Not that it was a dull house. The Marchese Lamberto, though a grave
and dignified personage in the eyes of the "jeunesse doree" of
Ravenna, was looked up to as one of the best loved, as well as most
respected, men in the city. And there was not a member of the
"society" who would not have been sadly hurt at not being invited to
the great annual Carnival ball at the Castelmare palace. But the
same degree of laissez aller jollity would not have been "de mise"
there as was permissible at the Circolo. The fun was not so fast and
furious as it was wont to be at the club of the nobles on the last
night of Carnival.
The whole society were at the latter gathering. All the nobles of
Ravenna were the hosts. and everybody was there solely and entirely
to amuse and enjoy themselves. Host and guests, indeed, were almost
identical. There were but few persons present, and those strangers
to the town, who did not belong to their own class.
To the Marchese, on the previous night, most of the company had
contented themselves with going in "domino." At the Circolo ball a
very large proportion of the dancers were in costume. The Conte
Leandro Lombardoni,--lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes
and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the
entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well-
known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself
with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling
around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,--the
Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace
as "Apollo," in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the
Marchese Lamberto's nephew, would insist on mistaking for that of
Aesop; and had now, according to a programme perfectly well known
previously throughout the city, come to the Circolo as "Dante.
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