Moccoli or moccoletti are candles of varying thickness,

from an Easter candle to a taper, which excite two contradictory ambitions

in the actors of the great finale of the Roman carnival:

first, to keep one's own moccoletto alight;

second, to extinguish everyone else's.

 

 The same is true of the moccoletto as of life;

mankind has so far found only one way of transmitting it,

which he owes to God. But he has found a thousand ways to extinguish it

-and here the devil has surely given him some little help.

 

 A moccoletto is lit by bringing it up to another source of light.

But who can describe the thousand ways that have been invented to put out a moccoletto; great puffs of breath, monstrous bellows, superhuman fans?

 

 

 

                                                                                 -The Count of Monte Christo-