"I am sick, Albano, else I know not how I come by these gloomy ideas. I am so tranquil in my innermost heart; I have shown only the chords, not the tune. We must work and look, not upon the future, but upon the next coming present. If the time should ever, ever appear--I have neither remorse nor patience--the time when thou lovedst me no more, heartily--ah! I should be stiller, stronger, briefer than now: and what could there be beyond, except to die either _for_ the loved one or--_by_ him? "Come soon, sweet one! It is very beautiful around us; it has rained, all the world is in jubilee, and sees the sun-drops, and has gathered itself a heavenly drink. I, too, have set out in haste for thee dishes and vases. Come; I will bring thee the olive-leaf and the myrtle-twig, and wind around thy head roses and violets. Come. Once I little thought that I should look so often toward Posilippo. L." "P. S.--The rival also looks toward Posilippo, and rejoices in the thought of thy return. Yet do not hurry anything. _Adio, caro_. J." Albano found in this character a silent justification and satisfaction of all demands which at an earlier period, when Liana was still living, he had always felt compelled to make upon a loved being. He did not, however, perceive, in the innocence of his love, that this was the very being whom the longing after war and exploits that reigned in his letter could not please. He visited now the subterranean city in its churchyard, near the Cestius' pyramid, as it were, of the volcano. Dian went through Herculaneum with him as an antiquarian lexicon, in order to unroll before him the whole domestic economy of the ancients, up to their very painting; but Albano was more moved than his friend by this picture of the past dwelling in the midst of the present,--by the still houses, and night-like streets, and by the frequent traces of flying despair. "Would not all these people, then, have been dead now, after all, if it had not been for Vesuvius?" asked Dian, gayly, in this gay region. "I ask you, rather," he continued, "whether an architect who comes out of this chamber or city of art can take any longer much pleasure in sketching in your Germany, after seeing these ruins of the earth, the petty, pitiful ones for your princely gardens?" They saw in a dark vestibule one of those earthern masks which they used to put into graves, with lamps like eyes behind. Then Albano looked at him staringly, and said, "Are we not gleaming earth-masks on graves?" "Fie! what an odious idea!" said Dian. Yet a long time, out there in the living sunshine, did gloomy forms follow him. Near the shining Portici stood Vesuvius, like a funeral pile, and on it the death-angel. He thought of Hamilton's prediction, that the lovely Ischia would one day perish over the mine of an earthquake. Even Linda's letter troubled him, with the bare imagination of the possibility of losing her.