It was the time of the Carnival.

It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midst of a Christian festival.

Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room in which several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely human.

I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of all.

The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had always possessed for me an absorbing fascination.