"Perhaps the don thought that he'd do a sharp bit of business," resumed Mr. Passmore, as soon as his explosive mirth had sufficiently subsided; "he'd contrive to get double pay for double work, by writing on week-days and fighting on Sundays. I wonder now what he'll receive for sticking his bull!"
"Nothing but honour," said an onion-merchant who was one of the guests. "Folk say that there is some fair donna of Seville mixed up with the business."
"Then Don Alcala de Aguilera is a greater idiot than I took him for!" exclaimed the ironware manufacturer. "I can imagine a man's selling his blood to support himself and his family; every soldier does that, and if he get a cannon-ball instead of promotion, one can only say that the poor fellow has had the worst of the bargain. But a man who is willing to run the chance of being gored or tossed for the sake of the prettiest girl that ever danced a bolero, is madder, in my opinion, than Molière's far-famed knight of La Mancha. Ah! Lepine, so you're here at last. You are Aguilera's friend; did you know anything beforehand of this freak of romantic folly?"
Lucius only shook his head; he could not trust himself to make other reply.
"They say," observed the merchant who had spoken before, "that Don Aguilera's family, of whom he is the chief if not the only support, are mightily distressed at his venturing as a picador into the Plaza de Toros. I hear that he has a poor old grandmother, who lost her husband in the war with the first Napoleon; and a young sister who, it is said, is breaking her heart with grief."
Lucius remembered the light graceful form which he had seen springing across the patio, and the tones of the sweet eager voice which had exclaimed, "Alcala, is it you at last?" The young Englishman thought of his own favourite sister, and felt for the Spanish girl, though the reality of her misery exceeded the picture drawn by his fancy.
The conversation now turned on other subjects, but the mind of Lepine was full of but one. He could not join in discussions on Spanish politics, or the current business of the day. The untasted viands lay before him; he cared not to touch food, though he had fasted since the morning. Lucius took the earliest opportunity of quitting the party and returning to a small lodging which he had taken in one of the humbler streets of Seville.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] This is taken verbatim from a translation of the charge, given in "Daybreak In Spain," by the Rev. J. Wylie, D.D.