I sat down on a stone, and commenced sketching the cabins. The whole community came round me, and looked on with expressions of the liveliest delight. Every one now wanted to have his portrait taken, in order that it might afterwards be "printed" in Paris, as they said. They would have it that I was from Paris; and I could not make it intelligible to them, that besides Paris, there was another country called Germania. "Germania, then," said my host, "is your paese; and this paese has kings, and it belongs to Paris." There the matter had to rest. The afternoon sun shone warmly, and tempted me into the hills. I took the children with me—Antonio, a boy of thirteen, shaggy as a bear; Paola Maria, and Fiordalisa. Fiordalisa means Lily-flower. Let the reader picture to himself this Lily-flower of Monte Rotondo: she has seen twelve summers; her dress is considerably tattered, her dark hair hangs wild about her brown face, her eyes are clear and keen as a falcon's, her teeth are white as ivory, and she climbs the rocks barefoot with the agility of a chamois. We botanized along the Restonica. I espied some beautiful red pinks on a ledge that I could hardly have reached, and I pointed to them. "Aspettate! wait!" cried the Lily-flower; and she was off like lightning up the cliff, and presently she was down again with a handful of the pinks. The children now emulated each other in climbing and dancing on the perilous crags like so many elves; fear seemed a thing quite unknown to these little mountain-sprites. As we were crossing the Restonica on our return home, Lily-flower sprang into the stream, and took the wild fancy of splashing me with water, which she did most unsparingly. I found the red foxglove growing in great abundance in these hills—my little elves brought it me in armfuls; and when we got home, we encircled the smoking hut with a garland of the poisonous beauties—a decoration that it had probably never before met with. This was to be a holiday token on the cabin that a guest was there, since with good men it is always festival when their house shelters a guest. Lily-flower's delight in the garland was unbounded. "To-morrow," she said, "when you are up on the hill, you will find a blue flower—the most beautiful flower in all Corsica." "If you say it, Fiordalisa, then it must be true, and to-morrow I shall find the blue wonder-flower."[L]