is ever in a
hurry to move from the place in which he may happen to be; and partly
as a consequence of the general sobriety. Even on such a night of
saturnalia as this of the Befana very little drunkenness is to be
seen. Although the crowd is so dense that every one's shoulder is
closely pressed against that of his neighbor, there is a great deal of
dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it
were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen
couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe
or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less
semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at
once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance
link themselves together and begin to bump themselves against their
immediate neighbors. These accept the intimation with the most perfect
good-humor, and assist in shoving back those behind them. A space
is thus gained in the first instance barely enough for the original
couple to gyrate in. But by violently and persistently dancing
up against the foremost of the little ring the area is gradually
enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow
the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits
of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter.
These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens
of them may be found in the course of one's peregrinations around the
large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist
of town-bred Romans, and those of others of people from the country.
There is no mistaking them one for the other, and the two elements
rarely mingle together. The differences to be observed in the bearing
and ways of the two are not a little amusing, and often suggestive of
considerations not uninstructive to the sociologist. The probabilities
are that the music in the case of the first mentioned of the above
classes will be found to consist of a fiddle--in that of the latter,
of a bagpipe, the old classical _cornamusa_, which has been the
national instrument of the hill-country around the Campagna for it
would be dangerous to say how many generations. In either case there
seems to be an intimate connection between the music and the spirit of
the public for which it is provided. The peasant of the Campagna and
of the Latian, Alban and Sabine hills takes his pleasure, even