When Albano raised his fiery eyes from the letter, he stood before Lilar under a high triumphal arch, and the sun went down in splendor behind Elysium. "Dost thou not know me?" asked Linda, in a low tone, who stood beside him in travelling dress, weeping in bright love and bliss; and Julienne came flying out and making a sign of caution to both, from the entrance thicket of the flute-dell, and cried, as a cunning pretext: "Linda, Linda, hearest thou not the flutes, then?" And Albano had forgotten the painful letter. 123. CYCLE. Like a concert that suddenly flutters up with a hundred wings did the swift presence of old love and joy break over the forsaken youth (so troubled about his friend) in beautiful waves; and smitten with delight, he saw Linda again as on Ischia; but she saw him again as in another Elysium; she was more soft, tender, ardent, remembering his past scenes in this garden. She would not relate nor hear anything at all about her own travelling adventures. Albano buried his mystery of Schoppe in his mighty but trembling breast; only to his father he burned to disclose it. He was incessantly representing to himself the possibility of a relationship, and the facility with which Schoppe might confound the pretended sister with the true one, Julienne; this very evening he meant to ask his father. He imparted to her the paternal consent to their alliance with great joy, but not with the greatest, because Schoppe's letter echoed in his bosom. Julienne perceived that only a cascade instead of a cataract came out of him to-day, and sought with a sly pleasantry to draw him out, by making him answer, which she easily did, through the whole range of questions touching important personalities of his and her acquaintance. She had some inclination to weave and to paint on the theatre curtain, or even to pierce a prompter's-hole in it. She began the questions at Idoine,--who shortly after his arrival had taken her departure back again from the city,--and left off with them at Schoppe,--inquiring after the object of his journey; but Albano had not seen the former, and as to the latter, Schoppe, he said, had confided it to him alone. A beautiful, inflexible marble vein of firmness ran through his being. Linda's black eye was an open, true German one, and looked upon him only to love him. Out of the flute-dell came the rest of the company, the Lector and others; Julienne constrained the lovers to a separation, saying: "Here is no Ischia; without me you cannot see each other here in the palace at all; I will announce it to thee always through thy father, when I am here."