The solemn festival was ushered in with the most imposing rites of the
Church. In the great cathedral, which dwarfed all other buildings in the
Plaza, there was high mass that day. The famous bell clanged out to all
Caracas remembrance of the agony of our Lord. A silent multitude was
prostrated all day long before the gorgeous altar. Prelates and priests
and acolytes stood, splendid in vestments of purple and white and
gold, solemnly celebrating upon the steps of the sanctuary the holiest
mysteries of the Roman Catholic communion. Above and around, gigantic
tapers flared from candlesticks of beaten gold; and every little while,
the glorious anthems floated forth in majestic cadence, eddying in waves
of harmony about the colonnade that stretched in dusky perspective from
the great door to the altar, soaring above the distant arches, and
swelling upwards in floods of melody, until the vast concavity of the
vaulted nave was filled with a sea of sound. But a sultry heaviness
weighed with the incense upon the air. Elder citizens glanced uneasily
at one another, and the thoughts of many wandered anxiously from the
sacred building. Outside, the streets were empty. All Caracas was
engaged in public worship; and the white dwellings that inclosed the
Plaza, with its converging avenues, looked silently down upon deserted
pavements, echoing only now and then to the careless tread of a party of
negroes, or to the clattering heel of some undevout trooper.
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