of the three beings out of two intoxicating ingredients! They followed the path to the summit of Epomeo, but in an elastic, yielding freedom, and in a rapid variety of nature which is not to be matched anywhere upon the earth. They met valleys with laurels and cherries, with roses and primroses at once. There came cool defiles filled out with ripe oranges and apples, beside high rocks of aloes and pomegranates, and on the summits of the cherry and apple tree stirred overhead the vine and orange blossoms. In the blooming clefts warbled secure nightingales, and out of the crevices poisonless serpents' heads darted to the light,--sometimes appeared a cloister in a citron-grove, sometimes a white house attached to a vine-garden, now a cool grotto, now a kitchen garden near red clover, now a little meadow full of white rose-flowers and narcissi, and at every turn a man, who went by singing, dancing, and accosting them. Heights and gardens alternately hid and revealed the land and the water, and often for a long time the far-stretching sea and its cloud-coasts glimmered after them like a second heaven through the green twigs.