The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, which was sent up, had long since arrived; he also took occasion to praise his situation. "Often," said he, and made Julienne laugh, "my mountain smokes like Vesuvius, and bathing-guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only because I am baking my bread up here." They encamped themselves in the shady open air. They must needs be ever looking down again upon the lovely, diminished island, which with its gardens planted within gardens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so whole and so near, a great family garden, where the people all dwell together, because there are no different lands to become entangled with each other, and the bees and the larks fly not far out over the garden of the sea. Like still, open flowers were the three souls beside each other; fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great deep heart; unused to love, she would fain gaze therein and find joy, while no word of Albano's escaped her, for it bespoke its birth of love in the heart. Overflowing with mildness, and deep in thought she sat there, with her great eye half under the downcast eyelid,--after her manner, always long silent as well as long speaking. As the diamond sparkles just like the dewdrop, but only with steady power and even without the sun, her heart resembled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne beheld, when, now and then, after a childlike forgetting of Albano, (because her stream of speech had borne her from one world to another,) suddenly and with unembarrassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the youth's, to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less than a tender embrace. They took the nearest way down back to Albano's residence, which was ever looking up to them from its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so little with each other,--in the morning Albano was to travel. He must write from Portici, a messenger must come to take the letter,--"And he brings me one, too," said he. "Certainly not!" said Linda. Albano begged. "She will soon change and write," said Julienne. She said no. By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain along with the dark lava-streams, and in the poplars nightingales began already their melodious twilight. They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, without having asked either, to procure a bark, in order that they might enjoy the evening. Compulsory proposals of pleasure are precisely those to which maidens love best to say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat; he always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.