CHAPTER LIII. A MASK IN CARNIVAL TIME
From the gorgeous halls of the Pitti Palace down to the humblest chamber in Camaldole, Florence was a scene of rejoicing. As night closed in, the crowds seemed only to increase, and the din and clamor to grow louder. It seemed as though festivity and joy had overflowed from the houses, filling the streets with merry-makers. In the clear cold air, groups feasted, and sang, and danced, all mingling and intermixing with a freedom that showed how thoroughly the spirit of pleasure-seeking can annihilate the distinctions of class. The soiled and tattered mummer leaned over the carriage-door and exchanged compliments with the masked duchess within. The titled noble of a dozen quarterings stopped to pledge a merry company who pressed him to drain a glass of Monte Pulciano with them. There was a perfect fellowship between those whom fortune had so widely separated, and the polished accents of high society were heard to blend with the quaint and racy expressions of the “people.”
Theatres and palaces lay open, all lighted “a giorno.” The whole population of the city surged and swayed to and fro like a mighty sea in motion, making the air resound the while with a wild mixture of sounds, wherein music and laughter were blended. Amid the orgie, however, not an act, not a word of rudeness, disturbed the general content. It was a season of universal joy, and none dared to destroy the spell of pleasure that presided.
Our task is not to follow the princely equipages as they rolled in unceasing tides within the marble courts, nor yet to track the strong flood that poured through the wide thoroughfares in all the wildest exuberance of their joy.
Our business is with two travellers, who, well weary of being for hours a-foot, and partly sated with pleasure, sat down to rest themselves on a bench beside the Arno.
“It is glorious fooling, that must be owned, Billy,” said Charles Massy, “and the spirit is most contagious. How little have you or I in common with these people! We scarce can catch the accents of the droll allusions, we cannot follow the strains of their rude songs, and yet we are carried away like the rest to feel a wild enjoyment in all this din, and glitter, and movement. How well they do it, too!”
“That's all by rayson of concentration,” said 'Billy, gravely. “They are highly charged with fun. The ould adage says, 'Non semper sunt Saturnalia,'—It is not every day Morris kills a cow.”
“Yet it is by this very habit of enjoyment that they know how to be happy.”
“To be sure it is,” cried Billy; “they have a ritual for it which we have n't; as Cicero tells us, 'In jucundis nullum periculum.' But ye see we have no notion of any amusement without a dash of danger through it, if not even cruelty!”