The Last Night of Carnival It was Carnival time in the ancient and once imperial, but now provincial and remote, city of Ravenna.

It was Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel.

For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its existence.

And there now remained but an hour before midnight on the Tuesday preceding the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday--Dies Cinerum!--that sad and sober morrow which has brought with it "sermons and soda-water" to so many generations of revellers.
Of course Carnival, according to the Calendar and Time's hour-glass, is over at twelve o'clock on the night of Shrove Tuesday.

Generally, however, in the pleasure-loving cities of Italy, a few hours' law are allowed or winked at.