These were all gone; all those dear friends whose sympathetic mirth had
made him gay. Kenyon felt as if an interval of many years had passed
since the last Carnival. He had grown old, the nimble jollity was tame,
and the maskers dull and heavy; the Corso was but a narrow and shabby
street of decaying palaces; and even the long, blue streamer of Italian
sky, above it, not half so brightly blue as formerly.
Yet, if he could have beheld the scene with his clear, natural eyesight,
he might still have found both merriment and splendor in it. Everywhere,
and all day long, there had been tokens of the festival, in the baskets
brimming over with bouquets, for sale at the street corners, or borne
about on people's heads; while bushels upon bushels of variously colored
confetti were displayed, looking just like veritable sugar plums; so
that a stranger would have imagined that the whole commerce and business
of stern old Rome lay in flowers and sweets. And now, in the sunny
afternoon, there could hardly be a spectacle more picturesque than the
vista of that noble street, stretching into the interminable distance
between two rows of lofty edifices, from every window of which, and
many a balcony, flaunted gay and gorgeous carpets, bright silks, scarlet
cloths with rich golden fringes, and Gobelin tapestry, still lustrous
with varied hues, though the product of antique looms. Each separate
palace had put on a gala dress, and looked festive for the occasion,
whatever sad or guilty secret it might hide within. Every window,
moreover, was alive with the faces of women, rosy girls, and children,
all kindled into brisk and mirthful expression, by the incidents in the
street below. In the balconies that projected along the palace fronts
stood groups of ladies, some beautiful, all richly dressed, scattering
forth their laughter, shrill, yet sweet, and the musical babble of their
voices, to thicken into an airy tumult over the heads of common mortals.
All these innumerable eyes looked down into the street, the whole
capacity of which was thronged with festal figures, in such fantastic
variety that it had taken centuries to contrive them; and through the
midst of the mad, merry stream of human life rolled slowly onward a
never-ending procession of all the vehicles in Rome, from the ducal
carriage, with the powdered coachman high in front, and the three golden
lackeys clinging in the rear, down to the rustic cart drawn by its
single donkey. Among this various crowd, at windows and in balconies, in
cart, cab, barouche, or gorgeous equipage, or bustling to and fro afoot,
there was a sympathy of nonsense; a true and genial brotherhood and
sisterhood, based on the honest purpose--and a wise one, too--of being
foolish, all together. The sport of mankind, like its deepest earnest,
is a battle; so these festive people fought one another with an
ammunition of sugar plums and flowers.