heavens, and poured down out of
the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian
Obelisk of the gateway, high as the clouds, in the night, and three
streets ran gleaming apart. "So," (said Albano to himself, as they
passed through the long _Corso_ to the tenth ward) "thou art veritably
in the camp of the God of war--here is where he grasped the hilt of
the monstrous war-sword, and with the point made the three wounds in
three quarters of the world!" Rain and splendor gushed through the
vast, broad streets; occasionally he passed suddenly along by gardens,
and into broad city-deserts and market-places of the past. The rolling
of the carriages amidst the rush and roar of the rain resembled the
thunder whose days were once holy to this heroic city, like the
thundering heaven to the thundering earth; muffled-up forms, with
little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a
long palace with colonnades in the light of the moon, often a solitary
gray column, often a single high fir tree, or a statue behind
cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the
carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall,
blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed
a little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now toward the child,
and so, alternately, illuminated each. This friendly group made its
way to the very centre of his soul, now so highly exalted, and brought
with it, to him, many a recollection; particularly was a Roman child
to him a wholly new and mighty idea.

They alighted at last at the Prince _di Lauria's_--Gaspard's
father-in-law and old friend. * * * Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept
his inspiration sacrificing to the unearthly gods of the past round
about him, after the old fashion, namely, with silence. Well might he
and could he have discussed, but otherwise, namely in odes, with the
whole man, with streams which mount and grow upward. He looked even more
and more longingly out of the window at the moon in the pure rain-blue,
and at single columns of the Forum; out of doors there gleamed for him
the greatest world. At last he rose up, indignant and impatient, and
stole down into the glimmering glory, and stepped before the Forum; but
the moonlit night, that decoration-painter, which works with irregular
strokes, made almost the very stage of the scene irrecognizable to him.

What a dreary, broad plain, loftily encompassed