A vast room. Think of the Great Exhibition, if you want a notion of it; and take off a discount for exaggeration. Walk to the end of this room, and a door opens into another ball-room, almost twice as large. In each of these great halls, there are raised orchestras, in which the bands are stationed; and when one band ceases playing, another is prepared immediately to begin. Galleries, to which you ascend by flights of stairs at each end, run round both the rooms; and into these galleries open innumerable ice and supper-rooms, passages, and out-of-the-way cells, wherein you may lose yourself, but not your company. Masks are to be found sitting in every corner; wherever a mask is, there is mischief.
You see nothing vulgar, no rude costume, no monstrous noses, no absurd pairs of spectacles, or woolly wigs. You hear no boisterous shouts of mirth; beautiful music reigns incessantly supreme over all other sounds. Only the ladies are disguised; their faces are hidden behind elegant little black silk masks, and they vie with each other in the costliness and beauty of their costumes and dominoes. The men are all in simple evening dress; they walk about, defenseless game, and yield sport in abundance to the dames and damsels. Most of the ministers are here--grave, steady gentlemen, with bald heads or gray hair. Each of them is surrounded by a swarm of masks--princesses, perhaps--milliners, perhaps--and some of them are evidently making wry mouths at what they are obliged to hear. This is the time for home truths. The ladies at a masked ball make good use of their disguise, and scatter about their wholesome mischief abundantly.
A vision in black and gold beckons to me. I place myself at her disposal. "You are an Englishman," the vision says; "I know you." "How, madam?" "By your awkwardness." "Are Britons awkward?" "Yes, and wearisome. Go, you are not amusing. Take care of your gloves; they are so large that I fear they will fall off." The vision laughs at me and vanishes. I have a secret or two which I don't mean to print. I did think that those mysteries were locked up in my bosom. If you ever happen to be at Vienna, with some secrets in your keeping, and desire to know whether you hold them safe, go to a Masked Ball. Mocking voices, behind black silk masks, will very much surprise you with some samples of the penetration proper to a sex which seems, in Vienna, to be made of Blue Beard wives. Twenty ladies honor me with minute details of the contents of one apartment in my mind, which I had considered quite a patent safe, with a fastening like that of the box in the talisman of Oromanes.