Gallardo arranged the journey. He had thought of going alone, but Doña Sol's company obliged him to seek an escort, fearing some evil encounter on the road.
He looked up Potaje, the picador. He was extremely rough, fearing nothing in the world but his gipsy wife, who when she was tired of being beaten would turn and bite him. There would be no need to give him any explanations, only wine in abundance. Alcohol and his atrocious falls in the arena seemed to keep him in a perpetual muddle, as if his head were buzzing, and only permitted his few slow words and a cloudy vision of everything.
He ordered also El Nacional to accompany them, he would be one more, and was of tried discretion.
The banderillero obeyed from subordination, but he grumbled when he knew Doña Sol was going with them.
"By the life of the blue dove! To think of the father of a family mixing himself up in such ugly doings!... What will Carmen and the Señora Angustias say of me when they come to hear of it?"
But when he found himself in the open country, seated by the side of Potaje, in front of the espada and the great lady, his annoyance gradually vanished.
He could not see her well, wrapped up as she was in a large blue veil which covered her travelling cap, and falling over her yellow silk coat; but she was very beautiful.... And to hear them talk! What things she knew!
Before the journey was half over, El Nacional, in spite of his twenty-five years of conjugal fidelity, forgave his master's weakness, and quite understood his infatuation.
If ever he found himself in a like situation he would do exactly the same!
Education!... It was a great thing, capable of infusing respectability even into the most heinous sins.