The banderillero departed from this interview with his head bent low and went in search of the maestro, meeting him at the door of the Forty-five.
"Juan, I have seen thy wife. The affair grows worse and worse. Try to make up with her, to straighten things out."
"Damn it! May sickness end her, thee, and me! This is not living. God permit that Sunday a bull may catch me and so it will all be ended! What is life worth!"
He was partially drunk. He was desperate over the sullen frown he met in his house and still more (though he confessed it to none), over the flight of Doña Sol without leaving a word for him, not even a paper with four lines of farewell. They had put him out of the door; had treated him worse than if he had been a servant. He did not even know where the woman was. The Marquis had interested himself but little in his niece's journey. The maddest girl! She had not told him, either, about her going, but not on that account would he think her lost in the world. She would soon give signs of existence from some strange country where her caprices had carried her.
Gallardo did not conceal his desperation in his own house. At the silence of his wife, who kept her eyes lowered, or looked at him frowning and refusing to converse, the matador burst forth into deadly curses.
"Damn my fate! I hope a Miura will hook me Sunday and shake me like a bell, and that they will bring me home on a stretcher!"
"Don't say that, malaje!" wailed Señora Angustias. "Don't tempt God. See if that don't bring bad luck."
But the brother-in-law intervened with his sententious air, taking advantage of the opportunity to flatter the swordsman.
"Never mind, Mamita. There isn't a bull alive that can touch him!"
Sunday was the last bull-fight of the year in which Gallardo was to work. He spent the morning without the vague fears and superstitious preoccupations of other occasions. He dressed himself joyfully, with a nervous excitement that seemed to augment the vigor of his arms and legs. What joy that he would be able to rush out upon the yellow sand and astound twelve thousand spectators by his gallantry and daring! His art was the only reality—something which awakened the enthusiasm of the multitudes and brought in money without measure. All the rest, family and love, but served to complicate existence and cause unhappiness. Ah! What sword-thrusts he was going to make! He felt the strength of a giant within himself. He was a different man, he had neither fear nor dread. He even showed impatience that it was not yet the hour for going to the plaza, contrary to other times when he had put off the dreaded moment. His fury at his domestic unhappiness and at that flight which wounded his vanity, made him long to throw himself upon the bulls.