"All at once the broad smoke ascends more darkly red, the thunders roll more wildly into one another, the heavy hell-cloud smokes more hotly. Suddenly morning air rushes in, and drags the flaming curtain down the mountain. There stood the clear, benignant sun on the Apennine, and Somma and Ottayano and Vesuvius bloomed in peaceful splendor, and the world came slowly up after the sun with its mountains, islands, and coasts. The ring of creation lay gilded upon the sea before me, and as the magic wands of the rays touched the lands, they started up into life. And the old royal brother of Vesuvius, Ætna, sat on his golden throne, and looked out over his land and sea. And the light day rolled like snow from the mountains down into the sea, melting away in splendors, and flowed over the broad, happy Campania[102] and into the dark chestnut-vales. And the earth became boundless, and the sun drew, in the wide net of rays, the sweetly imprisoned world onward in the fairest ether. "O Linda, there sparkled thy outspread island, proudly encamped in the sea, with the morning redness streaming down over it, a high-masted war-ship; and an eagle, the bird of the thunder-god, flew into the blessed distance, as if he bore my heart in his breast away to thy Epomeo. 'O that I could follow him,' said my spirit. The hot earth gave claps of thunder, and the smoke enveloped me. I could have died, that so I might follow the eagle in his flight and be at this moment in Ischia." Here the intensely excited soul held itself in. He went or glided down the declivity towards Portici. In a house which had been mutually fixed upon beforehand he thought to find again his friend. But he found neither Dian nor the expected letter from Linda. Enervated by walking, watching, and glowing, he fell, in the cool, still chamber into a dreamy sleep. When he awoke, the midnight of the Italian day, the siesta, embosomed him. All rested under the hot, still light; there was not a lark in heaven; the green parasols near his window, the pines, stood unmoved in the earth, and only the poplars rocked gently the new-born blossoms of the vine which lay in their arms; and the ivy, which hung from summits, swayed a little. Such shadowy twigs played once in Lilar in Chariton's chamber, when he was expecting Liana, and then thought of Italy. The great, level, simple garden from Portici to Naples--a garden web of villages, groves, and country-houses, washed by waves--carried his eye over blossoms to his paradise in the sea. This lonely, still time, full of longing, softened infinitely his fair heart. He ended the interrupted letter thus:-- "In Portici.