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Updated: April 30, 2025
Madame arrived, in full dress she knew not why, and howling she knew not why, inundated everybody with her tears in embracing them, making the chateau echo with renewed cries, and furnished the odd spectacle of a Princess putting on her robes of ceremony in the dead of night to come and cry among a crowd of women with but little on except their night- dresses, almost as masqueraders.
I do not know what I expected when, a few minutes later, I pulled the garment out of the hole in which it lay buried, and spread it out before me. Not what I discovered, I am sure; for when I had given it a glance, and found it was nothing more nor less than a domino, such as is worn by masqueraders, I experienced a shock that the mask, which fell out of its folds, scarcely served to allay.
In the mean time "bands play the air of the carmagnole and 'Malbrook.... On the entry of the dais, they strike up 'Ah! le bel oiseau;" all at once the masqueraders throw off their disguise, and, mitres, stoles, chasubles flung in the air, "disclose to view the defenders of the country in the national uniform." Peals of laughter, shouts and enthusiasm, while the instrumental din becomes louder!
They danced the Lancers, and a polka or two, and waltzed and dipped and bowed to "Comin' through the Rye" while all the masqueraders lined up against the walls to admire and applaud.
Yes, nonsense, she could see that herself; yes, a fool, he had impressed her as such; but still the stupid words beat and throbbed in her heart, as gruesome as masqueraders in comic masks would be should they knock at your door at any other time save during Carnival! "If you will wait, signora, in less than half an hour he is sure to be here. Che! What am I saying? In a quarter of an hour.
At sundown I had gone out with my father to see the masqueraders who were in the streets; and having returned rather early I went immediately to my attic-room to classify some shells.
The crowd of holiday masqueraders, laughing and shoving, was exchanging jests and showers of paper ribbon with the clowns and flinging little bags of sugar-plums to the columbine, who sat in her car, tricked out in tinsel and feathers, with artificial curls on her forehead and an artificial smile on her painted lips.
Hector Munro came in from Ghent with his oddly-dressed ladies, and at first one was inclined to call them masqueraders in their knickerbockers and puttees and caps, but I believe they have done excellent work.
Alas! thought I with vexation, each of us is like these masqueraders; our whole life is often but an unsightly Carnival! And yet man has need of holidays, to relax his mind, rest his body, and open his heart. Can he not have them, then, with these coarse pleasures? Economists have been long inquiring what is the best disposal of the industry of the human race.
"I see it from a different angle." An artist's model, and yet a guest at this exclusive function? A commotion around the stage distracted us. Presently we saw Teddy Hamilton mount the stage and hold up his hands. "Attention, ladies and gentlemen!" he called. Silence gradually fell upon the motley groups of masqueraders. "A thief is among us. I have had all the exits closed.
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