putting a stop to this examination. A band of Indians hurriedly entered the room. They dragged along, or rather pushed before them, a man crowned with a wreath of rushes, and draped in a tattered red cloak which had very probably been used as a muleta[1] in a bull-fight. His face and body were quite bespattered with mud. I looked at this man with astonishment as a living enigma, when the student, who was better acquainted with the manners of the Indians than with the virtues of the matlalquahuitl, said, in a low tone,
"There is nothing in this but a religious joke. They are going to get up here a dramatic representation of the Passion. We are no longer in an Indian village, but in Jerusalem. This fellow with the bespattered face personates Christ, and the alcalde, confound him! is Pilate."
In fact, we were about to have produced before us all the scenes of a genuine mystery of the Middle Ages. The alcalde, seated under his canopy of laurel, having gravely listened to the calumnious accusations of the Jews, rose and pronounced in the Indian tongue the historical sentence of condemnation. Such a storm of cries and yells greeted the sentence, that the unfortunate lépero (for it was one of that-class, who, for a few reals, was personating Christ) seemed to think that the drama was becoming rather too serious. He cried out in Spanish,
"Caramba! I think it would have been better had I taken the part of the good thief. Señor Alcalde, don't forget to pay me three reals more for personating the Divine Redeemer!"
"You are a fine fellow!" said the alcalde, pushing the lépero back, who, in violation of all historical truth
- ↑ A red cloth shaken before the bull for the purpose of exciting him.
