114 CASTILIAN DAYS
object to Madrid ale, and say that its cakes are unduly gingered?
Yet even those who most stoutly defend the bull-fight feel that its glory has departed and that it has entered into the era of full decadence. I was talking one evening with a Castilian gentleman, one of those who cling with most persistence to the national traditions, and he confessed that the noble art was wounded to death. "I do not refer, as many do, to the change from the old times, when gentlemen fought on their own horses in the ring. That was nonsense, and could not survive the time of Cervantes. Life is too short to learn bull-fighting. A grandee of Spain, if he knows anything else, would make a sorry torero. The good times of the art are more modern. I saw the short day of the glory of the ring when I was a boy. There was a race of gladiators then, such as the world will never see again,--mighty fighters before the king. Pepe Illo and Costillares, Romero and Paco Montes,--the world does not contain the stuff to make their counterparts. They were serious, earnest men. They would have let their right arms wither before they would have courted the applause of the mob by killing a bull outside of the severe
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traditions. Compare them with the men of to-day, with your Rafael Molina, who allows himself to be gored, playing with a heifer; with your frivolous boys like Frascuelo. I have seen the ring convulsed with laughter as that buffoon strutted across the arena, flirting his muleta as a manóla does her skirts, the bewildered bull not knowing what to make of it. It was enough to make Illo turn in his bloody grave.
"Why, my young friend, I remember when bulls were a dignified and serious matter; when we kept account of their progress from their pasture to the capital. We had accounts of their condition by couriers and carrier-pigeons. On the day when they appeared it was a high festival in the court. All the sombreros in Spain were there, the ladies in national dress with white mantillas. The young queen always in her palco (may God guard her). The fighters of that day were high priests of art; there was something of veneration in the regard that was paid them. Duchesses threw them bouquets with billets-doux. Gossip and newspapers have destroyed the romance of common life.
"The only pleasure I take in the Plaza de Toros now is at night. The custodians know me and let