Blood and Sand

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

They had seen him full of courage, throwing himself blindly into danger, and so they wished him to be always, till death should cut short his career. He had played almost suicidally with fate, when he was anxious to make a name for himself, and now people could not reconcile themselves to his prudence. Insults were always hurled at any attempt at self preservation. As certainly as he spread the muleta at a certain distance from the bull, so certainly the protests broke forth. He did not throw himself on the bull! He was afraid! And it was sufficient for him to throw himself one step back for the people to greet this precaution with filthy insults.

The news of what had happened in Seville at the Easter corrida seemed to have circulated throughout Spain. His enemies were taking their revenge for long years of envy and jealousy. His professional companions whom he had often forced into danger from a feeling of emulation now babbled with hypocritical expressions of pity about Gallardo's decadence. His courage had given out! His last cogida had made him over prudent. And the audience, influenced by these rumours, now fixed their eyes on the torero as soon as he entered the Plaza, predisposed to find anything he did bad, just as previously they had applauded even his faults.

The fickleness so characteristic of mobs had much to say to this change of opinion. The people were tired of watching Gallardo's courage, and now they enjoyed watching his fear—or his prudence—as if it made themselves the braver.

The public never thought he was close enough to his bull. He must throw himself better on it! And when he, overcoming by sheer strength of will that nervousness which longed to fly from danger, had succeeded in killing a bull as in former days, the ovation was neither so prolonged nor so vehement. He seemed to have broken the current of enthusiasm which had formerly existed between himself and the populace. His scanty triumphs only served to make the people worry him with lectures and advice. That was the way to kill! You ought always to kill like that! Great cheat!

His faithful partizans recognized his failures, but they excused them, speaking of the former exploits performed by the espada on his lucky afternoons.

"He is somewhat over careful," they said. "He seems tired. But when he wishes!"...

Ay! but Gallardo always wished. Why could he not do well and gain the applause of the populace? But his successes, that the aficionados thought a caprice of his will, were really the work of chance or of a happy conjunction of circumstances, of that heart-throb of the olden days which now he so very seldom felt.

In many of the provincial Plazas he had been whistled, the people on the sunny side insulted him by the tooting of horns and the ringing of cow bells whenever he delayed in killing a bull, by giving it half-hearted estocades which did not make it bend its knees.

In Madrid the people waited for him "with their claws," as he said. As soon as the spectators of the first corrida saw him pass the bull with the muleta, and enter to kill, the row broke out. That lad from Seville had been changed! That was not Gallardo; it was some one else. He shortened his arm, he turned away his face; he ran with the quickness of a squirrel, putting himself out of reach of the bull's horns, without the calmness to stand quietly and wait for him. They noted a deplorable loss of courage and strength.