While they were all busily drinking and talking, Caper had noticed that the wine was beginning to have its effects on the large crowd who had assembled at the Osterias and Trattorias around the foot of the Bacchic mountain. Laughing and talking, shouting and singing, began to be in the ascendant, and gravity was voted indecent. 'Ha!' said Rocjean, 'for one hour of the good old classic days!' 'What!' answered Caper, 'with those seventy thousand old Jews you were preaching about the other day?' 'Never!--with the Bacchante. But here our friends are off: let us help them into the carriage.' As the sun went down, the _minenti_ began to crowd toward Rome. More than one _spadina_ flashed in the hands of the slightly-tight maidens who were on foot. Those of the men who had carriages, foreseeing the inflammable spirit aroused, packed the women in by themselves, gave them lighted torches, and cut them adrift, to float down the Corso; they following in separate carriages. * * * * * 'Ah! really, and pray, Mrs. Jobson, don't you think that it's--ah! a beautiful sight; they tell me--ah! it's the peasants returning from visiting the shrine of the--ah! Madonna--ah?' 'And I think it is _most_ charming, Mister Lushington; and I remember me now that Lady Fanny Errol, poor thing, said it would be a _charming_ sight. And the poor creatures seem _much_ happier than our own lower orders; they do, to be sure.' * * * * * 'O Lord!' groaned Caper, as he overheard the above dialogue, 'allow me to retire.' CAPER 'STARTS' A MENAGERIE. As an animal-painter, Mr. Caper was continually hunting up materials for sketches. He made excursions into the Campagna, to see the long-horned gray oxen and the hideous buffaloes; watching the latter along the yellow Tiber, when, in the spring-time, they coquetted in the mud and water. He sketched goats and sheep, tended by the picturesquely-dressed shepherds and guarded by the fierce dogs that continually encircled them. In four words, he studied animal-ated nature.