Page:Armistice Day.djvu/418

396 "I passed a night there while on a walking tour when I was studying art in Munich."

"You speak German, then?"

"Yes, fairly well."

"Did you witness 'The Passion' there?"

"No."

"Well," said my friend, "I happened to be there in 1910. I shall not forget it. The Passion Play was performed amid an awful storm. At Oberfells everything is most primitive and the representation is all the more appealing because of its very simplicity. There is no theater, no stage, a background of everlasting mountains, and a foreground of somber rocks and solemn pines—an audience composed entirely of villagers and the neighboring peasants. On that occasion I was the only stranger. The thing is not advertised; the guide-books ignore it, very few persons know about it.

"As I say, there was a fearful storm which burst forth soon after the play began and which raged with fury for two days. The performance was abandoned, the people believing the tempest was an evidence of divine wrath. The peasant who should have appeared as Christus, and who was to have impersonated that character for the first time, was overwhelmed with grief, for he felt that God had pronounced him unworthy.