The audience, which had been somewhat
cheered by the prompt and picturesque punishment inflicted upon the
inhospitable Samuel, was
Still further exhilarated by the spectacle of
the impenitent traitor Gestas, staggering under an enormous cross, his
eyes and teeth glaring with abject fear, with an athletic Roman haling
him up to Calvary with a new hempen halter.
A long intermission followed, devoted to putting babies to sleep, - for
there were hundreds of them, wide-eyed and strong-lunged, - to smoking
the hasty cigarette, to discussing the next combination of Prim or the
last scandal in the gay world. The carpenters were busy behind the
scenes building the mountain. When the curtain rose, it was worth
waiting for. It was an admirable scene. A genuine Spanish mountain,
great humpy undulations of rock and sand, gigantic cacti for all
vegetation, a lurid sky behind, but not over-colored. A group of Roman
soldiers in the foreground, in the rear the hill, and the executioners
busily employed in nailing the three victims to their crosses. Demas was
fastened first; then Gestas, who, when undressed for execution, was a
superb model of a youthful Hercules. But the third cross still lay on
the ground; the hammering and disputing and coming and going were
horribly lifelike and real.
At last the victim is securely nailed to the wood, and the cross is
slowly and clumsily lifted and falls with a shock into its socket. The
soldiers huzza., the fiend in the tin barrel and another in a tin hat
come down to the footlights and throw dice for the raiment.
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