course, on this occasion. As they carried him along, he blessed
the people with the mystic sign; and as he passed them, they
kneeled down. When he had made the round of the church, he was
brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this performance was
repeated, in the whole, three times. There was, certainly nothing
solemn or effective in it; and certainly very much that was droll
and tawdry. But this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except
the raising of the Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one
knee instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the ground; which had
a fine effect.
The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three weeks
afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball; and then, the hangings
being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the framework
left, the remnants of these decorations looked like an exploded
cracker.
The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, and Sunday
being always a DIES NON in carnival proceedings, we had looked
forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to the beginning of
the new week: Monday and Tuesday being the two last and best days
of the Carnival.
On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there began to be a
great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel; a
hurrying to and fro of all the servants in it; and, now and then, a
swift shooting across some doorway or balcony, of a straggling
stranger in a fancy dress: not yet sufficiently well used to the
same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All the
carriages were open, and had the linings carefully covered with
white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper decorations from
being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums; and people
were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its
occupants, enormous sacks and baskets full of these confetti,
together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays,
that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally
running over: scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs,
some of their abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in
these essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks
of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothesbasket
full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired barouche, with
all speed. And from our place of observation, in one of the upper
balconies of the hotel, we contemplated these arrangements with the
liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now beginning to take up
their company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too,
armed with little wire masks for our faces; the sugar-plums, like
Falstaff's adulterated sack, having lime in their composition.
The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and palaces,
and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There
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are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost
every house - not on one story alone, but often to one room or
another on every story - put there in general with so little order
or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season,
it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown
balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more
disorderly manner.
This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival. But all
the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigilantly kept by
dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the first instance, to
pass, in line, down another thoroughfare, and so come into the
Corso at the end remote from the Piazza del Popolo; which is one of
its terminations. Accordingly, we fell into the string of coaches,
and, for some time, jogged on quietly enough; now crawling on at a
very slow walk; now trotting half-a-dozen yards; now backing fifty;
and now stopping altogether: as the pressure in front obliged us.
If any impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered
forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was suddenly
met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf as his own
drawn sword to all remonstrances, immediately escorted it back to
the very end of the row, and made it a dim speck in the remotest
perspective. Occasionally, we interchanged a volley of confetti
with the carriage next in front, or the carriage next behind; but
as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches by the military,
was the chief amusement.
Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides one line of
carriages going, there was another line of carriages returning.
Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to fly about, pretty
smartly; and I was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman
attired as a Greek warrior, catch a light-whiskered brigand on the
nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet to a young
lady in a first-floor window) with a precision that was much
applauded by the bystanders. As this victorious Greek was
exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a doorway -
one-half black and one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the
middle - who had offered him his congratulations on this
achievement, he received an orange from a house-top, full on his
left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited.
Especially, as he was standing up at the time; and in consequence
of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered
ignominiously, and buried himself among his flowers.
Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us to the
Corso; and anything so gay, so bright, and lively as the whole
scene there, it would be difficult to imagine. From all the
innumerable balconies: from the remotest and highest, no less than
from the lowest and nearest: hangings of bright red, bright green,
bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant
sunlight. From windows, and from parapets, and tops of houses,
streamers of the richest colours, and draperies of the gaudiest and
most sparkling hues, were floating out upon the street. The
buildings seemed to have been literally turned inside out, and to
have all their gaiety towards the highway. Shop-fronts were taken
down, and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining
theatre; doors were carried off their hinges, and long tapestried
groves, hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed
within; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in
silver, gold, and crimson; and in every nook and corner, from the
pavement to the chimney-tops, where women's eyes could glisten,
there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in
water. Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there.
Little preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old stomachers, more
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wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses, strained and
tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and clinging
to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild, quaint, bold, shy,
pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every
fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of
merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire
had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that
morning.
The carriages were now three abreast; in broader places four; often
stationary for a long time together, always one close mass of
variegated brightness; showing, the whole street-full, through the
storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth themselves. In
some, the horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings;
in others they were decked from head to tail, with flowing ribbons.
Some were driven by coachmen with enormous double faces: one face
leering at the horses: the other cocking its extraordinary eyes
into the carriage: and both rattling again, under the hail of
sugar-plums. Other drivers were attired as women, wearing long
ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real
difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a concourse, there
were a great many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead
of sitting IN the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome Roman
women, to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the
barouches, at this time of general licence, with their feet upon
the cushions - and oh, the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the
blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free, good-humoured, gallant
figures that they make! There were great vans, too, full of
handsome girls - thirty, or more together, perhaps - and the
broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of, these fairy
fire-shops, splashed the air with flowers and bon-bons for ten
minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, would
begin a deliberate engagement with other carriages, or with people
at the lower windows; and the spectators at some upper balcony or
window, joining in the fray, and attacking both parties, would
empty down great bags of confetti, that descended like a cloud, and
in an instant made them white as millers. Still, carriages on
carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon
crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to the wheels of
coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and
diving in among the horses' feet to pick up scattered flowers to
sell again; maskers on foot (the drollest generally) in fantastic
exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng through
enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an ecstasy of
love, on the discovery of any particularly old lady at a window;
long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders
at the ends of sticks; a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and
tearing to the life; a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their
horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a party of gipsy-women
engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors; a manmonkey
on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces,
and lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over
their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses,
colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not many
actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, considering
the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the scene consisting
in its perfect good temper; in its bright, and infinite, and
flashing variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad humour
of the time - an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so
irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle
in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and
thinks of nothing else till half-past four o'clock, when he is
suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole
business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound, and
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seeing the dragoons begin to clear the street.
How it ever IS cleared for the race that takes place at five, or
how the horses ever go through the race, without going over the
people, is more than I can say. But the carriages get out into the
by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some people sit
in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands
line the Corso on both sides, when the horses are brought out into
the Piazza - to the foot of that same column which, for centuries,
looked down upon the games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus.
At a given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, the
whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind: riderless, as
all the world knows: with shining ornaments upon their backs, and
twisted in their plaited manes: and with heavy little balls stuck
full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad them on. The
jingling of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon
the hard stones; the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing
street; nay, the very cannon that are fired - these noises are
nothing to the roaring of the multitude: their shouts: the
clapping of their hands. But it is soon over - almost
instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. The horses have
goal is reached; the prizes are won (they are given, in part, by
the poor Jews, as a compromise for not running foot-races
themselves); and there is an end to that day's sport.
But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last day
but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height of
glittering colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that the
bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment. The same
diversions, greatly heightened and intensified in the ardour with
which they are pursued, go on until the same hour. The race is
repeated; the cannon are fired; the shouting and clapping of hands
are renewed; the cannon are fired again; the race is over; and the
prizes are won. But the carriages: ankle-deep with sugar-plums
within, and so be-flowered and dusty without, as to be hardly
recognisable for the same vehicles that they were, three hours ago:
instead of scampering off in all directions, throng into the Corso,
where they are soon wedged together in a scarcely moving mass. For
the diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of the
Carnival, is now at hand; and sellers of little tapers like what
are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting lustily on
every side, 'Moccoli, Moccoli! Ecco Moccoli!' - a new item in the
tumult; quite abolishing that other item of ' Ecco Fiori! Ecco
Fior-r-r!' which has been making itself audible over all the rest,
at intervals, the whole day through.
As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull,
heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights begin
flashing, here and there: in the windows, on the housetops, in the
balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers:
little by little: gradually, gradually: more and more: until the
whole long street is one great glare and blaze of fire. Then,
everybody present has but one engrossing object; that is, to
extinguish other people's candles, and to keep his own alight; and
everybody: man, woman, or child, gentleman or lady, prince or
peasant, native or foreigner: yells and screams, and roars
incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, 'Senza Moccolo, Senza
Moccolo!' (Without a light! Without a light!) until nothing is
heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals
of laughter.
The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary that
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can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody
standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their lights at
arms' length, for greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a
bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled altogether; some with
blazing torches; some with feeble little candles; men on foot,
creeping along, among the wheels, watching their opportunity, to
make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other
people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main
force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and round his
own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere,
before he can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light
their extinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a
carriage-door, humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige
them with a light for a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of
doubt whether to comply or no, blowing out the candle she is
guarding so tenderly with her little hand; other people at the
windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or letting down
long willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them
out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his triumph,
others, biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers
like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches;
others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others,
raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or