"Sit down—This is a surprise! When did you arrive? Are you and yours quite well?"
His admirer sat down, with the contentment of a devotee who enters the sanctuary of his idol, with no intention of moving from it till the very last moment, delighted at being addressed as "tu" by the master, and calling him "Juan" at every other word, so that the furniture, walls, or anyone passing along the passage outside should be aware of his intimacy with the great man. 'He had arrived that morning and was returning on the following day. The journey was solely to see Gallardo. He had read of his exploits. The season seemed opening well. This afternoon would be a good one. He had been in the boxing enclosure[26] in the morning and had noticed an almost black animal which assuredly would give great sport in Gallardo's hands——'
The master hurriedly cut short the habitué's prophesies.
"Pardon me—Pray excuse me. I will return at once."
Leaving the room, he went towards an unnumbered door at the end of the passage.
"What clothes shall I put out?" enquired Garabato, in a voice more hoarse than usual, from his wish to appear submissive.
"The green, the tobacco, the blue,—anything you please," and Gallardo disappeared through the little door, while his servant, freed from his presence, smiled with malicious revenge. He knew what that sudden rush meant, just at dressing time,—"the relief of fear" they called it in the profession, and his smile expressed satisfaction to see once more that the greatest masters of the art and the bravest, suffered as the result of their anxiety, just the same as he himself had done, when he went down into the arena in different towns.
When Gallardo returned to his room, some little time after, he found a fresh visitor. This was Doctor Ruiz, a popular physician who had spent thirty years signing the bulletins of the various Cogidas,[27] and attending every torero who fell wounded in the Plaza of Madrid.
Gallardo admired him immensely, regarding him as the greatest exponent of universal science, but at the same time he allowed himself affectionate chaff at the expense of the Doctor's good-natured character and personal untidiness. His admiration was that of the populace,—only recognising ability in a slovenly person if he possesses sufficient eccentricity to distinguish him from the general run.
He was of low stature and prominent abdomen, broad faced and flat-nosed, with a Newgate frill of dirty whitish yellow which gave him at a distance a certain resemblance to a bust of Socrates. As he stood up, his protuberant and flabby stomach seemed to shake under his ample waistcoat as he spoke. As he sat down this same part of his anatomy rose up to his meagre chest. His clothes, stained and old after a few days' use, seemed to float about his unharmonious body like garments belonging to someone else,—so obese was he in the parts devoted to digestion, and so lean in those of locomotion.