Chapter 36 - Page 2

place. Instead of the spectacle of gloomy and silent
death, the Piazza del Popolo presented a spectacle of gay
and noisy mirth and revelry. A crowd of masks flowed in from
all sides, emerging from the doors, descending from the
windows. From every street and every corner drove carriages
filled with clowns, harlequins, dominoes, mummers,
pantomimists, Transteverins, knights, and peasants,
screaming, fighting, gesticulating, throwing eggs filled
with flour, confetti, nosegays, attacking, with their
sarcasms and their missiles, friends and foes, companions
and strangers, indiscriminately, and no one took offence, or
did anything but laugh. Franz and Albert were like men who,
to drive away a violent sorrow, have recourse to wine, and
who, as they drink and become intoxicated, feel a thick veil
drawn between the past and the present. They saw, or rather
continued to see, the image of what they had witnessed; but
little by little the general vertigo seized them, and they
felt themselves obliged to take part in the noise and
confusion. A handful of confetti that came from a
neighboring carriage, and which, while it covered Morcerf
and his two companions with dust, pricked his neck and that
portion of his face uncovered by his mask like a hundred
pins, incited him to join in the general combat, in which
all the masks around him were engaged. He rose in his turn,
and seizing handfuls of confetti and sweetmeats, with which
the carriage was filled, cast them with all the force and
skill he was master of.

The strife had fairly begun, and the recollection of what
they had seen half an hour before was gradually effaced from
the young men's minds, so much were they occupied by the gay
and glittering procession they now beheld. As for the Count
of Monte Cristo, he had never for an instant shown any
appearance of having been moved. Imagine the large and
splendid Corso, bordered from one end to the other with
lofty palaces, with their balconies hung with carpets, and
their windows with flags. At these balconies are three
hundred thousand spectators -- Romans, Italians, strangers
from all parts of the world, the united aristocracy of
birth, wealth, and genius. Lovely women, yielding to the
influence of the scene, bend over their balconies, or lean
from their windows, and shower down confetti, which are
returned by bouquets; the air seems darkened with the
falling confetti and flying flowers. In the streets the
lively crowd is dressed in the most fantastic costumes --
gigantic cabbages walk gravely about, buffaloes' heads below
from men's shoulders, dogs walk on their hind legs; in the
midst of all this a mask is lifted, and, as in Callot's
Temptation of St. Anthony, a lovely face