Gallardo, fired by her example, ate, and above all, drank much, seeking in the varied and heavy wines a remedy for that stupidity that made him silent as if abashed in the lady's presence, and unable to do more than to smile and repeat, "Many thanks."
The conversation grew animated; the matador became loquacious and talked of funny incidents in the tauromachic life, ending by telling about Nacional's original propaganda, and the feats of his picador Potaje, a wild fellow who swallowed hard-boiled eggs whole; how he was minus half an ear on account of one of his compadres having bitten it off, and how, on being carried injured into the infirmaries of the ring, he would fall on the bed with such a weight of armor and muscle that he would cut through the mattresses with his enormous spurs, and then had to be unriveted.
"Very original! Very interesting!"
Doña Sol listened, smiling at the details of the existence of these rough men, ever close to death, whom she had until then admired only at a distance.
The champagne completed the work of upsetting Gallardo, and when he rose from the table he gave his arm to the lady, surprised at his own audacity. Did not they do so in the great world? He was not so ignorant as he seemed at first sight!
In the drawing-room where coffee was served he saw a guitar. Doña Sol offered it to him, asking him to play.
"But I don't know how! I am the most unskilled fellow in the world, aside from killing bulls!"
He regretted that the puntillero of his cuadrilla was not there, a boy who set the women crazy with his "hands of gold" for plucking the strings of a guitar.
Gallardo was leaning back on a sofa smoking the magnificent Havana a servant had offered him. Doña Sol was smoking one of the cigarettes whose perfume created such a vague drowsiness. The heaviness of digestion weighed upon the bull-fighter, closing his mouth and permitting him no other sign of life than a fixed smile of stupidity. The lady, wearied, doubtless, at the silence in which her words were lost, seated herself before a grand piano, and striking the keys with virile force, drew forth the gay rhythm of Malagueñas followed by Sevillanas, and then all the old Andalusian songs, melancholy and of Oriental dreaminess, which Doña Sol had stored in her memory as an enthusiastic admirer of la tierra.
Gallardo interrupted the music with his exclamations, just as he did when seated near the stage of a music-hall.