“Hooray for the Rooster!” shouted young Ireland, encamped on the sidewalk to see the show, as Mephistopheles’ red cock’s feather skimmed up the stairs, and he left a pink domino at the ladies’ dressing-room door, with the brief warning, “Now cut your own capers and leave me to mine,” adding, as he paused a moment at the great door,—­

“By Jove! isn’t it a jolly sight, though?”

And so it was; for a mammoth boot stood sentinel at the entrance; a Bedouin Arab leaned on his spear in one corner, looking as if ready to say,—­

“Fly to the desert, fly with me,”

to the pretty Jewess on his arm; a stately Hamlet, with irreproachable legs, settled his plumage in another, still undecided to which Ophelia he would first address “The honey of his music vows.”

Bluff King Hal’s representative was waltzing in a way that would have filled that stout potentate with respectful admiration, while Queen Katherine flirted with a Fire Zouave.  Alcipades whisked Mother Goose about the room till the old lady’s conical hat tottered on her head, and the Union held fast to a very little Mac.  Flocks of friars, black, white, and gray, pervaded the hall, with flocks of ballet girls, intended to represent peasants, but failing for lack of drapery; morning and evening stars rose or set, as partners willed; lively red demons harassed meek nuns, and knights of the Leopard, the Lion or Griffin, flashed by, looking heroically uncomfortable, in their gilded cages; court ladies promenaded with Jack tars, and dukes danced with dairy-maids, while Brother Jonathan whittled, Aunt Dinah jabbered, Ingomar flourished his club, and every one felt warmly enthusiastic and vigorously jolly.

“Ach himmel!  Das ist wunder schon!” murmured a tall, gray monk, looking in, and quite unconscious that he spoke aloud.

“Hullo, Bopp!  I thought you weren’t coming,” cried Mephistopheles in an emphatic whisper.

“Ah, I guess you! yes, you are well done.  I should like to be a Faust for you, but I haf no time, no purse for a dress, so I throw this on, and run up for a hour or two.  Where is—­who is all these people?  Do you know them?”

The one with the Pope, Fra Diavolo; the telegraph, and two knights asking her to dance, is Dolly, if that’s what you want to know.  Go in and keep it up, Bopp, while you can; I am off for Fan;” and Mephistopheles departed over the banisters with a weird agility that delighted the beholders; while the gray friar stole into a corner and watched the pink domino for half an hour, at the end of which time his regards were somewhat confused by discovering that there were two pink damsels so like that he could not tell which was the one pointed out by Dick and which the new-comer.

“She thinks I will not know her, but I shall go now and find out for myself;” and, starting into sudden activity, the gray brother strode up to the nearest pink lady, bowed, and offered his arm.  With a haughty little gesture of denial to several others, she accepted it, and they joined the circle of many-colored promenaders that eddied round the hall.  As they went, Mr. Bopp scrutinized his companion, but saw only a slender figure shrouded from head to foot, and the tip of a white glove resting on his arm.