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.
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