The whole proceeding was a caricature upon prison discipline and the authorities who permitted it were very properly sharply and severely condemned. They exposed themselves to reproof and worse for flagrant contempt of the most ordinary restrictions in allowing women to pass in constantly, and in permitting the sale of alcoholic liquors. That a place of durance, primarily intended for the restraint and punishment of evil doers should be converted into a show and spectacle was an intolerable misuse of power and a disgraceful travesty of the fitness of things. The positive evil engendered was seen in the wholesale escape of the theatrical company, while the audience patiently waited in front of the curtain which "went up" eventually on a wholly unexpected performance.[21] [21] See ante, p. 128. In the matter of escapes Ceuta was famous. It was not difficult to get away from that imperfectly guarded stronghold when the convict had means to bribe officers or buy a boat and had the courage to make the voyage across the Straits of Gibraltar. The story of one veteran convict who escaped from Ceuta is interesting because he was driven to take himself off by what he no doubt deemed the ill-judged severity of his injudicious keepers. This was an old brigand known as "_El Niño de Brenes_," (the lad of Brenes), a name he must have earned some time back for he was a man aged seventy when he "withdrew" (the word is exact) from Ceuta. He was a well-behaved, well-to-do convict of affable address who had gained many staunch friends among the officials and his own comrades. The position he had created for himself was one of practical ease and comfort; he lived in _el Hacho_ pursuing various industries, usury among the rest, and gradually grew so rich that he gained possession of a strip of land which he cultivated profitably and kept a fine poultry yard as well as many sheep and goats.