human
At the Circolo ball a very large proportion of the dancers were in costume. The Conte Leandro Lombardoni,--lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well-known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,--the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace as
gpt
Apollo, in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the Marchese Lamberto's nephew, would insist on mistaking for that of Aesop; and had now, according to a programme perfectly well known previously throughout the city, come to the Circolo as
human
Dante. The Tuscan
gpt
La Lalli, or
human
La Bianca, in theatrical parlance--for she was one of the first singers of the day. Special circumstances--to be explained at a future page--had rendered it possible for remote little Ravenna to secure the celebrated artist for the Carnival, which was now expiring. The Marchese Lamberto, who, among many other avocations and occupations, all of them contributing in some way or other to the welfare and advantage of his native city, was a great lover and connoisseur of music, and patron of the theatre, had been mainly instrumental in bringing La Lalli to Ravenna. The engagement had been a most successful one. The
gpt
Diva Bianca