The Little Harlequin.

The whole city is in a tumult over the Carnival, which is nearing its close. In every square rise booths of mountebanks and jesters; and we have under our windows a circus-tent, in which a little Venetian company, with five horses, is giving a show. The circus is in the centre of the square; and in one corner there are three very large vans in which the mountebanks sleep and dress themselves,--three small houses on wheels, with their tiny windows, and a chimney in each of them, which smokes continually; and between window and window the baby's swaddling-bands are stretched. There is one woman who is nursing a child, who prepares the food, and dances on the tight-rope. Poor people! The word mountebank is spoken as though it were an insult; but they earn their living honestly, nevertheless, by amusing all the world--and how they work! All day long they run back and forth between the circus-tent and the vans, in tights, in all this cold; they snatch a mouthful or two in haste, standing, between two performances; and sometimes, when they get their tent full, a wind arises, wrenches away the ropes and extinguishes the lights, and then good by to the show! They are obliged to return the money, and to work the entire night at repairing their booth. There are two lads who work; and my father recognized the smallest one as he was traversing the square; and he is the son of the proprietor, the same one whom we saw perform tricks on horseback last year in a circus on the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. And he has grown; he must be eight years old: he is a handsome boy, with a round and roguish face, with so many black curls that they escape from his pointed cap. He is dressed up like a harlequin, decked out in a sort of sack, with sleeves of white, embroidered with black, and his slippers are of cloth. He is a merry little imp. He charms every one. He does everything. We see him early in the morning, wrapped in a shawl, carrying milk to his wooden house; then he goes to get the horses at the boarding-stable on the Via Bertola. He holds the tiny baby in his arms; he transports hoops, trestles, rails, ropes; he cleans the vans, lights the fire, and in his leisure moments he always hangs about his mother. My father is always watching him from the window, and does nothing but talk about him and his family, who have the air of nice people, and of being fond of their children.