CARNIVAL AT NAPLES

From the first days of January, Naples was taken with a mania for work that spread from one house and shop to another, from street to street, quarter to quarter, from fashionable parts to the poorest, with a continuous movement, rising and falling. A stronger noise of saws, planes and hammers came from the factories and workshops: in the shops, with doors left ajar, and in the houses they sat up late: the smallest as well as the big industries seemed to have got a mysterious impulse, a breath of new life, into their half-dying state.

The demand for gloves had increased beyond bounds, especially white and dove-coloured ones: the humblest general shops kept them. In the artificial-flower shops, that compete with the French trade with growing success, a great quantity of boughs, bunches, wreaths of flowers, and ferns were got ready; big and small bouquets of bright, warm-coloured flowers to take the eye—the finest intended for ladies' hair and bosoms, the coarser for decorating houses, shops, horses and carriages. Roses, camellias, pinks, were most in request. At all the tailors' and dressmakers', satin, velvet, gauze, crape, were draped in all styles, made into dresses, mantles, hoods, and scarves; whilst at the shoe-makers', binders spent ten hours a day making pink, blue, white, gray, and lilac shoes, fancy, gold-embroidered boots, and some bound in fur. The glove, flower, dress, and shoe makers' work began the first hours in the morning and ended at eleven at night; but the only others that came up to them were the cardboard shops. Here paper, in men and women's hands, was bent into a thousand shapes and sizes. It was painted, cut out, twisted, even curled up; it was made up with straw, metal, and rich brocade stuff, starting from the twisted paper that holds a sweet or cracker to the big expensive box. From the little chocolate-box, made of cardboard and a scrap of satin, to the handsome, neat satchel with a second cardboard lining; from the roll, made of two or three old gambling cards, a little Bristol board, and bright-coloured pictures, to straw cornucopias, covered with ribbons; from ugly, mean things to lovely and expensive ones, the work was never-ending. All this paper-work was arranged on large boards; the colours were dazzling and took the eye. Every day they were sent off to the sweet-shops, where they were filled with confetti, dainties, sweets, and sugar almonds.

Yes, the work was hardest, always, in the confectioners', from the humble FragalÀ of San Lorenzo quarter and the gorgeous but middle-class FragalÀ of Spirito Santo up to the exquisite fashionable confectioner in Piazza San Ferdinando. Above all, there was a grand making of caraways, white and coloured, of all sizes, with caraway-seeds and a powdery sugar covering; there were whole stores of them in tins, canisters of all sizes, overflowing baskets made like canisters, all kept carefully from damp, which ruins caraways. Such a stock!—if it had been gunpowder, there would have been enough to conquer an army. The other heavy work was getting sausages and black-puddings ready, all covered with yellow bits of Spanish bread—pig's blood, that is to say—made up with chocolate, pistachios, vanilla, lemon, and cinnamon, so presented as to hide the coarseness. In the back-shops they weighed cinnamon, sliced lemons, crushed pistachio nuts, boiled sweets of all colours and kinds; ovens roared, stoves were made red-hot, kettles boiled and gurgled, and workmen, in shirt-sleeves and caps, with bare arms and necks, stirring with big ladles, beating pestles in marble mortars, looked like odd figures in purgatory, lighted up by the furnace flames.

All trades were busy: advertisements were put up; whole sheets of them were spread on the city walls. Fashionable barbers took on new lads; the three celebrated Naples pizzaiuoli of Freddo and Chiaia Lanes, of CaritÀ Square, of Port Alba, informed the public, which loves pizza with Marano and Procida wine, that they would be open till morning. The CafÉ Napoli, the Grande, and the Europa covered their windows with thick cloths, and held a grand cleaning up all through the rooms; the theatres announced four times more illuminations, whilst at the door of fancy shops, the windows of miserable or fashionable bazaars, were shown black velvet masks, wax noses, and huge cardboard heads, three times the natural size, and much uglier than Nature; network masks, to protect the face from caraways, ladles for throwing them, long tongs for handing up sweets or flowers to the balconies, scarves and ribbons, fantastic ballroom decorations, and entire costumes of tissue-paper. Along the streets in Monte Calvario quarter, across and parallel to Toledo, in the darkest old-clothes shops and retail dealers', dominos hung on wooden pegs for the popular balls: Mephistopheles costumes in red and blue, Spanish grandees in cotton velvet, harlequins made up of old carpets, Sorrento peasant women's dresses in gay colours, Pulcinellos, and almost white dress; above all, shining helmets, with cuirass of cardboard to match, and wooden swords. Masquerading costumes were on hire everywhere for a few francs; they gave a jocular tone to these dull lanes, hanging even from the first-floor balconies, sticking out in a row from the damp, dark shops with grinning, devilish masks, or showing sickly faces of white or greeny-blue satin.

Wherever one went, in lower class neighbourhoods as well as in aristocratic parts, one could see a lively movement, cheerful labour, a noisy bustling about, a never-ending activity, a daily and nightly ferment of all forces, the constant, lively, energetic action of a whole peaceful, laborious town, intent upon one single piece of work, given up to it heart and mind, hand and foot, using up its nerves, blood, and muscles in this one tremendous work. Everywhere, everywhere, one guessed or knew it; it caught the eye; it was written up what this great work was—'For the coming carnival festivities.'

Nothing else but the carnival. The great city gave itself over to that impetuous, joyous exertion, not for love of work in itself—for work that is the cause and consequence of well-doing, which in itself is the ground-work of goodness and respectability. The great town had not given itself over to that lively activity for any immediate civic reason, for hygienic improvements, industrial art exhibitions, changing old quarters or making new ones: it was for the carnival only—a carnival by official decree of the Prefecture and of the Municipal Palace; a carnival warmed up by committees, associations, commissions, set agoing by thousands of people, arranged and carried out as a great institution, widely spread in the minds of the whole five hundred thousand inhabitants, made to resound as far as the southern provinces, echoing even to Rome and to Florence, putting in the place of any other project, initiative or work, this of the carnival; nothing but the carnival—enthusiastically, even deliriously.

But, as at the bottom of all joyous things in this land of Cockayne, there is an ever-flowing vein of bitterness. This carnival, that turned all the gravest persons and things in the town into fun and masquerade—this carnival was a merciful thing. From autumn to January the damp, grievous scirocco had blown in Naples' streets, overcoming the energies of healthy people, and making invalids' maladies worse. The winter crowd of foreigners was smaller than usual. Many works had been stopped for a time, and those just starting had been delayed, so that many poor people slept on the church steps under San Francesco di Paola portico and the Immacolata obelisk in Piazza GesÙ. A great wind of fasting had blown with the scirocco, so that the official carnival, carried out by the desire of thousands, was intended, if it succeeded, to satisfy for ten days at least a lot of starving people, from shoe-binders to flower-makers, from tailors to shop-clerks, from wandering salesmen to the small shopkeepers. Twenty days' carnival!—that is to say, ten days' bread, and a relish with it. The idea had been taken up at once. All helped, even the least enterprising, knowing they were putting out their money at good interest. Carnival, carnival, in the streets and balconies, in the gateways and houses!

On that Shrovetide Thursday the damp winter scirocco had got a spring softness. Toledo Road, where the carnival spread from one end to the other, both in its popular and fashionable form, had put on an extraordinary appearance. All the big shops were shut. The tradesmen and their ladies wished to enjoy the day's outing, also they were nervous about their plate-glass windows. All the signs were covered with linen or tow, as were the gas-lamps. As to the common smaller shops, they had taken out the glass and put up wooden platforms, and the owners, with their friends and children, sat with a store of caraways, having to do battle almost face to face with the people on the pavement; but they bravely flourished their ladles all the same. The balconies on the first floor were all differently draped with bright, cheap muslins, put up with a few nails or pins, with a very Southern and rather barbarous love of gay colours, some in the style of church decorations, blue, red, white, and gold, some tucked back with big camellias, roses, and dahlias, to make the balcony look like an alcove, an actress's room, a saint's niche, or a wild beasts' show even. The finest and smartest hangings began near Santa Brigida. Some Swiss gentlemen had had a chalet put up in their balcony, and the ladies wore simple, rather silly costumes, with hair down, a big cap, and gold crosses at their necks. Just after that, at Santa Brigida, a great man's natural son had hung his balconies with dark-blue velvet, covered with a silver net, which might represent the firmament, the kingdom of the moon, or the sea, but, at any rate, it surprised the good Naples folk. A balcony near the Conte di Mola Lane was made into a kitchen, with a stove, kettle, frying and stew pans, and eight or ten youths of good family worked as cooks and scullions, with white caps and aprons. A famous beautiful woman, whose beauty brought her wealth and led her into deadly sin, had changed her balcony into a Japanese hut, all stuffs and tapestries. Now and then she appeared wrapped in flowing, soft robes, just gathered in at the waist, with her black hair caught up in a shiny knot held by pins, her eyebrows arched in an unvarying look of surprise.

The common people smiled admiringly as they passed. They said, with their vague one idea of the East, 'The Turk, the Turk!' All these balconies, draped from one end of the street to the other, and the shop decorations, began to make one dizzy with bright colours, firing the imagination, giving that quick feeling of voluptuous joy Southerners get from outside impressions. Towards eleven, wandering salesmen began to go about, shrieking out their wares. They sold little boxes of inferior sweets made in bright colours—red bags, green and white boxes, lilac and yellow horns, carried in big, flat baskets in one hand. They sold artificial flowers also, made into sprays, cockades, and bunches, tied on to long poles. Real flowers were sold, too—white camellias and perfumed violets, from big baskets; also masks, ladles, linen bags for caraways, red and yellow paper sunflowers, that twirled round at every breath of wind like wild things. They sold a bad quality of caraways, bought cheap, intended to be sold dear in the blind, furious time of the battle.

At mid-day the traffic in sweetmeat-boxes, flowers, musks, and windmills began. Already the crowd began to fill the balconies and pavements, running up hurriedly from all the side-streets. On the first-floor windows and balconies a living, many-coloured hedge of women swayed about. There was a shimmer of girlish forms brightly dressed; their faces gently moved up and down like big pink and white flower-heads, with a blood-red touch now and then from an open parasol or scarlet hat. The balconies and windows of the second story were filled with still more excited people, whilst on the fourth children and girls here and there had thought of letting down a basket tied to a long bit of ribbon to fish with, smiling from above on some courteous unknown, who put a flower, some sweets, or a chocolate-box into the baskets of these smiling beings so near the sky. The people increased everywhere. Traffic with the hawkers went on from the balconies to the streets, with loud discussions, offers, and rejections, making the noise twice as great.

Caraways were not to be thrown before two o'clock, by the committee's express order, but some stray fights were started already. At San Sepolcro corner a peasant nurse, slowly swinging her petticoats, was fired at by some school-boys at close quarters. A grave gentleman, in top-hat and long great-coat, was violently assaulted in CaritÀ Square. He tried to go at them with his stick, but he was hissed. Then he called for the police, announcing pompously he was Cavaliere Domenico Mayer, a State functionary; but the police would not help, saying it was carnival, and that he should not tempt people with his top-hat. And then the misanthropic Secretary of the Finance Department, full of bitterness, had gone into the San Liborio Lane to escape. A lady in a broad-brimmed hat, not able to move from one spot in the pavement near San Giacomo, had a continuous shower of caraways poured on her by a child on the third story. She heard it fall on her felt and feathers without daring to move or raise her head, in case she got the caraways in her face.

At two o'clock exactly a cannon-shot was heard in the distance. Then there was a sigh of relief from one end of Toledo to the other, from the street to the upper stories, and the crowd swayed about.

The four Rossi Palace balconies, first floor on the right, looking into Toledo, were draped in blue and white linen, caught back by big red camellias. Luisella FragalÀ and her guests had thought of white and blue dominoes, with high, ridiculous hats and red cockades, and all the Naddeos, all the Durantes, all the Antonaccis, fat or thin, young or old, wore dominoes made in the house themselves to save their clothes from white powder, and, according to them, give an elegant look to the balcony. Some looked like big bundles, others like long ghosts; but the carnival madness had overcome these middle-class women. Besides all, trade was flourishing in these days. So many goods were sold; the men came back to the house in high good-humour, whilst all winter had been one complaint, and economy had got narrower and harder to bear. How happy they were, all these placid, industrious little women! In this time of carnival excitement they could share, in their blue and white fancy dresses and red cockades. Luisella FragalÀ had thought out the costume, and that monkey Carmela Naddeo took up the idea at once and made others follow suit. They were all there, ladles in hand, guessing what sort of carriages were to appear, exaggerating, contradicting, shrieking, laughing, hanging over the railings to see if any carriages were coming round by the Museum. Only sometimes a cloud came over Luisella FragalÀ's face; some unhappy thought was behind her brown eyes. Perhaps she was troubled by the thought that the balcony hangings would be spoilt by the confetti. Perhaps she would have liked to keep the shop open even on that profitable Carnival Thursday, her love of selling having instinctively grown so great, as if by that alone she saw a chance of being saved from imminent peril. Perhaps she secretly regretted Cesare FragalÀ's absence. He was often away lately, and had disappeared early that Thursday, too. But these clouds were fleeting. Luisella was going about from one balcony to another with her hood down, vainly looking for places for the Mayer family, who had come without being invited. All quietly snubbed them, so as not to give up their places, saying to each other that the mother and daughter had no dominoes, and they made a false note on the balcony. They set themselves in the third row, the mother, as usual, rheumatic, and wrapped in flannel to the finger-tips; the girl's big eyes still dully misanthropic, as were her swollen, discoloured lips; the brother, as usual, very hungry.

'We will not get even a chocolate-box,' they grumbled one after the other, muttering with their unending rage against humanity.

But the great carnival wave, with ever-increasing force, swallowed up their rage against mankind also. The noise among the carriages got tremendous. The confetti war had begun between them and the pony-carts, done up with myrtle as an attempt at decoration, all being well filled with masqueraders of both sexes dressed in bright-coloured calicoes. The Parascandolos, who lived on the other side of the Rossi Palace, kept their balcony shut, for the Signora considered herself in mourning; but Don Gennaro Parascandolo, in a Russian linen dust-cloak and cap, with a bag of sweets hung round his neck, after walking along Toledo, greeted from hundreds of balconies, where his past, present, and future clients were, had gone to his club at Santa Brigida, and from there, amid a group of young and old boon companions, made a life of it, as they said there. They joked about him, asked him how many cars he had lent money for, and if it was true his collection of bills was increased by many princely autographs. Ninetto Costa, the smart, lucky stock-broker, who had his own reasons for making a fuss with him, said, to flatter him, that not a handful of caraways was thrown that day he was not interested in either providing or scattering. Don Gennaro Parascandolo laughed paternally, not denying it. He answered those who asked him for coppers as a joke, 'I have had to get the loan of forty pounds from a friend to hold carnival with.' Others around shouted, whistled, but always flattered him. One never knew when one might fall into his hands. He stood out among them all by his great height and the little cap oddly set on his big head, throwing ladlefuls of caraways at the carriages and pony-carts.

Slovenly, in her black dress, grown greenish, and her torn shawl-fringe, Carmela the cigar-maker had set herself at the corner of D'Affitto Lane, looking at the passing carriages with her hollow eyes, her fine fresh mouth working impatiently, the only feature that was still young in her worn face. Handfuls, ladlefuls of caraways often new from the balconies and the street, frequently hitting her face or back; but she only moved a little to avoid it, smiling at the annoyance, and cleaned her face with a corner of her shawl.

She was waiting there to see her lover, Raffaele, called Farfariello, pass. He was in a carriage with four others, all dressed alike; and, indeed, to get this dress, she had had to sell some copper pans, a chest of drawers, and two long branches of artificial flowers under a glass case, all things she was keeping for her marriage. How it tore her heart to sell these things, bought bit by bit by dint of hard saving!

But Raffaele had insisted on having forty francs—blood from a snail—because he was in despair at making a poor appearance among his friends; and she, getting white when she heard him swear, had sold all these things, and, like a fool, was quite pleased at heart when she handed him the money, because he had smiled and promised to take her and her mother to an inn at Campo the last Carnival Sunday if she took as much as even an ambo on Saturday. She, quite proud of this fantastic promise, kept down her heart's bitterness, and went as slovenly as a beggar that carnival day, her hair falling on her neck, without a sou in her pocket, to see her handsome lover passing proudly in a carriage, smoking a Naples cigar, in new clothes and hat on one side, with that intensely indifferent look characteristic of the guappo, or aspirants to it. She waited patiently, thinking only of him, not caring about her day's work, as there was a holiday at the factory. She quietly bore all the pushing about that noon-day carnival that she took no part in, for she was wrapped up like a Buddhist in contemplation of her lover.

On the people went, on foot and in carriages, through the clouds of caraways, flowers, chocolates, through the shower of coloured paper from the upper stories, where, as they were not able to take part in the caraway war, they amused themselves in that way. The noise got clamorous, swaying about sonorously, rising to the skies that gentle scirocco day.

Carmela, confused by the noise and wild sights that noon-day, when Naples' rejoicing became epic, screwed up her eyes, not to lose sight of the two-horse carriages going along at a foot-pace, white with powder. Now and then one of the large cars appeared. There was the Parthenope Siren, a huge, pink lady with blonde hair hanging down. She was made of cardboard, and the body ended up in blue waves. This Siren was dragged along on a car full of men dressed as fish—oysters, carp, bull-heads. One car represented a merchant-vessel, a Tartana. The ship had rigging and sailors dressed in pink and white stripes, also in blue and white with long red caps. There was a car with eight or ten Jacks-in-the-box, from which gentlemen dressed in satin burst out in the midst of flowers. On one car all the Neapolitan masks were shown: Pulcinella, Tartaglia, Don Nicolai, Columbrina, Barilotto the clown, the guappo, the old woman—even to the newest mask of a pretentious, fast youth, Don Felice Scioscimocca.

When these cars passed, very slowly, almost quivering on their wheels, showering down caraway, confetti, and presents, they were much applauded. The Siren excited rather risky jokes; the Tartana was thought picturesque; the Jacks-in-the-box luxurious and smart; and the Naples masks were hailed with shouts of recognition and quick-flying dialogues from all the balconies in dialect, which the masks replied to in a lively way. There was one swaying movement from the top to the bottom of Toledo, both in the balconies and the crowds round the carriages.

Carmela looked and looked. She saw the two sisters Concetta and Caterina, pass in a carriage, the horses covered with flowers stuck in the shiny brass harness. She owed Donna Concetta thirty-five francs since ever so long, and managed to give her a few francs now and then just for interest, and she had often staked on the small game with Donna Caterina when she had not enough money for the Government Lottery, or, perhaps, only one penny left. The sisters were in full dress, the hair done up like a trophy on the top of the head with gold chains, and they wore heavy necklaces, pearl earrings, thick rings, keeping up their usual discreet, severe expression, casting oblique glances, and pursing up their lips. Two men were with them in workmen's Sunday attire, with shiny long hair, hat over the ear, in black jackets, with a spent cigar in a corner of the mouth. The four, silent and solemn, looked at each other now and then with serious, pleased glances of gratified pride, shaking their heads to get rid of the caraways off their hat-brims, smiling at the people who threw them. They looked to right and left haughtily, just like rich, common people.

Carmela bit her lips on seeing the two calm, ferocious heapers-up of other people's money, but immediately after the usual words came from her heart to her lips:

'It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.'

But a very original car was coming down from the top of Toledo, raising a colossal laugh, from right to left, up and down. It was a great bed, with a bright pink cotton quilt, such as are used in Naples. It had an open canopy, with images of the Virgin and patron saints on the hangings. In bed, tucked in with white sheets, were two people, with huge pasteboard heads, one an old man in a night-cap, the other an old woman in a mob-cap. Very caressing, affected old people; they nodded their great heads, pulled the coverlids from each other with that selfish, shivering habit old people have; offering snuff to each other, bowing, sneezing, and stretching themselves out; greeting people in the balconies, thanking them for the shower of caraways they got, and shaking them off the bed-clothes. It was not found out who they were, but they displayed that familiar caricature—a corner of a bedroom—without anyone thinking it too risky; for Southerners are used to sleeping in the open air, they live so much in public in this warm, easy-going country.

What about it? Everyone laughed. Even the people in Don Crescenzio's shop at Nunzio Corner, just beyond CaritÀ Passage, laughed. It was really the lottery bank, No. 117, a shop usually shut from Saturday at noon till Tuesday, the crush beginning on Thursday up to Saturday at twelve o'clock.

Don Crescenzio, the lottery banker, a handsome man, with a red beard, worked there with his two lads, who were anything but lads: one, an old man of seventy, bent, half-blind, his nose always on the gambling register, made people say their lottery numbers three times, to make no mistakes, and wrote them very, very slowly. The other was a colourless type of no particular age; his face had undecided lines, his beard was an indefinite colour, one of those queer beings that are employed as witnesses by ushers, as middlemen at the pawn-shop, as distributors of handbills, and agents for furnished rooms. Don Crescenzio lorded it over his two young men. That Thursday he had quite changed his shop, putting up a gallery in it draped in white and crimson, to which he invited his best customers. Yes, they were all there, those that came every week to put down the best of their income—money hardly earned, either snatched from domestic economies, or got by cunning expedient, bold at first, and then shameful.

All were there at the lottery shop, turned into a stand. The Marquis di Formosa, Don Carlo Cavalcanti, with his lordly air; Dr. Trifari, red of face, hair, and beard, bloated as if he were going to burst, a suspicious look in his false blue eyes; Professor Colaneri, more than ever that day, clearly showed the indelible marks of a priest who has given up the Church; then Ninetto Costa, come from his club in Don Gennaro Parascandolo's company, felt drawn by a powerful, irresistible desire to his haunt; and other eight or ten—a court judge, a steward of a princely house, a sickly painter of saints, and Cozzolino the barber, who was a great Cabalist, down to the shoeblack Michele, in a corner on the ground, a hunchback and lame, his wrinkled old face full of irrestrained passion; beside him was Gaetano, the glove-cutter, more worn and pale than before, his eyes burning with discontent, uneasiness in every line of his face. Don Crescenzio's clients held their carnival in the shop dear to their ruling passion, and as they were tormented to buy caraways, they, too, threw them at the carriages, but mostly at the passers-by, among whom they found acquaintances sometimes. No one was surprised to see such different sorts of people together—a Marquis, a stock-broker, a court judge, a doctor, a professor, down to a workman. Carnival, carnival! The gentle popular madness had seized all brains; the warmish day, the bright colours, the whims in the thousands of vehicles passing, the clamour of a hundred thousand people overpowered even those suffering from another fever, which was pushed back for a time into a corner of the mind.

When Cesare FragalÀ passed on foot, laughing and shouting, in a Russia-linen dust-cloak and travelling-cap, two long bags of caraways at his sides, which he emptied against balconies of his acquaintance and went filling again at every corner of the street from wandering salesmen, joking with everyone, fat, strong, and jovial, needing an outlet to his spirits—when he passed before Don Crescenzio's shop there was a chorus of greetings. Under the Rossi Palace, before his own balconies, he had already had half an hour's fight from below with his wife and her friends. Luisella, Carmela Naddeo, the Durantes, and the Antonaccis had thought Cesare's idea so original and he so charming that they had knocked him down by dint of caraway showers; he had been obliged to run away, laughing, keeping down his head, pulling his cap over his ears. There were noisy greetings, therefore, from Don Crescenzio's shop, and calls for him to come in. Was he not a customer, too, always hopeful of getting eighty thousand francs hard cash to open a shop in San Ferdinando? But Cesare was too satisfied wandering about alone, laughing and shrieking with everyone, buffeted by the caraways, red, panting with health and fun.

He went among the carts and carriages, borne by the crowd, through a burst of excitement, which the time of day made keener. The quietest did silly things now. Those standing on the cars, at first only merry, looked like so many demons. Raffaele, nicknamed Farfariello, loving Carmela's betrothed, passed in a carriage; to be seen better, he and his friends had made up their minds to sit on the roof. From there they waved white silk handkerchiefs, tied to sticks like flags, at the crowd. Alas! he did not see her, the girl who waited so many hours for him at the corner of D'Affitto Lane. She, having cried out, waved her arms and a bit of white stuff, felt stunned at the neglect, but whispered to herself as a consolation, 'It does not matter.'

But she still stayed there, hemmed in by that growing carnival frenzy. A thicker crowd closed in under the balcony where the lovely lady dressed as a Japanese was. She, getting excited, began to send down a shower of confetti by handfuls and boxfuls, as if she had a store in the house, a servant handing them to her. A shout of rogues and enthusiastic common folk rose to the skies, whilst she from above, quite serious, but a pink flame in her cheeks, recklessly flung down confetti, sweets, and chocolate-boxes. On the balcony draped with blue and silver net, the exalted personage's son had thought of the joke of tying a bottle of champagne, a game pie or a big chocolate-box, to a long rod, and letting it down to the level of the crowd's outstretched hands, pulling it up, dancing it about, amidst the longing cries, uplifted hands, and open mouths of the people below, until a shout of triumph announced some lucky one had carried off the prize of the new Cockayne. The rod was pulled up, and the young fellows, who had taken a mad fancy to the game, tied on some other eatable or drinkable—a bottle of bourdeaux, a cheese wrapped in silver paper, or a bag of confetti, and the game started again, with an unutterable row and obstruction to traffic. The men in the cars now, having taken in new stores as the evening went on, danced, sang, and threw things, behaving like demons.

It was at this most exciting time of the day that a new cart came out from a side-street of Toledo, arriving late, the horses drawing it at a foot-pace. It was queer and fantastic, being a philosopher's chemical laboratory, where a wretched old Faust sat cursing all human things in a frozen, melancholy way. It formed a dark room, with two shelves of books, a furnace, and an alchemist's retort, and there was an open Koran on a carved wooden desk. A bent old man in a black velvet skull-cap, with a long yellowy-white beard, tottered about the car, throwing boxes of sweets shaped like books, retorts, alembics, furnaces, to the crowd in the streets and balconies, each having a figure of Mephistopheles. But they were good sweets. Then a chimerical touch got into the carnival fury. The sorcerer's car seemed quite supernatural. The old man, whom the laughing women in the balconies called the Devil, his bald head in the skull-cap quivering, threw out things, magically producing them from beneath the car. Now and then amid the clamour of the populace a shrill voice called out to the decrepit sorcerer, 'Give us lottery numbers! give us tips!'

Having got to San Ferdinando, Faust's car turned to go back the same way up Toledo, when a most curious, indescribable thing happened. The old man took out of a copper alembic, beside the boxes of sweets, long, narrow strips of yellow paper and threw them to the crowd, who rushed furiously on them. A shout went before, and followed Faust's car, 'These are storni, storni!'

To carry out a new, splendid, eccentric generosity pleasing to the people, the old man threw lottery-tickets of two or three numbers, ready paid for next Saturday, at two sous each. They are called storni. He nobly threw handfuls of them to the people, laughing in his thick, white beard, forgetting he was old, holding his head back with ferocious gaiety.

What a shout everywhere, from the streets and windows up to the sky paling at sunset! What a lengthened shout of desire and enthusiasm! The whole population raised their hands and arms as if to seize the promised land. They cast themselves on the ground and kicked each other, so as to snatch a lottery-ticket, with its conditional promise of ten or two hundred francs gain. What joyous excitement among men, women, boys, rich and poor, needy and comfortably off! What an irresistible rush, that from holy fear respected the sorcerer's car; they made a triumph for him of glorious shouts from one end of Toledo to the other! But when he had thrown ten thousand tickets to the crowd he disappeared, no one knew where or how.

Antonio Amati met Margherita the maid on the staircase as she was going in, too, rather tired. Brusquely, as if he would have preferred not to speak, perhaps, he asked her:

'How is your mistress?'

'She is better,' the old domestic said in a low voice. 'Why have you not been to see her, sir?'

'I have a lot to do,' the doctor muttered, without, however, knocking at his door.

'That is true; but you are so kind, sir.'

'And then there was no need of me,' he added in a hesitating tone.

'Who can tell?' Margherita retorted in a still lower and mysterious voice. 'Why don't you come in now, sir?'

'I will come,' he said, with his head down, as if he was giving in to a superior will.

She put a key in the lock and opened it, going before the doctor into the quiet house, right on to the drawing-room, and he, though accustomed to keep down his own impressions, felt at once the cold silence and emptiness of the big room. He found the girl in black before him, smiling vaguely, holding out her hand—a long, cold, tiny one, which he kept a minute in his, more as a doctor than a friend.

'Are you quite well again?'

He spoke in a low voice, feeling the oppressive surroundings.

'Not altogether,' she said in her clear, tired voice. 'I had another fainting-fit one night; but very short—at least, I think so.'

'Did no one come to your help?' he said regretfully.

'No; no one knew about it; it was at night, in my own room.... It doesn't matter,' she added, with a slight smile.

'Why did you not go to the country?'

'My father hates the country,' she said. 'I will not leave him here alone.'

'But why do you not go out? It is carnival to-day; why did you not go to see it? Do you want to die of melancholy?'

'Signora FragalÀ did ask me, but I hardly know her. I think I would have had to wear a mask. My father does not like such things; he is right.'

She spoke in a gentle, pretty voice, with a tired sound in it. Amati, who had been working all that day by sick-beds while others enjoyed the carnival, felt rested by that harmonious voice and the tired, delicate calmness of the young girl. They were alone, facing each other—around them was a great silence; they hardly looked at each other, but they spoke as if their souls had long lived together, in joy and sorrow.

'Where were you a little ago?' Antonio Amati asked brusquely.

'I was in the chapel,' Bianca Maria answered, taking no offence at the question.

'Do you pray a great deal?'

'Not enough,' she replied, raising her eyes heavenwards.

'Why do you pray so much?'

'I must do it.'

'You don't sin,' the unbeliever muttered, trying to make a joke of it.

'One never knows,' she said gravely. 'One must pray for those that don't pray themselves.'

So saying, she gave him a passing glance. He bent his head.

'You spend too many hours in the cold church. It will do you harm.'

'I don't think so; and, then, what does it matter?'

'Don't say that,' interrupting her quickly.

'Few things can hurt me,' she replied in a tone he understood and did not want to inquire into.

'Let us go and see the carnival from Signora FragalÀ's windows. She asked me, too;' and he got up promptly to carry her off.

'Let us stay here,' Bianca gently retorted. 'Here at least there is peace. Don't you think this calm and silence good for one, too?'

'You are right,' Amati owned, sitting down again quite subdued.

'My father has gone out with his friends to see the carnival,' she went on quietly. 'Everyone in the palace is out on the balconies that look on Toledo; no noise reaches here, you see.'

They looked at each other frankly. That strange hour of unconsciousness, when he saved her, and she knew he was saving her, had set up something like an inward life between them. What she felt was a humble need of protection, help, and counsel; his feeling was a very tender pity. He could not keep back a question that rose to his mind.

'Is it true you wish to be a nun?' he asked in rather a choked voice.

'I would like it,' she said simply.

'Why should you?'

'Just because,' she replied with a woman's favourite answer.

'Why should you be a nun? No one wants to be a nun nowadays. Why should you do it?'

'Because, if there is one single person in the world that should go into a convent, it is I; because I have neither desires, nor hopes, nor anything before me. As that is so, you see, I must at least have prayer across this void desert and the desolation that comes before death.'

'Don't say that—don't say it!' he implored, as if for the first time fatality had breathed on his energy and destroyed it.