It was Carnival time, and
the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For
the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike
that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a
constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its
existence. And there now remained but an hour before midnight on the
Tuesday preceding the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday--Dies
Cinerum!--that sad and sober morrow which has brought with it
"sermons and soda-water" to so many generations of revellers.
Of course Carnival, according to the Calendar and Time's hour-glass,
is over at twelve o'clock on the night of Shrove Tuesday. Generally,
however, in the pleasure-loving cities of Italy, a few hours' law
are allowed or winked at. The revellers are not supposed to become
aware that it is past midnight till about three or four in the
morning.
Very generally the wind-up of the season of fun and frolic consists
of what is called a "Veglione," or "great making a night of it,"
which means a masked ball at the theatre. And the great central
chandelier does not begin to descend into the body of the house, to
have its lights flapped out by the handkerchiefs of the revellers
amid a last frantic rondo, till some four hours after midnight. But
in provincial Ravenna, a Pope's city under the rule of a Cardinal
Legate, there is--or was in the days when the Pope held sway there--
no Veglione.
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