Gallardo drank deeper and deeper, and the women who had quarrelled for a place by his side, finding him dull and unresponsive, now turned their backs with insulting taunts on his gloom. The guitarists scarcely played any longer, but, overcome with wine, bent drowsily over their instruments.
The torero was also nearly falling asleep on a bench, when one of his friends offered to give him a lift home in his carriage; he was obliged to leave early so as to be home before the old Countess, his mother, arose to hear Mass, as she did daily, at dawn.
The night wind did not disperse the torero's drunkenness. When his friend dropped him at the corner of his own street, Gallardo turned with unsteady steps towards his house. Close to the door he stopped, leaning against the wall with both hands, resting his head on his arms as though he could no longer endure the weight of his thoughts.
He had completely forgotten his friends, the supper at Eritana, and the painted strangers, who had begun by quarrelling for him and who had ended by insulting him. Some memory of the other one still floated through his mind, that always! ... but vaguely, and at last that, too, faded. Now his thoughts, by one of the capricious turns of drunkenness, were entirely filled by memories of the bull-ring.
He was the first Matador in the world. Olé! so his manager and his friends declared, and it was the truth. His enemies would see a fine sight when he returned to the Plaza. What had happened the other day was only an accident, a trick that bad luck had played him.
Proud of the overpowering strength that the excitement of wine had momentarily given him, he imagined all the Andalusian and Castillian bulls to be like feeble goats that he could overthrow with a single blow from his hand.
What had happened the other day was really nothing. Rubbish!... As El Nacional said, "From the best singer there sometimes escapes a cock-crow."
And this proverb, heard from the lips of many venerable patriarchs of his profession on days of disaster, inspired him with an irresistible desire to sing, to fill the silence of the street with his voice.
With his head still leaning on his arms, he began to croon a verse of his own composition, one of overweening praise of his own merit.
"I am Juaniyo Gallardo....