Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/232

212 imagery, conducting a procession in which figures representing scenes concerning the death of our Saviour, were carried by on platforms, as they were the preceding evening. There was the Virgin in mourning at the foot of the cross—the Virgin in glory,—and more saints, and more angels—St. Michael and the Dragon, &.c. &c., a glittering and innumerable train. Not a sound was heard as the figures were carried slowly onwards in their splendid robes, lighted by thousands of tapers, which mingled their unnatural glare with the fading light of day.

As the miserere was to be performed in the cathedral late in the evening, we went there, though with small hopes of making our way through the tremendous crowd. Having at length been admitted through a private entrance per favor, we made our way into the body of the church; but the crowd was so intolerable, that we thought of abandoning our position, when we were seen and recognised by some of the priests, and conducted to a railed-off enclosure near the shrine of the Virgin, with the luxury of a Turkey carpet. Here, separated from the crowd, we sat down in peace, on the ground. The gentlemen were accommodated with high-backed chairs beside some ecclesiastics; for men may sit on chairs or benches in church, but women must kneel or sit on the ground. Why? "Quien sabe?" "Who knows?" is all the satisfaction I have ever obtained on that point.

The music began with a crash that wakened me out of an agreeable slumber into which I had gradually fallen; and such discordance of instruments