ack
by stopping to examine various groups of masqueraders, in which he
fancied the objects of his search to be included. He found many a sallow
peasant or herdsman of the Campagna, in such a dress as Donatello
wore; many a contadina, too, brown, broad, and sturdy, in her finery
of scarlet, and decked out with gold or coral beads, a pair of heavy
earrings, a curiously wrought cameo or mosaic brooch, and a silver comb
or long stiletto among her glossy hair. But those shapes of grace and
beauty which he sought had vanished.

As soon as the procession of the Senator had passed, the merry-makers
resumed their antics with fresh spirit, and the artillery of bouquets
and sugar plums, suspended for a moment, began anew. The sculptor
himself, being probably the most anxious and unquiet spectator there,
was especially a mark for missiles from all quarters, and for the
practical jokes which the license of the Carnival permits. In fact,
his sad and contracted brow so ill accorded with the scene, that the
revellers might be pardoned for thus using him as the butt of their idle
mirth, since he evidently could not otherwise contribute to it.

Fantastic figures, with bulbous heads, the circumference of a bushel,
grinned enormously in his face. Harlequins struck him with their wooden
swords, and appeared to expect his immediate transformation into some
jollier shape. A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him and
suddenly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor friend in a
whole harvest of winged seeds. A biped, with an ass's snout, brayed
close to his ear, ending his discordant uproar with a peal of human
laughter. Five strapping damsels--so, at least, their petticoats bespoke
them, in spite of an awful freedom in the flourish of their legs--joined
hands, and danced around him, inviting him by their gestures to perform
a hornpipe in the midst. Released from these gay persecutors, a clown in
motley rapped him on the back with a blown bladder, in which a handful
of dried peas rattled horribly.

Unquestionably, a care-stricken mortal has no business abroad, when
the rest of mankind are at high carnival; they must either pelt him
and absolutely martyr him with jests, and finally bury him beneath the
aggregate heap; or else the potency of his darker mood, because the
tissue of human life takes a sad dye more readily than a gay one, will
quell their holiday humors, like the aspect of a death's-head at a
banquet. Only that