A Frolic of the Carnival

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 we know Kenyon's errand, we could hardly forgive him
for venturing into the Corso with that troubled face.

Even yet, his merry martyrdom was not half over. There came along a
gigantic female figure, seven feet high, at least, and taking up a third
of the street's breadth with the preposterously swelling sphere of
her crinoline skirts. Singling out the sculptor, she began to make a
ponderous assault upon his heart, throwing amorous glances at him out
of her great goggle eyes, offering him a vast bouquet of sunflowers and
nettles, and soliciting his pity by all sorts of pathetic and passionate
dumb-show. Her suit meeting no favor, the rejected Titaness made a
gesture of despair and rage; then suddenly drawing a huge pistol,
she took aim right at the obdurate sculptor's breast, and pulled the
trigger. The shot took effect, for the abominable plaything went off
by a spring, like a boy's popgun, covering Kenyon with a cloud of lime
dust, under shelter of which the revengeful damsel strode away.