To the mere eye nothing could be more splendid, nothing more suggestive of enjoyment, than the Pergola of Florence when brilliantly lighted and thronged with a gay and merry company. Character figures in every variety fancy or caprice could suggest--Turks, Styrians, Highlanders, Doges, Dervishes, and Devils--abounded, with Pifferari from Calabria, Muleteers, Matadors, and Conjurers; Boyards from Tobolsk jostled Male Crusaders, and Demons that might have terrified St. Anthony flitted past with Sisters of Charity! Strange parody upon the incongruities of our every-day life, costume serving but to typify the moral incompatibilities which are ever at work in our actual existence! for are not the people we see linked together--are not the social groupings we witness--just as widely separated by every instinct and every sentiment as are these characters in all their motley? Are the two yonder, as they sit at the fireside, not as remote from each other as though centuries had rolled between them? They toil along, it is true, together; they drag the same burden, but with different hopes and fears and motives. Bethink you “the friends so linked together” are like- minded? No, it is all masquerade; and the motley is that same easy conventionality by which we hope to escape undetected and unknown! Our business now is not with the mass of this great assemblage; we are only interested for two persons,--one of whom, a tall figure in a black domino, leans against a pillar yonder, closely scrutinizing each new- comer that enters, and eagerly glancing at the sleeve of every yellow domino that passes. He has been there from an early hour of the evening, and never left it since. Many a soft voice has whispered some empty remark on his impassiveness; more than once a jesting sarcasm has been uttered upon his participation in the gayety around; but he has never replied, but with folded arms patiently awaited the expected one. At last he is joined by another, somewhat shorter and stouter, but dressed like him, who, bending close to his ear, whispers,-- “Why are you standing here,--have you not seen her?” “No; she has never passed this door.” “She entered by the stage, and has been walking about this hour. I saw her talking to several, to whom, to judge by their gestures, her remarks must have been pointed enough; but there she is,--see, she is leaning on the arm of that Malay chief. Join her; you know the signal.”