There Remained
The Question Whether I Should Go Alone Or Whether I Should Ask The
Countenance Of Friends In So Bold An Enterprise.
When I suggested it to
some persons of the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked
To go with me; they instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said
they had always wished to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be
chosen by the raw and blustery afternoon which made us its own for the
occasion.
It was the eve of the last sad day of such shrunken and faded carnival
as is still left to Rome, and there were signs of it in the straggling
groups of children in holiday costume, and in here and there a pair of
young girls in a cab, safely masked against identification and venting,
in the sense of wild escape, the joyous spirits kept in restraint all
the rest of the year. Already in the Corso, where our touring-car waited
for us at the first corner, a great cafe was turning itself inside out
with a spread of chairs and tables over the sidewalk, which we found
thronged on our return with spectators far outnumbering the merrymakers
of the carnival. Our car was not nearly so packed, and when we mounted
to the benches we found that the last and highest of them was left to
the sole occupancy of a young man, well enough dressed (his yellow
gloves may have been more than well enough) and well-mannered enough,
who continued enigmatical to the last.
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