Complications already, and I hadn't yet put a foot inside the ball-room! "I am sorry," I said, "but you have made a mistake. Your Jesuit probably told you his card would be the nine, not the ten." "I will wager--" "Hush! This is a charity dance; no one makes wagers at such affairs." "But--Why, my goodness! there's my Jesuit now!" And to my intense relief she dashed away. I carefully observed the Jesuit, and made up my mind to keep an eye upon him. If he really possessed the ten of hearts, the man who kept tally on the cardboard was doing some tall thinking about this time. I glided away, into the gorgeous ball-room. What a vision greeted my eye! The decorations were in red and yellow, and it seemed as though perpetual autumnal sunset lay over everything. At the far end of the room was a small stage hidden behind palms and giant ferns. The band was just striking up _A Summer Night in Munich_, and a wonderful kaleidoscope revolved around me. I saw Cavaliers and Roundheads, Puritans and Beelzebubs, Musketeers, fools, cowboys, Indians, kings and princes; queens and empresses, fairies and Quaker maids, white and black and red and green dominoes. Tom Fool's night, indeed! Presently I saw the noble Doge of Venice coming my way. From his portly carriage I reasoned that if he wasn't in the gold-book of Venice he stood very well up in the gold-book of New York, He stopped at my side and struck an attitude. "_Pax vobiscum_!" said I, bowing. "Be at the Inquisition Chamber, directly the clock strikes the midnight hour," he said mysteriously. "I shall be there to deliver the supreme interrogation," I replied. "It is well." He drifted away like a stately ship. Delightful foolery! I saw the Jesuit, and moved toward him. "Disciple of Loyola, hast thou the ten of hearts?" "My hearts number nine, for I have lost one to the gay Columbine." "I breathe! Thou art not he whom I seek." We separated. I was mortally glad that Columbine had made a mistake. The women always seek the monk at a masquerade; they want absolution for the follies they are about to commit. A demure Quakeress touched my sleeve in passing. "Tell me, grave monk, why did you seek the monastery?" "My wife fell in love with me,"--gloomily. "Then you have a skeleton in the clothes-press?" "Do I look like a man who owned such a thing as a clothes-press, much less so fashionable a thing as a family skeleton?" "Then what do you here?" "I am mingling with fools as a penance." A fool caught me by the sleeve and batted me gaily over the head with a bladder. "Merry come up, why am I a fool?" "It is the fashion," was my answer. This was like to gain me the reputation of being a wit. I must walk carefully, or these thoughtless ones would begin to suspect there was an impostor among them. "Aha!" There was mine ancient friend Julius. "Hail Caesar!" He stopped. "Shall I beware the Ides of March?" I asked jovially.