s, and began to ride across the frontier without
leave or license, to fight in behalf of Italy. The whole regiment, in
fact, was found to be so disaffected that it was disbanded without delay,
and at present there are only some score or so left, who ride close
behind the Pope when he goes out "unattended," as his partisans profess.
So the dragoons having disappeared, the duty of keeping order is given to
the French soldiers. There are soldiers ranged everywhere: along the
street pavements there is one long line of blue overcoats and red
trousers and oil-skin flowerpot hats covering the short, squat, small-
made soldiers of the 40th Foot regiment, whose fixed bayonets gleam
brightly in the rare sun-light intervals. At every piazza there are
detachments stationed; their muskets are stacked in rows on the ground,
and the men stand ready to march at the word of order. In every side-
street sentinels are posted. From time to time orderlies gallop past.
Ever and anon you hear the rub-a-dub of the drums, as new detachments
pass on towards the Corso. The head-quarters at the Piazza Colonna are
crowded with officers coming and going, and the whole French troops off
duty seem to have received orders to crowd the Corso, where they stroll
along in knots of three or four, alone and unnoticed by the crowd around
them. The heavy guns boom forth from the Castle of St Angelo, and the
Carnival has begun.

Gradually and slowly the street fills. One day is so like another that
to see one is to have seen all. The length of the Corso there saunters
listlessly an idle, cloak-wrapt, hands-in-pocket-wearing, cigar-smoking,
shivering crowd, composed of French soldiers and the rif-raff of Rome,
the proportion being one of the former to every two or three of the
latter. The balconies, which grow like mushrooms on the fronts of every
house, in all out-of-the-way places and positions, are every now and then
adorned with red hangings. These balconies and the windows are scantily
filled with shabbily-dressed persons, who look on the scene below as
spectators, not as actors. At rare intervals a carriage passes. The
chances are that its occupants are English or Americans. On the most
crowded day there are, perhaps, at one time, fifty carriages in all, of
which more than half belong to the _forestieri_. Indeed, if it were not
for our Anglo-Saxon countrymen, there would be no carnival at all. We
don't contribute much, it is true, to the bri