They drew nearer and nearer to the hermit's house on the summit, rocking themselves upon the gay, golden flag-feathers of life. They spoke to each other now and then a word of joy, not, however, by way of communicating each other, but because the heart could not help it, and a word was nothing but a sigh of happiness. They stood at last upon the throne of the earth, and looked down as from the sun. Round about them the sea lay camped, melting away into the blue of the horizon,--from Capua, far in the depths of the distance, stretched the white Apennines around Vesuvius and over on the long coast of Sorrento still onward,--and from Posilippo the lands pursued the sea even beyond Mola and Terracina,--on the opened world-surface appeared everything, the promontories, the yellow crater-margins on the coasts and the islands round about, which the terrible, veiled fire-god under the sea had driven up out of his fiery realm to the light of the sun,--and the lovely Ischia with its little cities on the shores and with its little gardens and craters, stood like a green blooming ship in the great sea, and rested on innumerable waves. Then vanished the greatnesses of the earth from below, only the earth was great and the sun with his heavens. "O how happy we are!" said Albano. Yes, you were happy there; who will be so after you? Cradling himself upon the tree of life, at which his childish eye had already so early and longingly gazed upward, he gave utterance to all that exalted and possessed him. "Therein I recognize the all-powerful mother; angry and flaming, she comes up from the bottom of the sea, plants a burning land, and then does she again, smiling, distribute flowers among her children; so let man be, volcano--then flower." "What in comparison with this," said Julienne, "are all the winter amusements of the German May-moon! Is not that a smaller Switzerland only in a greater lake of Geneva?" The Countess, who through her Spain was more initiated in such charms, kept herself for the most part still. "Man," said she, "is the Oread and Hamadryad or some other divinity, and inspires wood and vale, and man himself, again, is inspired by man."