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