Shop-fronts were taken
down, and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining
theatre; doors were carried off their hinges, and long tapestried
groves, hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed
within; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in
silver, gold, and crimson; and in every nook and corner, from the
pavement to the chimney-tops, where women's eyes could glisten,
there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in
water. Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there.
Little preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old stomachers, more
wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses, strained and
tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and clinging
to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild, quaint, bold, shy,
pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every
fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of
merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire
had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that
morning.
The carriages were now three abreast; in broader places four; often
stationary for a long time together, always one close mass of
variegated brightness; showing, the whole street-full, through the
storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth themselves.
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