In Madrid
They Take The Afternoon Leisurely To The Transformation, And The
Evening's Performance Is Of Course Sacrificed.
So the sock and buskin,
not being adapted to the cancan, yielded with February, and the theatres
were closed finally on Ash Wednesday.
Going by the pleasant little theatre of Lope de Rueda, in the Calle
Barquillo, I saw the office-doors open, the posters up, and an
unmistakable air of animation among the loungers who mark with a seal so
peculiar the entrance of places of amusement. Struck by this apparent
levity in the midst of the general mortification, I went over to look at
the bills and found the subject announced serious enough for the most
Lenten entertainment, - Los Siete Dolores de Maria, - The Seven Sorrows of
Mary, - the old mediaeval Miracle of the Life of the Saviour.
This was bringing suddenly home to me the fact that I was really in a
Catholic country. I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when
reading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing one
than of assisting at an auto-da-fe or a witch-burning. I went to the
box-office to buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestallers had
swept the board. I was never able to determine whether I most pitied or
despised these pests of the theatre. Whenever a popular play is
presented, a dozen ragged and garlic-odorous vagabonds go early in the
day and buy as many of the best places as they can pay for. They hang
about the door of the theatre all day, and generally manage to dispose
of their purchases at an advance. But it happens very often that they
are disappointed; that the play does not draw, or that the evening
threatens rain, and the Spaniard is devoted to his hat. He would keep
out of a revolution if it rained. So that, at the pleasant hour when the
orchestra are giving the last tweak to the key of their fiddles, you may
see these woebegone wretches rushing distractedly from the Piamonte to
the Alcala, offering their tickets at a price which falls rapidly from
double to even, and tumbles headlong to half-price at the first note of
the opening overture. When I see the fore-staller luxuriously basking at
the office-door in the warm sunshine, and scornfully refusing to treat
for less than twice the treasurer's figures, I feel a divided
indignation against the nuisance and the management that permits it. But
when in the evening I meet him haggard and feverish, hawking his unsold
places in desperate panic on the sidewalk, I cannot but remember that
probably a half dozen dirty and tawny descendants of Pelayo will eat no
beans to-morrow for those unfortunate tickets, and my wrath melts, and I
buy his crumpled papers, moist with the sweat of anxiety, and add a
slight propina, which I fear will be spent in aguardiente to calm his
shattered nerves.
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