Then they brought out from their saddle-bags cakes, cutlets, and bottles of wine, spread a gay cloth on the grass, stretched themselves beside it, and feasted to their hearts’ content, sharing all generously with me, which I greatly enjoyed, seeing that for some days I had not had over and above enough to eat.  “And let me tell you,” one of them said to me—­“but you do not know us yet?” I shook my head.  “Then let me tell you.  I am the painter Lionardo, and my friend here is a painter also, called Guido.”

I could see the two painters more clearly in the dawning morning.  Herr Lionardo was tall, brown, and slender, with merry, ardent eyes.  The other was much younger, smaller, and more delicate, dressed in antique German style, as the Porter called it, with a white collar and bare throat, about which hung dark brown curls, which he was often obliged to toss aside from his pretty face.  When he had breakfasted, he picked up my fiddle, which I had laid on the grass beside me, seated himself upon the fallen trunk of a tree, and strummed the strings.  Then he sang in a voice clear as a wood-robin’s, so that it went to my very heart heart—­

  “When the earliest morning ray
  Through the valley finds its way,
  Hill and forest fair awaking,
  All who can their flight are taking.

  “And the lad who’s free from care
  Shouts, with cap flung high in air,
  ’Song its flight can aye be winging;
  Let me, then, be ever singing.’”

As he sang, the ruddy rays of morning exquisitely illumined his pale face and dark, love-lit eyes.  But I was so tired that the words and notes of his song mingled and blended strangely in my ears, until at last I fell sound asleep.

When, by and by, I began gradually to awaken, I heard, as in a dream, the two painters talking together beside me, and the birds singing overhead, while the morning sun shining through my closed eyelids produced the sensation of looking toward the light through red curtains. “Com’ e bello!” I heard some one exclaim close to me.  I opened my eyes, and saw the younger painter bending over me in the clear morning light, so near that I seemed to see only his large black eyes between his drooping curls.

I sprang up hastily, for it was broad day.  Herr Lionardo seemed cross—­he had two angry furrows on his brow—­and hastily made ready to move on.  But the other painter shook his curls away from his face and quietly hummed an air to himself as he was bridling his steed, until at last Lionardo burst into a sudden fit of laughter, picked up a bottle standing on the grass, and poured the contents into a couple of glasses.  “To our happy arrival!” he exclaimed, as the two clinked their glasses melodiously.  Whereupon Lionardo tossed the empty bottle high in the air, and it sparkled brilliantly.

At last they mounted their horses, and I marched on beside them.  Just at our feet lay a valley in measureless extent, into which our road descended.  How clear and fresh and bright and jubilant were all the sights and sounds around!  I was so cool, so happy, that I felt as if I could have flown from the mountain out into the glorious landscape.