While Gallardo was admiring this letter his servant Garabato came and went, bringing clothing and boxes which he left on the bed.
He was a fellow of quiet movements and agile hands, and seemed to take no notice of the presence of the bull-fighter. For some years he had accompanied the diestro on all his travels as sword-bearer. He had commenced in Seville at the same time as Gallardo, serving first as capeador, but the hard blows were reserved for him, while advancement and glory were for his companion. He was little, dark, and of weak muscles, and a tortuous and poorly united gash scarred with a whitish pot-hook his wrinkled, flaccid oldish face. It was from a thrust of a bull's horn which had left him almost dead in the plaza of a certain town, and to this atrocious wound others were added that disfigured the hidden parts of his body.
By a miracle he escaped with his life from his apprenticeship as a bull-fighter, and the cruellest part of it all was that the people laughed at his misfortunes, taking pleasure in seeing him stamped on and routed by the bulls. Finally his total eclipse took place, and he agreed to be the attendant, the confidential servant, of his old comrade. He was Gallardo's most fervent admirer, although he abused the confidence of intimacy by allowing himself to give advice and to criticise. Had he been in his master's skin, he would have done better at certain moments. Gallardo's friends found cause for laughter in the frustrated ambitions of the sword-bearer, but he paid no attention to their jokes. Renounce the bulls? Never! And so that the memory of his past should not be wholly obliterated he combed his coarse hair in shining locks over his ears and wore on the back of his head the long and sacred great lock of hair, the coleta of his youthful days, the professional emblem that distinguished him from common mortals.
When Gallardo was angry with him his fierce passion always threatened this capillary adornment.
"And thou dost wear a coleta, shameless one? I'm going to cut that rat's tail off for thee—brazen-face! Maleta!"
Garabato received these threats with resignation, but he took his revenge by shutting himself up in the silence of a superior man, answering the joy of the master with shrugs of his shoulders when the latter, on returning from the plaza of an afternoon in a happy mood, asked him with infantile satisfaction:
"What didst thou think of it? Did I do well, sure?"
On account of their juvenile comradeship he retained the privilege of saying thou to his master. He could not talk to the maestro in any other way, but the thou was accompanied by a grave gesture and an expression of ingenuous respect. His familiarity was like that of the ancient shield-bearers to the knights of adventure.
From his collar up, including the tail on the back of his head, he was a bull-fighter; the rest of his person resembled a tailor and a valet at the same time. He dressed in a suit of English cloth, a present from the Señor, wearing the lapels stuck full of pins, and with several threaded needles on one sleeve. His dry, dark hands possessed a feminine delicacy for handling and arranging things.
When he had placed in order all that was necessary for the master's dressing, he looked over the numerous objects to assure himself that nothing was lacking. Then he planted himself in the middle of the room and without looking at Gallardo, as if he were speaking to himself, he said in a hoarse voice and with a stubborn accent: