But Gallardo and Don José, who were smoking the other side of the table, with a glass of cognac within reach of their hands, and who delighted in making El Nacional talk so that they could laugh at his ideas, egged him on by depreciating Don Joselito: an imposter who upset ignorant men like him.
The banderillero received his master's jokes meekly enough. To doubt Don Joselito! Such a patent absurdity could not make him angry. It was as though some one was hitting at his other idol Gallardo, by saying he did not know how to kill a bull.
But when he heard the saddler, who inspired him with an unconquerable aversion, take part in these jests, he lost his calm. Who was that scamp, living by hanging on to his master, that he should dare to argue with him? With him!... And then losing all restraint, taking no notice of the espada's wife and mother, or of Encarnacion, who, imitating her husband, pursed up her mustachioed lip, looking contemptuously at the banderillero, the latter launched himself full sail on the exposition of his ideas, with the same ardour as when he discussed in committee.
For want of better arguments he overwhelmed the beliefs of others with insults.
"The Bible?... Rubbish![72] The creation of the world in six days.... Rubbish!... The story of Adam and Eve? Rubbish!... The whole of it lies and superstition."
And this word rubbish, that he employed, in order not to use one even more disrespectful, and that he applied to everything which seemed to him false and ridiculous, took on his lips an astonishing intensity of contempt.
The history of Adam and Eve was for him the subject of never-ending sarcasm; he had reflected much on this point during the hours of quiet drowsiness, when he was travelling with the cuadrilla, during which time he had discovered an irrefutable argument, drawn entirely from his own inner consciousness. "How could it be thought that all human beings were descended from one only pair?"
"I call myself Sebastian Venegas, and so it is; and you, Juaniyo, you call yourself Gallardo; and you, Don José, have also your own name; every one has his own, and when the names are the same people must be relations. If then we were all grandchildren of Adam, and Adam's name was—we will suppose—Perez, we should all be named Perez. That is quite clear?... Well then if we all have our family names, there must have been a great many Adams, and so what the priests tell us is all ... rubbish—retrograde superstition! It is education we want, and the clergy take advantage of our ignorance.... I think I am explaining myself!"
Gallardo, throwing himself back in his chair, screaming with laughter, greeted the orator with a hurrah, which imitated the bellowing of a bull—while the manager, with Andalusian gravity, stretched out his hand congratulating him,—
"Here, shake it! You have been very good! as good as Castelar!"