More marked indeed. For between day and night there is twilight, but
the transition from Carnival to Lent is as sudden as a plunge from
sunshine into cold water. Carnival ends at twelve o'clock on the
night of Shrove Tuesday. And the theory of its observance is, or
was, that the fun and revelry should grow ever more fast and furious
up to the last permitted moment. Then, the clock strikes; the lights
are put out, Carnival dies amid one last hurrah. And maskers and
revellers go home to rise the next morning with grave and perhaps
yellow faces.
In Ravenna, as has been said, a great reception of all the society
at the Palazzo Castelmare on the Sunday evening was as much an
institution as the High Mass on a Sunday morning. And this was the
course of things during all the year, except in Carnival time. Then,
in order to leave Sunday evening--the great time for balls and
theatres, and pleasure of all sorts free, the reception at the
Palazzo Castelmare was changed to the Monday. The programme,
therefore, for the three last grand days of the Carnival in Ravenna,
on that occasion, stood thus:--
On the Sunday, a grand gala Corso from four to six in the afternoon.
(That is to say, that every available carriage of every sort in
Ravenna would be put in requisition, and would be driven in
procession, at a slow foot pace, up and down the long street called
the Corso; and those who had servants and liveries and fine horses
would display them and rejoice; and those who had none of these
things would mingle with the grand carriages in broken-down
shandridans, and rejoice also at the sight of the finery, without
the smallest feeling of shame at their own poverty.
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