is disclosed. It must be allowed Andrea was not very handsome, the
hideous scoundrel! Come, dress yourselves, gentlemen, dress your
selves."
Franz felt it would be ridiculous not to follow his two companions' example. He assumed his costume, and fastened on his mask, that scarcely equaled the pallor of his own face. Their toilet finished they descended; the carriage awaited them at the door, filled with sweetmeats and bouquets. They fell into the line of carriages.
It is difficult to form an idea of the perfect change that had taken place. Instead of the spectacle of gloomy and silent death, the Piazza del Popolo presented a spectacle of gay and noisy mirth and revelry. A crowd of masks flowed in from all sides, issuing from the doors, descending from the windows. From every street and every turn drove carriages filled with pierrots, harlequins, dominoes, marquises, Transteverini, knights, and peasants, screaming, fighting, gesticulating, flinging eggs filled with flour, confetti, nosegays, attacking, with their sarcasms and their missiles, friends and foes, companions and strangers, indiscriminately, without any one taking offense, or doing anything else than laugh.
Franz and Albert were like men who, to drive away a violent sorrow, have recourse to wine, and who, as they drink and become intoxicated, feel a thick veil drawn between the past and the present. They saw, or rather continued to see, the image of what they had witnessed; but little by little the general intoxication seized them, their reason seemed to desert them, and they felt themselves obliged to take part in the noise and confusion.
A handfull of confetti that came from a neighboring carriage, and which, whilst it covered Morcerf and his two companions with dust, pricked his neck and that portion of his face uncovered by his mask like a hundred pins, plunged him into the general combat, in which all the masks around him were engaged. He rose in his turn, and seizing handfuls of confetti and sweetmeats, with which the carriage was filled, cast them with all the force and address he was master of.
The strife had fairly commenced, and the recollection of what they had seen half an hour before was gradually effaced from the young men's minds, so much were they occupied by the gay and glittering procession they now beheld.
As for the Count of Monte-Cristo, he had never for an instant shown any appearance of having been moved. Imagine the large and splendid Corso, bordered from one end to the other with lofty palaces, with their balconies hung with carpets, and their windows with flags; at these balconies three hundred thousand spectators—Romans, Italians, stran-
