The family life had completely changed. Gallardo, who now mixed with the gentry of Seville, did not care for his mother to continue living in the hovel of the days of her poverty. For his own part, he would have liked to move into the best street in the town, but Señora Angustias wished to remain faithful to the suburb of la Feria, with that love which simple people feel as they grow older for the places in which their youth has been spent.
They now lived in a much better house. The mother no longer worked, and the neighbours courted her, foreseeing in her a generous lender in their days of distress. Juan, besides the heavy and startling jewelry with which he adorned his person, possessed that supreme luxury of a torero, a powerful sorrel mare, with a Moorish saddle, and a large blanket, adorned with multi-coloured tassels rolled up on the bow. Mounted on her he trotted through the streets, his only object being to receive the homage of his friends who greeted his elegance with noisy Olé's. This for the time being satisfied his desire for popularity. At other times joining some gentlemen, the gallant cavalcade would ride to the pastures of Tablada, on the eve of some great corrida, to inspect the cattle that others were to kill.
When I shall have received "la Alternativa" ... he said perpetually, making all his plans for the future depend on this event.
For that future time he also left several projects with which he intended to surprise his mother; who, poor woman! already frightened by the comfort which had crept suddenly into her house, would have thought any farther augmentation an impossibility.
At last the day of "la Alternativa" arrived, the public recognition of Gallardo as matador.
A celebrated master ceded his sword and muleta to him in the full circus in Seville, the crowd were nearly mad with delight, seeing how he killed with one sword thrust the first "formal"[62] bull which was placed before him. The following month this doctorate of tauromachia was countersigned in the Plaza in Madrid, where another no less celebrated master gave him "la Alternativa" in a corrida of bulls from Muira.
He was now no longer a novillero; he was a recognized matador, and his name figured on the placards by the side of all the old espadas, whom he had admired as unapproachable divinities, in the days when he went through the little towns taking part in the "capeas." He remembered having waited for one of them at a station near Cordova to beg a little help from him as he passed with his cuadrilla. That night he had something to eat, thanks to the fraternal generosity existing between the people of the pigtail, and which made an espada living in princely luxury give a duro and a cigar to the needy wretch who was trying his first "capeas."
Engagements began to pour in to the new espada. In all the Plazas of the Peninsula they were curious to see him. The professional papers popularized his portrait and his life, not without adding romantic episodes to this latter. No matador had as many engagements as he had, and it would not be long before he made a fortune.
Antonio, his brother-in-law, viewed this success with scowling brow and grumbling protests to his wife and his mother-in-law. The fellow was ungrateful; it was the way of all those who rose too rapidly. Just think how he had worked for Juan! How obstinately he had discussed matters with Managers when they were arranging the runs of Novillos!... And now that he was "Maestro" he had taken for agent a certain Don José, whom he scarcely knew, who did not belong in any way to the family, and for whom Gallardo had taken a great affection simply because he was an old amateur.
He will suffer for it; he ended by saying: "One can only have one family. Where will he meet with affection like ours, who have known him since his earliest childhood? So much the worse for him! With me, he would have been like the real Roger...."