Thereupon, up rose the _short_ ruddy man, and up rose the _long_ Don Felix, each appropriating the insult to himself; but Flam, who never dreamed that any nose could be spoken of when his own kidney potato was in company, was first, and levelled little Moses in an instant. This was the signal for the sea of Jews in the pit to toss its billows; and, like a great cauldron, to popple and hiss, until it boiled over into the boxes, in a roaring torrent, that speedily overthrew both Don Felix, the little ruddy man, and _I Benjie_, who had neither part nor portion in the quarrel, _into the bargain_; and such a pommelling I never got before or since. Whatever Moses's creed might have been, he spared not my _bacon_ that blessed night, as my poor ribs witnessed for many a long day. In the midst of the uproar, a magistrate--a most excellent and sedate personage--planted his back against the pillar, immediately behind me, where a cohort of parrot bills had already turned the flank of the brave little red man, and were threatening my own rear, left uncovered by the destruction of both of my coat skirts. Here he shouted at the top of his pipe to "keep the peace;" but one of the assailants, a powerful bluebeard, speedily gagged _him_, by passing his arm round his neck, and pinning him to the post, as if he had been a culprit undergoing the Spanish punishment of the _garrote_. At length the row became so serious and _national_, that the whole house was likely to side with one or other of the parties; the manager, therefore, fearing for the safety of his theatre, sent for the chief magistrate in town (not the mayor, who was absent), and he fortunately made his appearance very promptly, with a party of police; the row on this was fast subsiding, until a very ludicrous incident made it breeze up again with twofold violence, like flax steeped in turpentine cast on a smouldering fire. For the last ten minutes Don Felix had disappeared, having been literally trodden down, after a fall on missing his blow at the Goliah who led the assault; and when the storm abated, and he could screw himself from under the benches where he had been forced, the first thing he did, in his haste and confusion, was _to throttle the very man of authority himself_; taking him for one of the enemy. The tumult again increased on this, and we now ran some chance of being extinguished altogether; for a gigantic black-whiskered Israelite had upheaved a stick, which threatened to prove the thickness of my skull, had there been any doubt about it, when I was saved by the timely succour afforded by a powerful sailor-looking chap, who had fought his way towards us, clearing a path right and left amongst our enemies, like a walking windmill.