But before dinner or lunch there is a high ceremony to take place,--the
great feature of the day. It is the mock-heroic play. This year it was
the meeting of Numa with the nymph Egeria at the grotto; and thither
went the festive procession; and the priest, befilletted and draped in
white, burned upon the altar as a sacrifice a great toy sheep, whose
offence "smelt to heaven"; and then from the niches suddenly appeared
Numa, a gallant youth in spectacles, and Egeria, a Spanish artist with
white dress and fillet, who made vows over the smoking sheep, and then
were escorted back to the sacred grove with festal music by a joyous,
turbulent crowd.
Last year, however, at Fidenae, it was better. We had a travesty of the
taking of Troy, which was eminently ludicrous, and which deserves a
better description than I can give. Troy was a space inclosed within
paper barriers, about breast-high, painted "to present a wall," and
within these were the Trojans, clad in red, and all wearing gigantic
paper helmets. There was old Priam, in spectacles, with his crown and
robes,--Laocooen, in white, with a white wool beard and wig,--Ulysses,
in a long, yellow beard and mantle,--and Aeneas, with a bald head, in a
blue, long-tailed coat, and tall dickey, looking like the traditional
Englishman in the circus who comes to hire the horse.
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