XXXVI. La carnaval de Rome.

XXXVI

The Carnival of Rome.

When Franz came to himself, he found Albert drinking a glass of water, whose paleness indicated that he stood in great need of it, and the count already putting on his clown's costume. He mechanically cast his eyes over the square; all had disappeared, scaffold, executioners, victims; there remained only the people, noisy, busy, joyous; the bell of Monte Citorio, which sounds only for the death of the pope and the opening of the mascherata, was tolling in full peals.

“Well,” he asked the count, “what has happened?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” said he, “as you see; only the carnival has begun, let us dress quickly.”

“Indeed,” answered Franz to the count, “of all that horrible scene there remains only the trace of a dream.”

“Why, it was nothing else than a dream, a nightmare, that you have had.”

“Yes, I; but the condemned man?”

“He is a dream too; only he remained asleep, while you awoke, you; and who can say which of you two is the favored one?”

“But Peppino,” asked Franz, “what has become of him?”

“Peppino is a sensible fellow who has not the slightest self-esteem, and who, contrary to the habit of men who are furious when no one takes notice of them, was charmed, he, to see that general attention was directed upon his comrade; he has consequently profited by this distraction to slip into the crowd and disappear, without even thanking the worthy priests who had accompanied him. Decidedly, man is a very ungrateful and very selfish animal.... But dress yourselves; see, M. de Morcerf is setting you the example.”

Indeed, Albert was mechanically drawing his taffeta trousers over his black trousers and his patent-leather boots.

“Well! Albert,” asked Franz, “are you in a fit state to do foolish things? Come, answer frankly.”

“No,” said he, “but in truth I am now glad to have seen such a thing, and I understand what the count said: that, when one has once been able to accustom oneself to such a spectacle, it is the only one that still gives emotions.”

“Not to mention that it is only at that moment that one can study characters,” said the count; “on the first step of the scaffold, death tears off the mask that has been worn all one's life, and the true face appears. It must be owned, that of Andrea was not beautiful to look upon.... The hideous rogue!... Let us dress, gentlemen, let us dress!”

It would have been ridiculous for Franz to play the fine lady and not follow the example given him by his two companions. He therefore in his turn put on his costume and set his mask, which was certainly no paler than his face.

The toilette finished, they went down. The carriage was waiting at the door, full of confetti and bouquets.

They took their places in the line.

It is difficult to form an idea of a more complete contrast than that which had just taken place. Instead of that dark and silent spectacle of death, the Piazza del Popolo presented the aspect of a mad and noisy orgy. A crowd of masks issued forth, overflowing on all sides, escaping by the gates, descending from the windows; carriages debouched from every corner of the street, laden with pierrots, harlequins, dominoes, marquises, Transteverines, grotesques, knights, peasants: all this crying, gesticulating, throwing eggs full of flour, confetti, bouquets; attacking with word and missile friends and strangers, known and unknown, without any one having the right to be angry, without a single one doing aught but laugh.

Franz and Albert were like men whom, to distract from a violent grief, one leads into an orgy, and who, as they drink and grow intoxicated, feel a veil thickening between the past and the present. They still saw, or rather they continued to feel within them the reflection of what they had beheld. But by degrees the general intoxication seized them: it seemed to their wavering reason that it was about to forsake them; they experienced a strange need to take their share of this noise, this movement, this dizziness. A handful of confetti which reached Morcerf from a neighboring carriage, and which, in covering him with dust, as well as his two companions, pricked his neck and all the part of his face not protected by the mask, as if a hundred pins had been thrown at him, finished by hurling him into the general fray in which all the masks they met were already engaged. He rose in his turn in the carriage, he plunged his hands into the bags, and, with all the vigor and skill of which he was capable, sent in his turn eggs and sugar-plums at his neighbors.

Thenceforth the combat was engaged. The memory of what they had seen half an hour before was entirely effaced from the minds of the two young men, so completely had the variegated, moving, senseless spectacle before their eyes diverted them. As for the Count of Monte Cristo, he had never, as we have said, appeared impressed for a single instant.

Indeed, let one imagine that great and beautiful street of the Corso, bordered from end to end with palaces of four or five stories, with all their balconies hung with tapestries, with all their windows draped; on those balconies and at those windows, three hundred thousand spectators, Romans, Italians, foreigners come from the four parts of the world: all the aristocracies united, aristocracies of birth, of wealth, of genius; charming women, who, themselves submitting to the influence of this spectacle, bend over the balconies, lean out of the windows, rain upon the passing carriages a hail of confetti which is returned in bouquets; the atmosphere all thickened with sugar-plums that descend and flowers that rise; then upon the pavement a joyous, incessant crowd; mad, with senseless costumes: gigantic cabbages that walk about, heads of buffaloes that bellow upon men's bodies, dogs that seem to walk upon their hind feet; amid all this a mask that lifts, and, in this temptation of St. Anthony dreamed by Callot, some Astarte who shows a ravishing face that one would follow and from which one is separated by kinds of demons like those seen in dreams, and one will have a faint idea of what the carnival of Rome is.

At the second round the count had the carriage stop and asked his companions' permission to leave them, leaving his carriage at their disposal. Franz raised his eyes: they were opposite the Palazzo Rospoli; and at the middle window, the one draped with a piece of white damask with a red cross, was a blue domino, under which Franz's imagination readily pictured the beautiful Greek of the Argentina theatre.

“Gentlemen,” said the count, leaping to the ground, “when you are weary of being actors and would become spectators again, you know that you have places at my windows. Meanwhile, dispose of my coachman, my carriage and my servants.”

We have forgotten to say that the count's coachman was gravely clad in a black bear's skin, exactly like that of Odry in *The Bear and the Pasha*, and that the two lackeys who stood behind the calash wore green monkey costumes, perfectly suited to their figures, and spring masks with which they made faces at the passers-by.

Franz thanked the count for his obliging offer: as for Albert, he was flirting with a full carriage of Roman peasant women, stopped, like the count's, by one of those halts so common in the lines, and which he overwhelmed with bouquets.

Unfortunately for him the line resumed its movement, and while he descended toward the Piazza del Popolo, the carriage that had attracted his attention remounted toward the Palazzo di Venezia.

“Ah! my dear!” said he to Franz, “you did not see?...”

“What?” asked Franz.

“There, that calash which is going away all laden with Roman peasant women.”

“No.”

“Well, I am sure they are charming women.”

“What a misfortune that you are masked, my dear Albert,” said Franz, “it was the moment to recover from your amorous disappointments!”

“Oh!” answered he, half laughing, half convinced, “I hope the carnival will not pass without bringing me some compensation.”

Despite this hope of Albert's, the whole day passed without other adventure than the encounter, twice or thrice renewed, of the calash with the Roman peasant women. At one of these encounters, whether by chance or by Albert's design, his mask came off.

At this encounter, he took the rest of the bouquet and threw it into the calash.

Doubtless one of the charming women whom Albert divined beneath the coquettish costume of peasant women was touched by this gallantry, for in her turn, when the two friends' carriage passed again, she threw into it a bouquet of violets.

Albert sprang upon the bouquet. As Franz had no reason to believe it was addressed to him, he let Albert seize it. Albert triumphantly placed it in his buttonhole, and the carriage continued its triumphant course.

“Well,” said Franz to him, “there is a beginning of an adventure!”

“Laugh as much as you please,” answered he, “but in truth I believe it is; and so I shall not part with this bouquet.”

“By Jove, I should think not!” said Franz, laughing; “it is a token of recognition.”

The jest, moreover, soon took a character of reality, for when, still conducted by the line, Franz and Albert crossed again the carriage of the *contadine*, she who had thrown the bouquet to Albert clapped her hands on seeing it in his buttonhole.

“Bravo, my dear! bravo!” said Franz to him; “this is preparing admirably! Shall I leave you, and is it more agreeable to you to be alone?”

“No,” said he, “let us not hurry anything; I will not let myself be caught like a fool at a first demonstration, at a rendezvous under the clock, as we say for the Opera ball. If the fair peasant has a mind to go further, we shall find her tomorrow, or rather she will find us. Then she will give me a sign of life, and I shall see what I have to do.”

“In truth, my dear Albert,” said Franz, “you are wise as Nestor and prudent as Ulysses; and if your Circe succeeds in changing you into some beast, she must be very clever or very powerful.”

Albert was right. The fair unknown had evidently resolved not to push the intrigue further that day; for, although the young men made several more rounds, they did not again see the calash they were seeking with their eyes: it had disappeared, no doubt, by one of the adjacent streets.

Then they returned to the Palazzo Rospoli, but the count also had disappeared with the blue domino. The two windows hung with yellow damask continued, however, to be occupied by persons whom he had no doubt invited.

At that moment, the same bell which had sounded the opening of the mascherata sounded the retreat. The line of the Corso broke up immediately, and in an instant all the carriages disappeared into the cross streets.

Franz and Albert were at that moment opposite the Via delle Maratte.

The coachman took it without a word, and, gaining the Piazza di Spagna along the Palazzo Poli, he stopped before the hotel.

Master Pastrini came to receive his guests on the threshold of the door.

Franz's first care was to inquire after the count and to express his regret at not having taken him back in time, but Pastrini reassured him by saying that the Count of Monte Cristo had ordered a second carriage for himself, and that this carriage had gone to fetch him at four o'clock at the Palazzo Rospoli. He was further charged, on his part, to offer the two friends the key of his box at the Argentina theatre.

Franz questioned Albert as to his dispositions, but Albert had great projects to execute before thinking of going to the theatre; in consequence, instead of answering, he inquired if Master Pastrini could procure him a tailor.

“A tailor,” asked their host, “and for what?”

“To make us, between now and tomorrow, Roman peasant costumes, as elegant as possible,” said Albert.

Master Pastrini shook his head.

“Make you two costumes by tomorrow!” cried he; “that is, I beg your Excellencies' pardon, a Frenchman's request; two costumes! when within a week you certainly would not find a tailor who would consent to sew six buttons on a waistcoat, though you paid him a crown apiece for them!”

“Then we must give up obtaining the clothes I desire?”

“No, because we shall have those clothes ready-made. Leave me to attend to that, and tomorrow on waking you will find a collection of hats, jackets and breeches with which you will be satisfied.”

“My dear,” said Franz to Albert, “let us trust our host, he has already proved himself a man of resources; let us dine quietly, then, and after dinner go and see *The Italian in Algiers*.”

“Agreed for *The Italian in Algiers*,” said Albert; “but bear in mind, Master Pastrini, that I and this gentleman,” continued he, pointing to Franz, “attach the highest importance to having tomorrow the clothes we have asked of you.”

The innkeeper affirmed afresh to his guests that they had nothing to worry about and that they should be served to their wishes; whereupon Franz and Albert went up to rid themselves of their clown costumes.

Albert, in doffing his, carefully preserved his bunch of violets: it was his token of recognition for the morrow.

The two friends sat down to table; but, while dining, Albert could not help remarking the notable difference which existed between the respective merits of Master Pastrini's cook and that of the Count of Monte Cristo. Now, truth forced Franz to admit, despite the prejudices he seemed to have against the count, that the comparison was not to the advantage of Master Pastrini's chef.

At dessert, the servant inquired at what hour the young men desired the carriage. Albert and Franz looked at each other, really fearing to be indiscreet. The servant understood them.

“His Excellency the Count of Monte Cristo,” said he to them, “has given positive orders that the carriage remain at the disposal of their Lordships all day; their Lordships may therefore dispose of it without fear of being indiscreet.”

The young men resolved to profit to the end of the count's courtesy, and ordered the horses to be put to, while they went to substitute an evening dress for their daytime toilette, somewhat crumpled by the numerous combats in which they had engaged.

This precaution taken, they went to the Argentina theatre, and installed themselves in the count's box.

During the first act, the Countess G... entered hers; her first glance was directed toward the spot where the evening before she had seen the count, so that she perceived Franz and Albert in the box of him concerning whom she had expressed, four-and-twenty hours before, to Franz, so strange an opinion.

Her opera-glass was pointed at him with such persistence that Franz saw plainly there would be cruelty in longer delaying to satisfy her curiosity; accordingly, using the privilege accorded to spectators of Italian theatres, which consists in making the houses of spectacle their reception saloons, the two friends left their box to go and present their homages to the countess.

Scarcely were they entered into her box than she made a sign to Franz to take the seat of honor.

Albert, in his turn, placed himself behind.

“Well,” said she, scarcely giving Franz time to sit down, “it appears you had nothing more pressing than to make acquaintance with the new Lord Ruthwen, and that there you are the best friends in the world?”

“Without our being so far advanced as you say in a mutual intimacy, I cannot deny, madame la comtesse,” answered Franz, “that we have all day abused his obligingness.”

“How, all day?”

“Why, that is the word: this morning we accepted his breakfast, during the whole mascherata we ran the Corso in his carriage, and finally this evening we come to the spectacle in his box.”

“Then you know him?”

“Yes and no.”

“How so?”

“It is a long story.”

“Which you will tell me?”

“It would frighten you too much.”

“So much the more reason.”

“At least wait until this story has an ending.”

“Be it so, I like complete stories. Meanwhile, how did you come into contact? who presented him to you?”

“No one; it is he, on the contrary, who had himself presented to us.”

“When?”

“Yesterday evening, on leaving you.”

“By what intermediary?”

“Oh, my God! by the very prosaic intermediary of our host!”

“Then he lodges at the Hotel d'Espagne, like you?”

“Not only in the same hotel, but on the same landing.”

“What is his name? for no doubt you know his name?”

“Perfectly, the Count of Monte Cristo.”

“What sort of name is that? it is not a name of race.”

“No, it is the name of an island he has bought.”

“And he is a count?”

“A Tuscan count.”

“In short, we shall swallow that one with the others,” resumed the countess, who was of one of the oldest families in the neighborhood of Venice; “and what manner of man is he, besides?”

“Ask the Viscount de Morcerf.”

“You hear, monsieur, I am referred to you,” said the countess.

“We should be difficult indeed if we did not find him charming, madame,” answered Albert; “a friend of ten years would not have done for us more than he has done, and that with a grace, a delicacy, a courtesy that truly mark a man of the world.”

“Come,” said the countess, laughing, “you will see that my vampire is simply some new-made rich man who wants his millions forgiven, and who has taken the look of Lara so as not to be confounded with M. de Rothschild. And she, have you seen her?”

“Who, her?” asked Franz, smiling.

“The beautiful Greek of yesterday.”

“No. We did, I think, hear the sound of her guzla, but she remained perfectly invisible.”

“That is to say, when you say invisible, my dear Franz,” said Albert, “it is simply to be mysterious. Whom do you take for that blue domino who was at the window hung with white damask?”

“And where was that window hung with white damask?” asked the countess.

“At the Palazzo Rospoli.”

“The count had then three windows at the Palazzo Rospoli?”

“Yes. Did you pass through the Via del Corso?”

“Doubtless.”

“Well, did you remark two windows hung with yellow damask and one window hung with white damask with a red cross? Those three windows were the count's.”

“Why, is the man a nabob then? Do you know what three such windows are worth for a week of carnival, and at the Palazzo Rospoli, that is to say in the finest situation of the Corso?”

“Two or three hundred Roman crowns.”

“Say two or three thousand.”

“Ah, the devil.”

“And is it his island that brings him this fine revenue?”

“His island? it does not bring in a bajocco.”

“Why did he buy it then?”

“From caprice.”

“Then he is an original?”

“The fact is,” said Albert, “he appeared to me rather eccentric. If he lived in Paris, if he frequented our theatres, I would tell you, my dear, either that he is a bad joker who poses, or that he is a poor devil ruined by literature; in truth, he made this morning two or three exits worthy of Didier or of Antony.”

At that moment a visitant entered, and, according to custom, Franz gave up his place to the new comer; this circumstance, besides the displacement, had still the result of changing the subject of the conversation.

An hour after, the two friends were returning to the hotel. Master Pastrini had already attended to their disguises for the morrow and promised them they should be satisfied with his intelligent activity.

Indeed, the next day at nine o'clock he entered Franz's chamber with a tailor laden with eight or ten Roman peasant costumes. The two friends chose two alike, which about fitted their sizes, and charged their host to have a score of meters of ribbons sewn to each of their hats, and to procure them two of those charming silk scarves with transverse bands and vivid colors which the common people, on feast days, are wont to gird about their waists.

Albert was eager to see how his new habit would become him: it was a jacket and breeches of blue velvet, clocked hose, buckled shoes and a silk waistcoat. Albert could not, however, but gain by this picturesque costume; and when his sash had girded his elegant waist, when his hat, slightly inclined to one side, let fall upon his shoulder streams of ribbons, Franz was forced to admit that costume is often much for the physical superiority we accord to certain peoples. Are not the Turks, so picturesque formerly with their long robes of vivid colors, hideous now with their buttoned blue frock-coats and their Greek caps which give them the air of wine-bottles with red seals?

Franz paid his compliments to Albert, who, moreover, standing before the glass, smiled to himself with an air of satisfaction that was not equivocal.

They were thus occupied when the Count of Monte Cristo entered.

“Gentlemen,” said he to them, “as, agreeable as a companion of pleasure is, liberty is still more agreeable, I come to tell you that for today and the following days I leave at your disposal the carriage you made use of yesterday. Our host must have told you that I have three or four in livery at his house, you do not therefore deprive me of it: use it freely, whether to go as you please, or to go on your affairs. Our rendezvous, if we have aught to say to each other, will be at the Palazzo Rospoli.”

The two young men would have made some objection, but they had really no good reason to refuse an offer which besides was agreeable to them. They ended, therefore, by accepting.

The Count of Monte Cristo remained about a quarter of an hour with them, talking of all things with extreme facility. He was, as might already have been remarked, very well acquainted with the literature of all countries. A glance cast upon the walls of his salon had proved to Franz and Albert that he was a lover of pictures. A few unpretending words, which he let fall in passing, proved to them that the sciences were not strange to him; he appeared especially to have particularly occupied himself with chemistry.

The two friends had not the pretension to return the count the breakfast he had given them; it would have been too bad a jest to offer him, in exchange for his excellent table, the very mediocre ordinary of Master Pastrini. They told him so frankly, and he received their excuses like a man who appreciated their delicacy.

Albert was delighted with the count's manners, whom his knowledge alone prevented him from recognizing as a true gentleman. The liberty of disposing entirely of the carriage filled him especially with joy: he had his designs upon his graceful peasant women; and, as they had appeared to him the evening before in a very elegant carriage, he was not sorry to continue to appear on that point with them on a footing of equality.

At half-past one, the two young men went down; the coachman and lackeys had had the idea of putting their livery clothes over their beast skins, which gave them a still more grotesque turn than the evening before, and which won them all the compliments of Franz and Albert.

Albert had sentimentally attached his bunch of faded violets to his buttonhole.

At the first sound of the bell, they set off and precipitated themselves into the Via del Corso by the Via Vittoria.

At the second round, a bunch of fresh violets, issuing from a calash laden with clownesses, and which fell into the count's calash, indicated to Albert that, like him and his friend, the peasant women of the evening before had changed costume, and that, whether by chance or by a feeling like that which had made him act, while he had gallantly taken their costume, they, on their side, had taken his.

Albert put the fresh bouquet in the place of the other, but he kept the faded bouquet in his hand; and, when he crossed the calash again, he carried it amorously to his lips: an action which appeared greatly to amuse not only her who had thrown it, but her mad companions also.

The day was no less animated than the preceding one: it is probable even that a profound observer would have recognized therein a still further increase of noise and gaiety. For an instant the count was seen at the window; but when the carriage passed again he had already disappeared.

It goes without saying that the exchange of coquetries between Albert and the clowness with the bunches of violets lasted all day.

In the evening, on returning, Franz found a letter from the embassy; he was announced that he would have the honor of being received the next day by His Holiness. On each preceding journey he had made to Rome, he had solicited and obtained the same favor; and, as much from religion as from gratitude, he had not wished to touch ground in the capital of the Christian world without laying his respectful homage at the feet of one of the successors of St. Peter who has given the rare example of all the virtues.

It was not then for him, that day, to think of the carnival; for, despite the goodness with which he surrounds his greatness, it is always with a respect full of profound emotion that one prepares to bow before that noble and holy old man called Gregory XVI.

On leaving the Vatican, Franz returned straight to the hotel, avoiding even to pass through the Via del Corso. He carried away a treasure of pious thoughts, for which the contact of the mad joys of the mascherata would have been a profanation.

At five minutes past five, Albert returned. He was at the height of joy; the clowness had resumed her peasant costume, and in crossing Albert's calash she had lifted her mask.

She was charming.

Franz paid Albert his very sincere compliments; he received them as a man to whom they are due. He had recognized, he said, by certain signs of inimitable elegance, that his fair unknown must belong to the highest aristocracy.

He was resolved to write to her on the morrow.

Franz, while receiving this confidence, remarked that Albert appeared to have something to ask of him, and yet he hesitated to address this request to him. He pressed him, declaring to him beforehand that he was ready to make, for the profit of his happiness, all the sacrifices that should be in his power. Albert let himself be entreated just the time that friendly politeness required: then at length he confessed to Franz that he would do him a service in abandoning to him for the morrow the calash all to himself.

Albert attributed to the absence of his friend the extreme kindness the fair peasant had shown in raising her mask.

One understands that Franz was not selfish enough to stop Albert in the midst of an adventure which promised at once to be so agreeable to his curiosity and so flattering to his self-love. He knew the perfectly indiscreet nature of his worthy friend well enough to be sure that he would keep him informed of the slightest details of his good fortune; and as, for two or three years that he had been traversing Italy in every direction, he had never had the luck even to sketch a like intrigue on his own account, Franz was not sorry to learn how things passed in such a case.

He promised Albert, then, that he would content himself the next day with looking at the spectacle from the windows of the Palazzo Rospoli.

Indeed, the next day he saw Albert pass and repass. He had an enormous bouquet which no doubt he had charged to be the bearer of his amorous epistle. This probability became certainty when Franz saw the same bouquet, remarkable for a circle of white camellias, in the hands of a charming clowness dressed in pink satin.

Also that evening it was no longer joy, it was delirium. Albert did not doubt that the fair unknown would answer him by the same means. Franz went to meet his desires by telling him that all this noise fatigued him, and that he was resolved to employ the next day in revising his album and taking notes.

Moreover, Albert had not been mistaken in his forecasts: the next evening Franz saw him enter with a single bound into his chamber, mechanically shaking a square of paper which he held by one of its corners.

“Well,” said he to Franz, “was I mistaken?”

“She has answered?” cried Franz.

“Read.”

This word was pronounced with an intonation impossible to render. Franz took the note and read:

“Tuesday evening, at seven o'clock, alight from your carriage opposite the Via dei Pontefici, and follow the Roman peasant who shall snatch your moccoletto from you. When you arrive at the first step of the church of San Giacomo, take care, so that she may recognize you, to tie a pink ribbon on the shoulder of your clown costume.

“Until then you shall not see me.

“Constancy and discretion.”

“Well,” said he to Franz, when the latter had finished this reading, “what think you of that, dear friend?”

“But I think,” answered Franz, “that the thing takes altogether the character of a very agreeable adventure.”

“That is my opinion too,” said Albert, “and I have great fear that you will go alone to the ball of the Duke of Bracciano.”

Franz and Albert had received that morning each an invitation from the celebrated Roman banker.

“Take care, my dear Albert,” said Franz, “all the aristocracy will be with the duke; and if your fair unknown is truly of the aristocracy, she will not be able to dispense with appearing there.”

“Whether she appears there or not, I maintain my opinion of her,” continued Albert. “You have read the note?”

“Yes.”

“You know the poor education that women of the *mezzo cito* receive in Italy?”

Thus is called the bourgeoisie.

“Yes,” answered Franz again.

“Well, read that note again, examine the writing and find me a fault either of language or of spelling.”

Indeed, the writing was charming and the spelling irreproachable.

“You are predestined,” said Franz to Albert, returning the note to him for the second time.

“Laugh as much as you will, jest as you please,” resumed Albert, “I am in love.”

“Oh, my God! you frighten me!” cried Franz; “and I see that not only shall I go alone to the ball of the Duke of Bracciano, but also that I may well return alone to Florence.”

“The fact is that if my unknown is as amiable as she is beautiful, I declare to you that I am fixing myself at Rome for six weeks at least. I adore Rome, and besides I have always had a marked taste for archaeology.”

“Come, one or two more such encounters as that, and I do not despair of seeing you a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.”

Doubtless Albert was about to discuss seriously his claims to the academic chair, but they came to announce to the two young men that they were served. Now, love in Albert was in no way contrary to appetite. He hastened then, as well as his friend, to sit down to table, free to resume the discussion after dinner.

After dinner, the Count of Monte Cristo was announced. For two days the young men had not caught sight of him. A business, Master Pastrini had said, had called him to Civita-Vecchia. He had set out the evening before, and had been back only an hour.

The count was charming; whether he was on his guard, or whether the occasion did not awaken in him the acrimonious fibres that certain circumstances had already made resound two or three times in his bitter words, he was almost like everybody else. This man was for Franz a veritable enigma. The count could not doubt that the young traveler had recognized him; and yet, not a single word, since their new meeting, seemed to indicate in his mouth that he recalled having seen him elsewhere. For his part, however much Franz might desire to make allusion to their first interview, the fear of being disagreeable to a man who had overwhelmed him and his friend with attentions restrained him; he continued then to remain on the same reserve as himself.

He had learned that the two friends had wished to take a box in the Argentina theatre, and that they had been answered that all was let.

In consequence, he brought them the key of his; at least that was the apparent motive of his visit.

Franz and Albert made some difficulties, alleging the fear of depriving him of it himself, but the count answered them that going that evening to the Palli theatre, his box at the Argentina would be lost if they did not profit by it.

This assurance determined the two friends to accept.

Franz had by degrees grown accustomed to that pallor of the count which had so strongly struck him the first time he saw him. He could not help doing justice to the beauty of his severe head, whose pallor was the only defect or perhaps the principal quality. A veritable hero of Byron, Franz could not, we will not say see him, but only think of him without representing to himself that dark face upon the shoulders of Manfred or beneath the bonnet of Lara. He had that furrow of the brow which indicates the incessant presence of a bitter thought, he had those ardent eyes that read to the bottom of souls; he had that haughty and mocking lip which gives to the words that escape it that particular character which makes them graven deeply in the memory of those who hear them.

The count was no longer young; he was at least forty, and yet one understood marvelously that he was made to carry it over the young men with whom he might find himself. In reality, it is that, by a last resemblance with the fantastic heroes of the English poet, the count seemed to have the gift of fascination.

Albert never tired of the happiness that he and Franz had had in meeting such a man. Franz was less enthusiastic, and yet he submitted to the influence which every superior man exercises upon the mind of those around him.

He thought of that project which the count had already two or three times manifested, of going to Paris, and he did not doubt that with his eccentric character, his marked face and his colossal fortune the count would produce the greatest effect there.

And yet he did not desire to find himself at Paris when he should come there.

The evening passed as evenings usually pass at the theatre in Italy, not in listening to the singers, but in paying visits and talking. The Countess G... wished to bring the conversation back to the count, but Franz announced to her that he had something much newer to tell her, and, despite the demonstrations of false modesty in which Albert indulged, he related to the countess the great event which, for three days, had formed the object of the two friends' preoccupation.

As such intrigues are not rare in Italy, at least if one is to believe travelers, the countess was not in the least incredulous, and complimented Albert on the beginnings of an adventure which promised to terminate in so satisfactory a fashion.

They parted with promises to meet again at the ball of the Duke of Bracciano, to which all Rome was invited.

The lady of the bouquet kept her promise: neither the next day nor the day after did she give Albert a sign of existence.

At length came Tuesday, the last and noisiest of the days of the carnival. On Tuesday, the theatres open at ten in the morning; for, past eight in the evening, one enters upon Lent. On Tuesday, all who, for lack of time, of money or of enthusiasm, have not yet taken part in the preceding festivities, mingle with the bacchanal, let themselves be carried away by the orgy, and bring their share of noise and movement to the general movement and noise.

From two o'clock till five, Franz and Albert followed the line, exchanging handfuls of confetti with the carriages of the opposite line and the foot-passengers who circulated between the horses' feet, between the carriage wheels, without there arising amid this frightful throng a single accident, a single quarrel, a single brawl. The Italians are the people par excellence in this respect. Feasts are for them veritable feasts. The author of this history, who has lived in Italy five or six years, does not recall ever having seen a solemnity troubled by a single one of those events which always serve as corollary to ours.

Albert triumphed in his clown costume. He had on his shoulder a knot of pink ribbon whose ends fell to his heels. So as to cause no confusion between him and Franz, the latter had kept his Roman peasant costume.

The more the day advanced, the greater grew the tumult; there was not upon all those pavements, in all those carriages, at all those windows, a mouth that remained mute, an arm that remained idle; it was veritably a human storm composed of a thunder of cries and a hail of sugar-plums, of bouquets, of eggs, of oranges, of flowers.

At three o'clock, the noise of boxes fired at once upon the Piazza del Popolo and at the Palazzo di Venezia, piercing with difficulty this horrible tumult, announced that the races were about to begin.

The races, like the moccoli, are one of the particular episodes of the last days of the carnival. At the noise of these boxes, the carriages instantly broke their ranks and took refuge each in the cross street nearest to the spot where they found themselves.

All these evolutions are performed, moreover, with an inconceivable address and a marvelous rapidity, and that without the police concerning itself in the least with assigning to each his post or tracing to each his route.

The foot-passengers glued themselves against the palaces, then was heard a great noise of horses and of sabre-scabbards.

A squad of carabineers, fifteen abreast, traversed at a gallop and in all its width the Via del Corso, which they swept to make room for the *barberi*. When the squad arrived at the Palazzo di Venezia, the sounding of another battery of boxes announced that the street was clear.

Almost immediately, amid an immense, universal, unheard-of clamor, were seen to pass like shadows seven or eight horses excited by the clamors of three hundred thousand persons and by the iron chestnuts that bounded upon their backs; then the cannon of the Castle of St. Angelo fired three shots: it was to announce that number three had won.

Straightway, without other signal than that, the carriages set themselves in motion again, reflowing toward the Corso, overflowing by all the streets like torrents for an instant checked that fling themselves together again into the bed of the river they feed, and the immense flood resumed, more rapid than ever, its course between the two granite banks.

Only a new element of noise and movement had mingled with this crowd: the sellers of moccoli had just entered the scene.

The moccoli or moccoletti are candles which vary in thickness, from the paschal candle to the cellar-rat, and which awaken in the actors of the great scene that terminates the Roman carnival two opposite preoccupations:

1º That of keeping one's moccoletto lighted;

2º That of extinguishing the moccoletto of others.

It is with the moccoletto as with life: man has yet found but one means of transmitting it; and that means he holds from God.

But he has discovered a thousand means of taking it away; it is true that for this supreme operation the devil has somewhat helped him.

The moccoletto is lighted by approaching it to some light or other.

But who shall describe the thousand means invented to extinguish the moccoletto, the gigantic bellows, the monstrous extinguishers, the superhuman fans?

Each hastened then to buy moccoletti, Franz and Albert like the rest.

Night was approaching rapidly; and already, at the cry of: *Moccoli*! repeated by the strident voices of a thousand tradesmen, two or three stars began to shine above the crowd. It was like a signal.

At the end of ten minutes, fifty thousand lights scintillated descending from the Palazzo di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo, and remounting from the Piazza del Popolo to the Palazzo di Venezia.

One would have said the feast of the will-o'-the-wisps.

One cannot form an idea of that aspect if one has not seen it.

Suppose all the stars detaching themselves from the sky and coming to mingle upon the earth in a mad dance.

The whole accompanied by cries such as no human ear has ever heard upon the rest of the surface of the globe.

It is especially at this moment that there is no longer any social distinction. The facchino attaches himself to the prince, the prince to the Transteverine, the Transteverine to the bourgeois, each blowing, extinguishing, relighting. If old Aeolus appeared at this moment, he would be proclaimed king of the moccoli, and Aquilon presumptive heir to the crown.

This mad and flaming course lasted about two hours; the Via del Corso was lighted as in broad day, one distinguished the features of the spectators to the third and fourth floor.

Every five minutes Albert drew his watch; at length it marked seven o'clock.

The two friends found themselves exactly opposite the Via dei Pontefici; Albert sprang down from the calash, his moccoletto in his hand.

Two or three masks wished to approach him to extinguish it or snatch it from him, but, as a skillful boxer, Albert sent them one after another rolling ten paces from him, continuing his course toward the church of San Giacomo.

The steps were laden with curious spectators and masks who struggled to snatch the torch from each other's hands. Franz followed Albert with his eyes, and saw him set foot on the first step; then almost immediately a mask, wearing the well-known costume of the peasant with the bouquet, stretched out her arm, and, without his making any resistance this time, took away his moccoletto.

Franz was too far to hear the words they exchanged, but doubtless they had nothing hostile, for he saw Albert and the peasant withdraw arm in arm.

For some time he followed them amid the crowd, but at the Via Macello he lost sight of them.

Suddenly the sound of the bell which gives the signal of the closing of the carnival rang out, and at the same instant all the moccoli were extinguished as if by enchantment. One would have said that a single and immense gust of wind had annihilated all.

Franz found himself in the deepest obscurity.

At the same stroke all cries ceased, as if the powerful breath which had carried away the lights carried away the noise at the same time.

Nothing was heard but the rolling of carriages which took the masks home; nothing was seen but the rare lights which shone behind the windows.

The carnival was finished.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”