As to Lando, he had been forced to tear himself away from Paris, and devote to economy an entire year which he had come very reluctantly to spend in the bosom of his family. He at once observed with astonishment that I was happier at Naples than at Paris. As for him, he declared life in a small city was an impossibility, and he should pass the time of his exile in absolute exclusion. But he contented himself with carrying this Parisian nostalgia from one drawing‐room to another, exhaling his complaints sometimes in Italian (continually _grasseyant_), sometimes in French sprinkled with the most recent _argot_, only comprehensible to the initiated. But as, in spite of all this, his natural good‐humor was never at fault, everything else was overlooked, and he was welcomed everywhere; so existence gradually became endurable, and he resigned himself to it so completely that by the time the Carnival approached he was so thoroughly renaturalized that no one was more forward than he in preparing and organizing all the amusements with which it terminates at Naples—vehicles, costumes, _confetti_, and flowers for the Toledo;(51) suppers, dominos, and disguises for the Festini di San Carlo,(52) without reckoning the great fancy ball at the Accademia;(53) and, to crown all, private theatricals with a view to Lent. With all this, he had ample means of escaping all danger of dying of _ennui_ before Easter!... I must acknowledge, however, that he found me as much disposed to aid him as any one. I was in one of those fits of exuberant gayety which at Naples, and even at Rome, sometimes seize even the most reasonable and sensible people during the follies of the Carnival. But it must be confessed these follies had not in Italy the gross, vulgar, and repulsive aspect which public gayety sometimes assumes at Paris on similar occasions. One would suppose everybody at Paris more or less wicked at Carnival time; whereas at Rome and Naples everybody seems to be more or less childlike. Is this more in appearance than reality? Must we believe the amount of evil the same everywhere during these days devoted to pleasure? I cannot say. At Rome, we know, no less than at Paris and Naples, while people on the Corso are pelting each other with _confetti_ and lighting the _moccoletti_, the churches are also illuminated, and a numerous crowd, prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altars, pray in order to expiate the follies of the merry crowd. But it seems to me no one who has made the comparison would hesitate to acknowledge a great difference in the gayety of these places, as well as the different amusements it inspires.