e in the midst where the
throne and effigy might be set down.

And now there appeared on the Pillory beside the Queen's image, one of
the six cardinals that had come up a little while before, and began a
sort of rhyming dialogue with a choir that was set on another platform
over against him. I could not hear all that was said, although the
people kept pretty quiet to hear it too; but I heard enough. The
cardinal was proclaiming the Catholic Religion as the only means of
salvation and threatened both temporal and eternal punishment to all
that would not have it; and the choir answered, roaring out the glories
of England and Protestantism. The fifes screamed for the cardinal's
words, as if accompanying them; and trumpets answered him for England;
and at the end, shaking his fist at the Queen and with another gesture
as of despair he came down from the Pillory.

Then came the end.

The devil, behind the throne, slipped altogether behind it and stood
tossing his hands with delight; while meantime the effigy, contrived in
some way I could not understand, rose stiffly from the seat and stood
upright. First he lifted his hands as if in entreaty towards the
Queen's image; then he shook them as if threatening, meanwhile rolling
his head with its tiara from side to side as if seeking supporters. Two
men then sprang upon the platform, as if in answer, dressed like English
apprentices, bare-armed and with leather aprons; and these seized each
an arm of the effigy; and at that the devil, after one more fit of
laughter, holding his sides, and shouting aloud as if in glee, leapt
down behind the platform, dragging the chair after him. The four boys
stood an instant as if in terror, and then followed him, with clumsy
gestures of horror.

The three figures that remained now began to wrestle together, stamping
to and fro, up to the very edge, then reeling back again, and so on--the
two apprentices against the great red dummy. At that the shouting of the
crowd grew louder and louder, and the torches tossed up and down: it was
like hell itself, for noise and terror, there in the red flare of the
bonfire: and, at the last, all roaring together, with the trumpets and
drums sounding, and the fifes too, the effigy was got to the edge of the
platform, where it yet swayed for an instant or two, and then toppled
down into the fire beneath.

* * * * *

It was a great spectacle, I cannot but confess it, and admi