pt thanks, as it is, your kind opinion
notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of
interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of
the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by

"Your devoted friend,
"G. F.

"Shall I find you at home this evening?"

CHAPTER XII

No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_.
It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last
_veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if
the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to
use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday.

The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the
parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above
tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party,
with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display.

Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center
of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in
tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic
evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public
dances in the remaining space--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the
special diversion of the evening being to "intrigue" some one. They are
heard speaking in high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may
disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros,
Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino.

When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at
the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her
features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm
she leans.

The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little
foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural
objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren
amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or
puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than
the drawing-room permits.

The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had
gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things
with which to feed them. There were the Fosses,