The crowd howled with exultation,
and Pilate washed his hands in impotent rage and remorse. The curtain
came down leaving the uncultivated portion of the audience in the frame
of mind in which their ancestors a few centuries earlier would have gone
from the theatre determined to serve God and relieve their feelings by
killing the first Jew they could find. The diversion was all the better,
because safer, if they happened to the good luck of meeting a Hebrew
woman or child.
The Calle de Amargura--the Street of Bitterness--was the next scene.
First came a long procession of official Romans,--lictors and swordsmen,
and the heralds announcing the day's business. Demas appears, dragged
along with vicious jerks to execution. The Saviour follows, and falls
under the weight of the cross before the footlights. Another long and
dreary scene takes place, of brutalities from the Roman soldiers, the
ringleader of whom is a sanguinary Andalusian ingeniously encased in a
tin barrel, a hundred lines of rhymed sorrow from the Madonna, and a
most curious scene of the Wandering Jew. This worthy, who in defiance of
tradition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show,
when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on his
threshold. He says churlishly, Anda!--"Begone!" "I will go, but thou
shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch
convulsively, as if pulled from under him.
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