Mary
falls overwhelmed into the arms of her attendants, and Simeon exclaims,
"Most blessed and most unfortunate among women! thy heart is to be
pierced with Seven Sorrows, and this is the first." Demas rushes in and
announces the massacre of the innocents, concluding with the appropriate
reflection, "Perish the kings! always the murderers of the people." This
sentiment is so much to the taste of the gamins of the paraiso that they
vociferously demand an encore; but the Roman soldiers come in and
commence the pleasing task of prodding the dolls in the arms of the
chorus.
The next act is the Flight into Egypt. The curtain rises on a rocky
ravine with a tinsel torrent in the background and a group of robbers on
the stage. Gestas, the impenitent thief, stands sulky and glum in a
corner, fingering his dagger as you might be sure he would, and
informing himself in a growling soliloquy that his heart is consumed
with envy and hate because he is not captain. The captain, one Issachar,
comes in, a superbly handsome young fellow, named Mario, to my thinking
the first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides,
and announces the arrival of a stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hates
the world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politely
welcome. No! he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs scornfully
and says _he_ is in the way of that modest aspiration. But Demas
speedily puts him out of the way with an Albacete knife, and becomes
captain, to the profound disgust of the impenitent Gestas, who exclaims,
just as the profane villains do nowadays on every well-conducted stage,
"Damnation! foiled again!"
The robbers pick up their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinsel
torrent.
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