Not that they were veritable sugar plums, however, but something that
resembled them only as the apples of Sodom look like better fruit.
They were concocted mostly of lime, with a grain of oat, or some other
worthless kernel, in the midst. Besides the hailstorm of confetti, the
combatants threw handfuls of flour or lime into the air, where it hung
like smoke over a battlefield, or, descending, whitened a black coat or
priestly robe, and made the curly locks of youth irreverently hoary.
At the same time with this acrid contest of quicklime, which caused much
effusion of tears from suffering eyes, a gentler warfare of flowers
was carried on, principally between knights and ladies. Originally, no
doubt, when this pretty custom was first instituted, it may have had a
sincere and modest import. Each youth and damsel, gathering bouquets
of field flowers, or the sweetest and fairest that grew in their own
gardens, all fresh and virgin blossoms, flung them with true aim at the
one, or few, whom they regarded with a sentiment of shy partiality at
least, if not with love. Often, the lover in the Corso may thus have
received from his bright mistress, in her father's princely balcony,
the first sweet intimation that his passionate glances had not struck
against a heart of marble. What more appropriate mode of suggesting
her tender secret could a maiden find than by the soft hit of a rosebud
against a young man's cheek?
This was the pastime and the earnest of a more innocent and homelier
age. Nowadays the nosegays are gathered and tied up by sordid hands,
chiefly of the most ordinary flowers, and are sold along the Corso,
at mean price, yet more than such Venal things are worth. Buying a
basketful, you find them miserably wilted, as if they had flown hither
and thither through two or three carnival days already; muddy, too,
having been fished up from the pavement, where a hundred feet have
trampled on them. You may see throngs of men and boys who thrust
themselves beneath the horses' hoofs to gather up bouquets that were
aimed amiss from balcony and carriage; these they sell again, and yet
once more, and ten times over, defiled as they all are with the wicked
filth of Rome.
Such are the flowery favors--the fragrant bunches of sentiment--that fly
between cavalier and dame, and back again, from one end of the Corso to
the other. Perhaps they may symbolize, more aptly than was intended,
the poor, battered, wilted hearts of those who fling them; hearts
which--crumpled and crushed by former possessors, and stained with
various mishap--have been passed from hand to hand along the muddy
street-way of life, instead of being treasured in one faithful bosom.