The cuadrilla became suddenly silent, a silence of fear, as they thought of the holy medals and scapularies that their women's hands had sewn into their fighting clothes before they left Seville. The espada, wounded in his slumbering superstitions, was furious with El Nacional, as if the banderillero's impiety would place his own life in danger.
"Shut up, and stop your blasphemies!... Your pardon, Sirs, I pray you. He is a good fellow, but his head has been turned by all these lies.... Shut up, and don't answer me! Curse you!... I will fill your mouth with...."
And Gallardo, to appease those gentlemen whom he considered as depositaries of the future, overwhelmed the banderillero with threats and curses.
El Nacional took refuge in a contemptuous silence. "It was all ignorance and superstition, all from not knowing how to read and write." And strong in his faith, with the obstinacy of a simple man who only possesses two or three ideas and clutches hold of them in the face of the roughest shocks, he would shortly afterwards renew the discussion regardless of the matador's anger.
His anti-clericalism did not leave him even in the circus among those peons and picadors, who having said their prayer in the chapel, entered the arena, in the hope that the sacred scapularies sewn into their clothes would guard them from danger.
When an enormous bull, "of many pounds,"[70] as it is called, with a powerful neck and a black coat arrived at the "turn" of the banderilleros, El Nacional, with his arms open and the darts in his hand, would stand a short distance from the animal, shouting insultingly,—
"Come along, priest!"
The "priest" threw himself furiously on El Nacional, who fixed the darts firmly in his neck as he rushed past, shouting loudly as if he were proclaiming a victory.
One for the clergy!