Our Herculean compatriots raised immense weights, and bent a considerable number of iron bars, to the great delight of the assembly; while the lighter of the two made an ascent upon the tight rope, and performed a variety of other feats, rather stale in Paris, but new, probably, to the population of Vittoria. During this time we were dying with impatience in our stalls, and I was cleaning the glass of my _lorgnette_ with a furious degree of activity, in order not to lose anything of the _baile nacional_. At last, the supports of the tight-rope were loosened, and the stage-carpenters, dressed as Turks, cleared away the weights and all the other paraphernalia of the Hercules_es_. Think, dear reader, of the frightful anxiety of two enthusiastic and romantic young Frenchmen about to behold, for the first time, a Spanish dance ... in Spain! At last the curtain rose upon a scene which seemed to entertain a feeble desire, which was certainly not gratified, of being enchanting and fairy-like. The cornets-à-piston played, with more fury than ever, the strain already described, and the _baile nacional_ advanced in the form of a _danseur_ and _danseuse_, armed with a pair of castagnettes each. Never have I seen anything more sad and lamentable than these two miserable ruins _qui ne se consolaient pas entre eux_: a penny theatre never bore upon its worm-eaten boards a couple more used-up, more worn-out, more toothless, more blear-eyed, more bald, and more dilapidated. The wretched woman, who had besmeared herself with bad Spanish white, had a sky-blue complexion, which recalled to your mind the Anacreontic pictures of a person who had died of cholera, or been drowned some time; the two dabs of rouge that she had placed upon her prominent cheek-bones, to add a little brilliancy to her fishy eyes that seemed as if they had been boiled, contrasted strangely with the aforesaid blue. With her veiny and emaciated hands she shook a pair of cracked castagnettes, which chattered like the teeth of a man who has got a fever, or like the wires of a skeleton in motion. From time to time, she stretched, with a desperate effort, the relaxed fibres of her calves, and managed to raise her poor old baluster-looking leg, so as to produce a nervous little capriole, like a dead frog submitted to the operation of the voltaic battery, and, for a second, to cause the copper spangles of the doubtful rags which served her for a robe, to sparkle and glisten. As for the man, he kept fluttering about most horribly in his own corner; he rose and fell flatly, like a bat crawling along upon its stumps; he looked like a grave-digger burying himself. His forehead, wrinkled like a boot, and his goat-like cheeks, gave him a most fantastic air: if, instead of castagnettes, he had only had a Gothic rebec in his hands, he might have set up to lead the Dance of Death at Basle.