The night was chill and moist; but the clouds passed off, and the infinite sky threw its myriad lights on the mists, on the craggy heights, and the dark larches. I sat long beside the rushing Restonica, whose tumultuous din broke the impressive silence of the still, pure night. The spirit of solitude had never come so near me as it did that night among the black crags, at the brink of a headlong brook, far up among the clouds and mists, face to face with primitive nature, lost in a foreign island girt with many a mile of sea. In such moments, the feeling of loneliness becomes oppressive, and the sudden thought alarms the soul, that the human being is but an insignificant atom; and that perhaps this spiritual atom may in an instant lose and forget its connexion with all related to it, and remain lonely in void space. But the soul is not thus to be overcome; it spreads its wings for the distant home, there regains its serenity, and loneliness has fled. I listen to sounds that seem to be borne to me from the hills; they sound sometimes like wild laughter—it is the mad Restonica that is so unquiet. These stones are the dumb witnesses to ancient, dreadful birth-pangs, offspring of the fieriest embraces of Uranus and Gaea. The cold air drove me again to the fire. Overcome with fatigue, I at last fell asleep, when I was suddenly awakened by the clear voice of Santa, who cried several times, _Spettacoli divini! spettacoli divini!_ She was putting the children to rights; they had flung themselves about into all sorts of comic positions. Divine spectacles they were certainly. Lily-flower lay rolled up like a snake half over her mother; Paola had thrown her arm about my neck. The child had perhaps heard an owl in her sleep, or seen the vampire in a dream, that comes to suck the heart's-blood. I spent the rest of the night sitting looking into the fire, and amused myself with imaginary representations of the heretics whom the Holy Catholic Church has burned to the honour of God. Now this is quite an endless amusement. CHAPTER IV. THE MOUNTAIN-TOP.