Not that it was a dull house.  The Marchese Lamberto, though a grave and dignified personage in the eyes of the “jeunesse doree” of Ravenna, was looked up to as one of the best loved, as well as most respected, men in the city.  And there was not a member of the “society” who would not have been sadly hurt at not being invited to the great annual Carnival ball at the Castelmare palace.  But the same degree of laissez aller jollity would not have been “de mise” there as was permissible at the Circolo.  The fun was not so fast and furious as it was wont to be at the club of the nobles on the last night of Carnival.

The whole society were at the latter gathering.  All the nobles of Ravenna were the hosts. and everybody was there solely and entirely to amuse and enjoy themselves.  Host and guests, indeed, were almost identical.  There were but few persons present, and those strangers to the town, who did not belong to their own class.

To the Marchese, on the previous night, most of the company had contented themselves with going in “domino.”  At the Circolo ball a very large proportion of the dancers were in costume.  The Conte Leandro Lombardoni,—­lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well-known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,—­the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace as “Apollo,” in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the Marchese Lamberto’s nephew, would insist on mistaking for that of Aesop; and had now, according to a programme perfectly well known previously throughout the city, come to the Circolo as “Dante.”  The Tuscan “lucco,” or long flowing gown, had at least the advantage of concealing from the public eye much that the Apollo costume had injudiciously exhibited.

Ludovico Castelmare had adopted the costume of a Venetian noble of the sixteenth century; and very strikingly handsome he looked in that most picturesque of all dresses.  The Marchese Lamberto was at the ball, of course, but not in costume.  Perhaps the most striking figure in the rooms, however, was one of those few persons who have been mentioned as present, but not belonging to Ravenna, or to the class of its nobles.  This was a lady, well known at that day throughout Italy as Bianca Lalli—­“La Lalli,” or “La Bianca,” in theatrical parlance—­for she was one of the first singers of the day.  Special circumstances—­to be explained at a future page—­had rendered it possible for remote little Ravenna to secure the celebrated artist for the Carnival, which was now expiring.  The Marchese Lamberto, who, among many other avocations and occupations, all of them contributing in some way or other to the welfare and advantage of his native