We will suppose it to be about midnight on the fifth of January, the day preceding the well-known revel, now come to be mainly a children's festival, which English people call Twelfth Night and celebrate by the consumption of huge plumcakes and the drawing of lots for the offices of king and queen of the revels. The Italians call it the festival of the "Befana," the word being a readily-perceived corruption of "Epifania." Of course the sense and meaning of the original term have been entirely forgotten, and the Befana of the Italian populace is a sort of witch, mainly benevolent indeed, and especially friendly to children, to whom in the course of the night she brings presents, to be found by them in the morning in a stocking or a shoe or any other such fantastic hiding-place. But Italians are all more or less children of a larger growth, and at Rome especially the populace of all ages, ever ready for _circenses_ in any form, make a point of "keeping" the festival of the Befana, who holds her high court on her own night in the Piazza Navona. We will betake ourselves thither about midnight, as I have said. It is a bitterly cold night, and the stars are shining brilliantly in the clear, steely-looking sky--such a night as Rome has still occasionally at this time of year, and as she used to have more frequently when Horace spoke of incautious early risers getting nipped by the cold. One of the first things that strikes us as we make our way to the place of general rendezvous muffled in our thickest and heaviest cloaks and shawls is the apparent insensibility of this people to the cold. One would have expected it to be just the reverse. But whether it be that their organisms have stored up such a quantity of sunshine during the summer as enables them to defy the winter's cold, or whether their Southern blood runs more rapidly in their veins, it is certain that men, women and children--and especially the women--will for amusement's sake expose themselves to a degree of cold and inclement weather that a Northerner would shrink from.