Transparent evening gold-dust was wafted over the garden; the loud day was muffled, and life peaceful; olive-branches and their blossoms sank slowly down out of the quiet heavens. "There is the only place," said Idoine, "where man concludes an eternal peace with himself and others, as a French clergyman so beautifully said to me." "Such Christian-catholic night-thoughts," replied Linda, "are as disagreeable to me as the clergymen themselves. We can as little experience an immortality as an annihilation." "I do not understand that," said Julienne. "Ah, Idoine, if now there were no immortality, what would you do?" "_J'aimerais_," said she to her, in a low voice. Suddenly they heard some one singing before them, as at a great distance: "Taste"--then after some time--"of life's"--at last--"pleasure."[121] "That is the echo from the churchyard," said Idoine, and endeavored to persuade the party to return. "Echo and moonshine and churchyard together," she continued playfully, "may well be too strong for female hearts." At the same time she touched her eye, with a hint to Julienne, as much as to say how sorry she was that the eyes of the Countess could only see through a mist the beautiful evening coming on afar off. "The singing voice sounds so familiar to me," said Linda. "It's Roquairol, that's all; shall we go on?" said Julienne. But Linda begged to stay, and Idoine courteously agreed. Now did the echo--the moonlight of sound--give back tones like dirges from the funeral choir; and it was as if the united shades of the departed sang them over in their holy-week under the ground,--as if the corpse-veil stirred on the white lip, and out of the last hollows sounded again a hollow life. The singing ceased; Alpine horns began on the mountains; then the echo of the concert came over again in enchanting tones, as if the departed still played behind the breastwork of the grave-mound, and rehabilitated themselves in echoed tones,[122] All men bear dead or dying ones in their breast; so did the three maidens. Tones are the garments of the past fluttering back with a glimmer, and they excite the heart too much thereby. They wept, and neither could say whether for sadness or joy. The hitherto so moderate Idoine grasped Linda's hand, and laid it softly on her heart, and let it sink again. They turned round silently and with one accord. Idoine held Linda by the hand. The subterranean waters of the echoes of the dead and the Alpine horns murmured after them, though more distantly. It did not escape Julienne how Idoine continually turned her face, merely in order to withdraw it from _her_, with the great drops in her large eyes, towards the thickly-veiled Linda; and she inferred therefrom that Idoine knew and was acquainted with much, and respected the bride of the youth to whom she had by her fair resemblance given back a happy life.