WEATHER PERMITTING.
The sky was in a state of anarchy, neither clear nor overcast, blue and smiling in one quarter, dark and gloomy in another. The tempest seemed about to do battle with the fine weather, for they paused looking at each other from opposite horizons and disputing the sky inch by inch. The sun, as a neutral party, alternately shone down upon the earth and hid behind the clouds, leaving it cold and dark. Notwithstanding the crowd on the Plaza de Toros did not seem to fear the result. It was an afternoon like most April or May days in Madrid, rough and windy, but, on the whole, inviting rather than repellent; bringing more dust than rain, and threatening worse than it performed, beyond drenching wedding parties, blowing up the women’s skirts and whisking off the men’s hats.
The amphitheatre was crowded but dull. Excepting for a few minutes occasionally it was all in shadow. The high structure of iron, painted slate-colour, looked dingier than ever, its elegant suggestion of manufactured architecture being little in harmony with the boisterous, clamorous, inebriate, and debasing character of the national Spanish festival. The uniformity of dress, which increases every day to the great loss of æsthetic effect, would give a public entertainment the aspect of a solemn congregation or a patriotic meeting, if the picture were not disturbed by the roar of voices—now an impatient murmur, now harsh yells of rage, in every key of passion, pleasure and frenzy, forming the hideous music of the sanguinary opera of which the libretto is the struggle in the arena. Coloured handkerchiefs are fast disappearing; still, a few bright spots of red and yellow, like gaudy butterflies, here and there relieved the huge black spot, and the incessant flutter of fans gave animation to the long rows of men and women. The uncovered seats on the shady side, especially those affected by the youth and students of the town, were closely packed with heads in ranks like the seeds in an ear of maize. The less crowded places on the sunny side were occupied by busy knots of press reporters, by country folks, by a hundred or more of Andalusians, in manners and dress a grotesque caricature of the torero; of hardworked artisans, seeking in this wild orgy of excitement some respite from the dreary round of labour. The distinguished society of mataderos, butchers, leather-dressers, tanners, the myrmidons of the slaughterhouse and purveyors of fodder, seethed like a boiling pot; and the hubbub, with the fitful ringing of a bell, sounded like the spasmodic progress of a neighing and kicking beast. The detestable medley of slang and dialects rose up like the hissing of some coarse and malodorous fry as it simmers over the fire. The chula muttered a hoarse oath as she insolently forced her way through the crowd, diffusing a mixed perfume of musk and garlic; and the miserable lout whose natural destiny it was to clean tripe and bladders, being incapacitated by nature for any more worthy function in life, made a speaking-trumpet of his hand to hurl a torrent of abuse, flavoured with a hot vapour of raw spirits, at the president’s box, where it would, no doubt, reach the ears of some official of the Spanish capital—the governor perhaps, or perhaps the president of the council.
The front seats of the amphitheatre presented a more pleasing spectacle; here there were a good many white mantillas decking pretty heads, on which camellias as white as milk or as red as blood, bloomed as naturally as though they had grown there. The ladies of the demi-monde, with their unmistakable and characteristic air—a sort of family likeness—their obtrusive elegance and vulgar assertive beauty, formed a notable proportion of the long row, elbowing here and there a woman of still lower morality. Some of these faces were of wonderful beauty, others mere masks of white and red, and burnt cork. Respectable families of the middle classes filed in, led by the father—a merchant perhaps, or a rising stockbroker, the head of a house of business, an infantry officer, a retired magistrate, a contractor for the supply of bacon to the public asylums, a stage baritone, an attorney, a professor of music—in short, whatever you choose—and closed by the youngest child, a little schoolboy. Here and there might be seen the essentially Spanish figure of a wealthy woman of the shopkeeping class; showy, generally very stout, with a certain loftiness as of a Roman matron grafted on to her florid native smartness; equally proud of her black eyes and her sparkling rings which cut into the flesh of her fat fingers; shedding contemptuous glances on all sides, as much as to convey that she is a very great lady and very rich, that her shop, with its stock of ancient furniture, or her butchery, or her pawnbroker’s parlour, is as good as the Bank of Spain, and that so long as she lives there will be no lack of occupation for the horrible gladiators below, who are loitering round the arena in green and gold, or crimson and silver, their cruel weapons in their hands and their spirits high with bold adventure. There is in the lavish proportions and air of satiety of these women, in their pretentious and sometimes cynical expression—particularly when they traffic in human creatures—an indefinable look of depravity suggesting Vitellius, Otho, or Heliogabalus; excepting that they are apt to turn pale when they hear the fatal ‘morituri te salutant.’
Behind are four long rows of humbler folk, the respectable class looking down on the disreputable class, very unpretending persons, plain, pretty, or commonplace. Above, in the boxes, there are more white mantillas—some covering grey heads, others framing the sweetest specimens of youth and beauty; fiery carnations or starry jasmine in their hair, cheeks like blush roses, eyes black or blue, with lashes quivering like butterflies; cherry lips, a glance as fickle as the light nod of a flower in the wind, and smiles that reveal teeth like pearls; the all-pervading fan with its wordless telegraphy in a thousand colours. This forms the bewildering charm of all large assemblages in Spain—the same in the boxes of a theatre as in the balconies over the streets—whenever there is a procession or a spectacle, or whenever a king makes his entry or takes his departure to do honour to a brand-new constitution.
There were faces there, withered, and faded, which betrayed even at a distance the pains that had been taken to hide their ruin, and others, young and innocent, that hid behind a fan when the loathsome teasing of the bull began; there was no lack of splendour—an atmosphere of elegance seemed to emanate from the style of dress, the glances, the air with which the women were pretty or ugly, and pervaded everything that they wore, from a blossom to the white paint, from the curl that the breeze fluttered on their temples to the jewel that rose and fell with every breath, and the glove that waved as the little hands clapped applause.
There were groups of men too in the boxes, all in black, with their elbows on the balustrade, and their hats tilted over their eyes, with nothing vulgarly loud in their dress, but talking a language savouring equally of the chamber of deputies and of the bull-ring, a strange medley of high-flown phrases, witty conceits, and slang terms full of point and metaphor, suggesting a mixture of cabbages and roses in a basket of flowers. The tone of their conversation was one of flippant scepticism; that of men who had ceased to believe even in bull-fights, while they directed the fire of their opera-glasses up and down the rows of ladies and made brutal comments on not a few of them. Morality and frivolity were inextricably mixed and fell together on the ear, just as gold and copper alike slip into the slit in a poor-box. The same lips pronounced technical criticisms on the tactics of the arena, and, almost in the same breath, blighted a reputation.
Among them were legislators and men whose daily occupation was the issue of decrees and regulations; some were impoverished aristocrats, some enriched plebeians, wealthy country proprietors, retired bull-fighters, elaborately preserved old dandies, here and there an inquisitive foreigner. But the flower of the moneyed youth sat below, in the places close behind the barrier—the favourite seats of the true dilettanti, where a distinguished company of critical spectators sit in judgment, including some names famous in the history of the time; young men who lack neither talent nor culture, and reporters, who dip their pen in the blood of the bull, so to speak, to indite a style of prose which, like the atmosphere of the cheaper boxes, is a steamy compound of raw garlic, musk, and brandy.
The hero of the fight was a bull called Sacristan, a huge brute, broadly marked with black, strong, wild, and well armed. The sound of the Olympian roar that hailed the fury of the beast’s first onslaught was immediately succeeded by a dull murmur of dissatisfaction, and every face—strange to say—was averted, for across the blood-stained arena swept the spectre of a horse dragging its bowels, as a kite drags its tail before it sinks for lack of wind.
The sport went on, though heavy rain-drops were already falling, and at length, when Higadillos, in scarlet and gold, with his knife in his iron hand, was inciting the beast just in front of the president’s box, there was a general stir throughout the amphitheatre. Every one got up, some screaming and some grumbling; there was a universal upturning of heads, pushing of elbows, and trampling of feet; a tremendous thunderclap rattled through the air, and at the same instant the rain came down as though a sluice gate had suddenly been opened in the clouds; a torrent—a cataract, that thrashed the earth like whip thongs.