When he awoke, he was alone, but with his weapon, and on the wooded spot where he had first sunk to sleep. The sky was blue, and the light constellations glimmered; the earth was green, and the snow gone; the half-ring he no longer held in his hand; around him was no sound, and no human being. Had all been but the fleeting cloud-procession of dreams, the brief whirl and shaping that goes on in their magic smoke? But life and truth had burned so livingly into his breast, and the tears of a sister still lay on his eye. "Or might they be only my brotherly tears!" said his perplexed spirit, as he rose, and in the bright night went homeward. All was as still as if life were yet sleeping on; he heard himself, and feared to waken it; he looked upon his own body as he walked along. Yes, thought he, this thick bed in which we are wrapped plays off before us even the woes and joys of life. Just as, in our sleep, we seem to stifle under falling mountains when the coverlet settles over our lips, or to stride over sticky, melted metal when it oppresses the feet with too great a thickness of feathers, or to freeze, like naked beggars, when it is shoved off, and exposes us to the night-chill, so does this earth, this body, throw into the seventy years' sleep of the immortal lights and sounds and chills, and he shapes to himself therefrom the magnified history of his joys and sorrows; and, when he once awakes, only a little of it proves true! "Heavens! why comest thou so late, and so pale?" asked Schoppe, who had been a long time in Albano's chamber, waiting for him. "O, ask me not to-day!" said Albano. TWENTY-THIRD JUBILEE. Liana. 95. CYCLE.