living scenes of the chest so deceptively, that every one took the images for true puppets. The point of this comico-tragic dagger came home directly enough upon Albano, as, besides, the hopping wax-figure-cabinet of the great masquerade seemed to double the solitude of man, and to separate two selves by four faces; but Schoppe went further. In his glass case stood a faro-bank, and by it a little man, who cut out the masked banker in black paper, but into a likeness of the German gentleman; this picture he carried into the card-chamber, where a bank-keeping mask--most certainly Cephisio--must needs hear and see him. The banker looked at him some time inquiringly. Another, dressed wholly in black, with a dying expression, which represented the _Hippocratica facies_,[115] did the same. Albano looked towards it with a fiery glance, because it occurred to him it might be Roquairol, for it had his stature and torch-like eye. The pale mask lost much, and kept redoubling its loss; at that it drank out of a quill immoderate draughts of Champagne wine. The Lector came up; Schoppe kept on playing before the eyes that crowded round; the pale mask looked steadily and sternly at the Count. Schoppe took off his own before Bouverot; but there was another under it; he pulled this off; it disclosed an under-mask of the under-mask; he carried on the process to the fifth root;--at last his own rough face came forth, but bronzed with gold-beater's skin and distorted, as it turned towards Bouverot, with an almost frightful glaze and smile. The pale mask itself seemed to start, and hastened with long strides off into the dancing-hall; it threw itself wildly into the wildest of the dance. This, too, confirmed Albano's conjecture, as well as its great defying hat, which seemed to him a crown, because he prized nothing more highly about manly attire than fur, cloak, and hat.