After having undergone the visit of the custom-house officials, we proceeded to take up our quarters in the immediate vicinity of the Calle d'Alcala and of the Prado; the name of our street was the Calle del Caballero de Gracia, and our hotel was called La Fonda de la Amistad, where Madame Espartero, Duchess de la Vittoria, happened at that time to be staying. The first thing we did was to despatch Manuel, our temporary servant, a most ardent aficionado and tauromachist, to procure us tickets for the next bull-fight.
CHAPTER VI.
MADRID.
Bull-fights—The Arena—Calesins—Espadas, Chulos, Banderilleros, and Picadores Sevilla the Picador—La Estocada a Vuela Pies.
We were obliged to wait two days. Never did two days appear so long to me, and in order to overcome my impatience, I read over more than ten times the bills posted up at the corners of the principal streets. These bills promised wonders; they announced eight bulls from the most famous pasturages; the picadores, Sevilla and Antonio Rodriguez; and the espadas, Juan Pastor, also called El Barbero, and Guillen; they wound up by prohibiting the public from throwing into the arena orange-peel or any other projectile capable of injuring the combatants.
The word matador is scarcely ever employed in Spain to designate the person who kills the bull; he is entitled espada (sword), which is more noble and more characteristic. Neither is the word toreador used, but torero. I just mention this as a piece of useful information for those authors who are accustomed to introduce a little local colouring into their ballads and comic operas. The fight is called media corrida, half-course or fight, because formerly there used to be two every Monday, one in the morning and one at five in the afternoon, the two together making up the day's amusement. At present only the fight in the afternoon is preserved.
It has been asserted and reasserted on all sides, that the Spaniards are losing their taste for bull-fights, and that civilization will soon cause the amusement to be discontinued altogether. If civilization does effect this, all I can say is that it will be all the worse for civilization, as a bull-fight is one of the grandest sights that the imagination of man can conceive; but, at any rate, the time for their abolition has not yet arrived, and those sensitive writers who affirm the contrary have only to transport themselves some Monday, between the hours of four and five, to the Puerta d'Alcala, in order to be convinced that the taste for this ferocious pastime is, as yet, very far from extinct.