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He entertained company constantly at his table, and often in great state and very sumptuously, in order to promote trade. As in the Saturnalia he made presents to the men which they were to carry away with them, so did he to the women upon the calends of March ; notwithstanding which, he could not wipe off the disrepute of his former stinginess.
I had been, two years before, hit in the face by a snow missile, during one of the snowballing saturnalia the New York roughs indulged in after every fall of snow; in this case the missile was a huge block of frozen snow-crust, which flattened my nose on my face and broke the upper maxillary inclosing all the front teeth.
Yet this was not what she feared, this saturnalia of unbridled passion, for the way was comparatively well lighted, and in traversing it she was reasonably certain to be within call of some one sober enough to protect her from insult or injury. Even in drink these men remained courteous to women of the right sort.
Everywhere, brazen and noisy, flitted women, bold of eye, painted of cheek, gaudy of raiment, making mock of their sacred womanhood. Riot reigned unchecked, while the quiet, sleepy town of the afternoon blossomed under the flickering lights into a saturnalia of unlicensed pleasure, wherein the wages of sin were death.
Its vices cannot compare for a moment in this respect with the monstrous tragedies and almost suffocating secrecies and villainies of the Court of James I. But the dram-drinking and nose-slitting of the saturnalia of Charles II. seem at once more human and more detestable than the passions and poisons of the Renaissance, much in the same way that a monkey appears inevitably more human and more detestable than a tiger.
His legions of slaves, and in particular a division of Ardyaeans, chiefly served as his executioners, and did not neglect, amidst these Saturnalia of their new freedom, to plunder the houses of their former masters and to dishonour and murder all whom they met with there.
He, according to the old legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild sports and merriment.
Ah, why is it only the revival of a dream? why must it be only an interval of labour and woe, the brief saturnalia of slaves, the green resting-spot in a dreary and long road of travail and toil?"
As we are obliged all the year to be decent, orderly, and reasonable, we make up for such a long restraint during the Carnival. It is a door opened to the incongruous fancies and wishes that have hitherto been crowded back into a corner of our brain. For a moment the slaves become the masters, as in the days of the Saturnalia, and all is given up to the "fools of the family."
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