Blanden nodded pleasantly and approvingly to his friend, who was chatting in the brightest wine-inspired mood, and then accompanied him to his carriage, in which he drove away to occupy the proud place upon the _sella curulis_ of a Prussian Landrath. As the evening's twilight had crept in, Blanden with Doctor Kuhl sat upon the balcony of the castle, looking over the lake. It was a cool summer evening; heavy leaden clouds lay above the lake, and the tall oak trees which shut in its broad mirror--there must have been thunder in the distance; the remains of stormy clouds were thrown up one above another, like charred logs of wood, and a freezing blast swept over the lonely lake. The lamps beside which Blanden and his friend sat, trembled in the soft sway of the evening breeze; the whole effect of the landscape had something mournfully wearisome, disconsolately monotonous; behind it again lay woods and lakes, lakes and woods; the course of cultivation had hardly touched these districts; the life of the people, the life of individuals pointed to but few memories in these forsaken places. Before Blanden's mind arose, with double charm, the picture of that Italian landscape, where in one paradise of nature, taste and cultivation create themselves enchanting asylums, where every foot's breadth of land stirs up fascinating recollections, and has been overcome by civilisation, where the great pilgrim train of strangers brings the culture of Europe in ever changing forms. Under the influence of this mood, he began to relate his adventure on Lago Maggiore to his friend. CHAPTER VIII. ON LAGO MAGGIORE. "Any one who reads one of those older Italian romances, feels himself irresistibly attracted by the free breath of adventure which pervades it; I know, indeed, that in our respectable society where every one carries his passport in his pocket book, this adventuresomeness cannot find a place; it is proscribed, and I do not see either how it can be otherwise in our condition as citizens. "All the same, it meets the untrammelled wanderer here and there; it wears a mask before its face, but it gazes fiercely and seductively through that mask. "I have often meditated as to wherein the charm of those fleeting meetings consists, which in no case lay claim to any endurance; it is the charm of freedom and want of fetters. There is something oppressive to the mind in this consciousness of durability, in order to reconcile oneself to it deeper reflections are needed about the necessity that fetters man's life, and the pride of a sense of duty reconciles us to the constraint of the unalterable.