I have myself left Ober-Ammergau
under a steady drenching rain, and found a cloudless sky the other
side of the Kofel.
"Then," he continues, "you can comment upon the hardihood of the
Bavarian peasant. How he or she walks about bare-headed and bare-
footed through the fiercest showers, and seems to find the rain only
pleasantly cooling. How, during the performance of the Passion
Play, they act and sing and stand about upon the uncovered stage
without taking the slightest notice of the downpour of water that is
soaking their robes and running from their streaming hair, to make
great pools upon the boards; and how the audience, in the cheaper,
unroofed portion of the theatre, sit with equal stoicism, watching
them, no one ever dreaming even of putting up an umbrella - or, if he
does dream of doing so, experiencing a very rude awakening from the
sticks of those behind."
B. stops to relight his pipe at this point, and I hear the two
ladies in the next room fidgeting about and muttering worse than
ever. It seems to me they are listening at the door (our room and
theirs are connected by a door); I do wish that they would either
get into bed again or else go downstairs. They worry me.
"And what shall I say after I have said all that?" I ask B. when at
last he has started his pipe again.
