Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/145

Rh mother. The whole Corso, from the Piazza di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo, looks like a festally decorated arena. But, for the first time during many weeks, the sky is gray and the streets are wet after rain, which has fallen in the night. It even now looks threatening, and already has rained a little, but the air is soft and calm; the tramontana has left Rome, and all windows are open. Some carriages, with masks in costume and dominoes, begin to drive up and down the Corso; the war with comfits and bouquets has begun between the pedestrians and those who are in carriages, between the people in the streets, and the people at the windows and in the balconies. They seek either to powder one another, or to make a present. Extremely beautiful bouquets and fine bonbons come amongst quantities of others, which are less beautiful, and not at all fine. One is obliged, in the mean time, to hold a fine wire gauze—in the form of a little scoop—before the face, if one would escape bruises. Our balcony is decorated with red and white, and along the outside of the iron railing, small boxes are hung for the bouquets and comfits. Our agreeable hostess belongs to the ornaments of her balcony, into which flowers are assiduously thrown by gentlemen in carriages and on foot.

The rainy, threatening clouds have damped a great deal of the merriments, and people say: “The Carnival has not yet begun, nor will it till Monday!”

At five o'clock a mounted troop of soldiers in close rank galloped at full speed up the Corso, in order to clear the streets, for now the horse-race was