"You will take a dislike to me, Señora Marquesa; but since you persist.... Understand that I cannot recollect them all, no matter how much I want to remember. They probably amount to thirty or thirty-five; I don't know for sure. In this wandering life, who thinks of keeping accounts? But I am a luckless fellow, Señora Marquesa; an unfortunate fellow. The fault belongs to them that made me bad. That matter of killing is like eating cherries. You pull one and the others come after, by dozens. One must kill to go on living and if one feels pity he is eaten for his pains."
There was a long silence. The lady contemplated the bandit's short thick hands with his uneven finger nails. But Plumitas was not looking at the Señora Marquesa. All his attention was given to the matador in his desire to show him gratitude for having received him at his table and to dispel the bad effect his words seemed to have upon him.
"I respect you, Señor Juan," he said. "The first time I saw you fight bulls, I said to myself, 'That's a brave fellow.' You have many devotees who admire you, but not the way I do! Believe me, that to see you, I have many times disguised myself, and gone into the towns where you were fighting the bulls with the risk of being captured. Is that devotion?"
Gallardo smiled with an affirmative nodding of his head, flattered now in his artistic pride.
"Besides," continued the bandit, "nobody can say I came to La Rincona' to ask even a piece of bread. Many times I have gone hungry or have lacked five duros, riding around near here, and never till to-day has it occurred to me to pass through the wire fence of the plantation. 'Señor Juan is sacred to me,' I said to myself always. 'He earns his money the same as I do, exposing his life. Comradeship must be respected.' For you will not deny, Señor Juan, that although you are a great personage, and I one of the most unfortunate of men, we are alike, we both live by playing with death. We are quietly eating here, but some day, if God tires of us and deserts us, they'll gather me up from the roadside like a mad dog shot to pieces, and you with all your capital will be carried out of a ring foot foremost; and although the papers may talk of your misfortune four weeks or so, damned little you will thank them over there in the other world."
"It is true—it is true," said Gallardo, with sudden pallor at the bandit's words.
The superstitious fear he felt when moments of danger drew near was reflected in his countenance. His destiny seemed similar to that of this terrible vagabond who must necessarily fall some day or other in his unequal struggle.
"But do you believe I think of death?" continued Plumitas. "I repent of nothing and I go on my way. I also have my desires and my little pride, the same as you, when you read in the papers that you did good work on such a bull and that they gave you the ear. Remember that they talk of Plumitas all over Spain, that the newspapers tell the greatest lies about me, and, according to what they say, they are going to bring me out in the theatres. Even in Madrid, in that palace where the deputies meet to hold parley, they talk of me nearly every week.
"On top of all this, the pride of having an army following my steps, of being able, a lone man, to stir the wrath of thousands who live off of the government and wield a sword! The other day, on Sunday, I entered a town at mass time and I stopped my mare in the square near some blind men who were playing the guitar and singing. The people were staring at a picture the singers had, representing a fine fellow with a three-cornered hat, whiskers, dressed in the finest style, mounted on a magnificent horse, with his blunderbuss on the horn of his saddle and a plump lass on the crupper. I stopped when I saw that the fine fellow in the picture was Plumitas! That gives pleasure. When one is condemned like Adam to work or starve, it is well to have the people imagine his existence different. I bought the paper from the blind singers and I carry it here; the complete life of Plumitas, with many lies, but all set to verse. A fine thing! When I lie down on the mountain I read it to learn it by heart. Some señor who knows much must have written it."
The dreaded Plumitas showed an infantile pride as he talked of his glory. The silent modesty with which he entered the plantation was gone; the desire that they should forget his fame and look upon him as nothing but a poor traveller pressed by hunger had vanished. He glowed when he remembered that his name was famous and that his deeds received the honors of publicity.