St. Simeon, In A Dress Suspiciously Resembling That Of The Modern Bishop, Was Talking With A Fiery Young Hebrew Who Turns Out To Be Demas, The Penitent Thief, And Who Is Destined To Play A Very Noticeable Part In The Evening's Entertainment.

He has received some slight from the government authorities and does not propose to submit to it.

The aged and cooler-blooded Simeon advises him to do nothing rash. Here at the very outset is a most characteristic Spanish touch. You are expected to be interested in Demas, and the only crime which could appeal to the sympathies of a Castilian crowd would be one committed at the promptings of injured dignity.

There is a soft, gentle strain of music played pianissimo by the orchestra, and, surrounded by a chorus of mothers and maidens, the Virgin Mother enters with the Divine Child in her arms. The Madonna is a strapping young girl named Gutierrez, a very clever actress; and the Child has been bought in the neighboring toy-shop, a most palpable and cynical wax-doll. The doll is handed to Simeon, and the solemn ceremony of the Presentation is performed to fine and thoughtful music. St. Joseph has come in sheepishly by the flies with his inseparable staff crowned with a garland of lilies, which remain miraculously fresh during thirty years or so, and kneels at the altar, on the side opposite to Miss Gutierrez.

As the music ceases, Simeon starts as from a trance and predicts in a few rapid couplets the sufferings and the crucifixion of the child. 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. This is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs of the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demas indulges in some fifty lines of rhymed reflections, which are interrupted by the approach of the Holy Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of Herod. They stop under a sycamore tree, which instantly, by very clever machinery, bends down its spreading branches and miraculously hides them from the bloodthirsty legionaries. These pass on, and Demas leads the saintly trio by a secret pass over the torrent, - the Mother and Child mounted upon an ass and St. Joseph trudging on behind with his lily-decked staff, looking all as if they were on a short leave of absence from Correggio's picture-frame.

Demas comes back, calls up his merrymen, and has a battle-royal with the enraged legionaries, which puts the critics of the gallery into a frenzy of delight and assures the success of the spectacle. The curtain falls in a gust of applause, is stormed up again, Demas comes forward and makes a neat speech, announcing the author. Que salga! roar the gods, - "Trot him out!" A shabby young cripple hobbles to the front, leaning upon a crutch, his sallow face flushed with a hectic glow of pride and pleasure. He also makes a glib speech, - I have never seen a Spaniard who could not, - disclaiming all credit for himself, but lauding the sublimity of the acting and the perfection of the scene-painting, and saying that the memory of this unmerited applause will be forever engraved upon his humble heart.

Act third, the Lost Child, or Christ in the Temple. The scene is before the Temple on a festival day, plenty of chorus-girls, music, and flowers. Demas and the impenitent Gestas and Barabbas, who, I was pleased to see, was after all a very good sort of fellow, with no more malice than you or I, were down in the city on a sort of lark, their leopard skins left in the mountains and their daggers hid under the natty costume of the Judaean dandy of the period. Demas and Gestas have a quarrel, in which Gestas is rather roughly handled, and goes off growling like every villain, qui se respecte, - "I will have r-revenge." Barabbas proposes to go around to the cider-cellars, but Demas confides to him that he is enslaved by a dream of a child, who said to him, "Follow me - to Paradise;" that he had come down to Jerusalem to seek and find the mysterious infant of his vision. The jovial Barabbas seems imperfectly impressed by these transcendental fancies, and at this moment Mary comes in dressed like a Madonna of Guido Reni, and soon after St. Joseph and his staff.

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