Between the mountains which form its horizon and the slow, lazy ripples which the breeze traces on its banks there is a zone of lush fields literally spangled with the most beautiful meadow-flowers which Lombardy produces. Carpets of saffron of the purest pink strew its shores and even on stormy days, no waves roar in anger. Light rustic boats glide over its calm waters where the peach and almond shed their petals.

At the moment when the two young travellers alighted from their carriage, several boats were untying their mooring ropes; and the inhabitants of the lakeside parishes whom their mounts and carts had brought home from the festival dashed forward, laughing and singing, on to the small boats which were to make a tour of the lake and drop each group at its own home. Carts laden with children and noisy girls were pushed on to the bigger boats; young couples leaped into the smaller ones and challenged each other to a race. In accordance with local custom, to prevent the sweating, steaming horses from catching a chill during the crossing, they were plunged beforehand into the icy water near the shore, and these brave animals seemed to derive great pleasure from their immersion.

Karol sat down on a tree-stump by the water’s edge to contemplate not the lively picturesque scene, but the vague pale blue horizon of the Alps. Salvator had entered the locanda to choose their rooms.

But he soon returned with a vexed look on his face. The hostelry was abominable, hot, filthy, over-crowded with animals and quarrelling drunkards. There was no possibility of resting there after the fatigues of a day’s travel.

Although a bad night distressed him more than it would do anyone else, the prince usually accepted that kind of annoyance with stoic unconcern. This time, however, he said to his friend with an air of unusual anxiety: “I had a presentiment that we would do better not to come and spend the night here.”

“A presentiment in connection with an inferior inn?” cried Salvator, slightly irritated with himself and therefore with his companion, because of the failure of his idea. “Upon my word, when it is a matter of avoiding the vermin of a filthy locanda and the stench of an unsightly kitchen, I confess that I have none of these subtle perceptions and mysterious forebodings.”

“Don’t mock me, Salvator,” the prince resumed in a gentle tone. “It is not a question of that kind of triviality and you know full well that I bow to the inevitable more readily than you.”

“Ah! Perhaps it is because of you that I do not accept the inevitable.”

“I know, my good Salvator; don’t distress yourself; let us leave.”

“What? Leave? We are hungry and at least there are some magnificent trout leaping in the frying pan. I don’t allow myself to be discouraged so quickly; let us sup first, let them serve us out there, in the open air under the carob trees. And then I shall scour the entire village and I am sure I shall find a house a little cleaner than the inn, at least a room for you, even if it is at the local doctor’s or lawyer’s. Surely there is a priest living here.”

“My friend, you refuse to understand me; you concern yourself with childish things….You know that I do not indulge in idle fancies, don’t you? Well, just this once forgive me if I have a strange whim. I feel ill at ease here; the air makes me apprehensive, the lake is too dazzling. Perhaps some poisonous plant grows here which is fatal to me….Let us go and spend the night elsewhere. I have a grave foreboding that I ought not to have come here. When the horses forsook the road to Venice and turned left it seemed to me as if they were resisting; didn’t you notice it? And so, do not think that I have been struck by madness and do not look at me in that frightened manner. I am calm, I am resigned, if you wish, to fresh misfortunes … but to what purpose should we brave them when there is still time to flee them?”

Salvator Albani was indeed frightened at the serious tone of conviction with which Karol had uttered these strange words. As he thought him weaker than he actually was, he imagined that he was about to fall seriously ill and that a secret uneasiness was warning him of it. But he did not think that the place entered into it at all, when nature, the human race, the sky, vegetation – everything around him was so luxuriant. However, he did not wish to come into conflict with his caprice, but he did wonder whether an additional journey, taken when he had had no food and moreover after a long day’s travel, would not precipitate the illness.

The prince saw his hesitation and remembered what the kind-hearted Salvator had already forgotten, namely, that he was starving. Whereupon sacrificing his extreme repugnance and silencing his imagination, he asserted that he was hungry himself, and that before leaving Iseo, they must at least have supper.

This compromise reassured Salvator somewhat “If he is hungry,” he thought, “he cannot be under the threat of imminent illness and possibly the feeling of distress which seized him is the result of an excessive hunger of which he was unaware, a kind of moral and physical faintness. Let us eat, then we shall see.”

The supper was better than the inn had seemed to promise and it was served in the innkeeper’s garden, in a cool arbour which somewhat obscured the brilliance of the lake and where Karol really felt more calm. Thanks to the mobility of his temperament and mood, he enjoyed his meal and forgot the inexplicable dread which had overcome him only a few moments earlier.

While their host was serving them with coffee, Salvator questioned him about the inhabitants of the town, and was chagrined to find that he did not know a single one of them, and that there was hardly any method of going to ask for hospitality in a house which was cleaner and quieter than the locanda. “Ah,” said he, sighing, “I once had a very good friend who came from these regions and who had spoken to me about them so much that perhaps it influenced me unwittingly when the whim occurred to me to pass the night here. But I see quite clearly that my poor Floriani had retained a memory of it utterly devoid of reality. It is always so with our childhood memories.”

“Doubtless,” said the landlord who had been listening to Salvator’s words, “Your Excellency is speaking of the famous Floriani, the one who, born as a poor peasant girl, became rich and famous throughout Italy.”

“Indeed I am,” cried Salvator. “Is it possible that you knew her in the old days here? – for to my knowledge she never returned to her native village since she left it at an early age.”

“Excuse me, Your Lordship, she came back about a year ago and she is here at the present moment Her family have forgiven everything and they live on the best of terms together now. Look, over there, on the far side of the lake! You can see the cottage where she was reared from here, and the pretty villa which she bought alongside it With the park and the meadows they both make a single property.