The revellers are not supposed to become aware that it is past midnight till about three or four in the morning.
Very generally the wind-up of the season of fun and frolic consists of what is called a "Veglione," or "great making a night of it," which means a masked ball at the theatre.

And the great central chandelier does not begin to descend into the body of the house, to have its lights flapped out by the handkerchiefs of the revellers amid a last frantic rondo, till some four hours after midnight.

But in provincial Ravenna, a Pope's city under the rule of a Cardinal Legate, there is--or was in the days when the Pope held sway there--no Veglione.

Its place was supplied, as far as "the society" of the city was concerned, by a ball at the "Circolo dei Nobili." It was not, therefore, till four o'clock in the morning, or perhaps even a little later, that the lights would be extinguished on the night in question at the "Circolo dei Nobili," and Carnival would, in truth, be over, and the tired holiday-makers would go home to their beds.
A few hours more remained, and the revelry was at its height, and the dancers danced as knowing that their minutes were numbered.
There had been a ball on the previous night at the Palazzo of the Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare.

But the scene at the Circolo was a much more brilliant, animated, and varied one than that of the night before at the Castelmare palace.