After having examined the building, the Pope went on foot to the neighbouring convent of the Augustine nuns, called “The Convent of the Virgins,” the whole of the religious community were “permitted to kiss the sacred foot,” and then “having comforted the virgins with paternal and loving words,” he returned to the Vatican, past the files of French troops, through the beggar-crowded streets, amidst cold, sullen glances and averted obeisances, back to his dreary palace, there to wait wearily for orders from Paris.

CHAPTER XI.  THE CARNIVAL SENZA MOCCOLO.

There are things in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one.  You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you.  The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it.  To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word-wizard, who dreamt the “dream of Venice,” and told it waking.  For my own part, the only branch of art to which, even as a child, I ever took kindly, was the humble one of tracing upon gritting glass, with a grating pencil, hard outlines of coarse sketches squeezed tight against the window-pane.  After the manner in which I used to draw, I have since sought to write; for such a picture-frame then as mine, the airy, baseless fabric of an Italian revel is no fitting subject, and had the Roman Carnival for 1860 been even as other carnivals are, I should have left it unrecorded.  It has been my lot, however, to witness such a carnival as has not been seen at Rome before, and is not likely to be seen again.  In the decay of creeds and the decline of dynasties there appear from time to time signs which, like the writing on the wall, proclaim the coming change, and amongst these signs our past Carnival is, if I err not, no unimportant one.  While then the memory of the scene is fresh upon me, let me seek to tell what I have seen and heard.  The question whether we were to have a Carnival at all, remained long doubtful; the usual time for issuing the regulations had long passed, and no edict had appeared; strange reports were spread and odd stories circulated.  Our rulers were, it seems, equally afraid of having a carnival and not having it; and with their wonted wisdom decided on the middle course, of having a carnival which was not a carnival at all.  One week before the first of the eight fete-days, the long-delayed edict was posted on the walls; the festival was to be celebrated as usual, except that no masks were to be allowed; false beards and moustaches, or any attempt to disguise the features, were strictly forbidden.  Political allusions, or cries of any kind, were placed under the same ban; crowds were to disperse at a moment’s notice, and prompt