Schoppe surveyed with visible complacency Albano's ripened form, and drew asunder, as it were, the young man's shining wings. "Thou hast," said he, "spread out and colored thyself right well,--hast May and August on one bough, like an orange-tree." Albano took no pleasure in this. "Only relate to me thy life, my brother," said he. "Thou shouldst tell thine first, methinks; I am tired even to stupidity," said Schoppe, seating himself and unbuckling his hunting-pouch. "Hereafter," replied Albano, "what thou hast occasion for I will tell thee. I got thy letters,--I really loved the well-known one,--a misfortune divided us,--I am innocent and she is great;--O God, be satisfied with this for to-day!" Never could he complain of misfortunes to his friends; still less now expose the misery of a beloved. "And still longer," replied Schoppe; "only say, does it add new misery if I bring with me from Spain and proceed to unpack proofs of your being related as brother and sister?" "No," said Albano, "I need tremble at no past." "Thou art still going to France?" asked Schoppe. "To-morrow, if thou wilt go too," replied Albano. "By all means, as thy regiment chaplaincy. Not for want of the spirit of art, as thou writest from Rome, but from a superfluity of it, thou goest among soldiers. I should see it with pleasure, if thou wert to consider that even Dante, Cæsar, Cervantes, Horace, served before they wrote so preciously,--only students invert it, and compose something short and sweet, and take up service afterward. To come to my travels,--it costs me much, namely, time, merely to tell thee that I caught thy absurd uncle with a carriage full of baggage in the little nest of _Ondres_, a post and a half from Bayonne. I owned to him I was going to Valencia to dissect the silk-stocking-weavers' looms in that place, to enjoy, at the same time, my drop of ice and a waistcoat-pocket full of Valencia almonds, and to visit the few professors who had produced the best compends for three thousand reals.[134] He should certainly arrive before me, he said. We arranged to put up at the same inn in Valencia. I found my account in him, as he could most easily introduce me to Romeiro's house. But I waited and watched there for him fourteen days in vain. With the steward of the house I found no hearing, although I cut out his stupid profile five times, with the request that he would unlock to a travelling painter the picture cabinet, where I wished to find the maternal picture of the Countess.