Before the performance began every seat was filled.  The men hailed their friends from opposite sides of the house, and laughed and chaffed, and sang snatches of Royalist and other ballads.  The women, who for the most part wore veils or masks, whispered together, flirted their fans, and returned without reserve the salutations that were offered them.

Ralph Ray, who was there, stood at the back of the pit, and close at his left was the sinister little man who had earlier in the evening been described as his shadow.  Their bearing towards each other was the same as had been observed at the Cross:  the one constantly interrogating in a low voice; the other answering with a steadfast glance or not at all.

When the curtain rose, a little butterfly creature, in the blue-and-scarlet costume of a man,—­all frills and fluffs and lace and linen,—­came forward, with many trips and skips and grimaces, and pronounced a prologue, which consisted of a panegyric on the King and his government in their relations to the stage.

It was not very pointed, conclusive, or emphatic, but it was rewarded with applause, which rose to a general outburst of delighted approval when the rigor of the “late usurpers” was gibbeted in the following fashion:—­

     Affrighted with the shadow of their rage,
     They broke the mirror of the times, the Stage;
     The Stage against them still maintained the war,
     When they debauched the Pulpit and the Bar.

“Pretty times, forsooth, of which one of that breed could be the mirror,” whispered the little man at Ralph’s elbow.

The play forthwith proceeded, and proved to be the attempt of a gentleman of fashion to compromise the honor of a lady of the Court whom he had mistaken for a courtesan.  The audience laughed at every indelicate artifice of the libertine, and screamed when the demure maiden let fall certain remarks which bore a double significance.  Finally, when the lady declared her interest in a cage of birds, and the gentleman drew from his pocket a purse of guineas, and, shaking them before her face, asked if those were the dicky-birds she wished for, the enjoyment of the audience passed all bounds of ordinary expression.  The men in lace and linen lay back in their seats to give vent to loud guffaws, and the women flirted their fans coquettishly before their eyes, or used them to tap the heads of their male companions in mild and roguish remonstrance.

“Pity they didn’t debauch the stage as well as the pulpit and bar, if this is its condition inviolate,” whispered the little man again.

The intervals between the acts were occupied by part of the audience in drinking from the bottles which they carried strapped about their waists, and in singing snatches of songs.  One broad-mouthed roysterer on the ground proposed the King’s health, and supported the toast by a ballad in which “Great Charles, like Jehovah,” was described as merciful and generous to the foes that would unking him and the vipers that would sting him.  The chorus to this loyal lyric was sung by the “groundlings” with heartiness and unanimity:—­