Hearts and Masks

I carefully observed the Jesuit, and made up my mind to keep an eye

upon him. If he really possessed the ten of hearts, the man who kept

tally on the cardboard was doing some tall thinking about this time. I

glided away, into the gorgeous ball-room.

What a vision greeted my eye! The decorations were in red and yellow,

and it seemed as though perpetual autumnal sunset lay over everything.

At the far end of the room was a small stage hidden behind palms and

giant ferns. The band was just striking up A Summer Night in Munich,

and a wonderful kaleidoscope revolved around me. I saw Cavaliers and

Roundheads, Puritans and Beelzebubs, Musketeers, fools, cowboys,

Indians, kings and princes; queens and empresses, fairies and Quaker

maids, white and black and red and green dominoes. Tom Fool's night,

indeed!

Presently I saw the noble Doge of Venice coming my way. From his

portly carriage I reasoned that if he wasn't in the gold-book of Venice

he stood very well up in the gold-book of New York, He stopped at my

side and struck an attitude.

"Pax vobiscum!" said I, bowing.

"Be at the Inquisition Chamber, directly the clock strikes the midnight

hour," he said mysteriously.

"I shall be there to deliver the supreme interrogation," I replied.

"It is well." He drifted away like a stately ship.

Delightful foolery! I saw the Jesuit, and moved toward him.

"Disciple of Loyola, hast thou the ten of hearts?"

"My hearts number nine, for I have lost one to the gay Columbine."

"I breathe! Thou art not he whom I seek."

We separated. I was mortally glad that Columbine had made a mistake.

The women always seek the monk at a masquerade; they want absolution

for the follies they are about to commit. A demure Quakeress touched

my sleeve in passing.

"Tell me, grave monk, why did you seek the monastery?"

"My wife fell in love with me,"--gloomily.

"Then you have a skeleton in the clothes-press?"

"Do I look like a man who owned such a thing as a clothes-press, much

less so fashionable a thing as a family skeleton?"

"Then what do you here?"

"I am mingling with fools as a penance."

A fool caught me by the sleeve and batted me gaily over the head with a

bladder.

"Merry come up, why am I a fool?"

"It is the fashion," was my answer. This was like to gain me the

reputation of being a wit. I must walk carefully, or these thoughtless

ones would begin to suspect there was an impostor among them.