as
monstrous and fantastic a crew, full of high-colored, confused images,
as ever rioted in the high-strung brain of some old _cinque-cento_
poet. Each of these terrible monsters had its rider--some little
golden-curled child, who clung about the neck of a cat-headed dolphin
and shrieked with delight at the danger. Some pale sewing-girl, with a
turret of powdered hair above her soft face and her black shawl thrown
like a habit around her, sat erect on her white palfrey, and for a
moment held herself the equal of the great ladies of other times whose
faces looked down upon her from the corridors of the palaces to which
she went to carry home her work, and haunted her as she sat alone in her
little chamber high up among the red roofs. Some straight-limbed
peasant-boy, with a clear-cut face and a red flower in his hat,
bestriding the black charger with fiery nostrils, felt his heart swell
with noble longing at some dim memory of the glorious deeds of the old
warriors of Padua that his grandmother had related to him many a
winter's night when the chestnuts were roasting on the hearth and the
rain was rustling through the dead vine-stalks. To him every note of the
cracked trumpet was full of intoxication: it meant war and love and
glory and heroic deeds.

There are brown-faced women in tarnished spangles tumbling on squares of
carpet, with their children crouching patiently on the blue
handkerchiefs that contain the family wardrobe, waiting for their dinner
to be earned. They are assisted by white curly poodles, with pink shaven
legs, solemn faces and long ears, which make them look like old Paduan
_marchesi_ in powdered wigs. They make the circuit of the carpet on
their hind legs, and jump through hoops, and pass the hat among the
bystanders, and watch the sleeping babies, and carry the weight of the
whole family upon their meditative shoulders.

There are tame magpies that tell the peasant-girls' fortunes by choosing
printed slips of paper from a box, and others that predict the winning
numbers of next week's lottery. Now and then an old magician passes who
has horse-hair curls reaching to his waist, a green shade over his eyes,
and carries slung about his neck a board on which sits a drugged cock
or a great black cat. He consults his familiar for answers to the
questions that are put to him. The peasants form groups about the
charlatans and tumblers and ring-throwers, and the sunlight streams over
the happy, careless c