upon your perilous vocation.  We geniuses—­for I am one too—­care as little for the world as it cares for us; without any ado, in the seven-league boots which we bring into the world with us, we stride on directly into eternity.  A most lamentable, inconvenient straddling position this—­one leg in the future, where nothing is to be discerned but the rosy morn and the faces of future children, the other leg still in the middle of Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo, where the entire present century would fain seize the opportunity to advance, and clings to the boot tight enough to pull the leg off!  And then all this restlessness, wine-bibbing, and hunger solely for an immortal eternity!  And look you at my comrade there on the bench, another genius; his time hangs heavy on his hands here and now, what under heaven is he to do in eternity?  Yes, my highly-esteemed comrade, you and I and the sun rose early together this morning, and have pondered and painted all day long, and it was all beautiful—­and now the drowsy night passes its furred sleeve over the world and wipes out all the colors.”  He kept on talking for a long while, his hair all disheveled with dancing and drinking, and his face looking deadly pale in the moonlight.

But I was seized with a horror of him and of his wild talk, and when he turned and addressed the sleeping painter I took advantage of the opportunity and slipped round the table, without being perceived by him, and out of the garden.  Thence, alone and glad at heart, I descended through the vine-trellises into the wide moonlit valley.

The clocks in the city were striking ten.  Behind me, in the quiet night, I still heard an occasional note of the guitar, and at times the voices of the two painters, going home at last, were audible.  I ran on as quickly as possible, that they might not overtake me.

At the city-gate I turned into the street on the right hand, and hurried on with a throbbing heart among the silent houses and gardens.  To my amazement, I suddenly found myself in the very Square with the fountain, for which, by daylight, I had vainly searched.  There stood the solitary summer-house again in the glorious moonlight, and again the Lady fair was singing the same Italian song as on the evening before.  In an ecstasy I tried first the low door, then the house door, and at last the big garden gate, but all were locked.  Then first it occurred to me that eleven had not yet struck.  I was irritated by the slow flight of time, but good manners forbade my climbing over the garden gate as I had done yesterday.  Therefore I paced the lonely Square to and fro for a while, and at last again seated myself upon the basin of the fountain and resigned myself to meditation and calm expectancy.

The stars twinkled in the skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with the ripple of the fountain.  All at once I perceived a white figure approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly toward the little garden door.  I peered eagerly through the dazzling moonlight—­it was the queer painter in his white cloak.  He drew forth a key quickly, unlocked the door, and, before I knew it, was within the garden.