"Very good. Very good, indeed!" he murmured. "That handsome fellow is me, and that other one too, all of them! And yet some people say of me.... Curse it all! I am the first man in the world. Don José says so, and he speaks the truth."
He threw his sombrero on to a divan, as if he were divesting himself of a glorious crown which oppressed his brow, and went staggering to lean with both hands on the writing bureau, fixing his eyes on the enormous bull's head which decorated the further end of the office.
"Hola! Good night, my fine fellow!... What are you doing here?... Muu! Muu!"
He saluted the head with bellowings, imitating childishly the lowing of the bulls on their pastures and in the Plaza. He did not recognize it; he could not remember why the shaggy head with its threatening horns should be there. But by degrees the memory came back to him.
"I know, you rascal.... I remember how you made me rage that afternoon. The crowd whistled at me and pelted me with bottles ... they even insulted my poor mother, and you! ... you were so pleased!... How you did enjoy it! Eh, shameless one?"...
His drunken glance thought he saw the brightly varnished muzzle twitch, and the glass eyes flash with peals of concentrated laughter; he even thought that the horned head was nodding an acknowledgment to his question.
The drunken man up to now smiling and good humoured, suddenly felt his anger rise at the remembrance of that afternoon's disgrace. And was that evil beast still laughing at it?... Those bulls with perverse minds, so cunning and reflective, were the evil causes of a worthy man being insulted and turned into ridicule. Ay! how Gallardo hated them! What a glance of hatred was his as he fixed it on the glassy eyes of the horned head.
"Are you still laughing, you son of a dog? Curse you, rascal! Cursed be the dam that bore you, and the thief your master who grazed you on the pastures! Would to God he were in jail.... Are you still laughing? Still making grimaces at me?"
Impelled by his ungovernable rage, he leant over the desk, and stretching out his arm opened a drawer. Then he drew himself up erect, and raised one hand towards the head.
Pum! Pum ... two revolver shots.