CHAPTER VIII
In the middle of spring the temperature suddenly fell, with the violent extremes of the uncertain and fickle Madrid climate.
It was very cold. A grey sky poured down torrents of rain, mingled with flakes of snow, and people who were already dressed in their light clothes, opened boxes and cupboards in search of cloaks and wraps.
For two weeks there had been no function in the Plaza de Toros. The Sunday corrida had been fixed for the first weekday on which it should be fine. The manager, the employés of the Plaza and the innumerable amateurs whom this enforced inaction put out of temper, watched the sky with the anxiety of peasants who are fearing for their harvest. A slight rent in the sky or the appearance of a few stars as they left their cafés at midnight raised their spirits.
"The weather is lifting.... We shall have a corrida the day after to-morrow."
But the clouds rolled together again, and the leaden sky continued to pour down its torrents. The aficionados were furious with the weather, which seemed to have set itself against the national sport. Horrid climate! which made even corridas impossible.
Gallardo had, therefore, a fortnight of enforced rest. His cuadrilla complained bitterly of the inaction. In any other town in Spain the men would have resigned themselves to the detention, because the espada paid all their hotel expenses in every place but Madrid. It was a bad custom initiated by former maestros living near the capital. It was supposed that the proper domicile of every real torero was in la Corte,[102] and the poor peons and picadors, who lodged in a boarding-house kept by the widow of a banderillero, eked out their existence by all sorts of petty economies, smoking but little, and standing outside the café doors. They thought of their families with the avarice of men who only receive a few coins in exchange for their blood. By the time these two corridas had come off they would already have devoured their earnings in anticipation.
The espada was equally ill-humoured in the solitude of his hotel, not on account of the weather, but on account of his ill luck.
He had fought his first corrida in Madrid with deplorable results, and the public were quite different to him. He still had many partizans of unquenchable faith, who rose in arms for his defence, but even those enthusiasts, so noisy and aggressive the previous year, now showed a certain reserve, and when they found occasion to applaud him they did so timidly. On the other hand, his enemies and the great mass of the populace always anxious for danger and death, how unjust they were in their judgments!... How ready to insult him!... What was tolerated in other matadors seemed vetoed for him.