"You may almost say that he who is not killed outright in the Plaza is saved. The cure becomes then only a matter of time."
For three days Gallardo endured tortures, his weakness preventing the use of anæsthetics, and Doctor Ruiz extracted several splinters of bone from the broken leg.
"Who has said you would be useless for fighting?" exclaimed the Doctor, satisfied with his own cleverness. "You will fight, my son. The public will still have to applaud you."
The manager agreed with this. Exactly what he had thought; how could that lad, who was the first man in the world, end his life in that fashion?
By order of Doctor Ruiz, the torero's family were moved to Don José's house. The women drove him wild, and their proximity was intolerable during the hours of the operations. A groan from the torero would instantly be answered from every part of the house by the howls of his mother and sister, and Carmen struggled like a mad woman to go to her husband.
Sorrow had changed the wife, making her forget her rancour. "The fault is mine," she would often say despairingly to El Nacional. "He said very often he wished a bull would end him once for all. I have been very wrong; I have embittered his life."
In vain the banderillero recalled all the details to convince her that the misfortune was accidental. No; according to her, Gallardo had wished to end it for ever, and had it not been for El Nacional he would have been carried dead out of the arena.
When the operations were over the family returned to the house, and Carmen paid her first visit to the sick man.
She entered the room quietly, with cast down eyes, as if she were ashamed of her former hostility, and taking Juan's hand in both hers she asked:
"How are you?"