ed, it was much more
likely to be by the ruthless riding of these helmeted dragoons than by
the riderless steeds. They thundered past, never drawing rein, no matter
what stood or ran in their way; and then, after an interval, during
which the long crowds, packed back on the opposite sidewalks, craned
forward as far as they dared to see them, came the eight or ten racers
at a furious pace. They were come and gone in a breath; and finally,
after the body of them were passed, came a laggard, who had been left at
the post, and was trying to make up for lost time. I believe it was this
horse who actually killed somebody on the course. The race over, back
into the street thronged the crowd, filling it from wall to wall; then
there was a gradual thinning away, as the people went home for supper;
and finally came the night and the moccoli, with the biggest crowd of
all. I was there with my twist of moccolo and a box of matches; except
the moccoli, there was no other illumination along the length of the
Corso. But their soft lights were there by myriads, and made a lovely
sight, to my eyes at least. "Senza moccolo!" was the universal cry;
young knights-errant, singly or in groups, pressed their way up and
down, shouting the battle-cry, and quenching all lights within reach,
while striving to maintain the flame of their own; using now the whisk
of a handkerchief, now a puff of breath, now the fillip of a finger;
contriving to extinguish a fair lady's taper with the same effusion of
vain words wherewith they told her of their passion. Most of the ladies
thus assailed sat in the lower balconies, elevated only a foot or two
above the level of the sidewalk; but those in the higher retreats made
war upon one another, and upon their own cavaliers; none was immune from
peril. The cry, uttered at once by such innumerable voices far and near,
made a singular murmur up and down the Corso; and the soft twinkling of
the lights, winking in and out as they were put out or relighted, gave
a singular fire-fly effect to the whole illumination. It seemed to me
then, and it still seems in the retrospect, that nothing more charming
and strange could be imagined; and through it all was the constant
blossoming of laughter, more inextinguishable than the moccoletti
themselves. The colors of the tapestries and stuffs dependent from the
windows and balconies glowed out in light, or were dimmed by shadow; and
the faces of the thousandfold crowd of festival-