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Within the city, from before daybreak, church-bells—­and Lucca abounds in belfries fretted tier upon tier, with galleries of delicate marble colonnettes, all ablaze in the sunshine—­have pealed out merrily.

Every church-door, draped with gold tissue and silken stuffs, more or less splendid, is thrown wide open.  Every shop is closed, save cafes, hotels, and tobacco-shops (where, by command of the King of New Italy, infamous cigars are sold).  Eating-tables are spread at the corners of the streets and under the trees in the piazza, benches are ranged everywhere where benches can stand.  The streets are filling every moment as fresh multitudes press through the city gates—­those grand old gates, where the marble lions of Lucca keep guard, looking toward the mountains.

For a carriage to pass anywhere in the streets would be impossible, so tightly are flapping Leghorn hats, and veils, snowy handkerchiefs, and red caps and brigand hats, packed together.  Bells ring, and there are waftings of military music borne through the air.  Trumpet-calls at the different barracks answer to each other.  Cannons are fired.  Each man, woman, and child shouts, screams, and laughs.  All down the dark, cavernous streets, in the great piazza, at the sindaco’s, at college, at club, public offices, and hotels, at the grand old palaces, untouched since the middle ages—­the glory of the city—­at every house, great and small—­flutter gaudy draperies; crimson, amber, violet, and gold, according to purse and condition, either of richest brocade, or of Eastern stuffs wrought in gold and needle-work, or—­the family carpet or bed-furniture hung out for show.  Banners wave from every house-top and tower, the Italian tricolor and the Savoy cross, white, on a red ground; flowers and garlands are wreathed on the fronts of the stern old walls.  If peasants, and shopkeepers, and monks, priests, beggars, and hoi polloi generally, possess the pavement, overhead every balcony, gallery, terrace, and casement, is filled with company, representatives of the historic families of Lucca, the Manfredi, Possenti, Navascoes, Bernardini, dal Portico, Bocella, Manzi, da Gia, Orsetti, Ruspoli—­feudal names dear to native ears.  The noble marquis, or his excellency the count, lord of broad acres on the plains, or principalities in the mountains, or of hoarded wealth at the National Bank—­is he not Lucchese also to the backbone?  And does he not delight in the festival as keenly as that half-naked beggar, who rattles his box for alms, with a broad grin on his dirty face?

Resplendent are the ladies in the balconies, dressed in their best—­like bands of fluttering ribbon stretched across the sombre-fronted palaces; aristocratic daughters, and dainty consorts.  They are not chary of their charms.  They laugh, fan themselves, lean over sculptured balustrades, and eye the crowded streets, talking with lip and fan, eye and gesture.