Not that they were veritable sugar plums, however, but something that

resembled them only as the apples of Sodom look like better fruit.

They were concocted mostly of lime, with a grain of oat, or some other

worthless kernel, in the midst. Besides the hailstorm of confetti, the

combatants threw handfuls of flour or lime into the air, where it hung

like smoke over a battlefield, or, descending, whitened a black coat or

priestly robe, and made the curly locks of youth irreverently hoary.

At the same time with this acrid contest of quicklime, which caused much

effusion of tears from suffering eyes, a gentler warfare of flowers

was carried on, principally between knights and ladies. Originally, no

doubt, when this pretty custom was first instituted, it may have had a

sincere and modest import. Each youth and damsel, gathering bouquets

of field flowers, or the sweetest and fairest that grew in their own

gardens, all fresh and virgin blossoms, flung them with true aim at the

one, or few, whom they regarded with a sentiment of shy partiality at

least, if not with love. Often, the lover in the Corso may thus have

received from his bright mistress, in her father's princely balcony,

the first sweet intimation that his passionate glances had not struck

against a heart of marble. What more appropriate mode of suggesting

her tender secret could a maiden find than by the soft hit of a rosebud

against a young man's cheek?

This was the pastime and the earnest of a more innocent and homelier

age. Nowadays the nosegays are gathered and tied up by sordid hands,

chiefly of the most ordinary flowers, and are sold along the Corso,

at mean price, yet more than such Venal things are worth. Buying a

basketful, you find them miserably wilted, as if they had flown hither

and thither through two or three carnival days already; muddy, too,

having been fished up from the pavement, where a hundred feet have

trampled on them. You may see throngs of men and boys who thrust

themselves beneath the horses' hoofs to gather up bouquets that were

aimed amiss from balcony and carriage; these they sell again, and yet

once more, and ten times over, defiled as they all are with the wicked

filth of Rome.

Such are the flowery favors--the fragrant bunches of sentiment--that fly

between cavalier and dame, and back again, from one end of the Corso to

the other. Perhaps they may symbolize, more aptly than was intended,

the poor, battered, wilted hearts of those who fling them; hearts

which--crumpled and crushed by former possessors, and stained with

various mishap--have been passed from hand to hand along the muddy

street-way of life, instead of being treasured in one faithful bosom.




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