Our own Set by Ossip Schubin — Read

It is Shrove Tuesday. The sorriest jade of the wretchedest _botta_ has a paper rose stuck behind his ear, though during the hours sacred to the carnival they are pariahs and outcasts from the Corso. Two-horse carriages are dressed in garlands and the horses have plumes on their heads. The Piazza di Spagna is alive with pedlars and hawkers, selling flowers and little tapers (_moccoli_), and with buyers of every nation doing their best to cheapen them. Baskets full of violets, roses, anemones, snowflakes -- baskets full of indescribable bunches of greenery -- the ammunition of the mob which have already done duty for two or three days and are like nothing on earth but the wisps of rushes with which the boards are rubbed in some parts of Austria. The sellers of coral and tortoise-shell cry out to you to buy -- "_e carnevale_. " and in the side streets -- for misery dares not show its head in the main thoroughfares to-day -- the beggars crowd more closely than ever round the pedestrian with their perpetual cry: "_muojo di fame_."

The houses on the Corso wear their gay carnival trappings to-day for the last time. A smart dress flutters on every balcony, several stands have been erected and all the window-sills are covered, some with colored chintz and some with gold brocade. All Thursday, Saturday, and Monday Zinka and Gabrielle had driven unweariedly up and down the Corso with Count Truyn, flinging flowers at all their acquaintances and at a good many strangers. To-day, however, they had agreed to look on from the windows of the Palazzo Vulpini, for the close of the carnival is apt to be somewhat riotous. Every one who lives on the Corso seizes the opportunity of paying long owing debts of civility and offers a place in a window to as many friends as can possibly be squeezed in.