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CHAPTER IV

MARY AND JESUS MEET

Though the early morning sky was bright and cloudless, the streets of
the Cabanal were rumbling as in a thunderstorm. People jumped out of bed
as the crashing almost split their eardrums; and good women of the
village, their hair still down and in wrappers hastily thrown on, went
out on the sidewalk in front of their doors to see what was going on.
The bluish transparency of dawn was barely gilded with the rays of the
still invisible sun. But the "Jews of Jerusalem" were on a rampage,
banging their harsh cymbals together as they marched along the streets.
One would have thought the Calendar had suddenly gone mad and
transported Carnival to Easter week. The most grotesque horribles were
gathering in the squares. The young folks of the town were out in
costume; for the procession of the _Encuentro_, in the environs of
Valencia, is virtually a masquerade.

Far down the long street, what looked like an army of cockroaches could
be seen assembling, figures, called _las vestas_, in tall, black,
sharp-pointed hoods, like so many astrologers, or judges of the
Inquisition, their cloth masks rolled up over their foreheads, their
long black trains hung over their arms, and each with a baton painted
black in one hand. Some of the paraders, to add a touch of ingenuity,
had slipped white petticoats on, well ironed and pleated, and from under
them pairs of trousers protruded with the legs turned up, and, at the
very bottom, top-shoes unutterably tormenting enormous feet accustomed
to walking bare on the sands.

Then came the "Jews," fierce villains apparently snatched from some
lowly stage for dramas of the Middle Ages that could afford only a
conventional costume of poor quality. Their induments were what the
Valencian populace refers to as its "war trappings," short skirts or
kilts, much mottled with spangles, trimmings and lace fringes, like the
tunic of the Apaches; helmets topped off with huge cock plumes, arms and
legs "armored" with a rude fabric of cotton tufts to give a distant
suggestion of mail. To cap the climax of caricature and anachronism,
following the _vestas_ and the "Jews," came--tall and handsome fellows
all--the "Virgin's Grenadiers," wearing high-fronted caps like those of
Frederick's Prussian guards, with black uniforms decorated with silver
lace that must surely have been ripped from the caskets in an
undertaker's store.

A stranger might have laug