at,
only done one action worthy of you! Then were it sweet to me and
legitimate to open my heart by a wound, and to mix earthly blood with
the hallowed soil, and, out of the world of graves, to hasten away to
you, eternal and immortal ones! But I am not worthy of it!"

At this moment there came suddenly along up the _Via Sacra_ a tall
man, deeply enveloped in a mantle, who drew near the fountain without
looking round, threw down his hat, and held a coal-black, curly,
almost perpendicular, hindhead under the stream of water. But hardly
had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of the profile of Albano,
absorbed in his fancies, when he started up, all dripping, stared at
the count, fell into an amazement, threw his arms high into the air,
and said, "_Amico_!" Albano looked at him. The stranger said,
"Albano!" "My Dian!" cried Albano; they clasped each other
passionately and wept for love.

Dian could not comprehend it at all; he said in Italian: "But it
surely cannot be you; you look old." He thought he was speaking German
all the time, till he heard Albano answer in Italian. Both gave and
received only questions. Albano found the architect merely browner,
but there was the lightning of the eyes and every faculty in its old
glory. With three words he related to him the journey, and who the
company were. "How does Rome strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As
life does," replied Albano, very seriously, "it makes me too soft and
too hard." "I recognize here absolutely nothing at all," he continued;
"do those columns belong to the magnificent temple of Peace?" "No,"
said Dian, "to the temple of Concord; of the other there stands yonder
nothing but the vault." "Where is Saturn's temple?" asked Albano.
"Buried in St. Adrian's church," said Dian, and added hastily: "Close
by stand the ten columns of Antonine's temple; over beyond there the
baths of Titus; behind us the Palatine hill; and so on. Now tell
me--!"

They walked up and down the Forum, between the arches of Titus and
Severus. Albano (being near the teacher who, in the days of childhood,
had so often conducted him hitherward) was yet full of the stream
which had swept over the world, and the all-covering water sunk but
slowly. He went on and said: "Today, when he beheld the Obelisk, the
soft, tender brightness of the moon had seemed to him eminently
unbecoming for the giant city; he would rather have seen a sun blazing
on its broad banner; but now the moon was the p