Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the jay. The Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer one, that he might with his own ears hear him drill it into the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In life dwells deception, not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at first, merely a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three times, then said, snapping his fingers by way of incitement to the creature, "_Allons diablesse!_" and the animal stuttered out, in a deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Roquairol found in this comic bestial-mask something frightful, and accepted the proposal to compose some lines of a chorus and assign them to the bird, on one unique condition, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening previous, draw away his nephew Albano from Pestitz, under some pretext or other, and then appear with him in the Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, "Sir Captain, I need no pretext; I have a true reason. I am to travel with him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come to-morrow evening; he, too, will be one of your spectators." Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda, and in his impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not have accepted anything so readily as a little plan for an excursion, by which he might the earlier have this beloved Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated by the Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany her to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier castle, and to go back the next day into the Prince's garden. She declined. The sick brother, according to concert between him and the Princess, put in the petitions which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled them. And now all was arranged for the evening on which Roquairol was to see Linda. So glimmer by night in the sheds of an innocent hamlet the inserted brands of the incendiary; the storm-wind roars around the weary, sleeping inmates; the robbers stand on the mountains in the mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the moment when the fiery swords of the flames shall gleam out on all sides through the mist, and rob and murder with them, as they rush down on the dismayed and defenceless. 128. CYCLE. Linda read the letter innumerable times over, wept for sweet love, and never once thought of--forgiving. This breeze of love, which bends all the flowers and breaks none, she had herself so long wished; and now, all at once, after the foggy dead-calm of the heart, it came fresh and living, through the garden of her life. She could hardly wait for eight o'clock. She helped herself while away the time by selecting her dress, which at last consisted of the veil, hat, and all the things which she had worn when she found her lover for the first time on the island of Ischia.