It was a thrillingly realistic performance; the costumes--designed, long
ago, by the Good Duke himself--varied with every tableau. Vociferous
expressions of approval accompanied the performance. The Saint's
encounter in the grove of Alephane with the golden-haired lady was a
masterpiece of histrionic art; so was his solemn preaching among the
black natives. Tears flowed freely at his violent death--a scene which
was only marred by the erratic movements of his venerable beard; that
mill-stone, too, of PAPIER MACHE, played lovely pranks upon a pea-green
ocean. Best of all was the cannibalistic feast of the Crotalophoboi
ending with a tempestuous, demoniacal war-dance. Their blackened limbs
emerging from the scantiest of vesture, the actors surpassed
themselves. Such an uproar of applause accompanied the orgy that it had
to be repeated.
Every year it had to be repeated, this particular tableau. It was by
far the most popular, to the intense regret of the PARROCO, the parish
priest, a rigid disciplinarian, an alien to Nepenthe, a frost-bitten
soul from the Central Provinces of the mainland.
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