"At midnight, my Linda, when the moon stood high over the Apennine, and looked from heaven with a long, enraptured, silvery look, and I thought of thee, I arose and went softly out, in order to see again where thou dwellest, my Linda. Out of doors it was all still everywhere; I seemed to hear the earth thunder along its path in the heavens; the shadows of the linden-trees around me lay fast asleep on the green turf; the smoke of Vesuvius streamed up into the pure air; the moon gleamed out wondrously over the smoking sea, and with difficulty I sought and found at last the solitary mountain of thy island soaring into the blue, blooming silvery among the surrounding stars,--a glimmering temple-pinnacle for my heart. 'Yonder she dwells, and slumbers upon her Tabor, a glorified one of Elysium!' I said to myself. Around me was the ashes of centuries, stillness as of a coffin, and only now and then a rattling, as if they were throwing upon it the earth of the grave-mound. I was neither in the land of death nor of immortality; the countries became clouds; Naples and Portici lay hidden; the broad blue of heaven encompassed me; a high night-wind bent the smoke-column of Vesuvius downward, and swept it on in long clouds, tinged with ever-varying hues, through the pure ether. Then I looked after Ischia, and looked toward heaven. O Linda, I am sincere, hear it; I prayed the holy Liana, who loved thee so infinitely, now to hover round thee and prepare for thee the fortune which she once so earnestly wished thee. All at once the thunders of the mountain became entirely still, the stars sparkled more brightly. Then did the silence and life send a shudder through me, and I went back into the hut; but long did I continue to weep for rapture at the mere thought that thou wast happy. "The morning rose, and in the midst of its wintry darkness we entered upon our journey to the fire-flue and smoke-gate. As in a burnt-up, smoking city, I went along by hollows, around hollows, mountains around mountains, and over the trembling floor of an everlastingly active powder-mill up to the powder-house. At last I found the throat of this land of fire,--a great glowing smoke-valley, containing another mountain within it,--a landscape of craters, a workshop of the last day, full of fragments of worlds, of frozen, burst hell-floods,--an enormous potsherd of time, but inexhaustible, immortal as an evil spirit, and under the cold, pure heaven bringing forth to itself twelve thunder-months.