In Naples he examined a few more curiosities; then on the next morning he embarked for the Eden of the waves. 115. CYCLE. And when they saw and embraced each other again, they were even more enraptured and devoted to each other than any happy heart could have foreseen. Linda sat still and soft, looked upon the fair youth, and let him and his sister tell their stories, the latter often interrupting herself to kiss both. He spoke with great joy about Linda's letter. Men always make more out of what is written than women. Linda spoke indifferently: "Ah, well, once written and read, let it be forgotten. In yours, too, there is occasionally a northern _faux brillant_." "The Countess," said Julienne, "never praises any one to the face, but herself." Linda bore the joke with characteristic good-nature. Albano, often pleasing and often offending her when he was not conscious of it, forgave love ever so easily. Friendship finds it harder to get forgiveness from offended vanity. "Yes, indeed!" cried Julienne, suddenly starting under the veil of mirthfulness for a serious discourse; "thy project of emigrating to France is a _faux brillant_. Canst thou then believe that they will allow a princess-sister of Hohenfliess to sign a pass to her brother for a democratic campaign? Never! And nobody at all will do it who loves thee!" Albano smiled, but at last grew serious. Linda was silent, and cast down her eyes. "Can you show me," said he, softly, as half in earnest and half in jest, "a purer field of spurs on the whole map?" "A poorer field of spurge!"[103] said she, playing on the words. "Hardly, I should think!" Now she began to shadow forth, with aristocratic, feminine, and princely colors at once, with tri-colored paints, all the flames, smoke-clouds, and waves with which the _Monte Nuovo_ of the Revolution had come up from the ground, and added, "Better an idle count than that!" He grew red. Always had this womanly fettering of man's energy, this affectionate fastening of one down to flowers, this unrighteous forging over of the love-ring into a galley-ring, been to him a crying and odious thing. "In a world which is only a fair-week and mask-ball, not to be able to maintain even the freedom of fair and masquerade, is tough," Schoppe had once said; and he had never forgotten it, because it came right out of his own soul back into it again. "Sister, either thou art not my brother, or I am not thy sister," said he, "else we should understand each other more easily." Linda's hand quivered in his, and her eye rose slowly towards him, and quickly sank again. Julienne seemed to be touched with the reproach cast upon her sex. Albano thought of the time when he had crushed a heart of wax with one of iron, and said, more brightly and coldly, "Julienne, I should be very willing not to say no to thee, if thou wouldst not take the absence of a negative for an affirmative." He