nd
passing within easy arm's-reach of each other; and the jolly battle was
waged between their occupants, with side conflicts with the foot-farers
at the same time. And as the same carriages would repass one another
every forty minutes or so, the persons in them would soon get to
recognize one another; and, if they were of the sterner sex, they would
be prepared to renew desperate battle; or if there was a pretty girl or
two in one of them, she would be the recipient of a deluge of flowers
or of really pretty bonbons. It was all play, all laughter, all a
new, rollicking world of happy fools, of comic chivalry, of humorous
gallantry. For my part, I thought it was the world which I had been born
to live in; and I was too happy in it to imagine even that anybody could
be less happy than I was. My sole grief was when my supply of confetti
had given out, and I had no money to buy more. I used to look at
those great baskets at the street-corners, filled with the white
agglomeration, with longing eyes, and wish I had it all in my pockets.
I picked up the fallen bouquets, muddy or not, with no misgiving, and
flung them at the girls with the unquestioning faith of boyhood. I
looked up at the people in the windows and on the draped balconies with
romantic emotions, and exchanged smiles and beckonings with them. The
February days were never long enough for me; I only wished that the
whole year was made up of those days; if it rained, or was cold, I never
knew it. There was an endless sunshine of some sort which sufficed for
me. But my father, at this epoch, could catch not a glimpse of it. "I
never in my life knew a shallower joke than the carnival at Rome; such
a rainy and muddy day, too; Greenwich Fair (at the very last of which I
assisted) was worth a hundred of it."

The masking day, and the ensuing night of the moccolo, were the
culminating features of the carnival; and it was on the afternoon of
this day, I think, that the horse-race, with bare-backed horses, took
place. The backs of these horses, though bare of riders, had attached
to them by strings little balls with sharp points in them, which, as the
horses ran, bobbed up and down, and did the office of spurs. The race
was preceded by a thundering gallop of cavalry down the whole length
of the Corso (the street having been cleared of carriages beforehand),
ostensibly to prevent anybody from being run over by the race-horses;
but, as a matter of fact, if any one were kill