And then again:—­

  I’ve drunk sheer madness!  Not with wine,
  But old fantastic tales, I’ll arm
  My heart in heedlessness divine,
  And dare the road, nor dream of harm!

  I’ll join Love’s rout!  Let thunder break,
  Let lightning blast me by the way! 
  Invulnerable Love shall shake
  His aegis o’er my head to-day.

This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin the fifth act in a roystering night’s adventure.  And still once more:—­

  Cold blows the winter wind; ’tis Love,
  Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,
  That bears me to thy doors, my love,
  Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.

  Cold blows the blast of aching Love;
  But be thou for my wandering sail,
  Adrift upon these waves of love,
  Safe harbour from the whistling gale!

However, upon this occasion, though we had winter-wind enough, and cold enough, there was not much love in the business.  My arm was firmly clenched in Christian Buol’s, and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring canaille choruses, of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged amu-u-u-r.  It is noticeable that Italian ditties are specially designed for fellows shouting in the streets at night.  They seem in keeping there, and nowhere else that I could ever see.  And these Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came.  It was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the place were dark.  The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in grey twilight.  The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and forest.  But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth’s slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times.  I wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms?  Was their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life—­the young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild winter air?  Alas! how many generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there, frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter after winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they knew.

‘There is a light,’ cried Christian, ‘up in Anna’s window!’ ’A light! a light!’ the Comus shouted.  But how to get at the window, which is pretty high above the ground, and out of reach of the most ardent revellers?  We search a neighbouring shed, extract a stable-ladder, and in two seconds Palmy has climbed to the topmost rung, while Christian and Georg hold it firm upon the snow beneath.  Then begins a passage from some comic opera of Mozart’s or Cimarosa’s—­an