possible subject.





CHAPTER IX
On the day after the review a fancy-dress ball was to be given at Court. It was to be an entertainment of a peculiar nature. The lively genius of Madame Carolina, wearied of the commonplace effect generally produced by this species of amusement, in which usually a stray Turk and a wandering Pole looked sedate and singular among crowds of Spanish girls, Swiss peasants, and gentlemen in uniforms, had invented something novel. Her idea was ingenious. To use her own sublime phrase, she determined that the party should represent "an age!" Great difficulty was experienced in fixing upon the century which was to be honoured. At first a poetical idea was started of having something primeval, perhaps antediluvian; but Noah, or even Father Abraham, were thought characters hardly sufficiently romantic for a fancy-dress ball, and consequently the earliest postdiluvian ages were soon under consideration. Nimrod, or Sardanapalus, were distinguished personages, and might be well represented by the Master of the Staghounds, or the Master of the Revels; but then the want of an interesting lady-character was a great objection. Semiramis, though not without style in her own way, was not sufficiently Parisian for Madame Carolina. New ages were proposed and new objections started; and so the "Committee of Selection," which consisted of Madame herself, the Countess von S——, and a few other dames of fashion, gradually slided through the four great empires. Athens was not aristocratic enough, and then the women were nothing. In spite of her admiration of the character of Aspasia, Madame Carolina somewhat doubted the possibility of persuading the ladies of the Court of Reisenburg to appear in the characters of [Greek: hetairai]. Rome presented great capabilities, and greater difficulties. Finding themselves, after many days' sitting and study, still very far from coming to a decision, Madame called in the aid of the Grand Duke, who proposed "something national." The proposition was plausible; but, according to Madame Carolina, Germany, until her own time, had been only a land of barbarism and barbarians; and therefore in such a country, in a national point of view, what could there be interesting? The middle ages, as they are usually styled, in spite of the Emperor Charlemagne, "that oasis in the desert of barbarism," to use her own eloquent and original image, were her particular aversion. "The age of chivalry is past!" was as constant an exclamation of Madame Carolina as it was of Mr. Burke. "The age of chivalry is past; and very