At last the guns boom again. Then the score
of dragoons--of whom one may truly say, in the words of Tennyson's
"Balaclava Charge," that they are "all that are left of--not the 'twelve'
hundred"--come trotting down the Corso from the Piazza del Popolo. With
a quick shuffling march the French troops pass along the street, and form
in file, pushing back the crowd to the pavements. With drawn swords and
at full gallop the dragoons ride back through the double line. Then
there is a shout, or rather a long murmur. All faces are turned up the
street, and half a dozen broken-kneed, riderless, terror-struck shaggy
ponies with numbers chalked on them, and fluttering trappings of pins and
paper stuck into their backs, run past in straggling order. Where they
started you see a crowd standing round one of the grooms who held them,
and who is lying maimed and stunned upon the ground, and you wonder at
the unconcern with which the accident is treated. Another gun sounds.
The troops form to clear the street, the crowd disperses, and the
Carnival is over for the day. A message is sent to the Vatican, to
inform the Pope that the festival has been most brilliant, and along the
telegraphic wires the truth is flashed to Paris that the day has passed
without an outbreak.
On the last day of the Carnival the Porto Pia road was full as usual, and
the Corso filled as usual with soldiers, and spies, and rabble.
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