At first I found myself putting Laura off more than once to enjoy Sadi- I could not call her "Sarah," though that was her name. But when she saw that I preferred Laura and was really devoted to her, Sadi suddenly left me with a letter, saying that she knew I preferred my "American, though she doesn't love you and will cheat you yet."
Strange creatures, women, to whom love lends a certain intuition!
Early in this year Laura spoke of the Passion Play as given by the peasants at Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. I had seen it in 1880 and had greatly admired the way Plunger played the Christ and Lechner the Judas. It would be a great holiday, I thought, so I proposed to take her and her mother for the opening performance in May.
Early in the month we all three went to Munich and stayed at my old hotel, the Vier Jahreszeiten. I was still remembered there and accordingly we were well received, and a couple of days later in the bright sunshine we took the train for Oberau. On the way I told them something about the Passion Play which we were going to see.
It has been played every ten years since 1634 with only two interruptions; an extra presentation in 1815 to celebrate the Great Peace, and another in 1871 to conclude the series interrupted by the Franco-German war. The history of it is almost an epitome of the changes in religious thought of these last centuries.
In the early drama, Lucifer had been one of the leading characters; and in 1740 9. monk named Rosner introduced comic incidents and gave Satan many attendant imps and demons, who strutted and gambolled about the stage, making the groundlings grin, until 1800. In consequence of these extravagances, the performance was almost forbidden in 1810; but the play was remodelled and limited to the simple Biblical narrative. In 1840 Pastor Daisenberger revised the text of the play and gave it much of its present reverence and charm.
The railway in 1890 ran as far as the Oberau station, within a short drive of the village: and the drive to the Ettal Monastery was by a new and infinitely more beautiful road than the one I remembered. Oberammergau itself had come to be a most flourishing village. At the dissolution of the Ettal Monastery the land was divided among the neighboring villagers and had made them extremely prosperous: every house showed comfort and well being.
As we drove into Oberammergau I told Laura an amusing experience. In 1880, going early to the first performance of the Passion Play, I suddenly noticed a curiously caparisoned figure standing in the wings, as if about to come on.
"Who is that?" I asked the village magnate who accompanied me.
"That," he said; "oh! that's Adam waiting to be created."
Laura laughed merrily.
The scenery was really splendid; high above us towered the Kopelberg, surmounted by a glittering cross. I had ordered tickets in advance and the proprietor of the Vier Jahreszeiten had secured for us the best accommodation in the inn. But alas, the village innkeeper, reading of a visit by mother, daughter, and one man, gave us one large bedroom with three beds: and when Laura's mother declared that she wouldn't have me in the room, the maid said it was quite easy to put up a Scheidewand, and brought in a little screen not three feet high, which shocked the American Puritanism of Laura's mother so that I thought she would have a fit. I went away and quickly got a couple of rooms at the forester's house.
Everyone knows that the performances at Oberammergau are given in an open-air theatre: that is, the stage and the lower part of the stalls next the stage are in the open air: fortunately there is a cover for the more highly placed spectators, chiefly Americans and English, which protects them both from the sun and rain. The stage is more than quaint: on the left a wide space; on the right a small stage, before which hangs a curtain; further to the right the horse of Annas, the High Priest; on the left, the house of Pilate-the whole outlook framed, so to speak, by green hills and blue sky.
The booming of a cannon tells us that the play is about to begin. You see half of the Old Testament pictures before any of the New; the slaying of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac, the affliction of Job.
The music, however, was really good and redeemed the trivialities of the first scenes. The orchestra, of course, was in front of the stage. The music, I learned, was written by one Dedler at the beginning of the century, and excellent music it is. It must be admitted that when the curtain drops after each scene, the effect grows in intensity through the harmony of colors and the fine grouping of the figures. All the costumes are taken from old pictures, and the arrangements this year were in the hands of the stage manager of the Munich Court Theatre and Opera-House; and so were all super-excellent, from the children bearing palm branches to the crowd assembled at the entry of Christ into Jerusalem to the singing of hosannas.
I was dreadfully disappointed in the impersonator of Christ, Joseph Maier, but then I had the memory of Plunger, who was a real genius just as the new Judas, one Zwinc, was nothing like as good as Lechner had been ten years before. Maier hadn't the face of Christ; his expression was that of the fighter rather than of the saint; yet, in spite of his bad acting, the agony in Gethsemane set every one in the great audience weeping; and the crucifixion scene must always remain among the imperishable memories of those who saw blood streaming from his hands and feet; then a soldier pierces his side, the last words are uttered, and the great life seems to be finished.
After some discussion Joseph of Arimathea begs the body and the disciples, with Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, bear it away to burial.
Then comes the Resurrection and the Ascension, which made no deep impression on me.
The one player who really rose to the height of the drama was a newcomer, one Rosa Lang, who played Mary, the mother of Jesus. She showed superbly the mother's joy and pride in her son, her sorrow at parting, her sympathy with him in affliction, her agony at the foot of the cross.
The idea seemed to occur to no one that this is not at all the way that the mother of Jesus is pictured in the Bible. But of course the usual mother business had to be played at Oberammergau; and thanks to a good actress, the performance was wonderfully effective. Long before the close, Laura and her mother, as well as the five thousand spectators, were sobbing as if their hearts would break.
Strange to say, however, none of us wanted to go back and see the play again the next day. We all preferred to keep the memory of it alive and for some time we went for long drives through the Bavarian highlands. After three or four days, however, Laura's mother thought she would like to see it again, and with much difficulty I got one seat for her; and of course no more could be gotten for love or money, so Laura came and spent the afternoon with me in my room-four hours never to be forgotten.
Who can tell of love-encounters with the same person and intensify interest by bringing something new into each recital? It was love, I suppose, real affection, that made many of our meetings memorable. Here in this bedroom I was surprised by the intensity of her passion; her emotions always seemed to determine her sensations. "You have given me so much," she said, "made the long journey so delightful, and now the unforgettable memory of how the Jesus story was made living and vivid-a part of my being forever, I want to thank you and reward you if I can!"
"Oh, you can," I cried; "let yourself go once with all your heart and I shall be rewarded."
And she did as I asked: for the first time she threw reserve to the winds and met every movement of mine with appropriate response, and finally loved me in turn and showed herself as clever as any French woman in rousing passion to intensity.