A vigorous, high-minded man, like Albano, will hardly, then, in the midst of thirty-years' wars, last days, emigrating nations, crumbling suns, strip off his coat, and exhibit to himself or the universe the ruptured vein which bleeds on his breast. So stood matters, when the two friends at evening climbed a half-open woodland height, from which they saw below them a wonderful glory-land, so friendly and foreign, as if it were the remains of a time when the whole earth was still warm, and an ever-green orient land. It seemed, so far as they could see for the trees and the evening-sun, to be a valley formed by the angle of mutually approaching mountains, and stretching away immeasurably toward the west. A party-colored windmill, flinging round its broad wings before the sun, confused the eye, which would fain analyze the throng of evening lights, gardens, sheep, and children; on both steeps white-clad children, with long, green hat-ribbons flowing behind them, were keeping watch; a motley Swissery ran through the meadow-green along the dark brook; on a high-arched hay-wagon there drove along a peasant-woman, dressed as if for a marriage festival, and at the side went country-people in Sunday finery; the sun withdrew behind a colonnade of round, leafy oaks,--those German liberty-trees and temple-pillars,--and they soared aloft, transfigured and magnified in the golden blue. At this moment the surprised travellers saw the shaded Dutch village near below,--composed, as it were, of neat, painted garden-houses clustered together, with a linden-circle in the middle, and a young, blooming hunter not far off, or an Amazon, who with one hand took off her hat, stuck full of twigs, and with the other let the crossbeam with the bucket mount high over the well. "My friend," inquired Schoppe of an official messenger who came behind them with tin-plate and knapsack, "what do you call this village?" "Arcadia," was the reply. "But to speak without any poetic white-heat or culminating of fancy, my poetic friend, how is that canton down below there properly named?" asked Schoppe again. Petulantly the official messenger answered, "Arcadia, I say, if you cannot retain it,--it is an old crown-domain; our Princess Idone (Idoine) keeps herself there year in and year out for constancy, and does everything there at her own pleasure; what will you have more?" "Are you, too, in Arcadia?"[22] "No, in Sowbow," answered the messenger, very loud, over his shoulders, for he was already five steps ahead.