Not far from the circus, under a wooden tent, a half score of monsters were whirling round and round in mad rivalry--fishes with enormous mouths and mighty fins, like the terrible "Orco" of Ariosto; wild steeds whose legs blossomed out into acanthus-leaves, like the old grotesques that lurk under the ferns about the basins of the village fountains; great mysterious birds, with big eyes, and golden chains about their necks; beasts with the heads of cats and the bodies of dogs, as monstrous and fantastic a crew, full of high-colored, confused images, as ever rioted in the high-strung brain of some old _cinque-cento_ poet. Each of these terrible monsters had its rider--some little golden-curled child, who clung about the neck of a cat-headed dolphin and shrieked with delight at the danger. Some pale sewing-girl, with a turret of powdered hair above her soft face and her black shawl thrown like a habit around her, sat erect on her white palfrey, and for a moment held herself the equal of the great ladies of other times whose faces looked down upon her from the corridors of the palaces to which she went to carry home her work, and haunted her as she sat alone in her little chamber high up among the red roofs. Some straight-limbed peasant-boy, with a clear-cut face and a red flower in his hat, bestriding the black charger with fiery nostrils, felt his heart swell with noble longing at some dim memory of the glorious deeds of the old warriors of Padua that his grandmother had related to him many a winter's night when the chestnuts were roasting on the hearth and the rain was rustling through the dead vine-stalks. To him every note of the cracked trumpet was full of intoxication: it meant war and love and glory and heroic deeds. There are brown-faced women in tarnished spangles tumbling on squares of carpet, with their children crouching patiently on the blue handkerchiefs that contain the family wardrobe, waiting for their dinner to be earned. They are assisted by white curly poodles, with pink shaven legs, solemn faces and long ears, which make them look like old Paduan _marchesi_ in powdered wigs. They make the circuit of the carpet on their hind legs, and jump through hoops, and pass the hat among the bystanders, and watch the sleeping babies, and carry the weight of the whole family upon their meditative shoulders.