It is generally the close of day when the races finish.  Then commences another kind of amusement, much less picturesque, but also very noisy.  The windows are illuminated.  The guards abandon their post to mix in the general joy[30].  Each one then takes a little torch called a moccolo, and they seek mutually to extinguish each other’s light, repeating the word ammazzare (kill) with a formidable vivacity. Che la Bella Principessa sia ammazata!  Che il signore abbate sia ammazata! (Let the fair princess be killed, let the abbot be killed!) is shouted from one end of the street to the other.  The crowd, become emboldened, because at this hour horses and carriages are forbidden, hurl themselves in all directions.  At length there is no other pleasure than that of tumult and disorder.  In the meantime night advances, the noise ceases by degrees—­a profound silence succeeds, and there only remains of this evening the confused idea of a dream, in which the people had forgotten for a moment their labour, the learned their studies, and the nobility their idleness.

FOOTNOTES: 

[28] I asked a little Tuscan girl which was the handsomer, she or her sister?  “Ah!” answered she, “Il piu bel viso e il mio;”—­Mine is the most beautiful face.

[29] An Italian postillion, whose horse was dying, prayed for him, saying. “O Sant’ Antonio, abbiate pieta dell’ anima sua;”—­O Saint Anthony, have mercy on his soul!

[30] Goethe has a description of the carnival at Rome, which gives a faithful and animated picture of that festival.

Chapter ii.

Oswald, since his calamity, had not found spirits to seek the pleasure of music.  He dreaded those ravishing strains so soothing to melancholy, but which inflict pain, when we are oppressed by real grief.  Music awakens those bitter recollections which we are desirous to appease.  When Corinne sang, Oswald listened to the words she uttered; he contemplated the expression of her countenance, it was she alone that occupied him; but if in the streets of an evening, several voices were joined, as it frequently happens in Italy, to sing the fine airs of the great masters, he at first endeavoured to listen, and then retired, because the emotion it excited, at once so exquisite and so indefinite, renewed his pain.  However, there was a magnificent concert to be given in the theatre at Rome, which was to combine the talents of all the best singers.  Corinne pressed Lord Nelville to accompany her to this concert, and he consented, expecting that his feelings would be softened and refined by the presence of her he loved.