If the priests ran after them, as
soon as the apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock
and resumed the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that
the temple was spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville had
escaped the fate of Lisbon it was natural that the event should be
dramatized in a perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of
November, the clergy leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass,
with much more stateliness than in the original event, and lead the
people out of one portal, to return with them by another for the
conclusion of the ceremonial.
We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through
the overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned.
He was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that
we were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than
Peter the Cruel's to have denied him, and he planted us at the most
favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions
which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta
and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing
back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he
had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have
learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been
his fatal error.
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