These were all gone; all those dear friends whose sympathetic mirth had

made him gay. Kenyon felt as if an interval of many years had passed

since the last Carnival. He had grown old, the nimble jollity was tame,

and the maskers dull and heavy; the Corso was but a narrow and shabby

street of decaying palaces; and even the long, blue streamer of Italian

sky, above it, not half so brightly blue as formerly.

Yet, if he could have beheld the scene with his clear, natural eyesight,

he might still have found both merriment and splendor in it. Everywhere,

and all day long, there had been tokens of the festival, in the baskets

brimming over with bouquets, for sale at the street corners, or borne

about on people's heads; while bushels upon bushels of variously colored

confetti were displayed, looking just like veritable sugar plums; so

that a stranger would have imagined that the whole commerce and business

of stern old Rome lay in flowers and sweets. And now, in the sunny

afternoon, there could hardly be a spectacle more picturesque than the

vista of that noble street, stretching into the interminable distance

between two rows of lofty edifices, from every window of which, and

many a balcony, flaunted gay and gorgeous carpets, bright silks, scarlet

cloths with rich golden fringes, and Gobelin tapestry, still lustrous

with varied hues, though the product of antique looms. Each separate

palace had put on a gala dress, and looked festive for the occasion,

whatever sad or guilty secret it might hide within. Every window,

moreover, was alive with the faces of women, rosy girls, and children,

all kindled into brisk and mirthful expression, by the incidents in the

street below. In the balconies that projected along the palace fronts

stood groups of ladies, some beautiful, all richly dressed, scattering

forth their laughter, shrill, yet sweet, and the musical babble of their

voices, to thicken into an airy tumult over the heads of common mortals.

All these innumerable eyes looked down into the street, the whole

capacity of which was thronged with festal figures, in such fantastic

variety that it had taken centuries to contrive them; and through the

midst of the mad, merry stream of human life rolled slowly onward a

never-ending procession of all the vehicles in Rome, from the ducal

carriage, with the powdered coachman high in front, and the three golden

lackeys clinging in the rear, down to the rustic cart drawn by its

single donkey. Among this various crowd, at windows and in balconies, in

cart, cab, barouche, or gorgeous equipage, or bustling to and fro afoot,

there was a sympathy of nonsense; a true and genial brotherhood and

sisterhood, based on the honest purpose--and a wise one, too--of being

foolish, all together. The sport of mankind, like its deepest earnest,

is a battle; so these festive people fought one another with an

ammunition of sugar plums and flowers.




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