‘As the door closed behind me, I found myself in the large raftered chamber, surrounded on every side by curious faces. Scattered here and there about the room were rudely-carved figures, for the most part representing the Crucifixion, many of them unfinished, and on a table near the window was a set of carver’s tools. Rudely coloured pictures, all of biblical subjects, were placed here and there upon the walls, and over the fireplace hung a large Christ in ebony, coarsely carven.
‘Courteously enough the fantastic group parted and made way for me, while one of the number, a woman, invited me to a seat beside the hearth.
‘I sat down like one in a dream, and accosted the man who had invited me to enter.
‘“What place is this?” I asked. “I have been walking all night and am doubtful where I am.”
‘“You are at Ober-Ammergau!” was the reply.
‘I could have laughed had my spirit been less oppressed. For now, my brain clearing, I began to understand what had befallen me. I remembered the Passion Play and all that I had read concerning it. The fantastic figures I beheld were those of some of the actors still attired in the tinsel robes they wore upon the stage.
‘I asked if this was so, and was answered in the affirmative.
‘“We begin the play to-morrow,” said the man who had first spoken. “I am Johann Diener the Chorfuhrer, and these are some of the members of our chorus. We are up late, you see, preparing for to-morrow, and trying on the new robes that have just been sent to us from Annheim. The pastor of the village was here till a few minutes ago, seeing all things justly ordered amongst us, and he would gladly have welcomed you, for he loves the English.”
‘The man’s speech was gentle, his manner kindly in the extreme, but I scarcely heeded him, although I knew now what the figures around me were—the merest supernumeraries and chorus-singers of a tawdry show. They seemed to me none the less ghostly and unreal, shadows acting in some grim farce of death.
‘“Doubtless the gentleman is fatigued,” said a woman, addressing Johann Diener, “and would wish to go to rest.”