"On Thursday last, the Giovedi Grasso, the Abbess had (in consultation with me) provided an entertainment which not only attracted the rank and fashion of Venice but (I will dare to say) made them forget the exhaustion of the maddest day of carnival with its bull-baiting and battles of _confetti_. An hour before midnight all Venice had taken to its gondolas and was being swept, with song and music, towards the Giudecca. The lagoons swam with the reflections of a thousand moving lanterns, and all their streaming ribbons of light converged upon the bridge of Santa Chiara, beyond which, where the gardens descended in stairways of marble to the water, I had lined the banks with coloured lamps. Discreet narrow water-alleys, less flauntingly lit, but with here and there a caged nightingale singing in the boscage, intersected the sisters' pleasure-grounds; but the main canal led around an ample stretch of turf in the midst of which my workmen had reared a stage for a masque of my composing, entitled _The Rape of Helen_. Badcock, who was to enact the part of Menelaus, had at my request attired himself early, for some few of my nightingales were young birds and not to be depended on, and I had an idea of concealing him in the shrubberies to supply a _flauto obbligato_ while our guests arrived. I had interrupted my instructions to despatch him on some small errand connected with the coloured fires, and he had scarcely disappeared among the laurels, when along the path came strolling two figures I recognized as fellow-countrymen--the young Lord Algernon Shafto, of the English embassy, and his mother's brother, the Venerable John Kynaston Worley, Archdeacon of Wells. Lord Algernon wore a domino. His uncle (I need scarcely say) had made no innovation upon the laced hat and gaiters proper to his archidiaconal rank--though it is likely enough that the Venetians found this costume as eccentric as any in the throng. He had arrived in the city a bare week before; and walked with an arm paternally thrust in his nephew's, while he made acquaintance with the luxurious frivolities of a Venetian carnival. "As they passed me I stooped to trim the peccant wick of one of the many lamps disposed like glowworms along the path: but a moment later their voices told me that my countrymen had found a seat a few paces away, in an arbour whence, by the rays of a paper lantern which overhung it, they could observe the passers-by.