Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/172

Rh the swell of the music words of menace and danger were exchanged, that the domino was only donned that the sword might be surely drawn hereafter, that under the dewy orange-boughs, and beside the starlit waters and on the marble stairs, and under the light exchange of frivolous wit, intrigues were woven and dark plans made perfect,—these no more disturbed the gaiety and the glory of the Antina masquerade than such had disturbed the laughing tide of festivities in Venice, or the garden fêtes of the Tuscans in the Cinque Cento. Rather they suited and enhanced it; it was in Italy, and they made it but the more Italian. It was the dagger of Sforza glancing beneath the Arlecchino spangles and colours of Goldoni. Whoso cannot understand this mingling—the laugh and the arlequinade as really joyous as the steel and the stroke are surely subtle—can never understand the Italy of the Past: perhaps not the Italy of the Present.

Around one the maskers gathered with pressing homage, around one the groups were more eager, more sedulous, more vivacious in their wit, more earnest in their under-current of political discussion than round any other; for on the elegance of the scarlet domino was the well-known badge of the Silver Ivy, that rallying symbol which brought to