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. "Caramba! curse my luck!" says our friend in the tin case, and the other walks off with the vestment. The Passion begins, and lasts an interminable time. The grouping is admirable, every shifting of the crowd in the foreground produces a new and finished picture, with always the same background of the three high crosses and their agonizing burdens against that lurid sky. The impenitent Gestas curses and dies; the penitent Demas believes and receives eternal rest. The Holy Women come in and group themselves in picturesque despair at the foot of the cross. The awful drama goes on with no detail omitted,--the thirst the sponge dipped in vinegar, the cry of desolation, the spear-thrust, the giving up of the ghost. The stage-lights are lowered. A thick darkness--of crape--comes down over the sky. Horror falls on the impious multitude, and the scene is deserted save by the faithful. The closing act opens with a fine effect of moon and stars. "Que linda luna!" sighed a young woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted by the beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed in the full splendor that is denied the others. Joseph of Abarimathea (as he is here called) comes in with ladders and winding-sheets, and the dead Christ is taken from the cross. The Descent is managed with singular skill and genuine artistic feeling. The principal actor, who has been suspended for an hour in a most painful and constrained posture, has a corpse-like rigidity and numbness. There is one moment when you can almost imagine yourself in Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Rubens. The Entombment ends, and the last tableau is of the Mater Dolorosa in the Solitude. I have rarely seen an effect so simple, and yet so striking,--the darkened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy Rood spectral and tall against the starry sky, and the Dolorous Mother, alone in her sublime sorrow, as she will be worshipped and revered for coming aeons. A curious observation is made by all foreigners, of the absence of the apostles from the drama. They appear from time to time, but merely as supernumeraries. One would think that the character of Judas was especially fitted for dramatic use. I spoke of this to a friend, and he said that formerly the false apostle was introduced in the play, but that the sight of him so fired the Spanish heart that not only his life, but the success of the piece was endangered. This reminds one of Mr. A. Ward's account of a high-handed outrage at "Utiky," where a young gentleman of good family stove in the wax head of "Jewdas Iscarrit," characterizing him at the same time as a "pew-serlanimous cuss."