escapade familiar to Spanish or Italian students, which recalls the stage.  It is an episode from ‘Don Giovanni,’ translated to this dark-etched scene of snowy hills, and Gothic tower, and mullioned windows deep embayed beneath their eaves and icicles. Deh vieni alla finestra! sings Palmy-Leporello; the chorus answers:  Deh vieni!  Perche non vieni ancora? pleads Leporello; the chorus shouts:  Perche?  Mio amu-u-u-r, sighs Leporello; and Echo cries, amu-u-u-r! All the wooing, be it noticed, is conducted in Italian.  But the actors murmur to each other in Davoser Deutsch, ’She won’t come, Palmy!  It is far too late; she is gone to bed.  Come down; you’ll wake the village with your caterwauling!’ But Leporello waves his broad archdeacon’s hat, and resumes a flood of flexible Bregaglian.  He has a shrewd suspicion that the girl is peeping from behind the window curtain; and tells us, bending down from the ladder, in a hoarse stage-whisper, that we must have patience; ’these girls are kittle cattle, who take long to draw:  but if your lungs last out, they’re sure to show.’  And Leporello is right.  Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.  From the summit of his ladder, by his eloquent Italian tongue, he brings the shy bird down at last.  We hear the unbarring of the house door, and a comely maiden, in her Sunday dress, welcomes us politely to her ground-floor sitting-room.  The Comus enters, in grave order, with set speeches, handshakes, and inevitable Prosits!  It is a large low chamber, with a huge stone stove, wide benches fixed along the walls, and a great oval table.  We sit how and where we can.  Red wine is produced, and eier-brod and kuechli.  Fraeulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her own with decent self-respect against the inrush of the revellers.  She is quite alone; but are not her father and mother in bed above, and within earshot?  Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and after an abnormal night, is well conducted.  Things seem slipping into a decorous wine-party, when Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed hat upon his head, and very cleverly acts a little love-scene for our benefit.  Fraeulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the thing is so prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste could be offended.  Meanwhile another party of night-wanderers, attracted by our mirth, break in.  More Prosits and clinked glasses follow; and with a fair good-morning to our hostess, we retire.

It is too late to think of bed.  ‘The quincunx of heaven,’ as Sir Thomas Browne phrased it on a dissimilar occasion, ’runs low....  The huntsmen are up in America; and not in America only, for the huntsmen, if there are any this night in Graubuenden, have long been out upon the snow, and the stable-lads are dragging the sledges from their sheds to carry down the mails to Landquart.  We meet the porters from the various hotels, bringing letter-bags and luggage to the post.  It is time to turn in and take a cup of black coffee against the rising sun.