nce in a way, report turned out to be true, in both the cases just
mentioned. Invitations were actually issued from the Melani Palace, and
Fabio returned from abroad to his home on the Arno.

In settling all the arrangements connected with his masked ball, the
Marquis Melani showed that he was determined not only to deserve, but
to increase, his reputation for oddity. He invented the most extravagant
disguises, to be worn by some of his more intimate friends; he arranged
grotesque dances, to be performed at stated periods of the evening by
professional buffoons, hired from Florence. He composed a toy symphony,
which included solos on every noisy plaything at that time manufactured
for children's use. And not content with thus avoiding the beaten track
in preparing the entertainments at the ball, he determined also to show
decided originality, even in selecting the attendants who were to wait
on the company. Other people in his rank of life were accustomed
to employ their own and hired footmen for this purpose; the marquis
resolved that his attendants should be composed of young women only;
that two of his rooms should be fitted up as Arcadian bowers; and that
all the prettiest girls in Pisa should be placed in them to preside over
the refreshments, dressed, in accordance with the mock classical taste
of the period, as shepherdesses of the time of Virgil.

The only defect of this brilliantly new idea was the difficulty of
executing it. The marquis had expressly ordered that not fewer than
thirty shepherdesses were to be engaged--fifteen for each bower. It
would have been easy to find double this number in Pisa, if beauty had
been the only quality required in the attendant damsels. But it was also
absolutely necessary, for the security of the marquis's gold and silver
plate, that the shepherdesses should possess, besides good looks, the
very homely recommendation of a fair character. This last qualification
proved, it is sad to say, to be the one small merit which the majority
of the ladies willing to accept engagements at the palace did not
possess. Day after day passed on; and the marquis's steward only
found more and more difficulty in obtaining the appointed number of
trustworthy beauties. At last his resources failed him altogether; and
he appeared in his master's presence about a week before the night of
the ball, to make the humiliating acknowledgment that he was entirely
at his wits' end. The total number of fair