A little light in our apartment can screen us against the blinding
effect of the whole heaven-broad lightning-glare; so it needs in us
only a single, constantly shining idea and tendency, that the rapid
alternation of flame and light in the outer world may not dizzy us. Had
not Albano had an end in view which could be seen far-off,--had he not
kept before his eye an obelisk in his life-path,--how long would the
last scene, with its pangs cutting through each other, have confounded
him! Now he was like the kindled olive--and laurel-leaves around him,
whose flames grow green as they are themselves. Dian, who drove away
the pains of others, because he, being easily movable, soon grew from a
spectator to a sharer of them, made Albano and himself gay by his
ardent interest in every beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy.
He had the rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys, of
plucking every flower, but no thistle; whereas the majority jog along
with the night-cap under the hat; from station to station, gaping as
they go on, and in grumbling war with every face, they travel through
whole paradises as if they were antechambers of hell.
In the waste Pontine marshes, wherein only buffaloes thrive and men
grow pale, Dian sought for all sorts of amusement, and even drew forth
his letter-case, in order to get over the last fishing-water of the
papal territory, out of the reach of Peter's fisherman successors,
without falling into a deadly sleep. There he stumbled, with a modern
Greek curse, upon a letter to Albano, which had been enclosed in one
from Chariton, and which in Rome he had forgotten, in the hurry of
departure, to hand over; but he soon laughed about it, and found it
good that in this "Devil's-dale" one had something to read against
sleep.