Carnival in a little Italian town, as we have said, is no very grand thing, and as a mere question of fun it is no doubt amusing only to people who are ready to be amused. And yet there is a quaint fascination in it as a whole, in the rows of old women with demure little children in their laps ranged on the stone seats along the bridge, the girls on the pavement, the grotesque figures dancing along the road, the harlequins, the mimic Capuchins, the dominoes with big noses, the carriages rolling along amidst a fire of sugarplums, the boys darting in and out and smothering one with their handfuls of flour, the sham cook with his pots and pans wreathed with vine-branches, the sham cavalier in theatrical cloak and trunk hose who dashes about on a pony, the solemn group tossing a doll to a church-like chant in a blanket, the chaff and violet bunches flung from the windows, the fun and life and buzz and colour of it all. It is something very different, one feels, from the common country fair of home. In the first place it is eminently picturesque. As one looks down from the balcony through a storm of sugarplums the eye revels in a perfect feast of colour. Even the russet-brown of every old woman's dress glows in the sunshine into a strange beauty. Every little touch of red or blue in the girls' head-dresses shines out in the intense light. As the oddly attired maskers dart in and out or whirl past in the dance the little street seems like a gay ribbon of shifting hues winding between its grey old houses with touches of fresh tints at every window and balcony. The crimson caps of the peasants stand out in bold relief against the dark green of the lemon-garden behind them. Overhead the wind is just stirring in the big pendant leaves of the two palm-trees in the centre of the street, and the eye once caught by them ranges on to the white mass of the town as it stands glowing on its hill-side and thence to the brown hilltops, and the intense blue of the sky.