makers glimmered forth
and were lost again on the background of the night, like the features of
spirits in the glimpses of a dream. How long it all lasted I know not;
but it had its term, like other mortal things, even in this fairyland of
carnival; and when the last light was out the carnival was no more, and
Lent, unawares, had softly settled down upon us with the darkness.

But let us now listen to my father when, for the second time, he made
proof of the carnival in the year following our return from Florence,
and after Una had left her sick-room and could be at his side. "The
weather has been splendid," he writes, "and the merriment far more free
and riotous than as I remember it in the preceding year. Tokens of
the festival were seen in flowers on street-stands, or borne aloft on
people's heads, while bushels of confetti were displayed, looking like
veritable sugarplums, so that a stranger might have thought that the
whole commerce and business of stern old Rome lay in flowers and sweets.
One wonders, however, that the scene should not be even more rich and
various when there has been so long a time (the immemorial existence
of the carnival) to prepare it, and adorn it with shapes of gayety
and humor. There was an infinite number of clowns and particolored
harlequins; a host of white dominoes; a multitude of masks, set in
eternal grins, or with monstrous noses, or made in the guise of monkeys,
bears, dogs, or whatever beast the wearer chooses to be akin to; a great
many men in petticoats, and almost as many girls and women, no doubt, in
breeches; figures, too, with huge, bulbous heads and all manner of such
easy monstrosities and exaggerations.. It is strange how the whole
humor of the thing, and the separate humor of each individual character,
vanishes the moment I try to grasp it and describe it; and yet there
really was fun in the spectacle as it flitted by--for instance, in the
long line of carriages a company of young men in flesh-colored tights
and chemises, representing a party of girls surprised in the midst of
dressing themselves, while an old nurse in the midst of them expressed
ludicrous horror at their predicament. Then the embarrassment of
gentlemen who, while quietly looking at the scene, are surrounded by
groups of maskers, grimacing at them, squeaking in their ears, hugging
them, dancing round them, till they snatch an opportunity to escape into
some doorway; or when a poor man in a black coat and c