ness of riot--childish, too--

Ian leaned against the broken base of an ancient statue, set in the
villa garden, at a point that gave a famous view. Around, the
almond-trees were in bloom. The marble Diana had gazed hence for so
many years, had seen so much that might make the dewy greenwood
forgotten! It was mid-afternoon and flooding light. Here Rome basked,
half-asleep in a dream of sense; here the ant city worked and worked.

Ian stood between tides, behind him a forenoon, before him an evening
of carnival participation. In the morning he had been with a stream of
persons; presently, with the declining sun, would be with another.
Here was an hour or two of pause, time of day for rest with
half-closed eyes. He looked over the pale rose wave of the almonds, he
saw Peter's dome and St. Angelo. He was conscious of a fatigue of his
powers, a melancholy that they gave him no more than they did. "How it
is all tinsel and falsetto!... I want a clean, cold, searching
wave--desert and night--not life all choked with wax tapers and
harlequins! I want something.... I don't know what I want. I only know
I haven't got it!"

His arm moved upon the base of the statue. He looked up at the white
form with the arrow in its hands. "Self-containment.... What, goddess,
you would call chastity all around?... All the spilled self somehow
centered. But just that is difficult--difficult--more difficult than
anything Hercules attempted. Oh me!" He sat down beneath the cypress
that stood behind the statue and rested his head within his hands.
From Rome, on all sides, broke into the still light trumpets and
bell-ringing, pipes and drums, shout and singing. It sounded like a
thousand giant cicadae. A group of masks went through the garden, by
the Diana figure. They threw pine cones and confetti at the gold-brown
foreigner seated there. One wore an ass's head, another was dressed as
a demon with horns and tail, a third rolled as Bacchus, a fourth,
fifth, and sixth were his maenads. All went wildly by, the clamor of
the city swelled.

This was first day of carnival. Succeeding days, succeeding nights,
mounted each a stage to heights of folly. Starred all through was
innocent merrymaking, license held in leash. But the gross, the
whirling, and the sinister elements came continuously and more
strongly into play. Measured sound grew racket, camaraderie turned
into impudence. Came at last pandemonium. All without Rome--Campagna
and mountains--wer