Albano could not spend a night in a region where the single columns and arches of the ruined sun-temple of his youth lay scattered round; but he betook himself, in a mournfully dreamy mood, toward the city. On the road he found the Provincial Director Wehrfritz on horseback, who was in quest of him. "Respected son," said he, "there have come to my hands the weightest things from thy intimate friend Mr. Schoppe, which I, in turn, have to deliver only into thine own, which I accordingly hereby make haste to do; for, by Heaven, I have little spare time. The Prince has dropped off this evening, from fright, because somebody said his old father, who had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign of his death, was to be seen in the mirror-room, which, however, I hear, turned out to be only something of wax. The articles which I have to deliver up are, first, a perspective-glass, wherewith thou wilt see thy mother and sister painted (I use carefully Mr. Schoppe's own expressions); secondly, a written packet addressed to 'Albano, foster-son of Wehrfritz,' half of which is still enclosed in a black, broken marble slab; and, thirdly, thy portrait." The portrait resembled Albano at his present age, it was discovered,--so far as the stars permitted one to see,--though, in fact, he had never let himself be painted. The black marble slab and the perspective-glass brought before his soul his father's prophecy on Isola Bella,[143]--that a female form would step toward him out of the wall of a picture-gallery, and describe to him a place where he was to find the black slab, having previously shown him one where he should find the telescope, of which the eye-glass would make for him, out of the old image of his sister, a young recognizable one, and the object-glass, out of the young image of his mother, an old recognizable one. Albano put anxious questions about Schoppe and the history of the finding of the rare freight. "With Herr Schoppe it fares well enough," said Wehrfritz; "he must be somewhere in the neighborhood with a strange gentleman." Albano inquired after his dress; this, to his astonishment, had grown out of a green into a red again. Hardly had Wehrfritz begun giving the wonderful history how Schoppe came by those wonderful things, when Albano, who gathered therefrom the solution of the paternal prophecy, in the eagerness of his expectation interrupted the intelligence with the request that he would accompany him to the neighboring Chapel of the Cross, around which several lanterns stood. He had both medallions always with him, and was now so curious to see the face of his mother through the object-glass, as well as to read the paper.