THE BLOOD OF
THE ARENA

BY
VICENTE BLASCO IBÁÑEZ
FROM THE SPANISH, BY FRANCES DOUGLAS

ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY TROY
AND MARGARET WEST KINNEY

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Copyright
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911
Published November, 1911
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
W. F. Gall Printing Company
Chicago

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BLOOD OF THE ARENA

CHAPTER I
THE HERO AND THE PUBLIC

JUAN GALLARDO breakfasted early, as he did whenever there was to be a bull-fight. A slice of roast meat was his only dish. Wine he did not even touch; the bottle remained unopened before him. He must keep himself calm. He drank two cups of thick, black coffee, and lighted an enormous cigar, sitting with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, looking with dreamy eyes at the guests who one by one filled the dining-room.

It was a number of years ago, not long after he had been given "the alternative" in the bull-ring of Madrid, that he came to lodge at a certain hotel on Alcalá Street where his hosts treated him as if he were one of the family, and the dining-room servants, porters, scullions, and old waiters adored him as the glory of the establishment. There, too, he had spent many days wrapped in bandages, in a dense atmosphere heavy with the smell of iodoform, in consequence of two gorings, but the unhappy recollection did not weigh upon him.

In his Southern superstitious mind, exposed to continual danger, he regarded this hotel as a charmed shelter, and thought that nothing ill would happen to him while living in it; accidents common to the profession, rents in his clothing, scratches in his flesh perhaps, but no last and final fall after the manner of other comrades, the recollection of whom haunted even his happier hours.

On the days of the great bull-fights, after the early breakfast, he enjoyed sitting in the dining-room contemplating the movement of travellers. They were foreigners, or people from distant provinces, who passed near with indifferent countenances, and without looking at him; and then became curious on learning from the servants that the fine youth with shaven face and black eyes, dressed like a young gentleman, was Juan Gallardo, by all familiarly called Gallardo, the famous bull-fighter. Thus were whiled away the long and painful hours before going to the plaza.

These moments of uncertainty, in which vague fears emerged from the depths of his soul, making him doubt himself, were the bitterest in his professional experience. He would not go out on the street thinking of the strain of the contest, and of the need of keeping himself rested and agile; and he could not entertain himself at the table on account of the necessity of eating a light meal, in order to reach the ring without disturbance of his digestion.

He remained at the head of the table, his face between his hands and a cloud of perfumed smoke before his eyes, turning his gaze from time to time with a certain fatuousness to look at some ladies who were contemplating the famous bull-fighter with interest.

His pride as the idol of the masses made him feel that he could divine eulogy and flattery in these looks. They thought him smart and elegant. And, with the instinct of all men accustomed to pose before the public, forgetting his preoccupation, he sat erect, knocked off with his finger nails the cigar ashes fallen on his sleeves, and arranged his ring, which covered the whole joint of one of his fingers with an enormous diamond surrounded by a nimbus of colors as if its clear liquid depths burned with magic fire.

His eyes roved with satisfaction over his person, admiring the suit of elegant cut, the cap which he wore around the hotel lying on a nearby chair, the fine gold chain that crossed the upper part of his vest from pocket to pocket, the pearl in his cravat that seemed to illuminate the brown tone of his countenance with milky light, and the shoes of Russia leather showing between their tops and the edge of the rolled-up trousers socks of open-work silk embroidered like the stockings of a cocotte.

An atmosphere of English perfumes, mild and vague, but used with profusion, arose from his clothing and from his black and brilliant hair. This he brushed carefully down over his temples, adopting a style certain to attract feminine curiosity. For a bull-fighter the ensemble was not bad; he felt satisfied with his appearance. Where was there another more distinguished, or one who had a better way with women?

But suddenly his preoccupation returned, the brilliancy of his eyes clouded, and he rested his chin in his hands again, puffing at his cigar tenaciously, his gaze lost in the cloud of smoke. He thought wistfully of the hour of nightfall, wishing it already here; of the return from the bull-ring, sweaty and tired, but with the joy of danger conquered, the appetites awakened, a mad desire for sport, and the certainty of a few days of safety and rest.

If God would protect him as heretofore he was going to feast with the appetite of his days of poverty and starvation, get a little drunk, and go in search of a certain girl who sang in a music-hall, whom he had seen on his last trip without having a chance to cultivate her acquaintance. Leading this life of continual change from one end of the Peninsula to the other he did not have time for much in the way of pleasure.

Enthusiastic friends who wished to see the swordsman before going to breakfast at their homes began entering the dining-room. They were old admirers anxious to figure in a bandería and to have an idol; they had made the young Gallardo the matador of their choice, and they gave him sage counsel, frequently recalling their old-time adoration for Lagartijo or Frascuelo.

In addressing Gallardo they called him thou, with gracious familiarity, while he put don before their names with the traditional class distinction that still exists between the bull-fighter risen from the social subsoil and his admirers. These men linked their enthusiasm with memories of the past to make the young matador feel their superiority of years and experience. They talked of the old plaza of Madrid where only bulls that were bulls and bull-fighters that were bull-fighters were recognized. Coming down to the present, they trembled with emotion on mentioning the Negro, Frascuelo.

"If thou hadst seen him! But thou and those of thy time were at the breast then, or were not even born."

Other enthusiasts began entering the dining-room, poorly clad and hungry-looking; obscure newspaper reporters; and men of problematical profession who appeared as soon as the news of Gallardo's arrival was circulated, besieging him with praises and petitions for tickets. Common enthusiasm jostled them against great merchants or public functionaries, who discussed bull-fighting affairs with them warmly, regardless of their beggarly aspect.

All, on seeing the swordsman, embraced him or shook his hand with an accompaniment of questions and exclamations.

"Juanillo—how goes it with Carmen?"

"Well, thanks."

"And how is your mother, Señora Angustias?"

"Fine, thanks. She's at La Rincona'."

"And your sister and your little nephews?"

"As usual, thanks."

"And that good-for-nothing brother-in-law of yours, how is he?"

"He's all right—as much of a gabbler as ever."

"Are there any additions to the family? Any expectations?"

"No—not even that."

He made a fingernail crackle between his teeth with a strong negative expression and then began returning the questions to the new arrivals, of whose life he knew nothing beyond their inclination for the art of bull-fighting.

"And how is your family—all right? Well, glad to hear it. Sit down and have something."

Then he inquired about the condition of the bulls that were to be fought within a few hours, for all these friends had come from the plaza and from seeing the separation and penning in of the animals; and, with professional curiosity, he asked news of the Café Inglés, a favorite gathering place of bull-fight fans.

It was the first bull-fight of the spring season, and Gallardo's enthusiasts showed great hopes, remembering the glowing accounts in the newspapers of his recent triumphs in other towns of Spain. He was the bull-fighter who had the most contracts. Since the Easter corrida in Seville (the first important one of the taurine year) Gallardo had gone from plaza to plaza killing bulls.

When August and September came, he would have to spend his nights on the train and his afternoons in the rings, without time to rest. His agent at Seville was almost crazy, so besieged was he by letters and telegrams, not knowing how to harmonize so many petitions for contracts with the exigencies of time. The afternoon before he had fought at Ciudad Real and, still dressed in his spangled costume, he had boarded the train to reach Madrid by morning. He had spent a wakeful night, only napping occasionally, crouched in the portion of a seat left him by the other passengers who crowded close together to give some chance for rest to this man who was to expose his life on the morrow, and was to afford them the joy of a tragic emotion without danger to themselves.

The enthusiasts admired his physical endurance, and the rash daring with which he threw himself upon the bulls at the moment of killing.

"We will see what thou art going to do this afternoon," they said with the fervor of true believers. "The devotees expect a great deal of thee. Thou wilt win many favors, surely. We shall see if thou dost as well as at Seville."

His admirers now began to disperse to go home to breakfast so as to be able to reach the bull-fight at an early hour. Gallardo, finding himself alone, was preparing to retire to his room, impelled by the nervous restlessness that dominated him. A man, leading two children by the hand, passed through the doorway of the dining-room, paying no attention to the questions of the servants. He smiled seraphically on seeing the bull-fighter, and advanced, dragging the little boys, his eyes glued upon him, taking no thought as to his feet. Gallardo recognized him.

"How are you, Godfather?"

And then followed the customary questions regarding the health of the family. The man turned to his sons, saying gravely:

"There he is! Are ye not continually asking me about him? Just like he is in the pictures."

The two little fellows reverently contemplated the hero whom they had so often seen in the prints that adorned the rooms of their poor home; he seemed to them a supernatural being whose heroic deeds and riches were their greatest marvel as they began to take notice of the things of this world.

"Juanillo, kiss thy godfather's hand."

The smaller of the two boys dashed his red face, freshly scrubbed by his mother in preparation for this visit, against the swordsman's right hand. Gallardo patted his head absent-mindedly. It was one of the many god-children he had throughout Spain. His enthusiastic friends obliged him to be godfather in baptism to their children, believing thus to assure them a future.

To exhibit himself at baptism after baptism was one of the consequences of his glory. This godchild recalled to his memory the hard times when he was at the beginning of his career, and he felt a certain gratitude to the father for the faith he had shown in him in spite of the lack of it in every one else.

"And how is business, compadre?" asked Gallardo. "Are things going better?"

The aficionado made a wry face. He was living, thanks to his commissions in the barley market, barely living, no more. Gallardo looked compassionately at his mean dress—a poor man's Sunday best.

"You want to see the bull-fight, don't you, compadre? Go up to my room and let Garabato give you a ticket. Good-bye, my good fellow. Here, take this to buy yourselves something."

As his godson kissed his right hand again, the bull-fighter handed the boys a couple of duros with his left. The father dragged away his offspring with expressions of gratitude, not making it clear in his confusion whether his enthusiasm were for the gift to the children or for the ticket for the corrida which the swordsman's servant was about to give him.

Gallardo allowed a few moments to elapse, so that he would not meet the enthusiast and his children again in his room. Then he looked at his watch. One o'clock! How long it was yet before the hour for the bull-fight!

As Gallardo walked out of the dining-room and started toward the stairway a crowd of curiosity-seekers and starvelings hanging around the street door, attracted by the presence of the bull-fighter, rushed in. Pushing the servants aside, an irruption of beggars, vagabonds, and newsboys filed into the vestibule.

The imps with their bundles of papers under one arm took off their caps, cheering with lusty familiarity.

"Gallardo! Hurrah for Gallardo!"

The most audacious among them grasped his hand and pressed it firmly and shook it in all directions, anxious to prolong as much as possible this contact with the great man of the people whose picture they had seen in the newspapers. Then they rudely invited their companions to participate in this glory.

"Shake hands with him! He won't get mad. Why, he's all right."

They almost knelt before the bull-fighter, so great was their respect for him. Other curious ones, with unkempt beards, dressed in old clothes that had once been elegant, moved about the idol in their worn shoes and held their grimy hats out to him, talking to him in low tones, calling him Don Juan to differentiate themselves from the enthusiastic and irreverent mob. As they told him of their misery they solicited alms, or more audacious, they begged him, in the name of their devotion to the game, for a ticket for the bull-fight,—with the intention of selling it immediately.

Gallardo defended himself, laughing at this avalanche that pushed and shoved him, the hotel clerks being quite unable to defend him, so awed were they by the respect that popularity inspires. He searched in all his pockets till they were empty, distributing silver-pieces blindly among the greedy, outstretched hands.

"There's none left now. The coal's all burnt up! Let me alone, pesterers."

Pretending to be annoyed by this popularity which really flattered him, he opened a passage for himself by a push with his strong arms and escaped by the stairway, running up the steps with the agility of an athlete, while the servants, no longer restrained by his presence, swept and pushed the crowd toward the street.

Gallardo passed the room occupied by Garabato and saw his servant through the half-opened door bending over valises and boxes getting his costume ready for the bull-fight.

Finding himself alone in his room the pleasant excitement caused by the avalanche of his admirers instantly vanished. The unhappy moments of these bull-fighting days had come, the trepidation of the last hours before going to the plaza. Miura bulls and the public of Madrid! The danger which, when he faced it, seemed to intoxicate him and increase his boldness, caused him bitter anguish now in his solitude, and seemed to him something supernatural, awful, on account of its uncertainty.

He felt crushed, as if suddenly the fatigue of the hideous night before had fallen upon him. He had a desire to lie down and rest on the bed at the other end of the room, when again anxiety over what awaited him, doubtful and mysterious, drove away his drowsiness.

He strode restlessly up and down the room and lighted another Havana by the end of the one he had just consumed.

How would this season which he was about to open in Madrid end for him? What would his enemies say? How would his professional rivals succeed? He had killed many Miuras—well, they were bulls like all the others; but he thought of his comrades who had fallen in the ring, almost all of them victims of the animals of that stock. Accursed Miuras! It was for a good reason that he and other swordsmen made out their contracts for a thousand pesetas more when they had to fight animals of this herd.

He continued wandering about the room with nervous step. He stopped to contemplate stupidly well-known objects that were a part of his equipment; then he let himself fall into an easy chair as if attacked by sudden weakness. He looked at his watch repeatedly. It was not yet two o'clock. How the time crept!

He wished that, as a stimulant for his nerves, the hour for dressing and going to the ring would come. The people, the noise, the popular curiosity, the desire to show himself calm and happy in the presence of the enthusiastic populace, and above all the very nearness of danger, actual and personal, instantly effaced this anguish of isolation in which the swordsman, without the aid of external excitement, felt something akin to fear.

The need of diverting himself caused him to search in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. He drew out with his pocket-book a little envelope which emitted a mild, sweet perfume. Standing by a window through which the obscure light of an inner courtyard entered, he contemplated the envelope which had been handed him when he arrived at the hotel, admiring the fine and genteel elegance of the characters in which the address was written.

He drew out the sheet of paper, breathing in its indefinable perfume with delight. Ah! people of high birth who have travelled widely,—how they reveal their inimitable superiority, even in the smallest details!

Gallardo, as though he felt that his person preserved the keen stench of the misery of his earlier years, perfumed himself with offensive profusion. His enemies joked about the athletic youth who, by his excessive use of perfumes, gave the lie to his sex. His admirers smiled at this weakness, but very often had to turn away their faces, nauseated by the heavy odors he carried with him.

A whole perfumery shop accompanied him on his travels, and the most effeminate essences anointed his body when he descended into the arena among the dead horses, and foul débris characteristic of the place. Certain enthusiastic cocottes, whom he had met on a trip to the towns in the south of France, had given him the secret of mixtures and combinations of strange perfumes; but the fragrance of the letter—that was like the person of her who had written it—a mysterious odor, delicate and indefinable, that could not be imitated, that seemed to emanate from her aristocratic body; it was what he called "the odor of a lady"!

He read and re-read the letter with a beaming smile of delight and pride. It was not a great matter; half a dozen lines—a greeting from Seville, wishing him good luck in Madrid; anticipated congratulations for his triumphs. That letter could have gone astray without in the least compromising the woman who wrote it. "Friend Gallardo" at the beginning, in elegant lettering that seemed to tickle the bull-fighter's eyes, and at the end, "Your friend, Sol"; all in a coldly friendly style, addressing him as you, with an amiable tone of superiority as though the words were not from equal to equal but had descended mercifully from on high.

The bull-fighter, gazing at the letter with the adoration which a man of the people has for caste, though little versed in reading, could not escape a certain feeling of annoyance, as if he beheld himself patronized.

"That baggage," he murmured. "That woman! No one living can break her pride. Look how she talks to me—you! you!—and to me!"

But happy memories brought a satisfied smile to his lips. This frigid style was for letters; these were the customs of a great lady; the precautions of a woman who had travelled over the world. His annoyance changed to admiration.

"What that woman doesn't know! And such a cautious creature!"

And in his smile appeared a professional satisfaction, the pride of the tamer who, appreciating the strength of the conquered wild beast, extols his own deed.

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:

"Two o'clock!"

Gallardo lifted his head nervously, as if he had not noticed the presence of his servant until then. He put the letter in his pocket and went to the lower end of the room with a certain hesitancy, as if he wished to delay the moment of dressing.

"Is everything ready?"

But suddenly his pale face colored with violent emotion. His eyes opened immeasurably wide as if they had just suffered the shock of a frightful surprise.

"What clothes hast thou laid out?"

Garabato pointed to the bed, but before he could speak the anger of the maestro fell upon him, loud and terrible.

"Curses on thee! Dost thou know nothing of the affairs of the profession? Thou has just come from hay-making, maybe? Bull-fight in Madrid, with Miura bulls, and thou dost get me out a green costume, the same that poor Manuel el Espartero wore! My bitterest enemy couldn't do worse, thou more than shameless one! It seems as if thou wishes to see me killed, malaje!"

His anger increased as he considered the enormity of this carelessness, which was like a challenge to ill fortune. To fight in Madrid in a green costume after what had happened! His eyes flashed with hostile fire as if he had just received a traitorous attack; the whites of his eyes grew red, and he seemed about to fall upon poor Garabato with his rough bull-fighter hands.

A discreet knock on the door of the room ended this scene.

"Come in!"

A young man entered, dressed in light clothes, with a red cravat, and carrying a Cordovan sombrero in a hand beringed with great brilliants. Gallardo recognized him instantly, with that gift for remembering faces possessed by all who live before the public.

He changed suddenly from anger to smiling amiability as if the visit were a sweet surprise. It was a friend from Bilbao, an enthusiastic admirer, a champion of his glory. That was all he could remember. But his name? He met so many! What could his name be? The only thing he knew for certain was that he must address him by thou, for an old friendship existed between the two.

"Sit down! What a surprise! When didst thou come? The family well?"

And the admirer sat down with the satisfaction of a devotee who enters the sanctuary of the idol determined not to move until the last instant, gratifying himself by the attention of the bull-fighter's thou, and calling him Juan at every two words so that furniture, walls, and whoever might pass along the corridor should know of his intimacy with the great man. He had arrived from Bilbao this morning and would return on the following day. He took the trip for no other purpose than to see Gallardo. He had read of his great exploits; the season was beginning well; this afternoon would be fine! He had been at the sorting of the bulls where he had especially noticed a dark beast that would undoubtedly yield great sport in Gallardo's hands.

"What costume shall I get out?" interrupted Garabato, with a voice that seemed even more hoarse with the desire to show himself submissive.

"The red one, the tobacco-colored, the blue—any one thou wishest."

Another knock sounded on the door and a new visitor appeared. It was Doctor Ruiz, the popular physician who for thirty years had been signing the medical certificates of all the injured and treating every bull-fighter that fell wounded in the plaza of Madrid.

Gallardo admired him and regarded him as the highest representative of universal science, although he indulged in good-natured jokes about his kindly disposition and his lack of care in his dress. His admiration was like that of the populace which only recognizes wisdom in a man of ill appearance and oddity of character that makes him different from ordinary mortals.

"He is a saint," Gallardo used to say, "a wise fellow, with wheels in his head, but as good as good bread, and he never has a peseta. He gives away all he has and he accepts whatever they choose to give him."

Two grand passions animated the doctor's life, revolution and bulls. A vague and tremendous revolution was to come that would leave in Europe nothing now existing; an anarchistic republic which he did not take the trouble to explain, and as to which he was only clear in his exterminating negations. The bull-fighters talked to him as to a father. He spoke as a familiar to all of them, and no more was needed than to get a telegram from a distant part of the Peninsula, for the good doctor to take the train on the instant to go to treat the horn-wound received by one of his boys with no other hope of recompense than whatever they might freely wish to give him.

On seeing Gallardo after a long absence he embraced him, pressing his flabby abdomen against the other's body which seemed made of bronze. Bravo! He thought the espada looking better than ever.

"And how is the Republic getting on, doctor? When is it going to happen?" asked Gallardo with an Andalusian drawl. "Nacional says it's going to come off soon; that it will be here one of these days."

"And what does that matter to thee, rogue? Let poor Nacional alone. The best thing for him to do is to stick in his banderillas better. As for thee, the only thing that should interest thee is to keep on killing bulls, like the very God himself. A fine afternoon this is going to be. They tell me that the bulls—"

But here the young man who had seen the sorting of the animals and wished to talk about it, interrupted the doctor to tell of a dark bull that had caught his eye, and from which he expected the greatest prowess. The two men, who had remained silent after bowing to one another, were face to face, and Gallardo thought an introduction necessary. But what was the name of that friend whom he addressed as thou? He scratched his head, knitting his eyebrows with an effort at recollection, but his indecision was short.

"Listen! What is thy name? Pardon, thou seest—with meeting so many people—"

The young man concealed beneath a smile of approbation his disenchantment at seeing himself forgotten by the master, and gave his name. Gallardo on hearing it felt the past come back suddenly to his memory, and made reparation for his forgetfulness by adding after the name, "wealthy miner from Bilbao." Then he presented the "famous Doctor Ruiz" and both men, as if they had known one another all their lives, united by the enthusiasm of a common devotion, began to gossip about the bulls of the afternoon.

"Sit down." Gallardo motioned to a sofa at the end of the room. "You'll not be in the way there. Talk and don't notice me. I am going to dress. I think that, as we're all men—"

And he took off his clothes, remaining in his under-garments.

Seated on a chair in the centre of the archway that divided the little reception room from the sleeping alcove, he gave himself up to the hands of Garabato, who had opened a bag of Russia-leather and was taking out of it an almost feminine necessaire for the swordsman's toilet.

In spite of the fact that the latter was carefully shaved he lathered his face again and passed the razor over his cheeks with the skill of one daily accustomed to the task. After washing himself Gallardo returned to his seat. The servant deluged his hair with brilliantine and other perfumes, combing it in curls over his forehead and temples; then he undertook the arrangement of the professional emblem, the sacred coleta.

With a certain respect he combed the long lock that crowned the occiput of the maestro, braided it and, postponing the completion of the operation, fixed it on the top of his head with two hairpins, leaving its final arrangement until later. Now he must occupy himself with the feet, and he stripped the athlete of his socks, leaving him dressed only in an undershirt and drawers of silk mesh.

Gallardo's strong muscles were outlined beneath this clothing in vigorous protuberances. A hollow in one thigh showed a deep scar where the flesh had disappeared on account of a horn-stab. Signs of old wounds were marked by white spots on the brown skin of his arms. His breast, dark and free from hair, was crossed by two irregular purplish lines, with a round depression, as if it had served as a mould for a coin. But his gladiatorial person exhaled an odor of clean brave flesh, mingled with strong but effeminate perfumes.

Garabato, with an armful of cotton and white bandages, knelt at the swordsman's feet.

"Like the ancient gladiators," said Dr. Ruiz, interrupting his conversation with the man from Bilbao; "thou hast become a Roman, Juan."

"Age, doctor," answered Gallardo with a certain melancholy. "We all have to grow old. When I used to fight bulls and hunger too, I didn't need this—and I had feet of iron in doing the cape-work."

Garabato introduced little tufts of cotton between his master's toes; then he covered the soles and upper part with a layer of this soft material and, putting on the bandages, began to bind them in tight spirals, as the ancient mummies are enwrapped. To fasten this arrangement he took the threaded needles he wore on one sleeve and carefully sewed the ends of the bandages.

Gallardo stamped on the floor with his compressed feet, which seemed firmer inside their soft swathing. Thus encased they felt strong and agile. The servant then drew on long stockings which reached half way up his leg; they were thick and flexible like leggings—the only defence of the legs under the silk of the fighting dress.

"Be careful about wrinkles. Look out, Garabato, I don't like to wear pockets!"

And he stood up to look at himself in the two panels of the mirror, stooping to pass his hands over his legs and smooth out the wrinkles. Over the white stockings Garabato drew on others of rose-colored silk. Then Gallardo thrust his feet into his low shoes, choosing them from among several pairs that Garabato had put on a trunk, all with white soles and perfectly new.

Now the real task of dressing began. The servant handed him his fighting trousers held by the legs,—tobacco-colored silk with heavy embroideries of gold on their seams. Gallardo put them on and the thick cords with gold tassels that closed the knees, congesting the leg with artificial fulness, hung to his feet.

Gallardo told his servant to tighten them as much as he could, at the same time swelling up the muscles of his legs. This operation was one of the most important. A bull-fighter must wear the machos well tightened. And Garabato, with deft speed, converted the dangling cords into little bows.

The master put on the fine batiste shirt which the servant offered him, with gatherings on the bosom, soft and transparent as a feminine garment. Garabato after buttoning it tied the knot of the long cravat that fell in a red line, dividing the bosom until it was lost in the waistband of the trousers.

The most complicated part of the dressing still remained, the faja, a band of silk nearly five yards long, that seemed to fill the whole apartment, Garabato managing it with the skill of long practice.

The swordsman walked to the other extreme of the room where his friends were and put one of the ends around his waist.

"Come, be very careful!" he said to his servant. "Make the most of thy little skill."

Slowly turning on his heels he drew near his servant who held one end of the belt, thus winding it around his body in regular curves, giving greater elegance to his waist. Garabato, with rapid movements of his hands, changed the folds of the band of silk. With some turns the belt rolled double, with others wide open, and it all adjusted itself to the bull-fighter's form, smooth as if it were a single piece, without wrinkles or puffs. Gallardo, scrupulous and fastidious in the arrangement of his person, stopped his progress in the course of the rotatory journey to go back two or three times and improve upon the work.

"It isn't good," he said with ill-humor. "Damn it all! Be careful Garabato."

After many halts Gallardo reached the end with the entire piece of silk wound around his waist. The skilful servant had sewed and put pins and safety pins all over his master's body, converting his clothes into one single piece. To get out of them the bull-fighter would have to resort to scissors and to others' hands. He could not divest himself of a single garment until his return to the hotel, unless the bull should accomplish it for him in the open plaza and they should finish undressing him in the hospital.

Gallardo seated himself again and Garabato went about the business of arranging the queue, taking out the hairpins and adding the moña, the black rosette with streamers which recalled the ancient head-dress of early bull-fighting times.

The master, as if he wished to put off the moment of final encasement in the costume, stretched himself, asked Garabato for the cigar that he had left on the little night-table, and demanded the time, thinking that all the clocks were fast.

"It's early yet. The boys haven't come. I don't like to go to the plaza early. It makes a fellow tired to be there waiting!"

A servant of the hotel announced that the carriage with the cuadrilla had arrived.

It was time to go. There was no excuse for delaying the moment of setting forth. He put over his belt the gold-embroidered vest and outside of this the jacket, a shining garment with enormous embossments, heavy as armor and resplendent with light as a glowing coal. The silk, color of tobacco, was only visible on the under side of the arms and in two triangles on the back. Almost the entire garment disappeared under the heavy layer of trimmings and gold-embroidered designs forming flowers with colored stones in their corollas. The shoulder pieces were heavy masses of gold embroidery from which fell a fringe of the same metal. The garment was edged with a close fringe that moved at every step. From the golden opening of the pockets the points of two handkerchiefs peeped forth, red like the cravat and the tie.

The cap!

Garabato took out of an oval box with great care the fighting cap, black and shining, with two pendent tassels, like ears of passementerie. Gallardo put it on, taking care that the coleta should remain unhidden, hanging symmetrically down his back.

The cape!

Garabato caught up the cape from off a chair, the capa de gala, a princely mantle of silk of the same shade as the dress and equally burdened with gold embroidery. Gallardo hung it over one shoulder and looked at himself in the glass, satisfied with his preparations. It was not bad.

"To the plaza!"

His two friends took their farewells hastily and called a cab to follow him. Garabato put under one arm a great bundle of red cloths, from the ends of which peeped the hilts and guards of many swords.

CHAPTER II
THE MATADOR AND THE LADY

AS Gallardo descended to the vestibule of the hotel he saw the street filled with a dense and noisy crowd as though some great event had taken place. The buzzing of the multitude outside the door reached his ears. The proprietor and all his family appeared with extended hands as if they would bid him farewell for a long journey.

"Good luck! May all go well with you!"

The servants, forgetting distance at the impulse of enthusiasm and emotion, also held their right hands out to him.

"Good luck, Don Juan!"

And he turned in all directions smiling, regardless of the frightened faces of the ladies of the hotel.

"Thanks, many thanks! See you later."

He was a different man. From the moment he had hung the glittering cape over one shoulder a persistent smile illuminated his countenance. He was pale, with a sweaty pallor like that of the sick; but he smiled, satisfied to live and to show himself in public, adopting his new pose with the instinctive freedom of one who but needs an incentive to parade before the people.

He swaggered with arrogance, puffing occasionally at the cigar he carried in his left hand. He moved his hips haughtily under his handsome cape and strode with a firm step and with the flippancy of a gay youth.

"Come, gentlemen, make way! Many thanks; many thanks."

And he tried to preserve his dress from unclean contact as way was made among an ill-clad, enthusiastic crowd which surged against the doors of the hotel. They had no money with which to go to the bull-fight but they took advantage of the opportunity of pressing the hand of the famous Gallardo, or of at least touching his garments.

A coach drawn by four richly caparisoned mules with tassels and bells stood waiting at the door. Garabato had already seated himself on the box with his bundle of muletas and swords. Three bull-fighters were inside with their capes over their knees, dressed in gayly colored clothes embroidered with as great profusion as the master's, but in silver.

Pressed onward by the popular ovation, and having to defend himself with his elbows from greedy hands, Gallardo reached the carriage-step.

"Good-afternoon, gentlemen," he said shortly to the men of his cuadrilla.

He seated himself at the back so that all could see him, and smiled with responsive nods to the shouts of some ragged women and to the short applause begun by some newsboys.

The carriage started with all the impetus of the spirited mules, filling the street with gay ringing. The mob parted to give passage but many rushed at the carriage as though they would fall under its wheels. Hats and canes were waved; an explosion of enthusiasm burst from the crowd, one of those contagions that agitate and madden the masses at certain times—making every one shout without knowing why.

"Hurrah for the brave! Viva España!"

Gallardo, ever pale and smiling, saluted, repeating "many thanks," moved by the contagion of popular enthusiasm and proud of his standing which united his name to that of his native land.

A troop of dishevelled youngsters ran after the coach at full speed, as though convinced that, at the end of the mad race, something extraordinary surely awaited them.

For at least an hour Alcalá Street had been like a river of carriages that flowed toward the outskirts of the city between two banks of close-packed foot passengers. All kinds of vehicles, ancient and modern, figured in this tumultuous and noisy emigration, from the ancient diligence, brought to light like an anachronism, to the automobile. Crowded tramways passed with groups of people overflowing on their steps. Omnibuses carried people to the corner of Seville Street, while the conductor shouted "To the plaza! To the plaza!" Tasselled mules with jingling bells trotted ahead of open carriages in which rode women in white mantillas with bright flowers in their hair; every instant exclamations of alarm were heard at the escape, by apelike agility, of some boy beneath the wheels of a carriage as he crossed by leaps from one sidewalk to the other defying the current of vehicles. Automobile horns tooted; coachmen yelled; newsboys shouted the page with the picture and history of the bulls that were to be fought, or the likeness and biography of the famous matadores, and from time to time an explosion of curiosity swelled the deafening roar of the crowd.

Among the dark steeds of the mounted police rode gayly dressed caballeros with their legs rigidly encased in yellow leggings, wearing gilded jackets and beaver hats with heavy tassels in lieu of a cockade, mounted on thin and miserable hacks. They were the picadores. Aft on the crupper, behind the high Moorish saddle, rode an impish figure dressed in red, the mono sabio, or servant who had brought the troop of horses to their hostelry.

The cuadrillas passed in open coaches, and the embroidery of the bull-fighters, reflecting the afternoon light, seemed to dazzle the crowd and excite its enthusiasm. "That is Fuentes!" "That is Bomba!" And the people, pleased with the identification, followed the retreating carriages with greedy stare as if something startling were going to happen and they feared to be too late.

From the top of the hill on Alcalá Street the broad straight road shone white in the sun, with its rows of trees turning green at the breath of spring, the balconies black with people, and the highway only visible at intervals beneath the ant-like movement of the crowd and the rolling of the coaches descending to the Fountain of Cibeles. Here the hill rose again amid groves and tall buildings and the Puerta de Alcalá closed the perspective like a triumphal arch, rearing its perforated white mass against the blue space in which flecks of clouds floated like solitary swans.

Gallardo rode in silence, responding to the multitude with a fixed smile. Since his greeting to the banderilleros he had not spoken a word. They were also silent and pale with anxiety over the unknown. Being all bull-fighters together, they put aside as useless the gallantries necessary before the public.

A mysterious influence seemed to tell the crowd of the passing of the last cuadrilla that wound its way to the plaza. The vagabonds that ran behind the coach shouting after Gallardo had been outstripped and the group scattered among the carriages, but in spite of this the people turned their heads as if they divined the proximity of the celebrated bull-fighter behind them and they stopped, lining up against the edge of the sidewalk to see him better.

The women in the coaches in advance turned their heads, attracted by the jingling bells of the trotting mules. An indescribable roar rose from certain groups that barred the passage along the sidewalks. There were enthusiastic exclamations. Some waved their hats; others lifted canes and swung them in salutation.

Gallardo responded to all with grinning smile but in his preoccupation he seemed to take small account of these greetings. At his side rode Nacional, his confidential servant, a banderillero, older than himself by ten years, a rugged, strong man with brows grown together and a grave visage. He was famous among the men of the profession for his good nature, his manliness, and his political enthusiasms.

"Juan—don't complain of Madri'," said Nacional; "thou art made with the public."

But Gallardo, as if he did not hear him and as if he wished to get away from the thoughts that occupied him, answered:

"I feel it in my heart that something's going to happen this afternoon."

When they arrived at Cibeles the coach stopped. A great funeral was coming along the Prado from the Castellana, cutting through the avalanche of carriages from Alcalá Street.

Gallardo turned paler, contemplating with angry eyes the passing of the cross and the defile of the priests who broke into a grave chant as they gazed, some with aversion, others with envy, at that God-forgotten multitude running after amusement.

Gallardo made haste to take off his cap, in which he was imitated by all his banderilleros except Nacional.

"But damn it!" yelled Gallardo, "uncover, condenao!"

He looked furious, as though he would strike him, convinced by some confused intuition that this rebellion would cause the most terrible misfortune to befall him.

"Well, I take it off," said Nacional with the ill grace of a thwarted child, as he saw the cross pass on, "I take it off, but it is to the dead."

They were detained some time to let the long cortège pass.

"Bad sign!" muttered Gallardo in a voice trembling with anger. "Whoever would have thought of bringing a funeral along the road to the plaza? Damn it! I say something's going to happen to-day!"

Nacional smiled, shrugging his shoulders.

"Superstitions and fanaticisms! Neither God nor Nature bothers over these things."

These words, which irritated Gallardo still more, caused the grave preoccupation of the other bull-fighters to vanish, and they began to joke about their companion as they did on all occasions when he dragged in his favorite expression of "God or Nature."

When the road was clear the carriage began to move at the full speed of the mules, crowding along with the other vehicles that flowed to the plaza. Arrived there it turned to the left toward the gate of the stables that led to the enclosures and stalls, obliged to move now at slower pace among the dense crowd. Another ovation to Gallardo when he descended from the coach followed by his banderilleros; blows and pushes to keep his dress from unclean contact; smiles of greeting; concealment of the right hand which all wished to press.

"Make way, gentlemen! many thanks!"

The large enclosure between the body of the plaza and the walls of the outbuildings was full of the curious who wished to see the bull-fighters at close range before taking their seats. Above the heads of the crowd emerged the picadores and guards on horseback in their seventeenth century dress. At one side of the enclosure rose one-story brick buildings with vines over the doors and pots of flowers in the windows, a small community of offices, shops, stables, and houses in which lived the stable boys, the carpenters, and other employees of the bull-ring.

The matador pressed forward laboriously among the assemblage. His name passed from mouth to mouth with exclamations of enthusiasm.

"Gallardo! Here is Gallardo! Hurrah! Viva España!"

And he, wholly preoccupied by the adoration of the public, advanced swaggering, serene as a god, happy and satisfied, as if he were assisting at a feast in his honor.

Suddenly two arms encircled his neck, and a strong stench of wine assailed his nostrils.

"You smasher of women's hearts! You glorious one! Hurrah for Gallardo!"

It was a man of decent appearance; he rested his head on the swordsman's shoulder and thus remained as though falling asleep in spite of his enthusiasm. Gallardo's pushing, and the pulling of his friends, freed the bull-fighter from this interminable embrace. The drunken man, finding himself separated from his idol, broke out in shouts of enthusiasm. "Hurrah! Let all the nations of the world come to admire bull-fighters like this one and die of envy! They may have ships, they may have money, but that's trivial! They have neither bulls nor youths like this—no one to outstrip him in bravery. Hurrah, my boy! Viva mi tierra!"

Gallardo crossed a great white washed hall bare of furniture where his professional companions stood surrounded by enthusiastic groups. Way was immediately made among the crowd which obstructed a door, and he passed through it into a narrow, dark room, at the end of which shone the lights of the chapel. An ancient painting representing the Virgin of the Dove hung over the back of the altar. Four candles were burning before it and branches of moth-eaten cloth flowers in vases of common earthenware were falling to dust.

The chapel was full of people. The devotees of the humbler classes crowded in to see the great men close by. They remained in the dimness with uncovered head; some crowded into the foremost ranks, others stood on chairs and benches, the majority of them with their backs to the Virgin and looking greedily toward the door, ready to shout a name the instant they discerned the glitter of a spangled costume.

The banderilleros and picadores, poor devils who were going to expose their lives as much as were the maestros, scarcely raised the slightest murmur by their presence. Only the most fervent enthusiasts recognized their nicknames.

Suddenly a prolonged buzzing, a name repeated from mouth to mouth:

"Fuentes!—That is Fuentes!"

And this elegant bull-fighter with his air of gentility and his cape over his shoulder advanced to the altar and bent one knee with theatrical arrogance, his gypsy-like eyes reflecting the lights and his graceful and agile body thrown back as he looked upward. As soon as his prayer was said and he had made the sign of the cross he rose, walking backwards toward the door without losing sight of the image, like a singer who retires bowing to the audience.

Gallardo was more simple in his devotions. He entered swaggering with no less arrogance, cap in hand and his cape folded, but on finding himself in the presence of the image he fell on both knees and gave himself up to prayer, unconscious of the hundreds of eyes fixed on him. His simple Christian soul trembled with fear and remorse. He asked protection with the fervor of ingenuous men who live in continual danger and believe in all kinds of adverse influences and in supernatural protection.

For the first time during the whole exciting day he thought of his wife and mother. Poor Carmen, there in Seville awaiting the telegram! Señora Angustias, happy with her chickens at the farm of La Rinconada, without knowing for a certainty in what place her son fought the bulls to-day! And he with the terrible presentiment that this afternoon something was going to happen! Virgin of the Dove! Some little protection! He would be good, he would forget the other one, he would live as God commands.

And with his superstitious spirit strengthened with this vain repentance, he left the chapel with troubled eyes, still deeply stirred and heedless of the people who obstructed the way.

Outside in the room where the bull-fighters were waiting, a shaven-faced man, dressed in a black habit which he seemed to wear with a certain slovenliness, greeted him.

"Bad sign!" murmured the bull-fighter, continuing on his way. "When I say that something is going to happen to-day—"

The black-robed man was the chaplain of the plaza, an enthusiast in the art of bull-fighting, who had come with the Holy Oils beneath his habit. He was accompanied by a neighbor who served him as sacristan in exchange for a seat to see the bull-fight. On bull-fight days he hired a carriage, which the management paid for, and he chose by turns among his friends and protégés one on whom to confer the favor of the seat destined for the sacristan, beside his own in the front row near the doors of the bull-pen.

The priest entered the chapel with a proprietary air, scandalized at the behavior of the congregation; all had their hats off, but were talking in a loud voice and some were even smoking.

"Gentlemen, this is not a café. Be so kind as to go out. The bull-fight is going to begin."

This news caused a dispersion, while the priest took out the hidden Holy Oils and placed them in a box of painted wood. Then he too, as soon as he had secreted the sacred articles, ran out to take his place in the plaza before the appearance of the cuadrilla.

The crowd had disappeared. No one was to be seen in the enclosure but men dressed in silk and embroidery, yellow horsemen with great beaver hats, guards on horseback, and the assistants in their suits of gold and blue.

The bull-fighters formed with customary promptness before the horses' gate beneath an arch that gave exit to the plaza, the maestros at the front, then the banderilleros keeping far apart, and behind them, in the enclosure itself, stamped the sturdy rough squadron of the picadores, smelling of burnt hide and dung, mounted on skeleton-like horses with one eye bandaged. As rearguard of this army the teams of mules intended for dragging out the slaughtered bulls fretted behind them; they were restless, vigorous animals with shining coats, covered with trappings of tassels and bells, and wore on their collars the waving national flag.

Beyond the arch, above the wooden gates which half obstructed it, opened a narrow space, leaving visible a portion of the sky, the tiled roof of the plaza, and a section of seats with the compact multitude swarming like ants, amid which fans and papers seemed to flutter like gayly colored mosquitoes. Through this gallery entered a strong breeze—the respiration of an immense lung. An harmonious humming was borne on the undulations of the air, making certain distant music felt, rather divined than heard.

About the archway peeped heads, many heads; those of the spectators on the nearby benches were thrust forward, curious to see the heroes without delay.

Gallardo arranged himself in line with the other bull-fighters, who exchanged among themselves grave inclinations of the head. They did not speak; they did not smile. Each one thought of himself, letting his imagination fly far away; or he thought of nothing, lost in that intellectual void produced by emotion. They occupied themselves with a ceaseless arranging of the cape, throwing it loosely over the shoulder, rolling its ends about the waist, and trying to make their legs, encased in silk and gold, show agile and brave under this gorgeous funnel. Every face was pale, not with a deathly pallor, but brilliant and livid, with the sweaty gloss of emotion. They thought of the arena, still unseen, experiencing that irresistible terror of events that take place on the other side of a wall, that fear of the hidden, the unknown danger that makes itself felt though invisible. How would the afternoon end?

Behind the cuadrillas sounded the trotting of the horses that entered through the outer arcades of the plaza. They bore the constables with their long black cloaks and bell-shaped hats decorated with red and yellow feathers. They had just cleared the ring, emptying it of the curious, and they came to put themselves at the head of the cuadrillas, serving them as advance guards.

The doors of the archway and those of the barrier wall opposite opened wide. The great ring appeared, the real plaza, the circular space of sand where the tragedy of the afternoon was to be enacted for the excitement and entertainment of fourteen thousand souls. The harmonious and confused buzzing increased, developing into gay and bizarre music, a triumphal march of sounding brass that caused arms to swing martially and hips to swagger. Forward, ye brave!

And the bull-fighters, winking at the violent transition, passed from the shadow to the light, from the silence of the quiet gallery to the roar of the ring on whose surrounding seats surged the crowd in waves of curiosity, rising to their feet to see to better advantage.

The toreros advanced, seeming suddenly to diminish in size in comparison to the length of the perspective as they trod the arena. They resembled brilliant little puppets, whose embroideries caught rainbow reflections from the sun. Their graceful movements fired the people with an enthusiasm like to that of the child in the presence of a wonderful toy. The mad gust that stirred the crowds, causing their nerves to tingle and their flesh to creep, they knew not why, moved the whole plaza.

The people applauded, the more enthusiastic and nervous yelled, the music rumbled and, in the midst of this outburst which spread in every direction, from the door of the exit to the president's box, the cuadrillas advanced with solemn pace, the graceful movements of arms and bodies compensating for the shortness of step. In the ring of blue ether overhanging above the plaza white doves were winging as if frightened by the roar that escaped from this crater of brick.

The athletes felt themselves different men as they advanced across the arena. They exposed their lives for something more than money. Their uncertainty and terror in the presence of the unknown were left behind those barriers; now they were before the public; they faced reality. And the thirst for glory in their barbarous and simple souls, the desire to outstrip their comrades, their pride of strength and skill, blinded them, made them forget fear and filled them with a brutal courage.

Gallardo had become transfigured. He walked erect, aspiring to be taller; he moved with the arrogance of a conqueror. He gazed in all directions with a triumphant air, as though his two companions did not exist. Everything was his; the plaza and the public. He felt himself capable of killing every bull that roamed the pastures of Andalusia and Castile. All the applause was for him, he was sure of it. The thousands of feminine eyes shaded by white mantillas in boxes and benches, dwelt only on his person. He had no doubt of it. The public adored him and, as he advanced, smiling flippantly, as though the entire ovation were directed to his person, he looked along the rows of seats on the rising tiers knowing where the greater number of his partisans were grouped and seeming to ignore those sections where his rivals' friends were assembled.

They saluted the president, cap in hand, and the brilliant defile broke up, lackeys and horsemen scattering about the arena. Then, while a guard caught in his hat the key thrown by the president, Gallardo turned toward the rows of seats where sat his greatest admirers and handed them his glittering cape to keep for him. The handsome garment, grasped by many hands, was spread over the wall as though it were a banner, a sacred symbol of loyalty.

The most enthusiastic partisans stood waving hands and canes, greeting the matador with shouts manifesting their expectations. "Let the boy from Seville show what he can do!"

And he, leaning against the barrier, smiling, sure of his strength, answered, "Many thanks. What can be done will be done."

Not only were his admirers hopeful of him, but all the people fixed their attention upon him in a state of great excitement. He was a bull-fighter who seemed likely to meet with a catastrophe some day, and the sort of catastrophe which called for a bed in the hospital.

Every one believed he was destined to die in the plaza as the result of a horn-stab, and this very belief caused them to applaud him with homicidal enthusiasm, with barbaric interest like that of the misanthrope who follows an animal tamer from place to place, expecting every moment to see him devoured by his wild beasts.

Gallardo laughed at the old professors of tauromachy who consider a mishap impossible as long as the bull-fighter sticks to the rules of the art. Rules! He knew them not and did not trouble himself to learn them. Valor and audacity were all that were necessary to win. And, almost blindly, without other guide than his temerity, or other support than that of his physical faculties, he had risen rapidly, astonishing the public into paroxysms, stupefying it with wonder by his mad daring.

He had not climbed up, step by step, as had other matadores, serving long years first as peón and banderillero at the side of the maestros. He had never known fear of a bull's horns. "Hunger stabs worse." He had risen suddenly and the public had seen him begin as espada, achieving immense popularity in a few years.

They admired him for the reason that they held his misfortune a certainty. He fired the public with devilish enthusiasm for the blind way in which he defied Death. They gave him the same attention and care that they would give a criminal preparing for eternity. This bull-fighter was not one of those who held power in reserve; he gave everything, his life included. It was worth the money it cost. And the multitude, with the bestiality of those who witness danger from a point of safety, admired and urged the hero on. The prudent made wry faces at his deeds; they thought him a predestined suicide, shielded by luck, and murmured, "While he lasts!"

Drums and trumpets sounded and the first bull entered. Gallardo, with his plain working-cape over one arm, remained near the barrier close to the ranks of his partisans, in disdainful immobility, believing that the whole plaza had their eyes glued on him. That bull was for some one else. He would show signs of existence when his arrived. But the applause for the skilful cape-work of his companions brought him out of his quiet, and in spite of his intention he went at the bull, achieving several feats due more to audacity than to skill. The whole plaza applauded him, moved by predisposition in his favor because of his daring.

When Fuentes killed the first bull and walked toward the president's box, bowing to the multitude, Gallardo turned paler, as though all show of favor that was not for him was equivalent to ignominious oblivion. Now his turn was coming; great things were going to be seen. He did not know for a certainty what they might be but he was going to astound the public.

Scarcely had the second bull appeared when Gallardo, by his activity and his desire to shine, seemed to fill the whole plaza. His cape was ever near the bull's nose. A picador of his cuadrilla, the one called Potaje, was thrown from his horse and lay unprotected near the horns, but the maestro, grabbing the beast's tail, pulled with herculean strength and made him turn till the horseman was safe. The public applauded, wild with enthusiasm.

When the time for placing the banderillas arrived, Gallardo stood between the inner and outer barrier awaiting the bugle signal to kill. Nacional, with the banderilla in his hand, attracted the bull to the centre of the plaza. No grace nor audacity was in his bearing; it was merely a question of earning bread. Away in Seville were four small children who, if he were to die, would not find another father. To fulfil his duty and nothing more; only to throw his banderillas like a journeyman of tauromachy, without desire for ovations and merely well enough to avoid being hissed!

When he had placed the first pair, some of the spectators in the vast circle applauded, and others bantered the banderillero in a waggish tone, alluding to his hobbies.

"Less politics, and get closer!"

And Nacional, deceived by the distance, on hearing these shouts answered smiling, like his master:

"Many thanks; many thanks."

When Gallardo leaped anew into the arena at the sound of the trumpets and drums which announced the last play, the multitude stirred with a buzzing of emotion. This matador was its own. Now they were going to see something great.

He took the muleta from the hands of Garabato, who offered it folded as he came inside the walls; he grasped the sword which his servant also presented to him, and with short steps walked over and stood in front of the president's box carrying his cap in his hand. All craned their necks, devouring the idol with their eyes, but no one heard his speech. The arrogant, slender figure, the body thrown back to give greater force to his words, produced on the multitude the same effect as the most eloquent address. As he ended his peroration with a half turn, throwing his cap on the ground, enthusiasm broke out long and loud. Hurrah for the boy from Seville! Now they were to see the real thing! And the spectators looked at each other mutely, anticipating stupendous events. A tremor ran along the rows of seats as though they were in the presence of something sublime.

The profound silence produced by great emotions fell suddenly upon the multitude as though the plaza had been emptied. The life of so many thousands of persons was condensed into their eyes. No one seemed to breathe.

Gallardo advanced slowly toward the bull holding the muleta across his body like a banner, and waving his sword in his other hand with a pendulum-like movement that kept time with his step.

Turning his head an instant he saw that Nacional with another member of his cuadrilla was following to assist him, his cape over his arm.

"Stand aside, everybody!"

A voice rang out in the silence of the plaza making itself heard even to the farthest seats, and a burst of admiration answered it. "Stand aside, everybody!" He had said, "Stand aside, everybody!" What a man!

He walked up to the beast absolutely alone, and instantly silence fell again. He calmly readjusted the red flag on the stick, extended it, and advanced thus a few steps until he almost touched the nose of the bull, which stood stupefied and terrified by the audacity of the man.

The public dared not speak nor even breathe but admiration shone in their eyes. What a youth! He walked in between the very horns! He stamped the ground impatiently with one foot, inciting the beast to attack, and that enormous mass of flesh, defended by sharp horns fell bellowing upon him. The muleta passed over his horns, which grazed the tassels and fringes of the dress of the bull-fighter standing firm in his place, with no other movement than a backward bending of his body. A shout from the crowd answered this whirl of the muleta. Hurrah!

The infuriated beast returned; he re-attacked the man with the "rag," who repeated the pass, with the same roar from the public. The bull, made more and more furious by the deception, attacked the athlete who continued whirling the red flag within a short distance, fired by the proximity of danger and the wondering exclamations of the crowd that seemed to intoxicate him.

Gallardo felt the animal snort upon him; the moist vapor from its muzzle wet his right hand and his face. Grown familiar by contact he looked upon the brute as a good friend who was going to let himself be killed to contribute to his glory.

The bull stood motionless for some seconds as if tired of this play, gazing with hazy eyes at the man and at the red scarf, suspecting in his obscure mind the existence of a trick which with attack after attack was drawing him toward death.

Gallardo felt the presentiment of his happiest successes. Now! He rolled the flag with a circular movement of his left hand around the staff and he raised his right hand to the height of his eyes, standing with the sword pointing towards the neck of the beast.

The crowd was stirred by a movement of protest and horror.

"Don't strike yet," shouted thousands of voices. "No, no!"

It was too soon. The bull was not in good position; he would make a lunge and catch him. But Gallardo moved regardless of all rules of the art. What did either rules or life matter to that desperate man?

Suddenly he threw himself forward with his sword held before him, at the same time that the wild beast fell upon him. It was a brutal, savage encounter. For an instant man and beast formed a single mass and thus moved together several paces, no one knowing which was the conqueror, the man with an arm and part of his body lying between the two horns, or the beast lowering his head and trying to seize with his defences the puppet of gold and colors which seemed to be slipping away from him.

At last the group parted, the muleta lay on the ground like a rag, and the bull-fighter, his hands free, went staggering back from the impulse of the shock until he recovered his equilibrium a few steps away. His clothing was in disorder; his cravat floated outside his vest, gored and torn by one of the horns.

The bull raced on impelled by the momentum of his start. Above his broad neck the red hilt of the sword embedded to the cross scarcely protruded. Suddenly the animal paused, shuddering with a painful movement of obeisance, doubled his fore legs, inclined his head till his bellowing muzzle touched the sand, and finished by lying down with shudders of agony.

It seemed as if the very building would fall, as if the bricks dashed against one another, as if the multitude was about to fly panic-stricken, by the way it rose to its feet, pale, tremulous, gesticulating and throwing its arms. Dead! What a stroke! Every one had believed for a second that the matador was caught on the horns. All had felt sure they would see him fall upon the sand stained with blood and, as they beheld him standing up still giddy from the shock but smiling, surprise and amazement augmented the enthusiasm.

"How fierce!" they shouted from the tiers of seats, not finding a more fitting word to express their astonishment—" How rash!"

Hats flew into the arena and a deafening roar of applause, like a shower of hail, ran from row to row of seats as the matador advanced around the ring until he stood in front of the president's box.

The ovation burst out clamorously when Gallardo, extending his arms, saluted the president. All shouted, demanding for the swordsman the honors due to mastery. They must give him the ear. Never was this distinction so merited; few sword-thrusts like that had ever been seen; and the enthusiasm increased when a mozo of the plaza handed him a dark triangle, hairy and blood-stained—the point of one of the beast's ears.

The third bull was now in the ring, but the ovation to Gallardo continued as though the public had not yet recovered from its amazement; as though all that might occur during the rest of the bull-fight would be tame in comparison.

The other bull-fighters, pale with professional envy, strove valiantly to attract the attention of the public. Applause was given, but it was weak and faint after the former ovations. The public was exhausted by the delirium of its enthusiasm and heeded absent-mindedly the events that took place in the ring. Fiery discussions broke out and ran from tier to tier. The adherents of other bull-fighters, serene and unmoved by the transports that had overcome the people, took advantage of the spontaneous movement, to turn the discussion upon Gallardo. Very valiant, very daring, a suicide, they said, but that was not art. And the vehement adherents of the idol, proud of his audacity and carried away by their own feelings, became indignant like the believer who sees the miracles of his favorite saint held in doubt.

The attention of the public was diverted by incidents that disturbed the people on some of the tiers of seats. Suddenly those in one section moved; the spectators rose to their feet, turning their backs to the ring; arms and canes whirled above their heads. The rest of the crowd ceased looking at the arena, directing their attention to the seat of trouble and to the large numbers, painted on the inner wall, that marked the different sections of the amphitheatre.

"Fight in the third!" they yelled joyfully. "Now there's a row in the fifth!"

Following the contagious impulse of the crowd, all became excited and rose to their feet to see over their neighbors' heads but were unable to distinguish anything except the slow ascent of the police who, opening a passage from step to step, reached the group where the dispute had begun.

"Sit down!" exclaimed the more prudent, deprived of their view of the ring where the bull-fighters continued the game.

Little by little the waves of the multitude calmed, the rows of heads assumed their former regularity on the circular lines of the benches, and the bull-fight went on. But the nerves of the audience were shaken and their state of mind manifested itself in unjust animosity toward certain fighters or by profound silence.

The public, exhausted by the recent intense emotion, found all the events tame. They sought to allay their ennui by eating and drinking. The venders in the plaza went about between barreras, throwing with marvellous skill the articles bought. Oranges flew like red balls to the highest row, going from the hand of the seller to those of the buyer in a straight line, as if pulled by a thread. Bottles of carbonated drinks were uncorked. The liquid gold of Andalusian wines shone in little glasses.

A movement of curiosity circulated along the benches. Fuentes was about to fix the banderillas in his bull and every one expected some extraordinary show of skill and grace. He advanced alone to the centre of the plaza with the banderillas in one hand, serene, tranquil, walking slowly, as though he were to begin a game. The bull followed his movements with curious eyes, amazed to see the man alone before him after the former hurly-burly of fluttering and extended capes, of cruel barbs thrust into his neck, of horses that came and stood within reach of his horns, as if offering themselves to his attack.

The man hypnotized the beast. He drew near until he could touch his poll with the point of the banderillas, then he ran slowly away, with short steps, the bull after him, as though persuaded into obedience and drawn against his will to the extreme opposite side of the plaza. The animal seemed to be mastered by the bull-fighter; he obeyed him in all his movements until the man, calling the game ended, extended his arms with a banderilla in each hand, raised his small, slender body upon his toes, advanced toward the bull with majestic ease, and thrust the gayly colored darts into its neck.

Three times he performed the same feat, applauded by the public. Those who considered themselves connoisseurs retaliated now for the explosion of enthusiasm provoked by Gallardo. This was a bull-fighter! This was pure art.

Gallardo, standing near the barrier, wiped the sweat off his face with a towel which Garabato handed him. Then he turned his back on the ring to avoid seeing the prowess of his companion. Outside of the plaza he esteemed his rivals with that feeling of fraternity established by danger; but as soon as they stepped into the arena all were enemies and their triumphs pained him as if they were offences. Now the enthusiasm of the public seemed to him a robbery that diminished his own great triumph.

When the fifth bull came out, it was for him, and he sprang into the arena anxious to again startle the public by his daring.

When a picador fell he threw his cape and enticed the bull to the other side of the ring, confusing him with a series of movements until the beast became stupefied and stood motionless. Then Gallardo touched his nose with one foot, and took his cap and put it between the horns. Again, he took advantage of the animal's stupefaction and thrust his body forward as an audacious challenge, and knelt at a short distance, all but lying down under the brute's nose.

The old aficionados protested loudly. Monkey-shines! Clown-tricks, that would not have been tolerated in olden days! But they had to subside, wearied by the tumult of the public.

When the signal for the banderillas was given the people were thrown into suspense by seeing that Gallardo took the darts from Nacional and walked towards the beast with them. There was an exclamation of protest. He to throw the banderillas! All knew his inexperience in that direction. This ought to be left to those who had risen in their career step by step, for those who had been banderilleros many years at the side of their maestros before becoming bull-fighters; and Gallardo had begun at the top, killing bulls ever since he stepped into the plaza.

"No! No!" clamored the multitude.

Doctor Ruiz shouted and gesticulated from the contrabarrera.

"Leave off that, boy! Thou knowest but the great act—to kill!"

But Gallardo scorned the public and was deaf to its protests when he felt the impulse of audacity. Amidst the outcries he went directly towards the bull, which never moved and, zas! he stuck in the banderillas. The pair lodged out of place, and only skin deep, and one of the sticks fell at the beast's movement of surprise. But this mattered not. With that lenity the multitude ever feels for its idols, excusing and justifying their defects, the entire public commended this piece of daring by smiling. He, growing more rash, took other banderillas and lodged them, heedless of the protests of the people who feared for his life. Then he repeated the act a third time, each time doing it crudely but with such fearlessness that what in another would have provoked hisses was received with great explosions of admiration. What a man! How luck aided this daring youth!

The bull stood with only four of the banderillas in his neck, and those so lightly embedded that he did not seem to feel them.

"He is perfectly sound," yelled the devotees on the rows of seats, alluding to the bull, while Gallardo, grasping sword and muleta, marched up to him, with his cap on, arrogant and calm, trusting in his lucky star.

"Aside, all!" he shouted again.

Divining that some one was near him giving no heed to his orders he turned his head. Fuentes was a few steps away. He had followed him, his cape over his arm, feigning inattention but ready to come to his aid as though he felt a premonition of an accident.

"Leave me alone, Antonio," said Gallardo, with an expression that was at once angry and respectful, as though he were talking to an elder brother, at which Fuentes shrugged his shoulders as if he thus threw off all responsibility, and turned his back and walked away slowly, but feeling certain of being needed at any moment.

Gallardo waved his flag in the beast's very face and the latter attacked. "A pass! Hurrah!" the enthusiasts roared. But the animal suddenly returned, falling upon the matador again and giving him such a violent blow with his head that the muleta was knocked from his hands. Finding himself unarmed and hard-pressed he had to make for the barrera, but at the same instant Fuentes' cape distracted the animal. Gallardo, who divined during his flight the beast's sudden halt, did not jump over the barrera; he sat on the vaulting wall an instant, contemplating his enemy a few paces away. The rout ended in applause for this show of serenity.

Gallardo recovered the muleta and sword, carefully arranged the red flag, and again stood in front of the beast's head, less calmly, but dominated instead by a murderous fury, by a desire to kill instantly the animal that had made him run in sight of thousands of admirers.

He had scarcely made a pass with the flag when he thought the decisive moment had arrived and he squared himself, the muleta held low, the hilt of the sword raised close to his eyes.

The public protested again, fearing for his life.

"He'll throw thee! No! Aaay!"

It was an exclamation of horror that moved the whole plaza; a spasm that caused the multitude to rise to its feet with eyes staring while the women covered their faces or grasped the nearest arm in terror.

At the bull-fighter's thrust the sword struck bone, and, delayed in the movement of stepping aside on account of this difficulty, Gallardo had been caught by one of the horns and now hung upon it by the middle of his body. The brave youth, so strong and wiry, found himself tossed about on the end of the horn like a miserable manikin until the powerful beast, with a shake of his head, flung him some yards away, where he fell heavily on the sand with arms and legs extended, like a frog dressed in silk and gold.

"He is killed! A horn-stab in the belly!" They shouted from the rows of seats.

But Gallardo got up amidst the capes and the men who rushed to cover and save him. He smiled; he tested his body; then he raised his shoulders to indicate to the public that it was nothing. A jar—no more, and the belt torn to shreds. The horn had only penetrated the wrapping of strong silk.

Again he grasped the instruments of death, but now nobody would remain seated, divining that the encounter would be short and terrible. Gallardo marched towards the beast with a blind impulse determined to kill or die immediately, without delay or precaution. The bull or he! He saw red, as if blood had been injected into his eyes. He heard, as something distant that came from another world, the outcry of the multitude counselling calmness.

He made only two passes, aided by a cape that he held at his side, then suddenly, with the swiftness of a dream, like a spring that is loosed from its fastening, he threw himself upon the bull, giving him a stab that his admirers said was swift as a lightning stroke. He thrust his arm so far over that on escaping from between the horns he received a blow from one of them which sent him staggering away; but he kept on his feet, and the beast, after a mad run, fell at the extreme opposite side of the plaza and lay with his legs bent under him and the top of his head touching the sand until the puntillero came to finish him. The public seemed to go mad with enthusiasm. A glorious bull-fight! It was surfeited with excitement. That fellow Gallardo did not rob one of his money; he responded with excess to the price of entrance. The devotees would have material to talk about for three days at their meetings at the café. How brave! how fierce! And the most enthusiastic, with warlike fervor, looked in every direction as if searching for enemies.

"The greatest matador in the world! And here am I to face whoever dare say to the contrary!"

The remainder of the bull-fight scarcely claimed attention. It all seemed tasteless and colorless after Gallardo's daring.

When the last bull fell upon the sand a surging crowd of boys, of popular devotees, of apprentices of the art of bull-fighting, invaded the ring. They surrounded Gallardo, following him on his way from the president's box to the door of exit. They crowded against him, all wishing to press his hand or touch his dress, and at last, the most vehement, paying no attention to the gesticulations of Nacional and the other banderilleros, caught the master by the legs and raised him to their shoulders, carrying him around the ring and through the galleries to the outer edge of the plaza.

Gallardo, taking off his cap, bowed to the groups that applauded his triumph. Wrapped in his glittering cape, he allowed himself to be carried like a divinity, motionless and erect above the current of Cordovan hats and Madrid caps, amidst acclamations of enthusiasm.

As he stepped into his carriage at the lower end of Alcalá Street, hailed by the crowd that had not seen the bull-fight, but which already knew of his triumphs, a smile of pride, of satisfaction in his own strength, illuminated his sweaty countenance over which the pallor of emotion still spread.

Nacional, anxious about the master's having been caught and about his violent fall, wished to know if he felt any pain, and if he should call Doctor Ruiz.

"It's nothing; a petting, nothing more. No bull alive can kill me."

But as though in the midst of his pride arose the recollection of his past weaknesses, and as though he thought he saw in Nacional's eyes an ironic expression, he added:

"Those are things that affect me before going to the plaza; something like hysteria in women. But thou art right, Sebastián. How sayest thou? God or Nature, that's it; neither God nor Nature should meddle in affairs of bull-fighting. Every one gets through as he can, by his skill or by his courage, and recommendations from earth or from heaven are of no use to him. Thou hast talent, Sebastián; thou shouldst have studied for a career."

In the optimism of his joy he looked upon the banderillero as a sage, forgetting the jests with which he had always received the latter's topsy-turvy reasoning.

When he reached his lodging he found many admirers in the vestibule anxious to embrace him. They talked of his deeds with such hyperbole that they seemed altered, exaggerated, and transfigured by the comments made in the short distance from the plaza to the hotel.

Upstairs his room was full of friends, gentlemen who thoued him, and, imitating the rustic speech of the country people, shepherds and cattle-breeders, said to him, slapping his shoulders:

"Thou hast done very well; but really, very well!"

Gallardo freed himself from this enthusiastic reception and went out into the corridor with Garabato.

"Go and send a telegram home. Thou knowest what to say: 'As usual.'"

Garabato protested. He must help the maestro undress. The servants of the hotel would take charge of sending the despatch.

"No, I wish it to be thou. I will wait. Thou must send another telegram. Thou already knowest who to—to that lady; to Doña Sol. Also 'As usual.'"

CHAPTER III
BORN FOR THE BULL-RING

WHEN Señora Angustias was bereft of her husband, Señor Juan Gallardo, the well known cobbler established in a portal in the ward of the Feria, she wept with the disconsolateness due the event, but at the same time, in the depths of her soul, she felt the satisfaction of one who rests after a long journey, freed from an overwhelming burden.

"Poor fellow, joy of my heart! May God keep him in His glory. So good! So industrious!"

During twenty years of life together, he had not caused her greater sorrows than those the rest of the women of the ward had to bear. Of the three pesetas he averaged as a result of his labor he handed over one to Señora Angustias for the support of the house and family, using the other two for personal entertainment and for keeping up appearances among his friends. He was obliged to respond to the attentions of his companions when they invited him to a convivial glass, and the famous Andalusian wine, since it is the glory of God, costs dear. Also it was inevitable that he should go to see the bulls, because a man who does not drink nor attend bull-fights—why is he in the world?

Señora Angustias with her two children, Encarnación and little Juan, had to sharpen her wits and develop numerous talents in order to keep the family together. She worked as a servant in the houses nearest her ward, sewed for the women of the neighborhood, sold clothing and trinkets for a certain brokeress, a friend of hers, and made cigarettes for the gentlemen, recalling her youthful aptitude when Señor Juan, an enthusiastic and favored lover, used to come and wait for her at the door of the Tobacco Factory.

Never could she complain of infidelity or ill-treatment on the part of her husband. On Saturdays when the cobbler used to come home drunk in the late hours of the night supported by his friends, joy and tenderness came with him. Señora Angustias had to drag him into the house, for he was determined to remain outside the door clapping his hands and intoning, with slobbery voice, tender love songs dedicated to his corpulent companion. And when the door was at last closed behind him, depriving the neighbors of a source of entertainment, Señor Juan, in a state of sentimental drunkenness, insisted on seeing the sleeping children; he kissed them, wetting their little faces with great tear-drops, and repeated his verses in honor of Señora Angustias (Hurrah! the greatest woman in the world!) till finally the good wife was compelled to cease frowning and to laugh while she undressed him and managed him as if he were a sick child.

This was his only vice. Poor fellow! There was not a sign of women or of gambling. His self-esteem which made him go well dressed while the family went in rags, and his unequal division of the products of his labor, were both compensated by generous incentives. Señora Angustias recollected with pride the great feast days when Juan had her put on her Manila shawl, her wedding mantilla, and, with the children walking in advance, he strode at her side with white Cordovan hat and silver handled cane, taking a walk along Delicias with the same air as any shopkeeper's family from Sierpes Street. On cheap bull-fight days he courted her pompously before going to the plaza, offering her glasses of wine at La Campana or at a café in the New Plaza. This happy time was now but a faint and pleasant memory in the recollection of the poor woman.

Señor Juan fell ill of phthisis and for two years the wife had to care for him, making still greater exertions in her industries to compensate for the lack of the peseta her husband used to turn over to her. At last he died in the hospital, resigned to his fate, convinced that existence was of no value without Andalusian wine and without bulls, and his last look of love and gratitude was for his wife, as if he would call out with his eyes: "Hurrah! the greatest woman in the world!"

When Señora Angustias was left alone her position did not change for the worse,—rather for the better. She enjoyed greater liberty in her movements, freed from the man who for the last two years had weighed more heavily upon her than the rest of the family. Being an energetic woman and of prompt decision, she immediately marked out a career for her children. Encarnación, who was now sixteen, went to the Tobacco Factory, where her mother was able to introduce her, thanks to her relations with certain friends of her youth who had become overseers. Juanillo, who as a lad had passed his days in the portal of the Feria watching his father work, should be a shoemaker, according to the will of Señora Angustias. She took him out of school, where he had learned to read but poorly, and at twelve he became an apprentice to one of the best shoemakers in Seville.

And now the martyrdom of the poor woman began.

Ah, that boy! Son of such honorable parents! Almost every day, instead of going to his master's shop he went to the slaughter-house with certain rascals who had their meeting place on a bench in the Alameda of Hercules and who delighted to flaunt a cape under the nose of young bullocks for the entertainment of herders and butchers, generally getting upset and trampled upon. Señora Angustias, who often toiled far into the night, needle in hand, so that the boy might go to the shop neat, with his clothing clean and mended, met him at the door when he came home with his pantaloons torn, his jacket dirty, and his face covered with lumps and scratches, afraid to enter yet without courage to flee owing to his hunger.

The welts made by his mother's blows and the marks of the broom-handle were added to the bruises of the treacherous bullocks, but the hero of the slaughter-house suffered them all, provided he did not lack his daily rations. "Beat me, but give me something to eat." And with his appetite awakened by violent exercise, he devoured the hard bread, the spoiled beans, the stale cod-fish, all the cheap food the diligent woman sought in the shops in the effort to maintain the family on her scanty earnings.

Toiling all day scrubbing floors, only now and then did she have an afternoon in which she could concern herself with her son's welfare and go to the cobbler's to learn of the progress of the apprentice. When she returned from the shoe-maker's shop she was puffing and blowing with anger and resolved upon terrible punishments to correct the vagabond.

Most of the time he failed to present himself at the shop at all. He spent the morning at the slaughter-house and in the afternoons he formed one of the group of vagabonds collected at the entrance of Sierpes Street, admiring at close range the bull-fighters out of work who gathered in Campana Street, dressed in new clothes, with resplendent hats but with no more than a peseta in their pockets, though each one was bragging of his exploits.

Little Juan contemplated them as if they were beings of marvellous superiority, envying their fine carriage and the boldness with which they flattered the women. The idea that each of these had at home a suit of silk embroidered with gold, and that with it on he strode before the multitude to the sound of music, produced a thrill of respect.

The son of Señora Angustias was known as the Little Cobbler among his ragged friends, and he showed satisfaction at having a nickname, as have nearly all the great men who appear in the ring. A foundation must be laid somewhere. He wore around his neck a red handkerchief which he had pilfered from his sister, and from beneath his cap his hair fell over his ears in thick locks which he carefully plastered down. He wore his plaited blouses of drill tucked into his trousers, which were ancient relics of his father's wardrobe made over by Señora Angustias; he insisted these must be high in the waist with the legs wide and the hips well tightened, and wept with humiliation when his mother would not yield to these exactions.

A cape! If only he might possess a fighting cape and not have to beg from other more fortunate boys the loan of the coveted "rag" for a few minutes! In a poor little room at home lay an old forgotten empty mattress case. Señora Angustias had sold the wool in days of stress. The Little Cobbler spent a morning locked in the room, taking advantage of the absence of his mother who was working as a servant in a priest's house.

With the ingenuity of a shipwrecked mariner on a desert isle who, thrown upon his own resources, must construct everything necessary to his existence, he cut a fighting cape from the damp and half-frayed cloth. Then he boiled in a pot a handful of red aniline bought at a druggist's, and dipped the ancient cotton in this dye. Little Juan admired his work—a cape of the most vivid scarlet that would arouse the greatest envy at the bull-baiting in the surrounding towns! Nothing remained but to dry it and he hung it in the sun beside the neighbor women's white clothes. The wind blew the dripping cloth about, bespattering the nearest pieces, until a chorus of curses and threats, clenched fists, and mouths that pronounced the ugliest of words against him and his mother, obliged the Little Cobbler to grasp his mantle of glory and take to his heels, his hands and face dyed red as though he had just committed a murder.

Señora Angustias, a strong, corpulent, be-whiskered woman who was not afraid of men, and inspired the respect of women for her energetic resolutions, was disheartened and weak in the presence of her son. What could she do? Her hands had pummelled every part of the boy's body; brooms were broken on him without beneficial results. That little imp had, according to her, the flesh of a dog. Accustomed outside of the house to the tremendous butting of the steers, to the cruel trampling of the cows, to the clubs of herders and butchers who beat the band of vagabond bull-fighters without compassion, his mother's blows seemed to him a natural event, a continuation of his life outside prolonged inside the home, and he accepted them without the least intention of mending his ways, as a fee which he must pay in exchange for his sustenance, chewing the hard bread with hungry enjoyment, while the maternal maledictions and blows rained on his back.

Scarcely was his hunger appeased when he fled from the house, taking advantage of the freedom in which Señora Angustias left him when she absented herself on her round of duties.

In Campana Street, that venerable haunt of the bull-fighters where the gossip of the great doings of the profession circulated, he received information about his companions that gave him tremors of enthusiasm.

"Little Cobbler, a bull-fight to-morrow."

The towns in the province celebrated the feasts of their patron saints with cape-teasing of bulls which had been rejected from the great plazas, and to these the young bull-fighters went in the hope of being able to say on their return that they had held the cape in the glorious plazas of Aznalcollar, Bollullos, or Mairena. They started on the journey at night with the cape over the shoulder if it were summer, or wrapped in it if winter, their stomachs empty, their heads full of visions of bulls and glory.

If the trip were of several days' journey they camped in the open, or they were admitted through charity to the hayloft of an inn. Alas for the grapes, melons, and figs they found by the way in those happy times! Their only fear was that another band, another cuadrilla, possessed of the same idea, would present itself in the pueblo and set up an opposition.

When they reached the end of their journey, with their eyebrows and mouths full of dust, tired and foot-sore from the march, they presented themselves to the alcalde and the boldest among them who performed the functions of director talked of the merits of his men. All considered themselves happy if the municipal generosity sheltered them in a stable of the hostelry and regaled them with a pot of stew in addition, which they would clean up instantly. In the village plaza enclosed by wagons and boards, they let loose aged bulls, regular forts of flesh covered with scabs and scars, with enormous saw-edged horns; cattle which had been fought many years in all the feasts of the province; venerable animals that "understood the game," such was their malice. Accustomed to one continual bull-fight they were in the secret of the tricks of the contest.

The youths of the pueblo pricked on the beasts from their place of safety and the people longed for an object of diversion greater than the bull—in the bull-fighters from Seville. These waved their capes, their legs trembling, their courage borne down by the weight of their stomachs. A tumble, and then great clamor from the public! When one in sudden terror took refuge behind the palisades, rural barbarity received him with insults, beating the hands clutching at the wood, pounding him on the legs to make him jump back into the ring. "Get back there, poltroon! Fraud, to turn your face from the bull."

At times one of the young swordsmen was borne out of the ring by four companions, pale as a sheet of white paper, his eyes glassy, his head fallen, his breast like a broken bellows. The veterinary came, quieting them all on seeing no blood. The boy was suffering from the shock of being thrown some yards and falling on the ground like a rag torn from a piece of clothing. Again it was the agony of having been stepped on by a beast of enormous weight. A bucket of water was thrown on his head and then, when he recovered his senses, they treated him to a long drink of brandy. A prince could not be better cared for!

To the ring again! And when the herder had no more bulls to let out and night was drawing near, two of the cuadrilla grasped the best cape belonging to the society and holding it by its edges went from one viewing stand to another soliciting a contribution. Copper coins fell upon the red cloth in proportion to the pleasure the strangers had given the country people; and, the bull-baiting ended, they started on their return to the city, knowing that they had exhausted their credit at the inn. Often they fought on the way over the distribution of the pieces of copper which they carried in a knotted handkerchief. Then the rest of the week, they recounted their deeds before the fascinated eyes of their companions who had not been members of the expedition.

Once Señora Angustias spent an entire week without hearing from her son. At last she heard vague rumors of his having been wounded in a bull-scrimmage in the town of Tocina. Dios mío! Where might that town be? How reach it? She gave up her son for dead, she wept for him, she longed to go; and then as she was getting ready to start on her journey, she saw little Juan coming home, pale, weak, but talking with manly joy of his accident.

It was nothing—a horn-stab in one thigh; a wound a fraction of an inch deep. And in the shamelessness of triumph he wanted to show it to the neighbors, affirming that a finger could be thrust into it without reaching its end. He was proud of the stench of iodoform that he shed as he walked, and he talked of the attention they had shown him in that town, which he considered the finest in Spain. The wealthiest citizens, one might say the aristocracy, interested themselves in his case, the alcalde had been to see him and later paid his way home. He still had three duros in his pocket, which he handed to his mother with the generosity of a great man. So much glory at fourteen! His satisfaction was yet greater when some genuine bull-fighters in Campana Street fixed their attention on the boy and asked him how his wound was getting along.

His companion in poverty was Chiripa, a boy of the same age, with a small body and malicious eyes, without father or mother, who had tramped about Seville ever since he had attained the use of his faculties. Chiripa was a master of the roving life and had travelled over the world. The two boys started on a journey empty of pocket, without other equipment than their capes, miserable cast-offs acquired for a few reales from a second-hand clothing store.

They clambered cautiously into trains and hid under seats. Often they were surprised by a trainman and, to the accompaniment of kicks and blows, were left by him on the platform of some solitary station while the train vanished like a lost hope. They awaited the arrival of another, spending the night in the open, employing the cunning of primitive man to satisfy their necessities, crawling round about country houses to steal some solitary chicken, which, after wringing the fowl's neck, they would broil over a fire of dry wood and devour scorched and half raw, with the voracity of young savages.

Often when they slept in the open air near a station awaiting the passing of a train, a couple of guards would come up to them. On seeing the red bundles that served as pillows for these vagabonds, their suspicions were quieted. They gently removed the boys' caps, and on finding the hairy appendage they went away laughing without further investigation. These were not young thieves; they were apprentices who were going to the capeas. And in this tolerance there was a mixture of sympathy for the national sport and of respect for the obscure possibilities of the future. Who could tell if one of these ragged youths, despite his present appearance of poverty, might not in the future be a "star of the art," a great man who would kill bulls for the entertainment of kings, and live like a prince, and whose deeds and sayings would be exploited in the newspapers?

One afternoon, the Little Cobbler was left alone in a town of Extremadura. For the admiration of the rustic audience which applauded the famous bull-fighters "come purposely from Seville," the two boys threw banderillas at a fierce and ancient bull. Little Juan stuck his pair into the beast and was posing near a view-stand, proudly receiving the popular ovation of tremendous hand-clappings and proffers of cups of wine, when an exclamation of horror sobered him in his intoxication of glory. Chiripa was no longer on the ground of the plaza; only the banderillas rolling in the dust, one slipper and a cap were there. The bull was moving about as if irritated by some obstacle, carrying hooked on one of his horns a bundle of clothing resembling a puppet. With the violent tossing of his head the shapeless roll was loosened from the horn, ejecting a red stream, but before touching the ground it was caught by the opposite horn which in its turn tossed it about during what seemed an interminable time. At last, the sorry bulk fell to the dust and there it stayed, flabby and inert, like a punctured wine-skin expelling its contents.

The herder with his leaders took the bull into the corral, for no one else dared go near him, and poor Chiripa was carried upon a stretcher to a wretched little room in the town-house that served as a jail. His companion looked at him with a face as white as if made of plaster. Chiripa's eyes were glazed and his body was red with the blood which could not be stopped by the cloths wet with water and vinegar, which were applied in lieu of anything better.

"Adio', Little Cobbler!" he moaned. "Adio', Juanito!"

And he said no more. The companion of the dead youth, terrified, started on his return to Seville still seeing his glassy eyes, hearing his mournful good-bye. He was filled with fear. A gentle cow appearing in his path would have made him run. He thought of his mother and of the prudence of her counsel. Would it not be better to dedicate himself to shoemaking and live tranquilly? But these resolutions only lasted while he was alone. When he reached Seville he felt the return of exhilaration. Friends rushed to him to hear about the death of poor Chiripa in every detail. Professional bull-fighters questioned him in Campana Street, remembering with pity the little vagabond with the pock-marked face who had often run errands for them. Juan, fired by such signs of consideration, gave rein to his powerful imagination, describing how he had thrown himself upon the bull when he had seen his poor companion hooked, how he had grabbed the beast by the tail and achieved even more wonderful feats, in spite of which the other boy had left this world.

The impulse of fear vanished. Bull-fighter—nothing but a bull-fighter! Since others were, why should he not be one? He recollected his mother's spoiled beans and hard bread; the deprivation each pair of new pantaloons had cost him; the hunger, that inseparable companion of many of his expeditions. Moreover he had a vehement desire for all the joys and displays of life; he gazed with envy at the coaches and the horses; he stood transfixed before the doors of the great houses through whose iron grilles he saw courtyards of Oriental sumptuousness and arcades of colored tiles, pavements with marble and chattering fountains casting a stream of pearls day and night into a basin surrounded by foliage. His fate was sealed. To kill bulls or die! To be rich, to have the newspapers talk of him, and to have the people bow to him, even though it were at the price of his life. He despised the lower grades of the art. He saw the banderilleros expose their lives equally with the swordsmen in exchange for thirty duros for each bull-fight; and, after a round of toil and horn-stabs, become old, with no other future than some wretched business bought with paltry savings, or else a position at the slaughter-house. Some died in the hospital; others begged alms from their youthful companions. He would have nothing to do with banderilleros nor with spending long years in a cuadrilla in submission to the despotism of a maestro. He would begin with killing bulls; he would tread the sand of the plazas as a swordsman!

The misfortune of poor Chiripa gave him a certain ascendency over his companions, and he formed a cuadrilla of ragged youths who marched behind him to the capeas of the pueblos. They respected him because he was braver and better dressed. Some young girls of the street, attracted by the manly beauty of the Little Cobbler, who was now in his eighteenth year, and predisposed by his coleta, disputed in noisy competition the honor of taking care of his comely person. Moreover he counted on a patron, an old magistrate who had a weakness for the courage of young bull-fighters and whose friendship infuriated Señora Angustias and caused her to let loose some most indecent expressions which she had learned at the Tobacco Factory in her younger days.

The Little Cobbler dressed himself in suits of English cloth well fitted to the elegance of his figure, and his hat was always resplendent. His friends took scrupulous care of the whiteness of his collars and furbelows, and on certain days he proudly wore on his waistcoat a heavy gold chain, a loan from his respectable friend, that had already figured around the necks of other "boys who were starting out."

He mingled with broken-down bull-fighters; he could pay for the drinks of the old peones who recalled the deeds of famous swordsmen. It was believed for a certainty that some protectors were exerting themselves in favor of this "boy," awaiting a propitious occasion for him to make his début in a fight of young bullocks in the plaza of Seville.

The Little Cobbler was now a matador. One day, at Lebrija, when a lively little young bull came into the plaza, his companions had urged him on to the greatest luck. "Dost thou dare to kill him?" And he killed him! Henceforward, fired by the ease with which he had escaped danger, he went to all the capeas in which they announced that a bull was to be killed, and to all the granges where bulls were to be fought to the death.

The proprietor of La Rinconada, a rich farmer with a small bull-ring, was an enthusiast who kept his table set and his hayloft open for all the hungry who wished to divert him by fighting his cattle. Juan went there in days of poverty with other companions, to eat and drink to the health of the rural hidalgo, although it might be at the price of some rough tumbling. They arrived afoot after a two days' tramp and the proprietor, seeing the dusty troop with their bundles of capes, said solemnly:

"Whoever does the best work, I'll buy him a ticket that he may return to Seville on the train."

Two days the lord of the farm spent smoking on the balcony of his plaza while the boys from Seville fought young bulls, being frequently caught and trampled.

He sharply reproved a poorly executed cape-play, and called out, "Get up off the ground, you big coward! Come, give him wine to get him over his fright," when a boy persisted in remaining stretched on the ground after a bull had passed over his body.

The Little Cobbler killed a bull in a manner so much to the liking of the owner that the latter seated him at his table while his comrades stayed in the kitchen with the herders and farm laborers, dipping their horn spoons into the steaming broth.

"Thou hast earned the return by railroad, my brave youth. Thou wilt travel far if thou dost not lose heart. Thou hast promise."

The Little Cobbler, starting on his return to Seville second class while the cuadrilla tramped afoot, thought that a new life was beginning for him, and he cast a look of covetousness at the enormous plantation with its extensive olive orchards, its fields of grain, its mills, its meadows stretching out of sight in which were pasturing thousands of goats, while bulls and cows lay quietly chewing the cud. What wealth! If only he might some day come to possess something like that!

CHAPTER IV
AT CARMEN'S WINDOW-GRILLE

GALLARDO'S prowess in fighting young bulls in the pueblos, heralded in Seville, caused the restless and insatiable amateurs, ever seeking a new luminary to eclipse those already discovered, to fix their attention upon him.

"He certainly is a boy of wonderful promise," they used to say, on seeing him pass along Sierpes Street with short step, swinging his arms arrogantly. "He must be seen on classic ground." This ground for them and for the Little Cobbler was the ring of the plaza at Seville. The boy was soon to find himself face to face with the real thing. His protector had acquired for him a spangled costume, somewhat worn, a cast-off of some bull-fighter who had failed to win a name. A corrida of young bulls was arranged for a benefit, and influential devotees, eager for novelty, managed to include him in the programme gratuitously, as matador.

The son of Señora Angustias declined to appear in the announcements under his nickname of Little Cobbler, which he desired to forget. He would have nothing to do with stage names, and less with menial offices. He wished to be known by the names of his father, he desired to be Juan Gallardo; no nickname should recall his origin to the great people who undoubtedly would become his friends of the future.

The whole ward of the Feria flocked en masse to the corrida with a noisy and patriotic fervor. The dwellers in the ward of Macarena also showed their interest and the other popular wards allowed themselves to be carried away with equal enthusiasm. A new matador for Seville! There was not room for all and thousands were left outside the plaza anxiously awaiting the news of the corrida.

Gallardo fought, killed, was knocked down by a bull without being hurt, and kept the public in constant anxiety by his daring, which generally resulted fortunately and provoked colossal bellowings of enthusiasm. Certain devotees, esteemed for their opinions, smiled complacently. He had much to learn but he had courage and ambition, which is the important thing.

"Above all, he goes in to really kill 'in classic style,' and he keeps inside the field of reality."

At the opposite side of the plaza the old magistrate smiled compassionately beneath his white beard, admiring the boy's bravery and the fine appearance he made in the spangled costume. When he saw him knocked down by the bull he fell back into his seat as if he were going to faint. That was too much for him.

In one section proudly strutted the husband of Encarnación, Gallardo's sister, a leather-worker by trade, a prudent man, an enemy of vagrancy, who had married the cigarette girl, captured by her charms, but under the express condition of having nothing to do with her scamp of a brother.

Gallardo, offended by his brother-in-law's distrust, had never ventured into his shop, which was situated in the outskirts of Macarena, nor descended from the ceremonious you when now and then of an afternoon he met him at his mother's house.

"I am going to see how that shameless brother of thine dodges the oranges," he had said to his wife as he set out for the plaza.

And now, from his seat, he bowed to the swordsman, calling him Juaniyo, saying thou, playing the peacock, content when the young bull-fighter, attracted by the many shouts, saw him at last and returned the greeting with a salute of his sword.

"He is my brother-in-law," said the leather-worker so that those near him might admire him. "I have always known the boy would amount to something at bull-fighting. My wife and I have helped him much."

The finale was triumphal. The multitude rushed impetuously upon Juanillo, as if they were about to devour him by their outbursts of enthusiasm. Fortunately the brother-in-law was present to impose order, to shield him with his body, and to conduct him to the hired coach in which he seated himself at the bull-fighter's side.

When they arrived at the house in the ward of the Feria an immense crowd was following the carriage with shouts of joy and acclamations of praise that brought the people crowding to the doors. The news of the triumph had reached there ahead of the swordsman and the neighbors ran out to see him and to press his hand.

Señora Angustias and her daughter were at the door. The leather-worker stepped out almost arm in arm with his brother-in-law, monopolizing him, shouting and gesticulating in the name of the family that nobody should touch him, as if he were a sick man.

"Here he is, Encarnación," he said, shoving him toward his wife, "Not even Roger de Flor himself—"

And Encarnación had no need to ask more, for she knew that her husband vaguely considered this historic individual the personification of all greatness and that he only ventured to connect his name with portentous circumstances.

Certain enthusiastic neighbors who came from the corrida flattered Señora Angustias, crying, "Blessed be the mother that has given birth to such a valiant youth!"

Her friends overwhelmed her with their exclamations. What luck! And what sums of money he soon was going to earn!

The poor woman wore in her eyes an expression of astonishment and doubt. And was it really her little Juan that had made the people run with such enthusiasm? Had they gone mad?

But she suddenly fell upon him as if all the past had vanished; as if her worry and fretting were a dream; as if she confessed a shameful error. Her great flabby arms wound around the bull-fighter's neck and her tears wetted his cheeks.

"My son! Little Juan! If thy poor father could only see thee!"

"Don't cry, mother—for this is a day of joy. You shall see. If God gives me luck I will build you a house and your friends shall see you in a carriage and you shall wear all the Manila shawls you want."

The leather-worker received these promises of greatness with signs of affirmation in the presence of his astonished wife, who had not yet recovered from her surprise at this radical change.

"Yes, Encarnación; this youth will do it all if he undertakes it. It was extraordinary. Not even Roger de Flor himself—!"

That night in the taverns and cafés of the popular wards they talked only of Gallardo. The bull-fighter of the future! He has flourished like the very roses. This boy is going to get away the favors from all the Cordovan caliphs.

In these assertions was revealed Sevillian pride in constant rivalry with the people of Córdova, which was also a land of good bull-fighters.

Gallardo's existence changed completely from this day. The young gentlemen greeted him and made him sit among them around the doors of the cafés. The pretty girls who formerly satisfied his hunger and took care of his adornment, found themselves little by little repelled with smiling disregard. Even the old protector prudently withdrew in view of a certain indifference and bestowed his tender friendship on other boys who were just beginning.

The management of the bull-plaza sought out Gallardo, humoring him as if he were already a celebrity. By announcing his name on the programmes success was assured, the plaza filled. The masses applauded wildly the "boy of Señora Angustias," giving tongue to tales of his valor. Gallardo's fame extended through Andalusia, and the leather-worker, without being solicited, mixed in everything and played the part of defender of his brother-in-law's interests. A thoughtful and expert man in business, according to himself, he saw the course of his life marked out.

"Thy brother," he would say to his wife at night as they went to bed, "needs a practical man at his side to manage his interests. Dost thou suppose he would think well of naming me his manager? A great thing for him! Not even Roger de Flor himself! And for us—?"

The leather-worker contemplated in imagination the great riches Gallardo was going to gain, and he thought also of his own five sons and those that were still to come. Who could tell if what the swordsman earned should fall to his nephews?

For a year and a half Juan killed bullocks in the best plazas of Spain. His fame had reached Madrid. The devotees at the capital felt a curiosity to see the "Sevillian boy" of whom the newspapers talked so much and of whom the "intelligent" Andalusians boasted.

Gallardo, escorted by a group of friends from his native city who were residing in Madrid, strutted along the sidewalk of Seville Street near the Café Inglés. The pretty girls smiled at his compliments and their eyes followed the toreador's heavy gold chain and his big diamond ornaments acquired with his first earnings and on credit—discounting the future. A matador must show that he has an overplus of money by decorating his person and treating everybody generously. How far away were those days when he, with poor Chiripa, tramped along that same pavement, afraid of the police, contemplating the bull-fighters with admiration and picking up the stubs of their cigars!

His work in Madrid was lucky. He made friends and formed around him a group of enthusiasts hungry for novelty who also proclaimed him the "bull-fighter of the future" and complained because he had not yet received the "alternative."

"He's going to earn money by basketfuls, Encarnación," said the brother-in-law. "He is going to have millions, if he doesn't have some bad luck."

The life of the family changed completely. Gallardo, mingling with the young gentlemen of Seville, did not wish his mother to continue living in the house where she had passed her days of poverty. On his account they had moved to a better street in the city, but Señora Angustias inclined to remain faithful to the ward of the Feria, with the love which simple people feel as they grow old for the places where their youth was spent.

They lived in a much better house. The mother did not work and the neighbors paid her homage, finding in her a generous lender in their days of stress. Juan possessed, besides the loud and showy jewels with which he adorned his person, that supreme luxury of every bull-fighter, a powerful sorrel mare, with a cowboy saddle and a fine blanket bordered with multicolored fringe across the pommel. Mounted on her he trotted along the streets with no other object than to receive the homage of his friends, who greeted his elegance with noisy "Olés!" This satisfied his desire for popularity for the moment. On other occasions he rode with the young bloods, forming a sightly troop of horsemen, to the pasture of Tablada, on the eve of a great corrida, to see the herd that others had to kill.

"When I take the 'alternative,'" he was saying at every step, making all his plans for the future depend on that.

He deferred until then a series of projects that would surprise his mother, poor woman, overcome by the good fortune fallen suddenly upon her house, and which, she thought, could not be surpassed.

The day of the "alternative" came at last, the day of Gallardo's recognition as a killer of bulls. A celebrated maestro ceded to him his sword and muleta in the open ring of Seville and the crowd went mad with enthusiasm, seeing how he felled with a single sword-thrust the first "formal" bull that appeared before him. The following month, this tauromachic degree was bestowed again in the plaza of Madrid where another maestro, not less celebrated, again gave him the "alternative" in a corrida of Miura bulls.

He was no longer a novillero; he was a matador, and his name figured beside those of old swordsmen whom he had worshipped as unapproachable gods when he was going about among the little towns taking part in the bull-baitings. He remembered having lain in wait for one of them at a station near Córdova to ask aid from him when he passed through on the train with his cuadrilla. That night he had something to eat, thanks to the generous fraternity that exists among the people of the queue which impels a swordsman of princely luxury to hand out a duro and a cigar to the unfortunate little vagabond on the road to his first capeas.

Contracts began to shower upon the new swordsman. In all the plazas of the Peninsula they desired to see him, moved by curiosity. The newspapers devoted to the profession popularized his picture and his life, distorting the latter with novel episodes. No other matador had so many engagements. He was going to make money abundantly.

Antonio, his brother-in-law, told of this success with clouded brow and loud protestations to his wife and her mother. The swordsman was an ungrateful fellow—the history of all who rise suddenly. And he had worked so hard for Juan! With what firmness had he argued with the managers when the bullock-fight was arranged for him. And now that he was a maestro he had as a manager a gentleman he had met only a short time ago; one Don José who was not one of the family but one for whom Gallardo showed esteem on account of his prestige as an old connoisseur.

"And he will be sorry for it," he ended, adding, "A man has only one family and where will he find such loving care as we have given him ever since he was little? He is the loser. With me he would flourish like Roger de—"

He interrupted himself, swallowing the famous name for fear of the jokes of the banderilleros and amateurs who frequented the house and who had no respect for the historical object of the leather-worker's adoration.

Gallardo, with the generosity of a victor, gave some satisfaction to his brother-in-law by putting him in charge of the house he was having built, with carte blanche as to expenses. The swordsman, overcome by the ease with which money came into his hands, was willing to let his brother-in-law rob him, thus compensating him for not having been chosen as manager.

The torero was to realize his desire of building a house for his mother. She, poor woman, who had spent her life scrubbing floors for the rich, should have her beautiful courtyard with marble pavements, with tiled wainscot, and rooms with furniture like those of the gentry, with servants, yes, many servants to wait upon her. He also felt united by a traditional affection to the ward where his childish poverty had slipped from him. He rejoiced to outshine the very people who had employed his mother as a servant and to give a handful of pesetas, in moments of need, to those who had taken shoes to his father or who had given him a crumb in those sorrowful days. He bought several old houses, one of them the same in whose portal the cobbler had worked. He had them torn down and began to build an edifice that was to have white walls with green painted grilles, a vestibule lined with tiles, and a barred gate of delicately wrought iron through which should be seen the courtyard with its fountain in the centre and its marble columns, between which should hang gilded cages with chattering birds.

Antonio's satisfaction at having full license in the direction and profit of the works was diminished somewhat by terrible news,—Gallardo had a sweetheart! He was travelling now in mid-summer, running over Spain from one plaza to another, making famous sword-thrusts and receiving applause; but almost daily he sent a letter to a certain girl in the ward and in the short respites between wandering from one corrida to another abandoned his companions and took the train to spend the night in Seville, courting her.

"Have you seen?" shouted the leather-worker, scandalized at what was taking place "in the bosom of the home" before the very eyes of his wife and mother-in-law. "A sweetheart! without saying a word to the family, which is the only thing worth while in the whole world! The Señor wants to marry. Without doubt he is tired of us. What a shameless fellow!"

Encarnación approved these assertions with rude grimaces of her strong, fierce face, content to be able to express herself thus against the brother who filled her with envy by his good fortune. Yes, he had ever been a shameless fellow.

But the mother protested. "No, indeed! I know the girl and her poor mother was a chum of mine in the Factory. She is as pure as nuggets of gold, trim, good, fine-looking. I have already told Juan that it would please me and the sooner the better."

She was an orphan, living with an aunt and uncle who kept a little grocery store in the ward. Her father, an old-time dealer in brandies, had left her two houses on the outskirts of Macarena.

"A little thing," said Señora Angustias, "but the girl doesn't come empty-handed. She brings something of her own. And as for clothes—Josú! you ought to see her little hands of gold; how she embroiders the clothes, how she is preparing her trousseau."

Gallardo vaguely recollected having played with her when they were children near the portal where the cobbler worked while the two mothers chatted. She was a sprightly creature, thin and dark, with eyes of a gypsy—the pupils black and sharply rounded like drops of ink, the corneas bluish white and the corners a pallid rose-hue. In their races she was as agile as a boy and her legs looked like reeds; her hair hung about her head in thick rebellious locks twisting like black snakes. Then she had dropped out of his sight and he did not meet her until many years afterward when he was a novillero, and had begun to make a name.

It was one Corpus Christi day—one of the few feasts when the women, shut up in the house through Oriental laziness, go out upon the streets like Moorish women at liberty, wearing mantillas of silk lace and carnations on their breasts. Gallardo saw a young girl, tall, slender, and at the same time strongly built, the waist confined in handsome firm curves with all the vigor of youth. Her face, of a rice-like pallor, colored on seeing the bull-fighter; her great luminous eyes hid themselves beneath their long lashes.

"That girl knows me," said Gallardo to himself. "She must have seen me in the ring."

And when, after having followed her and her aunt, he heard that it was Carmen, the companion of his infancy, he was astonished and confused by the marvellous transformation from the dark thin girl of the past. They became sweethearts and all the neighbors discussed their affair, seeing in them a new honor for the neighborhood.

"This is how it is with me," said Gallardo to his enthusiasts, adopting a princely air. "I don't want to imitate other bull-fighters who marry señoritas that are all hats and feathers and flounces. For me, those of my own class; a rich mantilla, a fine carriage, grace; that's what I want—Olé!"

His friends, enraptured, spoke highly of the girl,—a splendid lass, with curves to her body that would set any one wild, and what an air! But the bull-fighter only made a wry face. The less they talked of Carmen the better.

In the evening, as he conversed with her through a grated window, contemplating her Moorish face framed in the flowering vines, the servant of a nearby tavern presented himself, carrying glasses of Andalusian wine on a painted tray. He was the envoy who came to collect the toll, the traditional custom of Seville, which demanded pay from sweethearts who talk through the grille.

The bull-fighter drank a glass, offering another to the girl, and said to the boy:

"Give the gentlemen my thanks, and say I'll come along by the shop after a while. Also tell Montañés to allow no one else to pay, that Juan Gallardo will pay for everybody."

And when he had finished his talk with his betrothed he went into the tavern where he was awaited by the tipplers, some enthusiastic friends, others unknown admirers anxious to toast the health of the bull-fighter in tall glasses of wine.

On returning from his first trip as a full-fledged matador he spent the winter evenings close by Carmen's grated window, wrapped in his cape of greenish cloth, which had a narrow collar and was made generously ample, with vines and arabesques embroidered in black silk.

"They say that thou dost drink much," sighed Carmen, pressing her face against the bars.

"Nonsense! Courtesies of friends that one has to return and nothing more. Thou knowest that a bull-fighter is—a bull-fighter, and he is not going to live like a begging friar."

"They say that thou goest with bad women."

"That's a lie! That was in other days, before I met thee. Man alive! I would like to meet the son of a goat that carries thee such tales."

"And when shall we get married?" she continued, cutting off her sweetheart's indignant remarks by a question.

"As soon as the house is finished, and would to God it were to-morrow! That worthless brother-in-law of mine will never get it done. He knows that it's a good thing for him and he is sleeping on his luck."

"I'll set things to rights, Juaniyo, after we are married. Thou shalt see how well everything will run along. Thou shalt see how thy mother loves me."

And so their dialogues continued while waiting for the hour of the wedding which was being talked about all over Seville. Carmen's aunt and uncle and Señora Angustias discussed it whenever they met, but in spite of this the bull-fighter scarcely ever entered the home of his betrothed. They preferred to see one another through the grille, according to custom.

The winter passed. Gallardo mounted his horse and went hunting in the pasture lands of some gentlemen who thou-ed him with a protecting air. He must preserve the agility of his body by continual exercise, in preparation for the next bull-fight season. He feared losing his strength and nimbleness.

The most tireless propagandist of his glory was Don José, a gentleman who performed the office of his manager, and always called him his matador. He intervened in all Gallardo's affairs, not admitting a better right even to his own family. He lived on his rents with no other occupation than talking about bulls and bull-fighters. For him bull-fights were the only interesting thing in the world and he divided the human race into two classes, the elect nations who had bull-rings, and the dull ones for whom there is no sun, nor joy, nor good Andalusian wine—in spite of which they think themselves powerful and happy though they have never seen even a single ill-fought corrida of bullocks.

He brought to his enthusiasm the energy of a warrior and the faith of an inquisitor. Fat, still young, bald, and with a light beard, this father of a family, happy and gay in everyday life, was fierce and stubborn on the benches of a ring when his neighbors expressed opinions contrary to his. He felt himself capable of fighting the whole audience in defence of a bull-fighter friend, and he disturbed the ovations with extemporaneous protests when they were offered to an athlete who failed to enjoy his affection.

He had been a cavalry officer, more from love of horses than of war. His corpulence and his enthusiasm for the bulls had caused him to retire from the service. He spent the summer witnessing bull-fights and the winter talking about them. He was eager to be the guide, the mentor, the manager of a bull-fighter, but all the maestros had their own and so the advent of Gallardo was a stroke of fortune for him. The slightest aspersion cast upon the merits of his favorite turned him red with fury and converted the tauromachic dispute into a personal question. He counted it as a glorious act of war to have come to blows in a café with a couple of contemptuous amateurs who criticised his matador as being too boastful.

He felt as though there were not enough papers printed to publish Gallardo's glory, and on winter mornings he would go and place himself on a corner touched by a ray of sunlight at the entrance of Sierpes Street, and as his friends passed, he would say in a loud voice, "No! there is only one man!" as if he were talking to himself, affecting to not see those who were drawing near. "The greatest man in the world! And let him that thinks to the contrary speak out. The only one!"

"Who?" asked his friends, jestingly, pretending not to understand him.

"Who can it be? Juan!"

"What Juan?"

With a gesture of indignation and surprise he would answer, "What Juan could it be? As if there were many Juans! Juan Gallardo."

"But, man alive," some of them would say to him, "one might think you two lie down together! It is thou, may be, that is going to get married to him?"

"Only because he don't want it so," Don José would stoutly answer, with the fervor of idolatry.

And on seeing other friends approach, he forgot their jibes and continued repeating:

"No! there is only one man. The greatest in the world. And he that doesn't believe it let him open his beak, for here am I!"

Gallardo's wedding was a great event. The new house was opened with it—the house of which the leather-worker was so proud, where he showed the courtyard, the columns, the tiles, as if all were the work of his hands.

They were married in San Gil, before the Virgin of Hope, called the Virgin of Macarena. At the church door the hundreds of Chinese shawls embroidered with exotic flowers and birds, in which the bride's friends were draped, glistened in the sunshine.

A deputy to the Cortes stood as best man.

Above the black and white felts of the majority of the guests rose the shining tall hats of the manager and other gentlemen, Gallardo's devotees. All of them smiled with satisfaction at the deference of popularity that was shown them on going about with the bull-fighter.

Alms were given at the door of the house during the day. The poor came even from the distant towns, attracted by the fame of this gorgeous wedding.

There was a great feast in the courtyard. Photographers took instantaneous views for the Madrid newspapers. Gallardo's wedding was a national event. Far into the night guitars strummed with melancholy plaint, accompanied by hand-clapping and the click of castanets. The girls, their arms held high, beat the marble floor with their little feet, whirling their skirts and mantillas around their slender bodies, moving with the rhythm characteristic of the Sevillanas. Bottles of rich Andalusian wines were uncorked by the dozen; from hand to hand passed cups of ardent sherry, of strong montilla, and of the wine of San Lúcar, pale and perfumed. Every one was drunk but their intoxication left them sweet, subdued, and sad, with no other manifestation than sighs and songs, many starting at once to intone melancholy chants that told of prisons, of deaths, and of the poor mother, the eternal theme of the popular songs of Andalusia.

The last guests took their leave at midnight and the bride and groom were left in the house with Señora Angustias. The leather-worker, going out with his wife, made a gesture of desperation. He was drunk and furious because no one had paid him any attention during the entire day. As if he were nobody! As if the family did not exist!

"They cast us out, Encarnación. That girl, with her little face like the Virgin of Hope, is going to be mistress of everything and there won't be even a crumb left for us. Thou shalt see how they will fill the place with children."

And the prolific man grew indignant thinking of Gallardo's future offspring being brought into the world with no other purpose than to harm his own.

Time went on. A year passed without Señor Antonio's prediction being fulfilled. Gallardo and his wife appeared at all the functions with the pomp and show of a rich and popular bridal pair; she with mantillas that drew forth screams of admiration from the poor women; he, wearing his brilliants and ever ready to draw out his pocket-book to treat the people and to succor the beggars that came in bands. The gypsies, coppery of skin and chattering like witches, besieged Carmen with happy prophesies. Might God bless her! She was going to have a boy, a little prattling babe, more beautiful than the sun itself. They read it in the white of her eyes.

But in vain Carmen flushed with joy and modesty, lowering her eyes; in vain the espada walked erect, proud of his achievements, believing that the coveted fruit would soon appear.

And then another year passed without the realization of their hopes. Señora Angustias was sad when they spoke to her about it. She had other grandchildren, Encarnación's little ones, who by order of the leather-worker spent the day in their grandmother's house trying in every way to please their uncle. But she, wishing to compensate Gallardo for the hardships of the past, prayed with fervent affection for a child of his to care for, yearning to shower upon him all the love she could not give the father in his infancy because of her poverty.

"I know what is the matter," said the old woman sadly, "poor Carmen has no peace of mind. Thou shouldst see that unhappy creature when Juan is travelling about the world."

During the winter, in the season of rest when the bull-fighter was at home or went to the country testing bullocks and joining in the hunt, all was well. Carmen was then content knowing that her husband was in no danger. She laughed on the slightest pretext; she ate heartily; her face was animated by the color of health; but as soon as the spring came and Juan left home to fight bulls in the rings of Spain the poor girl, pale and weak, would fall into a painful stupefaction, her eyes enlarged by fear and ready to shed tears.

"Seventy-two bull-fights this year," said the friends of the house, commenting on the swordsman's contracts. "No one is so sought after as he."

And Carmen smiled with a grimace of pain. Seventy-two afternoons of agony like a criminal doomed to death, awaiting the arrival of the telegram at nightfall and at the same time dreading it! Seventy-two days of terror, of vague superstitions, thinking that a word forgotten in a prayer might influence the luck of the absent one! Seventy-two days of painful paradox, living in a tranquil house, seeing the same people, her accustomed existence running on, calm and peaceful as though nothing extraordinary were happening in the world, hearing the play of her husband's nephews in the courtyard and the flower-seller's song on the street, while far, very far away, in unknown cities, her Juan, in the presence of thousands of eyes, fought with wild beasts, seeing death pass close to his breast at each movement of the red rag he held in his hands!

Ah! those days of bull-fights, feast-days, on which the sky seemed more beautiful and the once solitary street resounded beneath the feet of the holiday crowd, when guitars strummed with accompaniment of hand-clapping and song in the tavern at the corner. Carmen, plainly dressed, with her mantilla over her eyes, left the house as if fleeing from evil dreams, going to take refuge in the churches. Her simple faith, which uncertainty burdened with superstitions, made her go from altar to altar as she recalled to mind the merits and miracles of each image. She went to San Gil, the church that had seen the happiest day of her existence, she knelt before the Virgin of Macarena, provided candles, many candles, and by their ruddy glow contemplated the brown face of the image with its black eyes and long lashes, which, it was said, resembled her own. In her she trusted. For a good reason was she Our Lady of Hope. Surely at this very hour she was protecting Juan by her divine power.

But suddenly indecision and fear rudely burst through her beliefs, tearing them asunder. The Virgin was a woman and women are so weak! Her destiny was to suffer and weep, as she wept for her husband, as the other had wept for her Son. She must confide in stronger powers; she must implore the aid of a more vigorous protection. And, in the stress of her agony, abandoning the Macarena without scruple as a useless friendship is forgotten, she went at other times to the church of San Lorenzo in search of Jesus, He of the Great Power, the Man-God crowned with thorns with the cross on his back, sweaty and tearful, the work of the sculptor Montañés, an awe-inspiring image.

The dramatic sadness of the Nazarene stumbling against the stones and bent beneath the weight of the cross seemed to console the poor wife. Lord of the Great Power! This vague and grandiose title tranquillized her. If the god dressed in brown velvet and gold would but deign to listen to her sighs, to her prayers repeated in eager haste, with dizzy rapidity, she was sure that Juan would walk unscathed out of the ring where he was at that moment. Again she would give money to a sacristan to light candles, and she passed hours contemplating the vacillating reflection of the red tongues on the image, believing she saw in the varnished face, by these alternations of shade and light, smiles of consolation, kind expressions that promised felicity.

The Lord of Great Power did not deceive her. On her return to the house she was presented with the little blue paper which she opened with a trembling hand: "As usual." She could breathe again, she could sleep like the criminal that is freed for the instant from immediate death; but in two or three days again came the agony of uncertainty, the terrible torture of doubt.

Carmen, in spite of the love she professed for her husband, had hours of rebellion. If she had known what this existence was before she married! At certain moments, craving the sisterhood of pain, she went in search of the wives of the bull-fighters who figured in Juan's cuadrilla, hoping they could give her news.

Nacional's good woman, who kept a tavern in the same ward, received the master's wife with tranquillity, wondering at her fears. She was accustomed to such an existence. Her husband must be all right since he sent no word. Telegrams cost dear and a banderillero earns little. If the newsboys did not shout an accident it was because none had happened. And she continued attentive to the service of her establishment as if no trace of worry could make its way into her blunted sensibility.

Again, crossing the bridge, Carmen went to the ward of Triana in search of the wife of Potaje, the picador, a kind of gypsy that lived in a hut like a hen-house surrounded by coppery, dirty youngsters whom she threatened and terrified with stentorian yells. The visit of the master's wife filled her with pride, but the latter's anxiety almost made her laugh. She ought not to be afraid. Those on foot always escaped the bull and Señor Juan Gallardo's good angel watched over him when he threw himself upon the beasts. The bulls killed but few. The terrible thing was being thrown from the horse. It was known to be the end of all picadores after a life of horrible falls; those who did not die suddenly from an unforeseen and thundering accident finished their days in madness. Thus poor Potaje would die—and so many hard struggles in exchange for a handful of duros,—while others—

This last she did not say but her eyes revealed the protest against the favoritism of Fate for those fine youths who, by a thrust of the sword, took the applause, the popularity, and the money, with no greater risks than those faced by their humbler associates.

Little by little Carmen grew accustomed to this new life. The cruel suspense on bull-fight days, the visits to the saints, the superstitious fears, she accepted them all as incidents necessary to her existence. Moreover, her husband's good luck and the continual conversation in the house on the events of the contest finally familiarized her with the danger. The fierce bull became for her as for Gallardo a generous and noble beast come into the world with no other purpose than to enrich and give fame to those who kill him.

She never attended a bull-fight. Since that afternoon on which she saw him who was to be her husband in his first novillada, she had not returned to the plaza. She lacked courage to witness a bull-fight, even one in which Gallardo did not take part. She would faint with terror on seeing other men face the danger dressed in the same costume as her Juan.

In the third year of their marriage Gallardo was wounded at Valencia. Carmen did not know it at once. The telegram arrived on time with the customary, "As usual." It was a merciful act of Don José, the manager, who, visiting Carmen every day and resorting to skilful jugglery to prevent her reading the papers, put off her knowledge of the misfortune for a week.

When Carmen heard of it through the indiscretion of some neighbor women she wished to take the train immediately to go to her husband, to take care of him, for she imagined him abandoned. It was not necessary. Before she could start the swordsman arrived, pale from the loss of blood, and with one leg doomed to a long season of immobility, but happy and anxious to tranquillize his family. The house was from that time a kind of sanctuary, hundreds passing through the courtyard to greet Gallardo, "the greatest man in the world," seated there in a big willow chair with his leg on a tabourette and smoking as tranquilly as though his body were not torn by an atrocious wound.

Doctor Ruiz, who came with him to Seville, prophesied that he would be well before a month, marvelling at the energy of his constitution. The facility with which bull-fighters were cured was a mystery to him in spite of his long practice of surgery. The horn, dirty with blood and animal excrement, often breaking into splinters at the blow, tore the flesh, scratched it, perforated it, making at once a deep penetrating injury and a bruised contusion, and yet these atrocious wounds healed with greater ease than those in ordinary life.

"I don't know what it is, this mystery," said the old surgeon with an air of doubt. "Either those boys have got the flesh of a dog, or else the horn, with all its filth, carries a curative virtue that is unknown to us."

A short time afterward, Gallardo went back to bull-fighting, his ardor uncooled by the accident, contrary to the prediction of his enemies.

Four years after his marriage the swordsman gave his wife and mother a great surprise. They were becoming landed proprietors, yea, proprietors on a great scale, with lands "stretching beyond view," with olive orchards, mills, great flocks and herds, and a plantation like those of the rich gentlemen of Seville.

Gallardo experienced the desire of all bull-fighters, who long to be lords over lands, breeders of horses, and owners of herds of cattle. Urban wealth? No. Values in paper do not tempt them nor do they understand them. The bull makes them think of the green meadow; the horse recalls the country to their minds. The continual necessity of movement and exercise, the hunt, and constant travel during the winter months, cause them to desire the possession of land. According to Gallardo the only rich man was he who owned a plantation and great herds of animals. Since his days of poverty, when he had tramped along the roads through olive orchards and pasture grounds, he had nursed his fervent desire to possess leagues and leagues of land, enclosed with barbed-wire fences against the depredation of other men.

His manager knew these desires. Don José it was who took charge of his affairs, collecting the money from the ring-managers and carrying an account that he tried in vain to explain to his matador.

"I don't understand that music," said Gallardo, content in his ignorance, "I only know how to despatch bulls. Do whatever you wish, Don José; I have confidence in you and I know that you do everything for my good." So Don José, who scarcely ever thought about his own property, leaving it to the weak administration of his wife, occupied himself at all hours with the bull-fighter's fortune, placing his money at interest with the heart of a usurer to make it fruitful. One day he fell upon his client joyfully.

"I have what thou desirest, a plantation like a world, and besides, it is very cheap; a regular bargain. Next week we will get it into writing."

Gallardo was eager to know the name and situation of the plantation.

"It is called La Rinconada."

His desires were fulfilled! When Gallardo went with his wife and mother to take possession of the plantation he showed them the hayloft where he had slept with the companions of his wandering misery, the room in which he had dined with the master, and the little plaza where he had stabbed a calf, earning for the first time the right to travel by train without having to hide beneath the seats.

CHAPTER V
THE LURE OF GOLDEN HAIR

ON winter evenings when Gallardo was not at La Rinconada, a company of friends gathered in the dining-room of his house after supper. Among the first arrivals were the leather-worker and his wife, who always had two of their children in the swordsman's home. Carmen, wishing to forget her barrenness and oppressed by the silence of the great dwelling, kept her sister-in-law's youngest children with her most of the time. They, partly from spontaneous affection and partly by command of their parents, affectionately caressed with kissings and cat-like purrings their handsome aunt and their generous and popular uncle.

When Nacional came to spend an hour with them, although the visit was rather a matter of duty, the circle was always enlivened. Gallardo, dressed in a rich jacket like a country gentleman, his head uncovered, and his coleta smooth and shiny, received his banderillero with waggish amiability. What were the devotees saying? What lies were they circulating? How was the republic coming along?

"Garabato, give Sebastián a glass of wine."

But Nacional refused this courtesy. No wine for him! He did not drink. Wine was to blame for the failures of the laboring class; and the whole party on hearing this broke out into a laugh, as though he had made some witty remark which they had been expecting. Then the banderillero began to be entertaining.

The only one who remained silent, with hostile eyes, was the leather-worker. He hated Nacional, regarding him as an enemy. He also was prolific in his fidelity, as befits a man of good principles, so that a swarm of young children buzzed about the little tavern clinging to the mother's skirts. Gallardo and his wife had been god-parents to the two youngest, thus uniting the swordsman and the banderillero in the relationship of compadres. Hypocrite! Every Sunday he brought the two god-children, dressed in their best, to kiss the hand of their sponsors in baptism, and the leather-worker paled with indignation whenever he saw Nacional's children receive a present. They came to rob his own. Maybe the banderillero even dreamt that a part of the swordsman's fortune might fall into the hands of these god-children. Thief! A man who was not of the family!

When he did not receive Nacional's words in silence and with looks of hatred he tried to censure him, showing himself in favor of the immediate shooting of all who stir up rebellion and are in consequence a danger to good citizens.

Nacional was ten years older than the maestro. When Gallardo began to fight in the capeas he was already a banderillero in professional cuadrillas and he had been to America where he had killed bulls in the plaza at Lima. At the beginning of his career he enjoyed a certain popularity on account of being young and agile. He had also shone for a few days as "the bull-fighter of the future," and the Sevillian connoisseurs, their eyes upon him, expected him to eclipse the bull-fighters from other lands. But this lasted only a short while. On his return from his travels with the prestige of hazy and distant exploits, the populace rushed to the bull-plaza of Seville to see him kill. Thousands were unable to get in; but at the moment of final trial "he lacked heart," as the amateurs said. He lodged the banderillas with skill, like a conscientious and serious workman who fulfils his duty, but when he went in to kill the instinct of self-preservation, stronger than his will, kept him at a distance from the bull and prevented his taking advantage of his stature and his strong arm. Nacional renounced the highest glories of tauromachy. Banderillero, nothing more! He resigned himself to be a journeyman of his art, serving others younger than himself and earning a meagre salary as a peón to support his family and lay by some scanty savings to establish a small industry by and by. His kindness and his honest habits were proverbial among the people of the coleta. The wife of his matador was fond of him, believing him a kind of guardian angel of her husband's fidelity.

When, in summer, Gallardo with all his people went to a music hall in some provincial capital, eager for gambling and sport after having despatched the bulls in several corridas, Nacional remained silent and grave among the singing girls with their gauzy dress and their painted lips, like an anchorite from the desert in the midst of the courtesans of Alexandria. He was not scandalized but he grew sad thinking of the wife and children that waited for him in Seville. All defects and corruptions in the world were, in his opinion, the result of lack of education. Of course those poor women did not know how to read and write. The same was true of himself and, as he attributed his insignificance and poverty of intellect to that, he laid all misery and degradation in the world to the same cause. In his early youth he had been an iron-founder and an active member of the International Workmen's Union, an assiduous listener to his more fortunate fellow-workmen who could read in a loud voice what the newspapers said of the welfare of the people. He played at soldiering in the days of the national militia, figuring in the battalions which wore the red cap as the sign of being implacable federalist propagandists. He spent whole days before the platforms raised in the public squares, where various societies declared themselves in permanent session and orators succeeded one another day and night, haranguing with Andalusian fluency about the divinity of Jesus and the increase in the price of articles of prime necessity, until, when hard times came, a strike left him in the trying situation of the workman black-listed on account of his ideas, finding himself turned away from every shop.

He liked bull-fighting and he became a torero at twenty-four, just as he might have chosen any other trade. He, moreover, knew a great deal and talked with contempt of the absurdities of the present state of society. Not for nothing does one spend years hearing the papers read! However ill he might fare at bull-fighting he would surely earn more and have an easier life than if he were a skilled workman. The people, remembering the time when he shouldered the musket of the popular militia, nicknamed him Nacional.

He spoke of the taurine profession with a certain regret, in spite of the years he had spent therein, and he apologized for belonging to it. The committee of his district, who had decreed the expulsion of all who attended bull-fights on account of their barbarous and retrograding influence, had made an exception in his favor, retaining him as an active member in good standing.

"I know," he said in Gallardo's dining-room, "that this business of the bulls is a reactionary thing—something belonging to the times of the Inquisition; I don't know whether I explain myself. The people need to learn to read and write as much as they need bread and it is not well for them to spend their money on us while they so greatly lack schooling. That is what the papers that come from Madri' say. But the club members appreciate me, and the committee, after a long preachment from Don Joselito, have agreed to keep me on the roll of membership."

Don Joselito, the school teacher and chairman of the committee of the district, was a learned young man of Israelitish extraction who brought to the political struggle the ardor of the Maccabees and was undistressed by his brown ugliness and his small-pox scars because they gave him a certain likeness to Danton. Nacional always listened to him open-mouthed.

When Don José, Gallardo's business manager, and other friends of the master, jokingly disputed his doctrines at those after-dinner gatherings, making extravagant objections, poor Nacional was in suspense, scratching his forehead from perplexity.

"You are gentlemen and have studied and I don't know how to read or write. That is why we of the lower class are like sheep. But if only Don Joselito were here! By the life of the blue dove! If you could hear him when he lets loose and talks like an angel!"

To fortify his faith, somewhat weakened by the assaults of the jokers, he would go the following day to see Don Joselito, who seemed to luxuriate in bitterness, as a descendant of the persecuted chosen people, and look over what Joselito called his museum of horrors. The Hebrew, returned to the native land of his forefathers, was collecting relics of the Inquisition in a room of the school, with the vengeful accuracy of a prisoner who might reconstruct bone by bone the skeleton of his jailor. In a bookcase stood rows of parchment tomes—decrees of sentences pronounced by the Inquisition and catechisms for interrogating the offender undergoing torture. On one wall hung a white banner with the dreaded green cross. In the corners were heaped instruments of torture—frightful scourges and fiendish devices for cleaving, for stripping and tearing human flesh, that Don Joselito found in the shops of the curio-dealers and catalogued as ancient belongings of the Holy Office. Nacional's kind and simple soul, easily roused to anger, rose in rebellion at the sight of these rusty irons and green crosses.

"Man alive! And yet there are those that say—! By the life of the dove! I would like to see some folks here!"

Often in summer, when the cuadrilla was going from one province to another and Gallardo went into the second class carriage in which "the boys" were travelling, some rural priest or pair of friars would get on board. The banderilleros would nudge each other with their elbows and wink one eye looking at Nacional, who seemed even more grave and solemn in the presence of the enemy. The picadores, Potaje and Tragabuches, lusty aggressive fellows, lovers of riots and fights who felt a decided aversion to the ecclesiastical dress, urged him on in a loud voice.

"There's thy chance! Go at him for the good cause! Lodge one of thy yarns in the nape of his neck."

The maestro, with all his authority as chief of cuadrilla, against which none may parley nor argue, rolled his eyes, and looked at Nacional, who maintained a silent obedience. But stronger than duty was the impulse of his simple soul to convert, and an insignificant word was enough to open a discussion with the travellers, to try to convince them of the truth; and the truth was for him a kind of confused and disordered remnant of arguments learned from Don Joselito.

His comrades looked at each other astonished at the wisdom of their companion, well pleased that one of them should face professional people and put them in a tight place, for they were almost invariably priests of little learning. And the holy men, astounded at Nacional's confused reasoning and the smiles of the other bull-fighters, finally resorted to an extreme measure. Did men who continually exposed their lives to peril take no thought of God and believe in such things as he said? At this very moment how their wives and mothers must be praying for them!

The men of the cuadrilla grew serious, thinking with timorous gravity of the scapularies and medallions feminine hands had sewed to their fighting garments before they left Seville. The matador, his sleeping superstition aroused, was angry with Nacional, as though in this lack of piety he foresaw danger to his life.

"Keep still and don't talk any more of your crudities. Pardon, Señores! He is a good man but his head has been turned by so many lies. Shut up and don't give me any impertinence. Damn it all!"

And Gallardo, to tranquillize these gentlemen whom he believed to be trustees of the future, overwhelmed the banderillero with threats and curses.

Nacional took refuge in disdainful silence. All ignorance and superstition! All from lack of knowing how to read and write! And firm in his beliefs, with the simplicity of a man who possesses only two or three ideas and will not let go of them, he took up the discussion again in a few hours—paying no heed to the anger of the matador.

He carried his impiety even into the midst of the ring, among peones and pikemen who, after having said a prayer in the chapel of the plaza, went into the arena with the hope that the sacred emblems sewed to their clothing would deliver them from danger.

When the time came to stick the barbs into some enormous bull of great weight, thick neck, and deep black color, Nacional stood up before him with his arms extended and the barbs in his hands, shouting insults at him:

"Come on, you old priest!"

The "priest" dashed forward furiously, and as he approached, Nacional lodged the banderillas in the nape of his neck with all his strength, saying in a loud voice, as if he had gained a victory:

"For the clergy!"

Gallardo ended by laughing at Nacional's extravagances.

"Thou makest me ridiculous. Our cuadrilla will be branded as a herd of heretics. Thou knowest that some audiences don't like that. The bull-fighter should only fight bulls."

Nevertheless, he loved his banderillero, mindful of his attachment which had sometimes risen to the point of sacrifice. Nacional cared not if he were hissed when he lodged the banderillas carelessly in dangerous bulls as a result of his desire to get through quickly. He cared nothing for glory and only fought bulls for his wage. But the moment Gallardo walked sword in hand toward a treacherous bull the banderillero kept near him, ready to aid him with his heavy cape and his strong arm which had humbled the necks of so many wild beasts. Twice when Gallardo rolled on the sand, nearly caught by the dagger-like horns, Nacional threw himself upon the animal forgetting his wife, his children, his little tavern, everything, ready to die to save his maestro. He was received in Gallardo's dining-room in the evenings, therefore, as though he were a member of the family.

Gallardo and Don José, who sat across the table smoking, the glass of cognac within reach of the hand, liked to start Nacional to talking so as to laugh at his ideas, and they teased him by insulting Don Joselito—a liar who turned the heads of the ignorant!

The banderillero took the jokes of the swordsman and his manager calmly. Doubt Don Joselito? Such an absurdity could not move him—no more than if they should attack his other idol, Gallardo, telling him he did not know how to kill a bull.

But when the leather-worker, who inspired him with an irresistible aversion, began to joke him he lost composure. Who was that hungry fellow who lived by hanging onto his master, to dare to dispute him! And losing self-command, forgetting the presence of the master's wife and mother and of Encarnación, who, imitating her husband, curled her be-whiskered lip and looked scornfully at the banderillero, he rushed down grade into an exposition of his views with the same fervor with which he discoursed in the committee. For lack of better arguments he overwhelmed the ideas of the jokers with insults.

"The Bible? Liquid! That nonsense about creation of the world in six days? Liquid! That about Adam and Eve? Liquid, also! All lies and superstition."

And the word liquid, applied to whatever he believed false or insignificant, fell from his lips as a strong expression of scorn. "That about Adam and Eve" was for him a subject of sarcasm. How could all human beings be descendants from one pair only?

"My name is Sebastián Venegas; and thou, Juaniyo, thy name is Gallardo; and you, Don José, have your surname; and every one has his own, only those of the parents being alike. If we were all grandchildren of Adam, and Adam, for example, was named Pérez, we would all have Pérez for a surname. Is that clear? But every one of us has his own because there were many Adams and what the priests tell is all liquid! Superstition and ignorance! We lack education and they deceive us; I think I explain myself."

Gallardo, throwing himself back with laughter, saluted his banderillero, imitating the bellowing of a bull. The business manager, with Andalusian gravity, offered him his hand, congratulating him.

"Shake, old boy! Thou hast done well! Not even Castelar could have done better!"

Señora Angustias was indignant at hearing such things in her house, horrified with the terror of an old woman who sees the end of her existence drawing near.

"Shut up, Sebastián; shut thy big, wicked mouth, lost soul, or into the street thou goest! Thou shalt not say those things here, thou devil! If I did not know thee—If I did not know that thou art a good man—"

Finally she became reconciled to the banderillero, remembering how much he loved her Juan and what he had done for him in moments of danger. Moreover, it gave her and Carmen great ease of mind to know that this serious man of decent habits worked in the cuadrilla by the side of the other "boys" and of the matador himself, who, when he was alone, was excessively gay in disposition and let himself be carried away by the desire to be admired by women.

The enemy of the clergy and of Adam and Eve guarded a secret of his maestro, however, that made him reserved and grave when he saw him at home with his mother and Señora Carmen. If these women knew what he knew!

In spite of the respect which every banderillero should show his matador Nacional had dared one day to talk to Gallardo with rough frankness, relying on his years and on their old friendship.

"Be careful, Juaniyo, for everybody in Seville knows the whole story! They talk of nothing else and the news is going to reach your house and there'll be such a riot it'll set fire to the hair of God himself—Don't forget about that affair with the singing girl; and that was nothing! This creature is more forceful and more dangerous."

"But what creature is that? And what riots are those thou art talking about?"

"Who can it be? Doña Sol; that great lady who makes so much talk. The niece of the Marquis of Moraima, the cattle-breeder."

And as the swordsman was smiling and silent, flattered by Nacional's exact information, the latter continued with the air of a preacher proclaiming the vanities of this world, "The married man should above all things seek the tranquillity of his house. Women! Liquid! They are all alike and it is nonsense to embitter one's life jumping from one to another. I am a married man and in the twenty-four years I have lived with my Teresa I have never been faithless to her even in thought, although I am a bull-fighter; and I had my day and more than one lass has cast tender eyes at me."

Gallardo burst out laughing at his banderillero. He talked like a father-superior. And was this the same man that wanted to eat the priests up raw?

"Nacional, don't be hard on me. Every one is what he is and since the women come, let them come. What does one live for? Any day he may go out of the ring foot foremost. Besides, thou knowest nothing of the affair, nor what a lady is. If thou couldst see that woman!"

Then he ingenuously added, as if he wished to counter-act the expression of scandal and sadness engraved on Nacional's countenance:

"I love Carmen very much, dost thou understand? I love her as well as ever; but the other I love too. That is different. I don't know how to explain it to thee. That's another matter. Drop it!"

And the banderillero could make no further headway in his expostulation with Gallardo.

Months before, when with the autumn came the end of the bull-fighting season, the swordsman had had an adventure at the Church of San Lorenzo. He was resting in Seville a few days before going to La Rinconada with his family. To kill more than a hundred bulls a year with all the danger and strain of the contest did not weary him so much as the ceaseless travel from one end of Spain to the other during a period of several months. These journeys were made in mid-summer, under a blistering sun, over parched plains and in old cars whose roofs seemed to be on fire. The water-jar belonging to the cuadrilla, filled at every station, was not enough to quench the thirst. Moreover, the trains ran crowded with passengers—people going to the fairs in the cities to see the bull-fights. Often Gallardo, for fear of missing the train, killed his last bull in one plaza, and, still dressed in his fighting costume, rushed to the train, passing like a meteor of light and color among the groups of travellers and baggage trucks, and changed his clothes in a first-class compartment under the gaze of the passengers, who were glad to travel with a celebrity.

When he arrived, worn-out, at some city where the streets were in festal array, decorated with banners and arches, he had to endure the torment of enthusiastic adoration. The connoisseurs and his personal adherents met him at the station and accompanied him to his hotel. They were well-rested and happy folk who grasped him by the hand and expected to find him expansive and loquacious, as though on meeting them he must perforce experience the greatest pleasure.

Frequently a single corrida was not all. He had to fight bulls three or four days in succession, and when night came, exhausted from weariness and lack of sleep on account of his recent excitement, he gave up all social affairs and sat at the door of the hotel in his shirt-sleeves, enjoying the fresh air of the street. The "boys" of the cuadrilla lodged at the same inn and kept near the maestro, like a brotherhood in a cloister. Some of the most audacious would ask permission to take a walk along the illuminated streets and out to the fair grounds.

"Miuras to-morrow!" said the matador. "I know what those walks are. Thou wilt return at daybreak with two glasses too many and thou'lt not fail to have some kind of an affair to take thy strength. No; thou canst not go. When we get through thou mayest play."

And the work over, if there were a few days of liberty before the next corrida in some other city, the cuadrilla would put off the trip, and then the gay time would begin, far from the restraint of their families, with abundance of wine and women in company with enthusiastic devotees, who imagined this to be the everyday life of their idols.

The divers dates of the fiestas obliged the swordsman to take absurd journeys. He would leave one city to work in the other extreme of Spain, and four days later he would return, fighting bulls in a town near the first one. He almost spent the summer months, when corridas were most frequent, in the train, making a continual zigzag over all the railroads of the Peninsula, killing bulls in the plazas, and sleeping on the cars.

"If all my summer travel were arranged in a straight line," said Gallardo, "it would sure reach to the North Pole."

At the beginning of the season he started on his travels with enthusiasm, thinking of the multitude that talked of him throughout the whole year, impatiently awaiting his coming; he thought of the unforeseen events; of the adventures that feminine curiosity would frequently yield him; of the life from hotel to hotel, with its changes, its annoyances, its varied meals, that contrasted strongly with the placid existence in Seville and the days of mountain solitude at La Rinconada. But after a few weeks of this giddy life, in which he earned five thousand pesetas for each afternoon of work, Gallardo began to lament, like a child far from its family.

"Ah! My cool house in Seville! Poor Carmen who keeps it shining like a little silver cup! Ah! Mamita's cooking! So rich!"

He only forgot Seville on holiday nights, when he did not have to fight bulls the following day; when all the cuadrilla, surrounded by devotees anxious to give them a good impression of the city, gathered at a café flamenco where women and songs were all for the maestro.

When Gallardo went home to recuperate during the remainder of the year he felt the satisfaction of the mighty who, forgetting honors, give themselves up to the comforts of ordinary life.

He slept late, free from the tyranny of train schedules and unstirred by any emotion when he thought of bulls. Nothing to do this day, nor the next, nor the next! His travel ended at Sierpes Street, or the plaza of San Fernando. The family seemed changed, happier and in better health, having him safe at home for a few months. He went out with his hat on the back of his head, twirling his gold-headed cane and admiring the big brilliants on his fingers. In the vestibule some men were waiting for him,—sun-browned men with a sour, sweaty, stench, wearing dirty blouses and broad hats with ragged rims. Some were field laborers out on a tramp, who thought it quite natural on passing through Seville to obtain help from the famous matador whom they called Señor Juan. Others lived in the city, and thou-ed the bull-fighter, calling him Juaniyo.

Gallardo, with a memory for faces characteristic of a public man, recognized them and permitted their familiarity. They were comrades of his few school days or his youthful vagabondage.

"Business not going well, eh? Times are hard for everybody."

And before this friendliness could encourage them to greater intimacy he turned to Garabato who stood holding the gate open.

"Tell the señora to give thee a couple of pesetas for each one."

Then he went out into the street whistling, pleased with his generosity and the beauty of his life. He was detained on the next block by a couple of old women, friends of his mother, who asked him to stand as godfather to the grandchild of one of them. Her poor daughter was about to become a mother at any moment; her son-in-law, an ardent Gallardist, had come to blows several times going out of the plaza in defence of his idol but dared not speak to him.

"But, damn it! Do you take me for the director of an orphan asylum? I've got more god-children than there are in the poor-house."

To rid himself of them he told them to see his mamita. Whatever she said should stand! And he went on, not stopping until he reached Sierpes Street, bowing to some and giving others the honor of walking at his side in glorious intimacy before the gaze of the passersby.

He looked in at the Forty-five Club, to see if his manager were there. This was an aristocratic society of a limited membership, as its title indicated, in which the talk was only of bulls and horses. It was composed of gentlemen-amateurs and cattle-breeders, the Marquis of Moraima figuring preëminently, like an oracle.

On one of these walks, one afternoon, Gallardo found himself sauntering along Sierpes Street, and took a notion to enter the parish chapel of San Lorenzo. In the little square before it stood luxurious carriages. On this day the best families were wont to pray to the miraculous image of Our Lord Jesus of the Great Power. Ladies stepped out of the coaches, dressed in black, with rich mantillas; and men went into the church attracted by the feminine assemblage.

Gallardo entered also. A bull-fighter must take advantage of opportunities to rub elbows with persons of high position. The son of Señora Angustias felt the pride of a conqueror when rich gentlemen bowed to him and elegant ladies murmured his name, turning their eyes upon him. Moreover, he was a devotee of the Lord of the Great Power. He tolerated in Nacional his opinions on "God or Nature" without being much shocked, for the Divinity meant for him something vague and indefinite, like the existence of a great lord about whom one might listen calmly to all kinds of blasphemy, because he is only known by hearsay. But the Virgin of Hope and Jesus of the Great Power he had been accustomed to seeing since his earliest years, and these must not be maligned. The susceptibilities of the lusty youth were touched by the theatrical agony of the Christ with the cross on his back, the sweaty countenance, painful and livid like that of comrades he had seen stretched out in the infirmaries of the bull-plazas. He must be on good terms with this powerful lord and he fervently uttered several pater-nosters, standing before the image, with the candles like red stars reflected in the corneas of his Moorish eyes.

A movement among the women kneeling before him distracted his attention, which had been absorbed in a plea for supernatural intervention whenever his life should be in danger.

A lady passed among the worshippers, attracting their notice; she was a tall, slender woman, of astounding beauty, dressed in light colors and wearing a great hat with plumes beneath which shone the luminous gold of her abundant hair.

Gallardo knew her. It was Doña Sol, the Marquis of Moraima's niece, the "Ambassadress," as they called her in Seville. She passed among the women paying no attention to their movements of curiosity, satisfied to win their glances and to hear the murmur of their words as though this were a natural homage that should follow her appearance in any public place. The foreign elegance of her dress and her enormous hat were outlined in their showy splendor against the dark mass of feminine toilettes. She knelt, inclined her head as if in prayer for a few moments, and then her light eyes of greenish blue, with their reflections of gold, roved about the temple tranquilly as though she were in a theatre examining the audience, searching for familiar faces. Those eyes seemed to smile when they encountered the face of a friend and persisted in their roving until they met Gallardo's, which were fixed upon her. The matador was not modest. Accustomed to being himself the object of contemplation of thousands and thousands of persons on bull-fight afternoons, he might well believe that, wherever he was, the looks of all must of course be meant for him. Many women, in hours of confidence, had revealed to him their emotion, the curiosity and desire they felt on seeing him for the first time in the ring. Doña Sol's gaze did not fall as it met the bull-fighter's; instead it remained fixed, with the frigidity of a great lady, obliging the matador, ever respectful to the rich, to turn his eyes away.

"What a woman!" thought Gallardo, with the petulance of a popular idol. "Can that gachí be for me?"

Outside of the church he felt a desire to wait, and he remained near the door. His heart warned him of something extraordinary, as on afternoons when good fortune was coming. It was that mysterious presentiment which in the ring made him deaf to the protests of the public, throwing himself headlong into the greatest dangers, and always with excellent results. When she came out of the church she again looked at him strangely, as if she had guessed that he would be waiting for her. She stepped into an open carriage accompanied by two friends, and when the coachman drove away she still turned her head to see the bull-fighter, a faint smile on her lips.

Gallardo was distracted the remainder of the afternoon—thinking of his former love affairs, of the triumphs of admiration and curiosity that his bull-fighter's arrogance had won for him; conquests that filled him with pride and made him think himself irresistible, but which now inspired him with a kind of shame. A woman like that, a great lady, who had travelled about the world and lived in Seville like an unthroned queen! That would be a conquest! To his admiration of beauty was united a certain reverence derived from ancient servitude, of respect for the rich in a country where birth and fortune possess great importance. If he should manage to claim the attention of that woman, what a tremendous triumph!

CHAPTER VI
THE VOICE OF THE SIREN

DON José, firm friend of the Marquis of Moraima, and related to the best families of Seville, had often talked to Gallardo concerning Doña Sol.

She had returned to Seville only a few months before, arousing the enthusiasm of the young people. She came, after a long absence in foreign lands, eager for everything pertaining to la tierra, enjoying the popular customs and finding it all very interesting, "very artistic." She went to the bull-fights arrayed in the ancient costume of a maja, imitating the dress and pose of the beautiful women painted by Goya. Strong, accustomed to sports, and a great horsewoman, the people saw her galloping around the outskirts of Seville, wearing with her black riding skirt a man's jacket, a red cravat, and a white beaver hat perched on top of her golden hair. Sometimes she carried a spear across the pommel of the saddle and with a party of friends converted into piqueros, she went to the pasture grounds to tease and upset bulls, enjoying this wild festivity, abounding as it did in danger. She was not a child. Gallardo had a confused recollection of having seen her in his youth on the paseo of Delicias, seated beside her mother and covered with white frills, like a luxurious doll in a show-case, while he, a miserable vagabond, dashed under the wheels of the carriage in search of cigar stubs. They were undoubtedly the same age,—she must be at the end of the twenties; but how magnificent! So different from other women! She seemed like an exotic bird, a bird of paradise, fallen into a farmyard among mere shiny, well fed hens.

Don José knew her history. An eccentric mind had Doña Sol! Her mother was dead and she had a considerable fortune. She had married in Madrid a certain man older than herself, who offered to a woman eager for splendor and novelty the advantages of travelling about the world as the wife of an ambassador who represented Spain at the principal courts.

"The way that girl has amused herself, Juan!" said the manager. "The heads she has turned in ten years from one end of Europe to the other! She must be a regular geography with secret notes at the foot of each page. Surely she cannot look at the map without making a little cross of memory near all the great capitals. And the poor ambassador! He died, of despondency, no doubt, because there was no longer any place to which he could be sent. The good gentleman, accredited to represent our country, would go to a court and inside of a year, behold! the queen or the empress of that land was writing to Spain asking the minister to retire the ambassador and his dreaded consort, whom the newspapers called 'the irresistible Spanish woman.' The crowned heads that gachí has turned! Queens trembled when they saw her come, as if she were the Asiatic cholera. At last the poor ambassador saw no other place for his talents but the republics of America, but as he was a gentleman of good principles and the friend of kings, he preferred to die. And don't think that the girl contented herself only with personages who eat and dance in royal palaces. Not if what they say be true! That child is all extremes; it is all or nothing! She will as soon go after one that digs in the ground as the highest above it. I have heard that there in Russia she was running after one of those bushy-haired fellows that throw bombs, a youth with a woman's face, who paid no attention to her because she disturbed him in his business. But the girl kept chasing and chasing after him until finally they hung him. They say, too, that she had an affair with a painter in Paris, and they even say he painted her in the nude, with one arm over her face so as not to be recognized, and that the picture travels around that way on match-boxes. That must be false; an exaggeration! What seems more certain is that she was the great friend of a German, a musician—one of those who write operas. If thou couldst hear her play the piano! And when she sings! Just like one of those singers that come to the theatre of San Fernando in the Easter season. And think not that she sings in Italian only; she talks anything—French, German, English. Her uncle, the Marquis of Moraima, when he talks about her at the Forty-five says he has his suspicions that she speaks Latin. What a woman! Eh, Juanillo? What an interesting creature!

"In Seville," he went on, "she leads an exemplary life. On that account I think what they tell of her foreign affairs may be false; lies of certain young cocks that go for grapes and find them sour."

And laughing at the spirit of this woman, who at times was as bold and as aggressive as a man, he repeated the rumors that had circulated in certain clubs on Sierpes Street. When the "Ambassadress" came to live in Seville, all the young people had formed a court around her.

"Imagine, Juanillo, an elegant woman, different from those around here, bringing her clothes and hats from Paris, her perfume from London; besides being a friend of kings, branded with the brand of the finest stock in Europe, so to speak. They followed in her wake like mad men, and the girl permitted them certain liberties, wanting to live among them like a man. But some of them transgressed the bounds, mistaking familiarity for something else, and, at a loss for words, they made too free with their hands. Then there were blows, Juan, and something worse. That young lady is dangerous. It seems that she shoots at a mark, that she knows how to box like an English sailor, and knows besides, that Japanese way of fighting that they call jitsu. To sum it all up, if a Christian dares to give her a pinch, she, with her dainty little fists, without even getting angry, will grasp thee and leave thee torn to shreds. Now they attack her less, but she has enemies who go about talking evil of her; some praising what is a lie, others even denying that she is clever."

Doña Sol, according to the manager, was enthusiastic over life in Seville. After a long sojourn in cold, foggy lands she admired the intensely blue sky and the winter sun of soft gold, and she discoursed on the sweetness of life in this country—so picturesque!

"The simplicity of our customs fills her with enthusiasm. She is like one of those English women that come in Holy Week—as if she had not been born in Seville; as if she saw it for the first time! They say she spends her summers in foreign cities and her winters here. She is tired of her life in palaces and courts, and if thou didst but see the people she goes with! She has made them receive her like a sister in the convent of Cristo de Triana and that of the Most Holy Cachorro, and she has spent a pot of money on wine for the brotherhood. Some nights she fills her house with guitarists and dancers, for so many girls in Seville are good singers and dancers. With them go their teachers and their families, even to their most distant relatives; they all stuff themselves with olives, sausages, and wine, and Doña Sol, seated in a big chair like a queen, spends the hours demanding dance after dance, all which must be native to the country. They say this is a diversion equal to that which was given to I don't know what king, who had operas sung for himself alone. Her servants, foreign fellows that have come with her, long-faced and serious as parrots, go about in their evening dress with great trays, passing glasses to the dancers who in plain sight box their ears and snap olive stones in their eyes. Most honest and diverting games! Now, Doña Sol receives Lechuzo in the mornings, an old gypsy who gives guitar lessons, master of the purest style; and when her visitors don't find her with the instrument on her lap, she is with an orange in her hand. The oranges that creature has eaten since she came! And still she isn't satisfied!"

Thus continued Don José, explaining to his matador the eccentricities of Doña Sol.

Four days after Gallardo had seen her in the parish church of San Lorenzo, the manager approached the matador in a café on Sierpes Street with an air of mystery.

"Gachó, thou art a child of good fortune. Knowest who has been talking to me about thee?"

And putting his mouth close to the bull-fighter's ear he whispered, "Doña Sol!"

She had asked him about his matador, and expressed a desire to meet him. She was such an original type! So Spanish!

"She says she has seen thee kill several times, once in Madrid and again, I know not where. She has applauded thee. She recognizes that thou are very brave. What if she should take up with thee! Imagine it! What an honor! Thou wouldst be a brother-in-law, or something like that, of all the high-toned fellows on the European calendar of swells."

Gallardo smiled modestly, lowering his eyes, but at the same time he twisted his handsome person proudly as if he did not consider his manager's hypothesis either difficult or extraordinary.

"But do not form illusions, Juanillo," continued he; "Doña Sol wishes to study a bull-fighter at close range, with the same interest that she takes lessons from the master Lechuzo. Local color and nothing more! 'Bring him day after to-morrow to Tablada,' she told me. Thou knowest what that will be—a baiting of the cattle of the Moraima herd; an entertainment the Marquis has gotten up to divert his niece. We will go; she has invited me also."

Two days later, in the afternoon, the maestro and his manager started from the ward of the Feria like gentlemen picadores, eagerly watched by the people who peeped out of the doors and stood in groups on the sidewalks.

"They are going to Tablada," they said. "There is to be a bull-baiting."

The manager, mounted on a large-boned mare, was in the dress of the country, short jacket, cloth trousers with yellow gaiters, and leather leggings. The swordsman had arrayed himself for the event in his usual bizarre dress of the ancient bull-fighters, before modern fashion had levelled their apparel to that of other mortals. A crush hat of velvet with a plaited band was held on by a chin-strap; the collar of the shirt, innocent of cravat, was fastened with a pair of brilliants and two larger ones sparkled on the undulating bosom; the jacket and waistcoat were of wine-colored velvet with black loops and hangings; lastly there was a red silk belt and tight knee-breeches of dark mixed weave bound at the knees with garters of black braid. His leggings were amber-colored, with leather fringes along the side, and boots of the same color, half hidden in the wide Moorish stirrups, exposed to view great silver spurs. Over the saddle-horn, on top of the gay Jerez blanket whose tassels hung on both sides of the horse, lay a gray jacket with black trimmings and red lining.

The two horsemen rode at a gallop, carrying on their shoulders javelins made of fine elastic wood, with balls on the end to guard the tip. Their passage through the populous ward aroused an ovation. Hurrah! The women waved their hands.

"God be with you, Señores! Amuse yourself, Señor Juan!"

They spurred their horses to escape from the crowd of youngsters that ran after them, and the narrow lanes with their blue pavements and white walls rang with the rhythmic beat of the horseshoes.

On the quiet street of manorial houses with massive grilled gates and great balconies, where Doña Sol lived, they met other riders before the door, sitting on their horses, leaning on their lances. They were young gentlemen, relatives or friends of the lady, who greeted the bull-fighter with amiable familiarity, happy to have him in the party. The Marquis of Moraima came out of the house and immediately mounted his horse.

"The child will be down immediately. Everybody knows the women—how long they take to get ready."

He said this with the sententious gravity that he gave to all his words, as if he were uttering oracles. He was a tall, big-boned old man, with long white whiskers in the midst of which his mouth and eyes preserved an infantile ingenuousness. Courteous and measured in his speech, genteel in manner, moderate in his smile, the Marquis of Moraima was a fine gentleman of the type of by-gone days. He was dressed almost always in riding clothes, hating the city life, bored by the social demands of his family when detained by them in Seville, and eager to fly to the country among shepherd-foremen and cattlemen, whom he treated with the familiarity of comrades. He had almost forgotten how to write, from lack of practice, but as soon as the talk turned to cattle, to the raising of bulls and horses, or to agriculture, his eyes shone and he expressed himself with the skill of one deeply learned.

The sunlight clouded. The golden glow on the white walls on one side of the street grew pale. People looked aloft. Along the blue belt between the two rows of eaves, a dark cloud passed.

"There is no danger," said the Marquis gravely. "As I came out of the house I saw a bit of paper which the wind blew in a direction I understand. It will not rain."

All were convinced. It could not rain since the Marquis of Moraima so declared. He was as weather-wise as an old shepherd; there was no fear of his being mistaken.

Then he faced Gallardo.

"This year I am going to provide for thee some magnificent corridas. What bulls! We shall see if thou sendest them to death like good Christians. Thou knowest that this year I have not been quite satisfied. The poor things deserved better."

Doña Sol appeared, holding up her black riding-skirt in one hand and showing beneath it the tops of her high gray leather boots. She wore a man's shirt with a red tie, a jacket and waistcoat of violet velvet, a velvet three-cornered hat gracefully tipped to one side over her curls. She mounted her horse with ease, in spite of the abundant plumpness of her well-developed form, and took her javelin from a servant's hands. She greeted her friends, excusing her tardiness, while her eyes travelled toward Gallardo. The manager spurred his mare closer to make the presentation, but Doña Sol, drawing near, rode up to the bull-fighter.

Gallardo was disturbed at her presence. What a woman! What should he say to her?

He saw that she extended him her hand, a fine hand that was gloriously fragrant, and in his perturbation he could only press it with his great fingers that better knew how to throw wild beasts. But the delicate and rosy palm, instead of cringing under the involuntary and brutal pressure that would have drawn from another a shriek of pain, tightened its muscles with vigorous force, freeing itself easily from his clasp.

"I am most grateful to you for having come, and I am charmed to meet you."

And Gallardo, feeling in his confusion the necessity of answering something, stammered, as if he were greeting a devotee:

"Thanks. The family well?"

Doña Sol's discreet laugh was lost in the noise of the horseshoes that resounded on the stones with the first movement of the cavalcade. The lady put her horse to a trot and the whole troop followed, forming an escort around her. Gallardo, abashed, travelled in the rear, not recovering from his stupefaction, and vaguely guessing that he had said something foolish.

They galloped along the outskirts of Seville beside the river; they left behind them the Tower of Gold; they followed shady avenues of yellow sand and then a high-road beside which stood inns and lunch-booths.

As they drew near Tablada they saw, on the green expanse of plain, a dark mass of people and carriages near the palisade that separated the pasture from the enclosure containing the cattle.

The Guadalquivir swept its current through the length of the pasture-grounds. On the opposite bank rose the hill called San Juan de Aznalfarache, crowned by a ruined castle. The country houses loomed white against the silver gray masses of the olive groves. On the opposite wing of the extended horizon, against a blue background on which floated fleecy clouds, was Seville, its houses dominated by the imposing mass of the cathedral and the marvellous Giralda, a tender rose-color in the afternoon light.

The riders advanced with much care through the dense crowd. The curiosity which Doña Sol's eccentricities inspired had attracted nearly all the ladies of Seville. Her friends bowed to her from their carriages, thinking her most beautiful in her mannish costume. Her relatives, the daughters of the Marquis, some unmarried, others accompanied by their husbands, cautioned her to prudence. "For mercy's sake, Sol! Don't do crazy things!"

The bull-baiters entered the enclosure, welcomed as they passed through the palisade by the applause of the common people who had come to the festivity. The horses, scenting the enemy, and seeing them in the distance, rose on their hind legs and began to prance and neigh, held in by the firm hand of the riders.

The bulls were grouped in the centre of the enclosure. Some were quietly feeding, some were lying on the reddish green winter field. Others, more rebellious, trotted toward the river, and the older bulls, the trained leaders, ran after them, ringing the bells that hung around their necks, while the cowboys helped them in this rounding up, slinging well-aimed stones that struck the horns of the fugitives. The horsemen remained motionless a long time, as if holding council before the eager gaze of the public awaiting something extraordinary.

The first to start was the Marquis, accompanied by one of his friends. The two riders galloped toward the group of bulls and reined in their horses when near them, standing in their stirrups, waving their javelins in the air, and making loud outcries to frighten them. A black bull with strong legs separated from the band, running toward the end of the enclosure.

The Marquis was justly proud of his herd, which was composed of fine selected animals. They were not oxen destined to the production of meat, with filthy, loose, and wrinkled hide, nor with broad hoofs, nor drooping head, nor with big ill-placed horns. These were animals of nervous vigor, strong and heavy enough to make the earth tremble, raising a cloud of dust beneath their feet; their hide was fine and glossy like that of a thoroughbred horse, their eyes flashed, their neck was thick and proud, and they had short legs, fine delicate tails, slender horns, sharp and clean, as if polished by hand, and round and small hoofs, so hard that they cut the grass as though made of steel.

The two horsemen rode behind the black bull, attacking him on both sides, barring his way when he tried to make for the river, until the Marquis, setting spur to his mare, gained distance and rode up to the bull, with the javelin held before him and, lodging it under his tail, managed, with the combined strength of his arm and horse, to make the beast lose his equilibrium, rolling him on the ground, with his belly up, his horns driven into the earth and his four feet in the air. The rapidity and ease with which the breeder accomplished this trick provoked an explosion of enthusiasm from behind the palisade. Hurrah for the old man! No one understood bulls like the Marquis. He managed them as if they were his own children, following them from the time of their birth in the cow-herd until they went to their death in the plazas like heroes worthy a better fate.

Other horsemen wished to start at once to win the applause of the crowd but Moraima held them back, giving preference to his niece. If she were determined to try her luck it would be better for her to begin now before the herd grew ugly with continued attacks. Doña Sol spurred on her horse which was pawing the ground with his fore feet, excited by the presence of the bulls. The Marquis desired to accompany her in her race, but she objected. No; she would rather have Gallardo, who was a bull-fighter. Where was Gallardo? The matador, still ashamed of his stupidity, placed himself at the lady's side without a word. The two set out on a gallop toward the centre of the drove of bulls. Doña Sol's horse reared several times, standing almost upright, as if resisting, but the strong Amazon forced him to advance. Gallardo waved his javelin, uttering shouts that were more like bellows, just as he did in the ring when he incited the beasts to show their mettle.

It took but little urging to make an animal separate from the drove. A white creature with cinnamon-colored spots, an enormous sloping neck, and horns of the finest point, started out. He ran toward the end of the enclosure as if it were his customary haunt, to which he was irresistibly drawn by instinct, and Doña Sol galloped after him, followed by the matador.

"Look out, Señora," called Gallardo. "That bull is old and knows the game! Be careful that he doesn't turn on you!"

When Doña Sol prepared to achieve the same feat as her uncle, reining her horse alongside to thrust her javelin under the animal's tail and upset him, he turned as if he suspected the danger, planting himself in a threatening attitude before his pursuers. The horse passed in front of the bull, Doña Sol being unable to rein him in on account of his speed, and the beast plunged after him, converting the besieger into the besieged. The lady did not think of flight. Many thousands of people were watching her from a distance. She feared her friends' laughter and the commiseration of the men, so she reined in her horse, making him face the bull. She sat with the javelin under her arm like a picador, and she thrust it into the bull's neck as he came on bellowing, his head down. The great cervix reddened with a stream of blood, but the beast continued to advance from mere momentum, not feeling that he enlarged the wound, till he thrust his horns beneath the horse, shaking him and lifting his fore feet off the ground. The Amazon was thrown from her saddle while a shout of horror from hundreds of throats arose in the distance. The horse, freeing himself from the horns, began to run like mad, his belly stained with blood, the girths broken, the saddle hanging over his back. The bull started to follow him, when at that instant something nearer attracted his attention. It was Doña Sol, who, instead of lying motionless on the ground, had just arisen, and picking up her javelin, placed it bravely under her arm to hold off the bull again. It was mad arrogance, due to her consciousness of the many who watched her. It was a challenge to death rather than yield to cowardice and ridicule.

They no longer shouted behind the palisade. The crowd was motionless with the silence of terror. The whole troop of bull-baiters rode up on a mad gallop in a cloud of dust, the riders seeming to gain in size at every bound. Aid would come too late. The bull pawed the ground with his fore feet and lowered his head to attack the audacious little figure that stood threatening him with the lance. One little horn-stab would make an end of it! But at the same instant, a fierce bellowing distracted the bull's attention and something red passed before his vision like a flame of fire. It was Gallardo, who had thrown himself off his mare, abandoning the javelin to grasp the jacket which he carried on the pommel of his saddle.

"Aaaa! Come on!"

The bull came on, running past the red-lined jacket, attracted by an adversary worthy of him, and turned his hind quarters toward the figure in the black skirt and violet bodice, that, in the stupefaction of danger, still stood with the lance under her arm.

"Have no fear, Doña Sol; he is mine now!" cried the bull-fighter, still pale with emotion but smiling, sure of his skill. Without other defence than the jacket, he fought the beast, drawing him away from the lady and escaping from its furious attacks with graceful movements.

The crowd, forgetting the recent fright, commenced to applaud, enraptured. What joy! To go to a simple baiting and to find themselves at an almost formal corrida, seeing Gallardo work gratis.

The bull-fighter, fired by the violence with which the brute attacked him, forgot Doña Sol and every one else, intent only on evading his attacks. The bull became furious, seeing that the man slipped unharmed from between his horns, and fell upon him again, never encountering anything but the brilliant red lining of the jacket.

At last he wearied and stood still, his mouth frothing, his head low, his legs trembling; then Gallardo took advantage of the brute's stupefaction and taking off his hat touched his head with it. An immense shout arose behind the palisade, greeting this heroic exploit. Then yells and ringing of bells sounded at Gallardo's back, cattlemen with lead-bulls appeared and, surrounding the animal, drove it slowly toward the thick of the herd.

Gallardo went in search of his mare, which stood motionless, accustomed to being near the bulls. He picked up his javelin, mounted, and rode back toward the palisade at a gentle gallop, prolonging the noisy applause of the crowd by this slow riding. The horsemen who had taken Doña Sol away greeted him with wild enthusiasm. The manager winked one eye at him, saying mysteriously, "Gachó, thou hast not been slow. Very good, but very good! Now I tell thee that thou'lt get her."

Doña Sol was in the landau of the Marquis' daughters, outside the palisade. Her cousins surrounded her, anxious, feeling her over, almost expecting to find some bone broken by her fall. They gave her glasses of manzanilla to help her recover from her fright but she smiled with an air of superiority, passively receiving these feminine demonstrations.

As she saw Gallardo breaking through the lines of people on his horse, amidst waving hats and extended hands, the lady smiled yet more brightly.

"Come here, Cid Campeador. Give me your hand!"

And again their hands clasped, with a pressure that lasted long.

In the evening, in the house of the matador, this event, which was talked about throughout the whole city, was commented upon. Señora Angustias displayed satisfaction, just as after a corrida. Her son saving one of those señoras on whom she gazed with admiration, habituated to reverence by long years of servitude! Carmen remained silent, scarcely knowing what to think.

Several days passed without Gallardo's receiving news from Doña Sol. The manager was out of the city hunting with some friends of the Forty-five. One afternoon, near nightfall, Don José sought him in a café on Sierpes Street where the connoisseurs met. He had returned from the hunt two hours before and had had to go immediately to Doña Sol's house in response to a certain note that awaited him at his domicile.

"But, man alive, thou art worse than a wolf!" said the manager, drawing his matador out of the café. "This lady expected thee to go to her house. She has spent most of her afternoons at home, thinking thou wouldst come any moment. This shouldn't be. After my having introduced thee, and after all that happened, thou owest her a call; a question of asking for her health."

The matador stopped in his walk and scratched his head beneath his hat.

"Well, but," he murmured with indecision, "well, but I am embarrassed. Yes, that is it; yes, sir, embarrassed. You know that I have my affairs with women and that I know how to say a half dozen words to any common gachí; but to this one, no. This is a lady, and when I see her I realize that I am rough and coarse, and I keep my mouth shut, for I can't speak without putting my foot in it. No, Don José, I am not going. I ought not to go."

But the manager, sure of convincing him, conducted him toward Doña Sol's house, talking of his recent interview with the lady. She showed herself somewhat offended by Gallardo's forgetfulness. The best in Seville had gone to see her since her accident at Tablada, but not he.

"Thou knowest that a bull-fighter should stand well with the people who are worth while. One must have education and show that he is not a herder raised in the branding-pen. A lady of so much importance who honors thee and expects thee! Come! I will go with thee."

"Ah! If you accompany me!" And Gallardo drew a deep breath on hearing this, as if he were freed from the weight of a great danger.

They entered Doña Sol's house. The courtyard was in Moorish style, its many colored arcades of beautiful designs recalling the horseshoe arches of the Alhambra. The fountain flowing into a basin where gold-fish were swimming sang with sweet monotony in the afternoon stillness. In the four surrounding passages with carved ceilings separated from the courtyard by the marble columns of the arcades, the bull-fighter saw ancient mosaics, time-darkened paintings, images of saints with livid countenances, and wood-work worm-eaten as though it had been fusilladed with small shot.

A servant conducted them up the broad marble stairway, and there again the bull-fighter was surprised to see paintings on wood of rude figures with a gilded background; voluptuous virgins that seemed to be hewn out with an axe, with delicate colors and faded gold, looted from ancient altars; tapestries of the soft tone of dry leaves, bordered with flowers and fruits, some representing scenes from Calvary, others full of hairy satyrs with hoofs and horns with whom nude girls seemed to play as men play with bulls in the ring.

"How vast is ignorance," he said to his manager. "And I had thought that all this was only good for convents. How much these people seem to value it."

Gallardo received new surprises. He was proud of his own furniture brought from Madrid, all of gaudy silk and complicated design, heavy and rich, seeming to proclaim, as it were by shouts, the money it had cost, but here he was dazzled at the sight of delicate and fragile chairs, white or green, tables and cupboards of simple lines, walls of a single tint with no other ornament than small paintings separated by great distances, and hanging by heavy cords, the whole giving a tone of subdued and quiet elegance that seemed the handiwork of artists. He was ashamed of his own stupefaction and of what he had admired in his house as the supreme of luxury. "How vast is ignorance!" And as he seated himself he did so with care, fearing lest the chair would crumble beneath his weight.

Doña Sol's presence banished these thoughts. He saw her, as he had never before seen her, without mantilla or hat, her glossy hair hanging, and seeming to justify her romantic name. Her arms, of superlative whiteness, escaped from the silken funnels of a Japanese tunic crossed over the breast, which left uncovered a space of adorable neck, slightly amber-colored, with the lines that suggest the neck of the mother Venus. Stones of all colors set in rings of strange design covered her fingers and scintillated with magic splendor as she moved her hands. On her youthful wrists glistened bracelets of gold, some of Oriental filigree with mysterious inscriptions, others massive, from which hung amulets and little foreign figures, mementoes of distant travels. She had crossed one leg over the other with manlike freedom, and on the point of one of her feet dangled a red slipper with a high, gilded heel, tiny as a toy, and covered with heavy embroidery.

Gallardo's ears buzzed, his vision was clouded, he only managed to distinguish a pair of blue eyes fixed on him with an expression half caressing, half ironic. To hide his emotion, he smiled, showing his teeth,—the expressionless smile of a child who wishes to be amiable.

"No, Señora—many thanks. That amounted to nothing."

Thus he received Doña Sol's expressions of gratitude for his heroic feat of the other afternoon. Little by little Gallardo began to acquire a certain composure. The lady and the manager talked of bulls, and this gave the swordsman a sudden confidence. She had seen him kill several times, and she remembered exactly the principal incidents. Gallardo felt pride that this woman had gazed upon him at such moments and had even kept fresh the memory of his deeds. She opened a lacquer box, decorated with weird flowers, and offered the men cigarettes with golden mouthpieces which exhaled a strange and pungent perfume.

"They contain opium; they are very agreeable."

And she lighted one, following the smoke spirals with her greenish eyes which acquired a tremor of liquid gold as they refracted the light. The bull-fighter, accustomed to the strong Havana tobacco, smoked the cigarette with curiosity. Pure straw; a mere treat for ladies. But the strange perfume of the smoke slowly overcame his timidity.

Doña Sol, looking at him fixedly, asked questions about his life. She wished to get a glimpse behind the scenes of glory, of the subterranean ways of celebrity, of the miserable wandering life of the bull-fighter before he gained public acclamation; and Gallardo, with sudden confidence, talked and talked, telling of his youthful days, dwelling with proud delectation on the lowliness of his origin, although omitting all that he considered questionable in his eventful adolescence.

"Very interesting, very original!" said the handsome lady, and withdrawing her eyes from the bull-fighter they became lost in wandering contemplation, as if fixed on something invisible.

"The greatest man in the world!" exclaimed Don José in frank enthusiasm. "Believe me, Sol; there are no two youths like this. And the way he recuperates from horn-stabs—!"

Happy in Gallardo's fortitude, as if he were his progenitor, he enumerated the wounds he had received, describing them as if they could be seen through his clothing. The lady's eyes followed him in this anatomical journey with sincere admiration. A true hero; timid, shy, and simple, like all strong men. The manager spoke of taking his leave. It was after seven and he was expected at home. But Doña Sol rose to her feet with smiling determination as if to oppose his going. He must remain; they must dine with her; a friendly invitation. That night she expected no one else. The Marquis and his family had gone to the country.

"I am alone—not another word. I command. You will stay and take pot-luck with me."

And as if her orders admitted of no question, she left the room.

The manager protested. No, he could not remain; he had come from outside the city that very afternoon, and his family had scarcely seen him. Besides, he had invited two friends. As for his matador, it seemed to him natural and proper that he should stay. Really, the invitation was meant for him.

"But stay a while at least!" said the swordsman, distressed. "Damn it! Don't leave me alone. I shall not know what to do; I shall not know what to say."

A quarter of an hour afterward Doña Sol appeared again, dressed in one of her Paris gowns, a Paquin model, the desperation and wonder of relatives and friends.

Don José insisted again. He must go, but his matador should stay. He would take care to let them know at home so that they would not wait for him. Again Gallardo made a gesture of agony, but he grew calm at a look from the manager.

"Don't worry," he whispered, going toward the door, "dost thou think I am a child? I will say thou art dining with some connoisseurs from Madrid."

What torment Gallardo suffered during the first moments of the dinner! He was intimidated by the grave and lordly luxury of the dining-room in which he and the lady seemed to be lost, seated face to face at the centre of a great table, under enormous silver candelabras with electric lights and rose-colored shades. The imposing servants inspired awe; they were ceremonious and impassive as if habituated to the most extraordinary actions; as if nothing this lady did could surprise them. He was ashamed of his dress and manners, feeling the strong contrast between the environment and his appearance. But this first impression of fear and shyness vanished little by little. Doña Sol laughed at his moderation, at the fear with which he touched the plates and cups. Gallardo ended by admiring her. What an appetite the blonde woman had! Accustomed to the squeamishness and abstinence of the señoritas he had known, who thought it bad taste to eat much, he marvelled at Doña Sol's voracity and at the naturalness with which she disposed of the viands. Mouthfuls disappeared between her rosy lips without leaving the slightest trace of their passage; her jaws worked without in the least diminishing the beautiful serenity of her countenance; she carried the glass to her mouth without the slightest drop of liquor spilling a colored pearl upon her clothing. Surely thus must goddesses eat!

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.

"Good for those little hands of gold! Let's hear another."

"Do you enjoy music?" asked the lady.

"Oh, very much!" Gallardo had never been asked this question until now, but undoubtedly he enjoyed it.

Doña Sol passed slowly from the lively rhythm of the popular songs to other music more slow, more solemn, which the matador, in his philharmonic wisdom, recognized as "church music." He no longer shouted exclamations of enthusiasm. He was overcome by a delicious quiet, trying to keep awake by contemplating the handsome lady whose back was turned toward him. What a figure—Mother of God! His Moorish eyes fastened themselves on the nape of her neck, round and white, crowned by an aureole of wild, rebellious, golden hair. An absurd idea danced through his blunted mind, keeping him awake with the tickling of temptation.

"What would that gachí do if I should rise and creep up behind her step by step and give her a kiss on that rich little neck of hers?"

But his design did not venture beyond a tempting thought. That woman inspired an irresistible respect. Moreover, he remembered his manager's talk of the arrogance with which she could frighten away troublesome bores; of that little game learned in foreign lands which taught her how to manage a strong man as if he were a rag. He continued gazing at the white neck, like a moon surrounded by a nimbus of gold seen through the clouds which drowsiness hung before his eyes. He was going to fall asleep! He feared that suddenly a loud snore would interrupt the music, a music incomprehensible to him, and which, consequently, must be magnificent. He pinched his legs to keep awake; stretched out his arms; covered his mouth with one hand to stifle his yawns.

A long time passed. Gallardo was not sure whether he had slept or not. Suddenly Doña Sol's voice woke him from this painful somnolence. She had laid down her cigarette with its blue spirals of smoke, and in a low voice that accentuated the words, giving them impassioned trembling, she sang, accompanying herself by the melody of the piano.

The bull-fighter cocked his ears to try to understand something. Not a word. They were foreign songs. "Damn it! Why not a tango or a soleá? And yet a Christian is expected to keep awake."

Doña Sol ran her fingers over the keys, casting her eyes upward, throwing her head back, her firm breast trembling with musical sighs. It was Elsa's prayer, the lament of the blonde virgin thinking of the strong man, the brave warrior, invincible before men, and sweet and timid with women. She dreamed awake in her song, throwing into her words tremors of passion, the moisture rising to her eyes. The simple strong man! The warrior! Maybe he was behind her! Why not?

He did not have the legendary aspect of the other; he was rough and unpolished, but she could yet see, with the clarity of a vivid recollection, the grace with which days before he had rushed to her rescue; the smiling confidence with which he had fought a bellowing, infuriated beast, just as the Wagnerian heroes fought frightful dragons. Yes; he was her warrior. And shaken from her heels to the roots of her hair by a voluptuous fear, giving herself up for conquered in advance, she thought she could divine the sweet danger that was approaching behind her. She saw the hero, the knight, rise slowly from the sofa, his Moorish eyes fixed upon her; she heard his cautious steps; she felt his hands on her shoulders; then a kiss of fire on her neck, a brand of passion that marked her his slave for all time—But suddenly the romance ended, and nothing had happened; she had experienced no other impression than her own thrills of timid desire.

Disappointed, she turned around on the piano stool; the music ceased. The warrior was there, buried in the sofa, with a match in his hand, trying to light his cigar for the fourth time, and opening his eyes immeasurably wide to drive the torpor from his senses.

Seeing her eyes fastened upon him, Gallardo rose to his feet. Ah, the supreme moment was coming! The hero strode toward her, to press her with manly passion, to conquer her, to make her his.

"Good-night, Doña Sol. I must go, it is late. You will want to rest."

Impelled by surprise and dismay, she extended her hand, not knowing what she did. Strong and simple like a hero!

All the feminine conventionalisms went rushing in confusion through her mind, the traditional expressions a woman never forgets, not even in the moments of her greatest abandon. Her desire was impossible. The first time he entered her house? Without the slightest pretence of resistance? Could she go to him? But when the swordsman clasped her hand she looked into his eyes, eyes that could only gaze with impassioned steadiness, that in their mute tenacity expressed his timid hopes, his silent desires.

"Don't go—come; come!"

And she said no more.

CHAPTER VII
THE SPANISH WILD BEAST

A great satisfaction was added to the numerous conceits which served to flatter Gallardo's vanity. When he talked with the Marquis of Moraima, he contemplated him now with an almost filial affection. That señor dressed like a country gentleman, a rude centaur in chaps, with a strong lance, was an illustrious personage who could cover his breast with official sashes and wear in the palace of kings a coat covered with embroidery, with a golden key sewed to one lapel. His most remote ancestors had come to Seville with the monarch that expelled the Moors, receiving as a reward for their deeds immense territories taken from the enemy, of which the great plains where the Marquis' bulls now pastured were the remains. His nearest forefathers had been friends and councillors of monarchs, spending a large part of their patrimony in the pageantry of court life. And this great lord, kind and frank, who maintained in the simplicity of his country life the distinction of his illustrious ancestry, was almost like a near relative of Gallardo. The cobbler's son was as haughty as if he had become a member and formed a part of a noble family. The Marquis of Moraima was his uncle, although he could not confess it publicly and, though the relationship was not legitimate, he consoled himself thinking of the dominion he exercised over a woman of that family, thanks to a love that seemed to laugh at all law and class prejudice. His cousins also, and relatives in greater or less degree of proximity, were all those young gentlemen who used to receive him with that somewhat disdainful familiarity which connoisseurs of rank bestow upon bull-fighters; these now began to treat him as equals. Accustomed to hear Doña Sol speak of them with the familiarity of kinship, Gallardo thought it disadvantageous to him not to treat them with equal freedom.

His life and habits had changed. He seldom entered the cafés on Sierpes Street where his old admirers gathered. They were good fellows, simple and earnest, but of little importance; small merchants, workmen who had risen to be employers; modest employees; vagabonds of no profession who lived miraculously by unknown expedients, with no other visible occupation than talking of bulls.

Gallardo passed the windows of the cafés and bowed to these devotees, who responded with eager signs for him to come in. "I'll return soon." But he did not. He entered an aristocratic club on the same street, with servants in knee breeches, with imposing Gothic decorations and silver service on its tables. The son of Señora Angustias felt a glow of vanity whenever he passed among the servants standing so erect, with a military air, in their black coats, and a lackey, imposing as a magistrate, with a silver chain around his neck, offered to take his hat and stick. It pleased him to mix with so many distinguished people. The young men, sunk down in high chairs like those seen in romantic dramas, talked of horses and women, and kept account of all the duels that took place in Spain, for they were men of fastidious honor and unquestioned valor. In an inside room they shot at targets; in another they gambled from the early evening hours until after sunrise. They tolerated Gallardo as an "original" of the club, because he was a reputable bull-fighter, who dressed well, spent money, and had good connections.

"He is very celebrated," said the members, with great tact, realizing that he knew as much as they did.

The character of Don José, who was charming and well-born, served the bull-fighter as a guarantee in this new existence. Moreover, Gallardo, with his cleverness as an old-time street gamin, knew how to make himself popular with this assemblage of gay youths in which he met acquaintances by the dozens.

He gambled much. It was the best means of coming into contact with his "new family" and strengthening the relationship. He gambled and lost with the bad luck of a man fortunate in other undertakings. He spent his nights in the "hall of crime," as the gambling room was called, and he seldom managed to gain. His ill-luck was a cause of pride to the club.

"Last night Gallardo took a good laying out," said the members. "He lost at least eleven thousand pesetas."

And this prestige as a strong "bank," as well as the serenity with which he gave up his money, made his new friends respect him, finding in him a firm upholder of society's game. The new passion rapidly took possession of him. The excitement of the game dominated him even to the point of sometimes making him forget the great lady who was to him the most interesting object in the world. To gamble with the best in Seville! To be treated as an equal by the young gentlemen, with the fraternal feeling that the loaning of money and common emotions creates!

Suddenly one night a great cluster of electric globes that stood on the green table and illuminated the room went out. There was darkness and disorder, but Gallardo's imperious voice rose above the confusion.

"Silence, gentlemen! Nothing has happened. On with the game! Let them bring candles!"

And the game went on, his companions admiring him for his energetic oratory even more than for the bulls he killed. The manager's friends asked him about Gallardo's losses. He would be ruined; what he earned by the bulls was being eaten up by gaming. But Don José smiled disdainfully, doubling the glory of his matador.

"We have more bull-fights for this year than any one else. We're going to get tired of killing bulls and earning money. Let the boy amuse himself. That's what he works for, and that's why he is what he is—the greatest man in the world!"

Don José considered that the people's admiration for the serenity with which he lost added glory to his idol. A matador could not be like other men who keep chasing after a cent. He did not earn his money for nothing. Besides, it pleased him as a personal triumph, as something that was an accomplishment of his own, to see him established in a social set which not everybody could join.

"He is the man of the day," he said with an aggressive air to those who criticised Gallardo's new habits. "He doesn't go with nobodies, nor does he sit around taverns like other bull-fighters. And what does that prove? He is the bull-fighter of the aristocracy, because he wants to be, and can be. The others are jealous."

In his new existence, Gallardo not only frequented the club, but some afternoons he mingled with the Society of the Forty-five. It was a kind of senate of tauromachy. Bull-fighters did not find easy access to its salons, thus leaving the respectable nobility of the connoisseurs free to voice their opinions.

During the spring and summer the Forty-five gathered in the vestibule and on the sidewalk, seated in willow arm-chairs, to await the telegrams from the bull-fights. They had little faith in the opinions of the press; moreover they must get the news before it came out in the papers. Telegrams from all parts of the Peninsula where bull-fights were held came at nightfall, and the members, after listening with religious gravity to their reading, argued and built suppositions upon these telegraphic brevities. It was a function that filled them with pride, elevating them above common mortals, this of remaining quietly seated at the door of the Society, enjoying the cool air and hearing in a certain manner, without prejudiced exaggerations, what had occurred that afternoon in the bull plaza of Bilbao, or of Coruña or Barcelona, or Valencia, of the ears one matador had received or the hisses that had greeted another, while their fellow-citizens remained in the saddest depths of ignorance and walked the streets obliged to wait till night for the coming out of the newspapers. When there was an accident, and a telegram arrived announcing the terrible goring of a native bull-fighter, emotion and patriotic sentiment softened the respectable senators to the point of communicating the important secret to some passing friend. The news instantly circulated through the cafés on Sierpes Street, and no one doubted it at all. It was a telegram received at the Forty-five.

Gallardo's manager, with his aggressive and noisy enthusiasm, disturbed the social gravity; but they tolerated him on account of his being an old friend and they ended by laughing at his ways. It was impossible for such critical persons to discuss the merits of the bull-fighters tranquilly with Don José. Often, on speaking of Gallardo as "a brave boy, but with little art," they looked timorously toward the door.

"Pepe is coming," they said, and the conversation was suddenly broken off.

Don José entered waving the blue paper of a telegram above his head.

"Have you got news from Santander? Here it is: Gallardo, two strokes, two bulls, and with the second, the ear. Now, didn't I tell you? The greatest man in the world!"

The telegram for the Forty-five was often different, but the manager scarcely conceded it a scornful glance, bursting out in noisy protest.

"Lies! All jealousy! My message is the one that's worth something. That one shows pique because my boy gets all the favors."

And the members in the end laughed at Don José, touching their foreheads with a finger to indicate his madness, joking about "the greatest man in the world" and his funny manager.

Little by little, as an unheard of privilege, he managed to introduce Gallardo into the Society. The bull-fighter came under the pretext of looking for his manager and finally seated himself among the gentlemen, many of whom were not his friends and had chosen their matador among the rival swordsmen.

The decorations of this club-house had distinction, as Don José said; high wainscotings of Moorish tiles, and on the immaculately white walls, gay posters recalling past bull-fights; mounted heads of bulls famous for the number of horses they had killed or for having wounded some celebrated matador; glittering capes and swords presented by certain bull-fighters on "cutting the queue" and retiring from the profession.

Servants in frock coats waited on gentlemen in country dress or in negligee during the hot summer afternoons. In Holy Week and during other great feasts of Seville, when illustrious connoisseurs from all over Spain called to greet the Forty-five, the servants dressed in knee breeches and wore white wigs with red and yellow livery. In this guise, like lackeys of a royal house, they served trays of manzanilla to the wealthy gentlemen, some of whom had even taken off their cravats.

In the afternoons, when the dean of the Club, the illustrious Marquis of Moraima, presented himself, the members formed in a circle in deep arm-chairs and the famous cattle-breeder occupied a seat higher than the others like a throne, from which he presided over the conversation. They always began by talking about the weather. They were mostly breeders and rich farmers who lived on the products of the earth when favored by the variable heavens. The Marquis expounded the observations drawn from the knowledge acquired on interminable horseback rides over the Andalusian plain. Upon this immense desert, with a boundless horizon like a sea of land, the bulls resembled drowsy sharks moving slowly among the waves of herbage. The drought, that cruel calamity of the Andalusian plains, led to discussions lasting whole afternoons, and when, after long weeks of expectation, the lowering sky let fall a few drops, big and hot, the great country gentlemen smiled joyfully, rubbing their hands, and the Marquis said impressively, looking at the broad circles that wet the pavement:

"The glory of God! Every drop of these is a five dollar gold piece!"

When they were not busying themselves talking about the weather, cattle became the subject of their conversation, and especially bulls, as though they were united to them by a blood relationship. The breeders listened with respect to the Marquis' opinions, recognizing the prestige of his superior fortune. The mere amateurs, who never went out of the city, admired his skill as a raiser of noble animals. What that man knew! He showed himself convinced of the greatness of his occupation when he talked of the care the bulls needed. Out of every ten calves eight or nine were only good for meat, after being tested for their temper. Only one or two which proved themselves ferocious and aggressive before the point of the spear came to be considered animals suitable for combat, living apart, with all manner of care—and such care!

"A herd of fierce bulls," said the Marquis, "should not be treated as a business. It is a luxury. They give, for a fighting bull, four or five times more than for an ox for the butcher-shop—but what they cost!"

They must be cared for at all hours, heed must be taken in regard to their pasture and water, they must be moved from one place to another with changes of temperature. Each bull costs more to maintain than a family. And when he is ready he must be watched till the last minute so that he may not disgrace himself in the ring but do honor to the emblem of the breeder which he wears on his neck.

The Marquis had been compelled to quarrel with the managers and authorities of certain plazas, and had refused to furnish his animals because the band of music was placed over the bull-pens. The noise of the instruments upset the animals, taking away their courage and serenity when they entered the arena.

"They are just like ourselves," he said with tenderness. "They lack only speech. What do I say? Like us? There are some that are better than some people."

And he told about Lobito, an old bull, a leader, which he declared he would not sell even if they would give him the whole of Seville with its Giralda. He no sooner galloped in sight of the drove in which this jewel lived on the vast pastures, than a shout was enough to call his attention. "Lobito!" And Lobito, abandoning his companions, came to meet the Marquis, moistening the horseman's boots with his gentle muzzle; yet he was an animal of immense power and the rest of the herd lived in fear of him.

The breeder dismounted, and taking a piece of chocolate out of his saddle bags, he gave it to Lobito, who gratefully bowed his head armed with its gigantic horns. The Marquis advanced with an arm resting over the leader's neck, walking quietly through the drove of bulls, which grew restless and ferocious at the presence of the man. There was no danger. Lobito marched like a dog, covering the master with his body, looking in all directions, compelling respect among his companions with his flashing eyes. If one more audacious drew near to nose the Marquis he encountered the threatening horns of the leader. If several united with dull stupidity to bar his passage, Lobito thrust his armed head among them and opened the way.

An expression of enthusiasm and tenderness moved the Marquis' beardless lips and his white side-whiskers as he recalled the great deeds of some of the animals produced in his pastures.

"The bull! The noblest animal in the world! If men were more like them the world would be better off. There was Coronel. Do you remember that treasure?"

And he showed an immense photograph with a handsome mounting, that represented himself in mountaineer dress, much younger and surrounded by several girls dressed in white, all seated in the centre of a meadow on a dark mass at one end of which was a pair of horns. This mass was Coronel. Immense and fierce toward his companions in the herd, he showed affectionate submission to the master and his family. He was like a mastiff, fierce to strangers, but letting the children pull him about by the tail and ears and put up with all their deviltry with growls of kindness. The Marquis had with him his young daughters, and the animal smelt of the little girls' white skirts as they timidly clung to their father's legs, until, with the sudden audacity of childhood, they ended by rubbing his nose. "Down, Coronel!" Coronel went down on his knees and the family seated themselves on his side, which moved up and down like a bellows with the ru-ru of his powerful respiration.

One day, after much hesitation, the Marquis sold him to the plaza of Pamplona and attended the bull-fight. Moraima was moved by the recollection of this event; his eyes filled with emotion. He had never in all his life seen a bull like that. He came courageously into the arena and stood planted in the middle of it, surprised at the light after the darkness of the bull-pen, and at the clamor of thousands of persons after the silence of the stables. But the moment a picador pricked him he seemed to fill the whole plaza with his tremendous fierceness.

Before him, men, horses, nothing could stand. In one minute he threw the horses and tossed the picadores into the air. The peones ran. The plaza was like a regular branding-pen. The public shouted for more horses, and Coronel, in the meantime, stood waiting for some one to stand up and face him. Nothing like that for nobility and power will ever be seen again.

As soon as they incited him to come on, he rushed up with a courage and speed that set the public wild. When they gave the sign to kill, with the fourteen stabs he had in his body, and the complete set of banderillas, he was as brave and valiant as though he had never gone out of the pasture. Then—

The breeder, when he arrived at this point, always stopped, to strengthen his voice, which grew tremulous.

Then—the Marquis of Moraima, who had been in a box, found himself, he knew not how, behind the barrier among attendants who were running about with the excitement of the eventful contest, and near to the matador, who was making ready his muleta with a certain deliberation, as if wishing to put off the moment for standing face to face with an animal of such power. "Coronel!" shouted the Marquis, leaning his body half over the barrier and beating the boards with his hands.

The animal stood still but raised his head at these cries—distant calls from a country he would never see again. "Coronel!" Turning his head the bull saw a man calling to him from the wall and he started in a direct line to attack him. But in the midst of his advance he slackened his pace and slowly approached until he touched with his horns the arms held out to him. His throat was varnished red with little streams of blood which escaped from the barbs buried in his neck and from the wounds in his hide, in which the blue muscle could be seen. "Coronel! My son!" And the bull, as if he understood these outbursts of tenderness, raised his dripping muzzle and dampened the Marquis' white beard. "Why hast thou brought me here?" those wild and blood-shot eyes seemed to say. And the Marquis, unheeding what he did, pressed kisses upon the animal's nose that was wet with his furious bellowings.

"Don't let him be killed!" shouted a good soul in the galleries; and as if these words reflected the mind of the public, an explosion of voices filled the plaza, while thousands of handkerchiefs fluttered above the tiers of seats like flocks of doves. "Don't let him be killed!" For a moment the multitude, moved by a vague tenderness, despised its own diversion, hated the bull-fighter with his glittering dress and his useless heroism, admired the valor of the animal, and felt inferior to it, recognizing that among so many thousands of reasoning beings the greater nobility and sensibility were represented by the poor brute.

"I took him back," said the Marquis, with emotion. "I returned the management their two thousand pesetas. I would have given my whole hacienda. After he had been pastured in the meadow a month he didn't even have the scars on his neck. It was my intention to let that brave beast die of old age, but the good do not prosper in this world. A tricky bull that was not fit to look him in the face treacherously gored him to death."

The Marquis and his fellow cattle-breeders passed suddenly from this tenderness toward the animals, to the pride they felt in their ferocity. One should see the scorn with which they talked of the enemies of bull-fights, of those who protested against this art in the name of prevention of cruelty to animals. Foreigners' nonsense! Errors of ignoramuses, who only distinguish animals by their horns and think a slaughter-house ox the same as a fighting-bull! The Spanish bull was a wild-beast; the most heroic wild beast in the world. And they recounted the numerous combats between bulls and terrible felines, always followed by the noisy triumph of the national wild beast.

The Marquis laughed as he recollected another of his animals. A combat was arranged in a plaza between a bull, and a lion, and a tiger belonging to a certain famous tamer, and the breeder sent Barrabas, a wicked animal he had always kept by himself in the pasture because he was ever goring his companions, and had killed many cattle.

"I saw that, also," said Moraima. "A great iron cage in the centre of the ring, and in it was Barrabas. First they let the lion loose at him and the damned beast, taking advantage of the bull's lack of cunning, jumped onto his hind quarters and began to tear him with his claws and teeth. Barrabas jumped with fury to unfasten him and get him in front of his horns where his defences lay. At last, in one of his turns, he managed to toss the lion in front of him and gored him, and then, gentlemen, just like a ball, he smelled him from tip to tip a long while, shook him about like a figure stuffed with straw, till finally, as if he despised him, he tossed him to one side and there lay what they call the 'king of beasts' rolled up into a heap, mewing like a cat that has had a beating. Then they let the tiger at him and the affair was shorter yet. He had scarcely stuck his nose in before Barrabas hooked him and tossed him up, and after getting a good shaking, he went into the corner like the other, curling himself up and playing baby."

These recollections always provoked great laughter at the Forty-five. The Spanish bull! Little wild beasts to face him! And in their joyful exclamations there was an expression of national pride, as if the arrogant courage of the Spanish wild beast signified equally the superiority of the land and race over the rest of the world.

At the time Gallardo began to frequent the Society, a new subject of conversation interrupted the endless discussions about bulls and the country's crops.

At the Forty-five, as well as all over Seville, they talked about "Plumitas," a bandit celebrated for his audacity, who each day acquired fresh fame by the fruitless efforts of his pursuers. The newspapers related his deeds as if he were a national personage; the Government was interpellated in the Cortes and promised an immediate capture which never took place; the civil guard concentrated and a regular army was mobilized for pursuing him while Plumitas, always alone, with no other auxiliary than his carbine and his restless steed, slipped in and out among them like a phantom. When their numbers were not great he faced them and dropped some one of them lifeless, and he was revered and assisted by the poor country people, miserable slaves on enormous estates, who saw in the bandit an avenger of the hungry, a quick and cruel justice, like that exercised by the ancient mail-clad knight errant. Plumitas demanded money from the rich and, with the air of an actor who sees himself watched by an immense audience, from time to time he succored some poor old woman or a laborer burdened with a family. These acts of generosity were enlarged upon by the gossips of the rural multitude, who at all hours had the name of Plumitas on their lips but who were blind and dumb when questioned by the military or the police.

He passed from one province to another with the ease of one who knew the country well, and the land-owners of Seville and Córdova contributed equally to his sustenance. Whole weeks would pass without talk of the bandit, when he would suddenly present himself on a plantation, or make his entrance into a town, scornful of danger.

At the Forty-five they had direct news of him, the same as if he were a killer of bulls.

"Plumitas was at my place yesterday," said a rich farmer. "The overseer gave him thirty duros and he went away after breakfast."

They patiently tolerated this contribution and did not communicate the news to any but their friends. A denunciation meant declarations and all kinds of turmoil. Of what use? The civil guard pursued the bandit fruitlessly and when he became angry with the informers their property was at the mercy of his vengeance, utterly unprotected.

The Marquis talked about Plumitas and his deeds without dismay, smiling as if he were discussing a natural and inevitable calamity.

"They are poor boys that have been unlucky and have taken to the woods. My father (may he rest in peace!) knew the famous José María and breakfasted with him twice. I have come across many of less fame who went around doing mischief. They are like bulls; courageous, simple people. They only attack when they are pressed, growing hotter under persecution."

"He had left orders at his farmhouses and at all the herders' huts on his vast territories for them to give Plumitas whatever he asked for. According to tales of the overseers and cowboys, the bandit, with the old time respect of the peasant for good and generous masters, spoke in greatest praise of him, offering to kill any one who might offend the Señor Marqués in the least. Poor fellow! For a pittance, which was what he asked when he presented himself, tired and hungry, it was not worth while to irritate him and attract his vengeance."

"The breeder, who galloped alone over the plains where his bulls pastured, had a suspicion of having several times crossed Plumitas' path without recognizing him. He must be one of those gaunt-looking horsemen he met in the country solitudes with no town in sight and who raised his hand to his grimy hat, saying with respectful simplicity:

"God be with you, Señor Marqués!"

Moraima, when he talked of Plumitas, sometimes glanced at Gallardo, who, with the vehemence of the neophyte, railed against the authorities because they did not protect property.

"Some fine day he'll present himself to thee at La Rincona', boy," said the Marquis with his grave drawl.

"Damn it! Well, that will not please me, Señor Marqués. Man alive! And must one pay such heavy taxes for that?"

No; it would not please him to run against that bandit on his excursions at La Rinconada. He was a brave man when killing bulls, and he forgot his life in the ring; but these professional man-killers inspired him with the terrors of the unknown.

His family was at his plantation. Señora Angustias loved country life after years spent in poverty in city houses. Carmen also enjoyed the peace of the country. Her industrious disposition inclined her to see to the work of the farm, enjoying the sweetness of ownership as she realized the extent of her property. Moreover, the leather-worker's children, those nephews and nieces who consoled her for her barrenness, needed the country air for the good of their health.

Gallardo had promised to join them, but put off his trip with all manner of pretexts. He lived in his city house without other companionship than that of Garabato, like a bachelor, and this permitted him complete liberty in his relations with Doña Sol. He thought this the happiest time of his life. Sometimes he even forgot the existence of La Rinconada and its inhabitants.

Mounted on fiery steeds he and Doña Sol rode out in the same costumes as on that day when they first met, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of Don José, who by his presence seemed to mollify the scandal of the people at this exhibition. They were going to see bulls on the pastures near Seville, to test calves in the Marquis' herds, and Doña Sol, eager for danger, was enraptured when a young bull, instead of running away, turned against her at the prick of her javelin and attacked her so that Gallardo had to rush to her rescue.

Again they went to the station at Empalme, if a shipment of bulls had been announced for the plazas which gave extra bull-fights late in the winter.

Doña Sol curiously examined this place, the most important centre of exportation for the taurine industry. Near the railroad there were extensive enclosures in which enormous boxes of gray wood, mounted on wheels, and with two lift-doors, stood by the dozens, awaiting the busy times of exhibitions, or the summer bull-fights. These boxes had travelled all over the Peninsula, carrying noble bulls to distant plazas and returning empty to be occupied by another, and yet another.

Human fraud and cunning succeeded in managing as easily as merchandise these wild beasts habituated to the freedom of the country. The bulls that were to be sent off on the train came galloping along a broad dusty road between two barbed wire fences. They came from far away pastures, and as they drew near Empalme their drivers started them on a disorderly race, so as to deceive them more completely by their scurrying speed. In advance, at full gallop, rode the overseers and herders, with pikes over their shoulders, followed by the prudent leaders covering the others with enormous horns, showing them to be old cattle. After them trotted the fierce bulls, the wild beasts destined for death, marching well flanked by tame bulls, who prevented their getting out of the road, and by strong cowboys who ran, sling in hand, ready to check with an unerring stone the pair of horns that separated from the group.

When they reached the enclosures the advance riders separated, remaining outside the gate, and the whole troop of bulls, an avalanche of dust, kicking, bellowing, and bell ringing, rushed impetuously into the place, the barricade suddenly closing behind the tail of the last animal. People astride the walls or peering through the galleries excited them with shouts or by waving hats. They crossed the first enclosure, not noticing that they were shut in, but as though they still ran in the open country. The leaders, taught by experience and obedient to the herders, stood to one side as soon as they went through the door, letting the whirlwind of bulls that ran snorting after them, pass quietly through. They only stopped, with surprise and uncertainty, in the second enclosure, seeing the wall ahead of them, and as they turned, they found the gate closed in the rear.

Then the boxing up began. One by one the bulls were urged, by the waving of rags, by shouts and blows, toward a little lane in the centre of which was placed the travelling box with its lift-doors. It was like a little tunnel at the end of which could be seen the open space of other grassy enclosures and leaders that walked peacefully about; a fiction of a far-away pasture which attracted the wild beast.

He advanced slowly along the lane, now suspicious of danger and fearing to set his feet on the gently sloping gangway that led to the box mounted on wheels. The bull divined peril in this little tunnel which presented itself before him as an inevitable passage. He felt on his hind quarters the goad that urged him along the lane, obliging him to advance; he saw above him two rows of people looking over the barriers and exciting him with gesticulations and whistles. From the roof of the box, where the carpenters were hidden ready to let the doors fall, hung a red rag, waving in the rectangle of light framed by the other exit. The pricks, the shouts, the shapeless mass that danced before his eyes as if defying him, and the sight of his tranquil companions pastured on the other side of the passage, finally decided him. He began to run through the little tunnel; he made the wooden inclined plane tremble with his weight, but he had scarcely entered the box when the door in front fell, and before he could turn back the one behind him slid down.

The loud grating of the locks was heard and the animal was swallowed up in darkness and silence, a prisoner in a little space wherein he could only lie down with his legs doubled up. Through a trap in the roof armfuls of forage fell upon him; men pushed the perambulating dungeon on its little wheels toward the nearby railroad, and immediately another box was placed in the passage, repeating the deception, until all the animals for the corrida were ready to start on their journey.

Doña Sol admired these proceedings in the great national industry with all her enthusiasm for "color," and longed to imitate the overseers and cowboys. She loved life in the open, the gallop over the immense plains followed by sharp horns and bony foreheads that could give death with the slightest movement. Her soul overflowed with strong love for the pastoral life which we all feel sometimes within us, as an inheritance from remote ancestors in that epoch in which man, not yet knowing how to extract riches from the womb of the earth, lived by gathering the beasts together and depending on their products for his sustenance. To be a herder, and a herder of wild beasts, seemed to Doña Sol the most interesting and heroic of professions.

Gallardo, when he had overcome the first intoxication of his good luck, contemplated the lady in wonder in the hours when they were alone, asking himself if all women of the great world were like her. Her caprices, her versatility, astounded him. He dared not thou her; no, not that. She had never encouraged him to such familiarity, and once when he tried it, with hesitating tongue and trembling voice, he saw in her eyes of gilded splendor such an expression of aloofness that he drew back ashamed, returning to his old form of address.

She on the other hand used thou in her speech to him, as did the great gentlemen friends of the bull-fighter, but this was only in hours of intimacy. Whenever she had to write him a short note, telling him not to come because she was obliged to go out with her relatives, she used you, and in her letters were no other expressions of affection than the coldly courteous ones which she might employ when writing to a friend of the lower class.

"That gachí!" murmured Gallardo disheartened. "It seems as if she has always lived with scrubs who might show her letters to everybody and she is afraid. Anybody would say she doesn't think me a gentleman because I am a matador!"

Other peculiarities of the great lady made the bull-fighter sulky and sad. Sometimes, when he presented himself at her house, one of those servants who looked like fine gentlemen in reduced circumstances coldly barred the way. "The Señora is not in. The Señora has gone out." And he guessed it was a lie, feeling Doña Sol's presence a short distance away on the other side of door and curtains. No doubt she was getting tired, was feeling a sudden aversion to him, and just at the moment of the call gave orders to her servants not to receive him.

"Well; the coal is burned up!" said he as he walked away. "I'll never come back again. That gachí is amusing herself with me."

But when he returned he was ashamed of having believed in the possibility of not seeing Doña Sol again. She received him holding out to him white firm arms like those of an Amazon, her eyes wide and wandering, with a strange light that seemed to reflect mental disorder.

"Why dost thou perfume thyself?" she complained, as though she perceived the most repugnant odors. "It is something unworthy of thee. I wish thee to smell of bulls, of horses. What rich odors! Dost thou not love them? Tell me yes, Juanín; beast of God, my animal!"

One afternoon the bull-fighter, seeing her inclined to confidences, felt curiosity regarding her past and asked about the kings and great personages who, according to gossip, had crossed Doña Sol's life.

She responded with a cold look in her light eyes.

"And what does that matter to thee? Thou art jealous, maybe? And even if it were true, what then?"

She remained silent a long while, her gaze wandering, her look of madness accompanied always by fantastic thoughts.

"Thou must have beaten women," she said, looking at him with curiosity. "Deny it not. That would greatly interest me! Not thy wife; I know that she is good. I mean other women, all those that bull-fighters meet; the women that love with more fury the more they are beaten. No? Truly hast thou never beaten one?"

Gallardo protested with the dignity of a brave man, incapable of ill-treating those who were not so strong as he. Doña Sol showed a certain disappointment on hearing his explanations.

"Some day thou must beat me. I want to know what that is." She spoke with resolution, and then her face clouded, her brows met, a blue effulgence animated the gold dust of her pupils.

"No, my strong man; mind me not; risk it not. Thou wouldst come out the loser."

The advice was valid and Gallardo had occasion to remember it. One day, in a moment of intimacy, a somewhat rude caress from his bull-fighter hands awoke the fury of this woman who was attracted to the fellow—and hated him at the same time. "Take that!" And her right hand, clenched and hard as a club, gave a blow up and down the swordsman's jaw, with an accuracy that seemed to follow fixed rules of defence.

Gallardo was stupefied with pain and shame, while the lady, as if she understood the suddenness of her aggression, tried to justify it with a cold hostility.

"That is to teach thee a lesson. I know what you are, you bull-fighters. If I should let myself be trampled on once thou wouldst end by flogging me every day like a gypsy of Triana. That was well done. Distances must be preserved."

One afternoon, in the early spring, they were returning from a testing of calves in the Marquis' pasture. He, with a troop of horsemen, rode along the highway. Doña Sol, followed by the swordsman, turned her horse through the fields, enjoying the elasticity of the sod under the horses' feet. The setting sun dyed the verdure of the plain a soft purple, the wild flowers dotted it with white and yellow. Across this expanse, on which the colors took the ruddy tone of distant fire, the shadows of the riders were outlined, long and slender. The spears they carried on their shoulders were so gigantic in the shadow that their dark lines were lost on the horizon. On one side shone the course of the river like a sheet of reddish steel—half hidden in the grass. Doña Sol looked at Gallardo with imperious eyes.

"Put thy arm around my waist!"

The swordsman obeyed and thus they rode, the two horses close together, the riders united from the waist up. The lady contemplated their blended shadows through the magic light of the meadow moving ahead of their slow march.

"It seems as though we were living in another world," she murmured, "a world of legend; something like the scenes one sees on tapestries or reads of in books of knight errantry; the knight and the Amazon travelling together with the lance over the shoulder, enamoured and seeking adventure and danger. But thou dost not understand that, beast of my soul. Isn't it true that thou dost not comprehend me?"

The bull-fighter smiled, showing his wholesome, strong teeth of gleaming whiteness. She, as if charmed by his rude ignorance, pressed her body against his, letting her head fall on his shoulder and trembling at the caress of Gallardo's breath upon her neck. Thus they rode in silence. Doña Sol seemed to be sleeping. Suddenly she opened her eyes and in them shone that strange expression that was a forerunner of the most extravagant questions.

"Tell me, hast thou ever killed a man?"

Gallardo was agitated, and in his astonishment drew away from Doña Sol. Who? He? Never! He was a good fellow who had made his way without doing harm to anybody. He had scarcely ever quarrelled with his companions in the capeas, not even when they kept the copper coins because they were stronger. A few fisticuffs in some disputes with his comrades in the profession; a blow with a flask in a café; these were the sum of his deeds. He was inspired with an invincible respect for the life of man. Bulls were another thing!

"So thou hast never had a desire to kill a man? And I thought that bull-fighters—!"

The sun hid itself, the meadow lost its fantastic illumination, the light on the river went out, and the lady saw the tapestry scene she had admired so much become dark and commonplace. The other horsemen rode far in advance and she spurred her steed to join the group, without a word to Gallardo, as if she took no heed of his following her.

CHAPTER VIII
DIAMONDS IN THE RING

GALLARDO'S family returned to the city for the fiestas of Holy Week. He was to fight in the Easter corrida. It was the first time he would kill in the presence of Doña Sol since his acquaintance with her, and this troubled him and made him doubt his strength.

Besides he could not fight in Seville without a certain emotion. He would be resigned to a calamity in any other town of Spain, knowing he would not return there for a long while; but in his own city, where were his greatest enemies!

"We shall see if thou dost shine," said the manager. "Think of those who will see thee. I want thee to be the greatest man in the world."

On Holy Saturday the penning in of the bulls destined for the corrida took place in the small hours of the night, and Doña Sol wished to assist in this operation as piquero. The bulls must be conducted from the pasture ground of Tablada to the enclosures in the plaza.

Gallardo did not assist, in spite of his desire to accompany Doña Sol. The manager opposed it, alleging the necessity of his resting to be fresh and vigorous on the following afternoon. At midnight the road that leads from the pasture to the plaza was animated like a fair. The windows of the taverns were illuminated, and before them passed linked shadows moving with the steps of the dance to the sound of the pianos. From the inns, the red doorways flashed rectangles of light over the dark ground, and in their interiors arose shouts, laughter, twanging of guitars, and clinking of glasses, a sign that wine circulated in abundance.

About one in the morning a horseman passed up the road at a short trot. He was the herald, a rough herder who stopped before the inns and illuminated houses, announcing that the bulls for the penning-in were to pass in a quarter of an hour, and asking that the lights be put out and all remain in silence.

This command in the name of the national fiesta was obeyed with more celerity than an order from high authority. The houses were darkened and their whiteness was blended with the sombre mass of the trees; the people became quiet, hiding themselves behind window-grilles, palisades, and wire-fences, in the silence of those who await an extraordinary event. On the walks near the river, one by one the gas lights were extinguished as the herder advanced announcing the penning-in.

All was silent. In the sky, above the masses of trees, the stars sparkled in the dense calm of space; below, along the ground, a slight movement was heard, as if countless insects swarmed thick in the darkness. The wait seemed long until the solemn tinkling of far away bells rang out in the cool stillness. They are coming! There they are!

Louder rose the clash and clamor of the copper bells, accompanied by a confused galloping that made the earth tremble. First passed a body of horsemen at full speed, with lances held low, gigantic in the obscure light. These were the herders. Then a troop of amateur lancers, among whom was Doña Sol, panting from this mad race through the shadows in which one false step of the horse, a fall, meant death by being trampled beneath the hard feet of the ferocious herd that came behind, blind in their disorderly race.

The bells rang furiously; the open mouths of the spectators hidden in the darkness swallowed clouds of dust, and the fierce herd passed like a nightmare—shapeless monsters of the night that trotted heavily and swiftly, shaking their masses of flesh, emitting hideous bellowings, goring at the shadows, but frightened and irritated by the shouts of the under-herder who followed on foot, and by the galloping of the horsemen that brought up the rear, harassing them with goads.

The passage of this heavy and noisy troop lasted but an instant. Now there was nothing more to be seen. The crowd, satisfied at this fleeting spectacle after the long wait, came out of their hiding-places, and many enthusiasts started to run after the herd with the hope of seeing it enter the enclosures.

The amateur lancers congratulated themselves on the great success of the penning-in. The herd had come well flanked without a single bull straying or getting away or making trouble for lancers and peones. They were fine-blooded animals; the very best of the Marquis' herd. On the morrow, if the maestros showed bull-fighter pride, they were going to see great things. And in the hope of a grand fiesta riders and peones departed. One hour afterward the environs of the plaza were dark and deserted, holding in their bowels the ferocious beasts which fell quietly into the last sleep of their lives in this prison.

The following morning Juan Gallardo rose early. He had slept badly, with a restlessness that filled his dreams with nightmare.

He wished they would not give him corridas in Seville! In other towns he lived like a bachelor, forgetting his family momentarily, in a strange room in a hotel that did not suggest anything, as it contained nothing personal. But to dress himself in his glittering costume in his own bed-chamber, seeing on chairs and tables objects that reminded him of Carmen; to go out to meet danger from that house which he had built and which held the most intimate belongings of his existence, disconcerted him and produced as great uneasiness as if he were going to kill his first bull. Ah! the terrible moment of leaving, when, dressed by Garabato in the shining costume, he descended to the silent courtyard! His nephews approached him awed by the brilliant ornaments of his apparel, touching them with admiration, not daring to speak; his be-whiskered sister gave him a kiss with an expression of terror, as if he were going to his death; his mamita hid herself in the darkest rooms. No, she could not see him; she felt sick. Carmen was animated but very pale, her lips, purple from emotion, were compressed, her eye-lashes moved nervously in the effort to keep herself calm and when she at last saw him in the vestibule, she suddenly raised her handkerchief to her eyes, her body was shaken by tremendous sobs, and his sister and other women had to support her that she might not fall to the floor.

It was enough to daunt even the very Roger de Flor of whom his brother-in-law talked.

"Damn it! Man alive!" said Gallardo. "Not for all the gold in the world would I fight in Seville, if it were not to give pleasure to my countrymen and so that the shameless brutes cannot say that I'm afraid of the home audiences."

He walked through the house with a cigarette in his mouth, stretching himself to see if his muscular arms kept their agility. He took a cup of Cazalla in the kitchen and watched his mamita, ever industrious in spite of her years and her flesh, moving about near the fireplaces, treating the servants with maternal vigilance, managing everything for the good government of the house.

Garabato came to announce that friends were waiting for him in the courtyard. They were enthusiastic connoisseurs, the admirers who called on him on bull-fight days. The matador instantly forgot all his anxieties and went out smiling, his head thrown back, his bearing arrogant, as if the bulls that awaited him in the plaza were personal enemies whom he desired to face as soon as possible and make them bite the dust with his unerring sword.

The farewell was, as on other occasions, disconcerting and disturbing to Gallardo. The women fled so as not to see him go, all except Carmen, who forced herself to keep serene, and accompanied him to the door; the astonishment and curiosity of his little nephews annoyed the bull-fighter, arrogant and manful now that the hour of danger had come.

"I should think they were taking me to the gallows! Well, see you later! Don't worry, nothing is going to happen."

And he stepped into his carriage, forcing his way among the neighbors and the curious grouped before his house, who wished good luck to Señor Juan.

The afternoons when the bull-fighter fought in Seville were agonizing for his family as well as for himself. They had not the same resignation as on other occasions when they had to wait patiently for nightfall and the arrival of the telegram. Here the danger was near at hand and this aroused anxiety for news and the desire to know the progress of the corrida every quarter of an hour.

The leather-worker, dressed like a gentleman, in a fine light woollen suit and a silky white felt hat, offered his services to the women in sending messages, although he was furious at the neglect of his illustrious brother-in-law who had not even offered him a seat in the coach! At the termination of each bull that Juan killed, he would send news of the event by one of the boys who swarmed around the plaza.

The corrida was a noisy success for Gallardo. As he entered the ring and heard the applause of the multitude, he felt that he had grown several inches taller. He knew the soil he trod; it was familiar; he felt it his own. The sand of the various arenas exercised a certain influence on his superstitious soul. He recollected the great plazas of Valencia and Barcelona with their whitish ground, the dark sand of the plazas of the north, and the reddish earth of the great ring of Madrid. The arena of Seville was different from the others—sand from the Guadalquivir, a deep yellow, as if it were pulverized paint. When the disembowelled horses shed their blood upon it, Gallardo thought of the colors of the national flag, that floated over the roof around the ring.

The diverse architecture of the plazas also influenced the bull-fighter's imagination, which was readily agitated by the phantasmagoria of uneasiness. There were rings of more or less recent construction, some in Roman style, others Moorish, which had the banality of new churches where all seems empty and colorless. The plaza of Seville was a taurine cathedral of memories familiar to many generations, with its façade recalling a past century—a time when the men wore the powdered wig—and its ochre ring, which the most stupendous heroes had trod. It had known the glorious inventors of difficult feats, the perfecters of the art, the heavy champions of the round school with its correct and dignified bull-fighting system, the agile, gay maestros of the Sevillian school with their plays and mobility that set the audiences wild—and there he, too, on that afternoon, intoxicated by the applause, by the sun, by the clamor, and by the sight of a white mantilla and a blue-clad figure leaning over the railing of a box, felt equal to the most heroic deeds.

Gallardo seemed to fill the ring with his agility and daring, anxious to outshine his companions, and eager that the applause should be for him alone. His admirers had never seen him so great. The manager, after each one of his brave deeds, arose and shouted, defying invisible enemies hidden in the masses on the seats: "Let's see who dares say a word! The greatest man in the world!"

The second bull Gallardo was to kill Nacional drew, with skilful cape-work, to the foot of the box where sat Doña Sol in blue gown and white mantilla, with the Marquis and his two daughters. Gallardo walked close to the barrier with sword and muleta in one hand, followed by the eyes of the multitude, and when he stood before the box, he looked up, taking off his cap. He was going to tender his bull to the niece of the Marquis of Moraima! Many smiled with a malicious expression. "Hurrah for the lucky boys!" He gave a half turn, throwing down his cap to end his speech, and awaited the bull which the peones were drawing over by the play of the cape. In a short time, managing so that the bull did not get away from this place, the matador accomplished his feat. He wished to kill under the very eyes of Doña Sol so that, at close range, she should see him defying danger. Each pass of his muleta was accompanied by acclamations of enthusiasm and shouts of fear. The horns passed close to his breast; it seemed impossible for him to escape the attacks of the bull without losing blood. Suddenly he squared himself, with the sword raised for attack, and before the audience could voice their opinions with shouts and counsel, he swiftly threw himself upon the brute and man and animal formed but a single body.

When the matador drew away and stood motionless, the bull ran with halting step, bellowing, with distended nostrils, his tongue hanging between his lips and the red hilt of the sword visible in his blood-stained neck. He fell a few steps away and the audience rose to its feet en masse as though it were a single body moved by a powerful spring; the outburst of applause and the fury of the acclamations broke out in a violent storm. There was not another brave man in the world equal to Gallardo! Could that youth ever once have felt fear?

The swordsman saluted before the box, extending his arms holding the sword and muleta, while Doña Sol's white-gloved hands beat together in a fever of applause.

Then something flew past spectator after spectator, from the box to the barrier. It was a lady's handkerchief, the one she carried in her hand, a fragrant tiny square of batiste and lace drawn through a ring of brilliants that she presented to the bull-fighter in exchange for this honor.

Applause broke out again at this gift, and the attention of the audience, fixed until then on the matador, was distracted, many turning their backs to the ring, to look at Doña Sol, praising her beauty in loud voices with the familiarity of Andalusian gallantry. A small, hairy triangle, still warm, was passed from hand to hand from the barrier to the box. It was the bull's ear, which the matador sent in testimony of his brindis.

At the close of the bull-fight, news of Gallardo's great success spread throughout the city. When he arrived at his house the neighbors awaited him at the door, applauding him as if they had actually witnessed the corrida.

The leather-worker, forgetting his anger at the swordsman, candidly admired him, though more for his valuable friendship than for his success as a bull-fighter. He had long kept his eye on a certain position which he no longer doubted his ability to get, now that his brother-in-law had friends among the best in Seville.

"Show them the ring. See, Encarnación, what a fine gift! Not even Roger de Flor himself—!"

And the ring was passed around among the women, who admired it with exclamations of enthusiasm. Only Carmen made a wry face when she saw it. "Yes, very pretty," and she passed it to her sister-in-law, as though it burned her hands.

After this bull-fight, the season of travel began for Gallardo. He had more contracts than in any previous year. Following the corrida in Madrid he had to fight in all the rings in Spain. His manager studied train schedules and made interminable calculations for the guidance of his matador.

Gallardo passed from success to success. He had never felt in better spirits. It seemed as though he carried a new force within him. Before the bull-fights cruel doubts assailed him, anxieties he had never felt in the hard times when he was just beginning to make a name for himself; but the moment he entered the ring these fears vanished and he displayed a fierce courage accompanied ever by great success.

After his work, in whatever plaza of the provinces, he returned to his hotel followed by his cuadrilla, for they all lived together. He seated himself, glowing with the pleasant fatigue of triumph, without removing his glittering costume, and the connoisseurs of the community came to congratulate him. He had been colossal! He was the greatest bull-fighter in the world. That stab when he killed the fourth bull!

"Is it really so?" asked Gallardo with infantile pride. "That wasn't bad, sure."

And with the interminable verbosity of all conversation about bulls, time passed unheeded by the bull-fighter and his admirers, who never tired of talking of the corrida of the afternoon and of others that had taken place some years before. Night closed in, lights were brought, yet the devotees did not go. The cuadrilla, obedient to the discipline of the profession, silently listened to their gossip at one end of the room. Until the maestro gave them permission, the boys could not go to dress and eat. The picadores, fatigued by the heavy iron armor on their legs and by the terrific falls from their horses, shifted their beaver hats from knee to knee; the banderilleros, prisoners in their garments of silk, wet with sweat, were hungry after an afternoon of violent exercise. All had but a single thought and cast terrible glances at the enthusiasts.

"But when will these tiresome old uncles go? Damn their souls!"

Finally the matador remembered them. "You may retire." And the cuadrilla went out crowding each other like a school set free, while the maestro continued listening to the praises of the "intelligent," without thinking of Garabato who silently awaited the moment of undressing him.

During his days of rest, the maestro, free from the excitement and danger of glory, turned his thoughts to Seville. Now and then he received one of those brief, perfumed little notes. Ah! if he had Doña Sol with him!

In this continual travel from one audience to another, adored by the enthusiasts, who desired to have him spend a pleasant time in their town, he met women and attended entertainments gotten up in his honor. He always went away from these feasts with his brain clouded by wine and in a fit of ferocious sadness that made him intractable. He felt a cruel desire to ill-treat the women. It was an irresistible impulse to revenge himself for the aggressiveness and caprices of that other woman on those of her own sex.

There were moments when it was necessary to confide his sorrows to Nacional with that irresistible impulse to confession felt by those who carry a great weight on their minds. Moreover the banderillero awoke in him, when far from Seville, a greater affection, a reflected tenderness. Sebastián knew of his love affair with Doña Sol. He had seen it, although from afar, and she had often laughed on hearing Gallardo tell of the banderillero's eccentricities.

Nacional received the maestro's confidences with an expression of severity.

"The thing thou shouldst do, Juan, is to forget that lady. Remember that peace in the family is worth more than anything else for us who go about the world exposed to the danger of coming home useless forever. Remember that Carmen knows more than thou dost think. She knows everything. She has asked indirect questions even of me about thy affairs with the Marquis' niece. Poor girl! It is a sin that thou shouldst make her suffer. She has her temper, and if she lets it loose she'll give thee trouble."

But Gallardo, far from his family, his thought dominated by the memory of Doña Sol, seemed not to understand the dangers of which Nacional discoursed, and he shrugged his shoulders at such sentimental scruples.

He needed to speak his thoughts, to make his friend participate in his past joys, with the pride of a satisfied lover who wishes to be admired in his happiness.

"But thou dost not know that woman! Thou, Sebastián, art an unfortunate fellow that knowest not the best in life. Imagine all the women of Seville put together! Nothing! Imagine all those of all the towns where we have been! Nothing, either! There is only Doña Sol. When one knows a lady like that one has no mind for any other. If thou didst know her as I do, boy! The woman of our kind smell of clean flesh, of white clothing. But this one, Sebastián, this one! Imagine all the roses of the gardens of the Alcázar together. No, it is something better; imagine jasmine, honeysuckle, and perfume of vines like those that must grow in the garden of Paradise. But her sweet odors come from within, as if she did not put them on, as if they came from her very blood. And besides, she is not one of those who, once seen, are forever the same. With her there is always something yet to be desired; something one longs for and that doesn't come. In fine, Sebastián, I cannot explain myself well—but thou knowest not what a lady is; so preach not to me and shut thy beak."

Gallardo no longer received letters from Seville. Doña Sol was travelling in foreign lands. He saw her once when he fought at San Sebastián. The beautiful lady was at Biarritz and she came in company with some French women who wished to meet the bull-fighter. He saw her one afternoon. She went away and he had only vague knowledge of her during the summer through the few letters he received and through the news his manager communicated from chance words dropped by the Marquis of Moraima.

She was at elegant watering-places whose very names Gallardo heard for the first time, and they were of impossible pronunciation for him; then he heard that she was travelling in England; afterward that she had gone on to Germany to hear some operas sung in a wonderful theatre that only opened its doors a few weeks each year. Gallardo lost faith in ever seeing her again. She was a bird of passage, venturesome and restless, and he dared not hope that she would seek her nest in Seville again when winter returned. This possibility saddened him and revealed the power this woman had exercised over his body and his mind. Never to see her again? Why then expose his life and be celebrated? Of what use was the applause of the multitude?

His manager tried to soothe him. She would return; he was sure. She would return, if only for a year. Doña Sol, with all her mad caprices, was a practical woman, who knew how to look out for her property. She needed the Marquis' help to unravel the business tangles of her own fortune and that which her husband had left her, both diminished by a long and luxurious sojourn far from home.

Gallardo returned to Seville at the end of the summer. He still had a goodly number of autumn bull-fights, but he wished to take advantage of nearly a month of rest. His family was at the seashore at Sanlúcar, for the health of the little nephews, who needed the salt-water cure.

Gallardo was overcome with emotion when his manager announced one day that Doña Sol had just arrived, unexpected by any one. He went to see her immediately, but after a few words he felt intimidated by her frigid amiability and the expression of her eyes.

She gazed at him as if he were a stranger. He divined in her manner a certain surprise at the bull-fighter's rough exterior, at the difference between herself and this youth, a mere killer of beasts. He also divined the gulf that had opened between the two. She seemed to him a different woman; a great dame of another land and race.

They chatted pleasantly. She seemed to have forgotten the past, and Gallardo lacked the courage to remind her of it, nor did he dare to make the slightest advance, fearing one of her outbursts of anger.

"Seville!" said Doña Sol. "Very pretty—very agreeable. But there are other places in the world. I tell you, Gallardo, that some day I am going to take my flight forever. I foresee that I am going to be very much bored here. It seems to me my Seville has changed."

She no longer thou-ed him. Several days passed before the bull-fighter dared to remind her of other times during his calls. He limited himself to contemplating her in silence, with his moist, adoring Moorish eyes.

"I am bored. I may leave any day," exclaimed the lady at every one of their interviews.

Once again the servant with the imposing air met the bull-fighter at the inner gate and told him the Señora had gone out when he knew for a certainty she was in the house.

Gallardo told her one afternoon about a short excursion he must take to his plantation at La Rinconada. He must look at some olive orchards his manager had bought during his absence to add to his estate; he must also acquaint himself with the progress of the work on the plantation.

The idea of accompanying the matador on this excursion occurred to Doña Sol and made her smile at its absurdity and daring. To go to that hacienda where Gallardo's family spent a part of the year! To invade with the scandalous audacity of irregularity and sin that tranquil atmosphere of domestic life where the poor youth lived with those of his own home! The very absurdity of the idea decided her. She would go; it would interest her to see La Rinconada.

Gallardo was afraid. He thought of the people on the plantation, of the gossips who would tell his family about this trip. But the look in Doña Sol's eyes overthrew his scruples. Who could tell! Maybe this trip would bring back the old situation.

He wished, however, to offer a final obstacle to this desire.

"And Plumitas? Remember about him; they say that he is around La Rinconada."

"Ah! Plumitas!" Doña Sol's countenance, clouded by ennui, seemed to clear by a sudden flash from within. "How charming! I would be delighted if you could present him."

Gallardo arranged the trip. He had expected to go alone, but Doña Sol's company obliged him to take an escort for fear of an unhappy adventure on the road. He sought Potaje, the picador. He was a rough fellow, and feared nothing in the world but his gypsy wife, who, when she grew tired of taking beatings, tried to bite him. No need to give explanations to him—only wine in abundance. Alcohol and the atrocious falls in the ring kept him in a perpetual state of stupidity, as if his head buzzed and prevented him from saying more than a few words and permitted him but a clouded vision of things in general.

Gallardo also ordered Nacional to go with them; one more, and that was discretion beyond all doubt.

The banderillero obeyed from force of habit but grumbled when he heard that Doña Sol was going with them.

"By the life of the blue dove! Must a father of a family see himself mixed up in these ugly affairs! What will Carmen and Seña' Angustias say about me if they find it out?"

When he found himself in the open country, placed beside Potaje on the seat of an automobile, in front of the matador and the great lady, his anger little by little vanished. He could not see her well, hidden as she was in a great blue veil that fell from her travelling cap and floated over her yellow silk coat; but she was very beautiful. And such conversation! And such knowledge of things!

Before half the journey was over, Nacional, with his twenty-five years of marital fidelity, excused the weakness of the matador, and made vain efforts to explain his enthusiasm to himself.

"Whoever found himself in the same situation would do the same.

"Education! A fine thing, capable of giving respectability to even the greatest sins."

CHAPTER IX
BREAKFAST WITH THE BANDIT

LET him tell thee who he is—or else let the devil take him. Damn the luck! Can't a man sleep?"

Nacional heard this answer through the door of his master's room, and transmitted it to a peón belonging to the hacienda who stood waiting on the stairs.

"Let him tell thee who he is! Unless he does, the master won't get up."

It was eight o'clock. The banderillero peeped out of the window, following with his gaze the peón who ran along the road in front of the plantation until he came to the farther end of the wire fence that surrounded the estate. Near the entrance to this enclosure he saw a man on horseback,—so small in the distance, both man and horse seemed to have stepped out of a box of toys.

The laborer soon returned, after having talked with the horseman. Nacional, interested in these goings and comings, received him at the foot of the stairs.

"He says he must see the master," faltered the peón. "He looks like an ill-tempered fellow. He says he wants the master to come down at once because he's got news for him."

The banderillero hastened upstairs to pound on the master's door again, paying no attention to his protests. He must get up; it was late for the country and that man might bring an important message.

"I'm coming!" said Gallardo, gruffly, without rising from his bed.

Nacional peeped out again and saw that the horseman was advancing along the road toward the farmhouse.

The peón ran out with the answer. He, poor man, seemed nervous, and in his two dialogues with the banderillero stammered with an expression of fear and doubt as though not daring to reveal his thoughts. When he joined the man on horseback, he listened to him a few moments and then returned on a run toward the house, this time with even more precipitation. Nacional heard him come up the stairs with no abatement of speed, till he stood before him, trembling and pale.

"It's Plumitas, Señor Sebastián! He says he's Plumitas and that he must talk to the master. My heart told me that the minute I saw him."

Plumitas! The voice of the peón, in spite of his stammering and his panting with fatigue, seemed to pierce the walls and scatter through every room as he pronounced this name. The banderillero was struck dumb with surprise. The sound of oaths accompanied by the swish of clothing and the thud of a body that hastily flung itself out of bed were heard in the master's room. In the one Doña Sol occupied there was a sudden activity that seemed to respond to the tremendous news.

"But, damn him! What does that man want with me? Why does he intrude himself at La Rinconada? And especially just now!"

It was Gallardo who rushed madly out of his room, with only his trousers and jacket hurriedly thrown on over his underclothing. He ran past the banderillero, and threw himself down the stairs, followed by Nacional.

The rider was dismounting before the door. A herder was holding the reins of the mare and the other workmen formed a group a short distance away, contemplating the newcomer with curiosity and respect.

He was a man of medium stature, stocky rather than tall, full-faced, blonde, and with short strong limbs. He was dressed in a gray blouse trimmed with black braid, dark, well-worn breeches with a double thickness of cloth on the inside of the leg, and leathern leggings cracked by sun, rain, and mud. Under his blouse his girth was enlarged by the addition of a heavy girdle and a cartridge-belt, to which were added the bulkiness of a heavy revolver and a formidable knife. In his right hand he carried a repeating carbine. A hat which had once been white covered his head, its brim flapping and worn ragged by the inclement weather. A red handkerchief knotted around his neck was the gayest adornment of his person.

His countenance, broad and chub-cheeked, had the placidity of a full moon. His cheeks still revealed the fair skin through their heavy tan; the sharp points of a blonde beard, not shaven for many days, protruded, gleaming like old gold in the sunlight. His eyes were the only disquieting feature of his kindly face, which looked like that of a village sacristan; eyes small and triangular, sunken in bubbles of fat—narrow eyes, that reminded one of the eyes of pigs, with a wicked pupil of dark blue.

When Gallardo appeared at the door of the farmhouse the bandit recognized him instantly and lifted his hat from his round head.

"God give you good-day, Señor Juan," he said with the grave courtesy of the Andalusian country people.

"Good-day."

"The family well, Señor Juan?"

"Well, thanks, and yours?" asked the matador with the automatism of custom.

"Well, also, I believe. I haven't seen them for some time."

The two men had drawn near together, examining one another at close range with simple frankness as though they were two travellers met in the open country. The bull-fighter was pale and his lips were compressed to hide his emotion. Did the bandit think he was going to scare him? On another occasion perhaps this visit would have frightened him; but now, having upstairs whom he had, he felt equal to fighting him as though he were a bull, should he announce any evil intentions.

Some seconds passed in silence. All the men of the plantation who had not gone to their labors in the field, obsessed by the dark fame of his name, contemplated this terrible personage with an amazement that had in it something infantile.

"Can they take the mare to the stable to rest a little?" asked the bandit.

Gallardo made a sign and a boy tugged at the animal's reins, leading her away.

"Care for her well," said Plumitas. "Remember that she's the best thing I've got in the world and that I love her more than my wife and children."

Potaje now came out with his shirt unbuttoned, stretching himself with all the brutal bigness of his athletic body. He rubbed his eyes, always blood-shot and inflamed from abuse of drink, and striding up to the bandit he let a great rough hand fall on one of his shoulders with studied familiarity, as if he enjoyed making him wince beneath his fist, but expressing to him at the same time a rude sympathy.

"How art thou, Plumitas?"

He had not seen him before. The bandit shrank back as though to spring from this rude caress, and his right hand raised his rifle, but the blue eyes, fastened on the picador, seemed to recognize him.

"Thou art Potaje, if I don't deceive myself. I have seen thee stir up the bulls at Seville and in other plazas. Comrade, what terrible falls thou hast suffered! How strong thou art! As though made of iron."

And to return his greeting, he grasped one of Potaje's arms with his callous hand, feeling his muscle with a smile of admiration. The two stood gazing at one another with affectionate eyes. The picador laughed sonorously.

"Ho! Ho! I imagined thee a bigger man, Plumitas. But it matters not; take thee altogether, thou art a fine fellow."

The bandit turned to Gallardo:

"Can I breakfast here?"

Gallardo made a gesture of the gran señor.

"Nobody who comes to La Rincona' goes without breakfasting."

They all entered the kitchen of the farmhouse, a vast room with a bell-shaped chimney, the habitual place of these gatherings.

The matador seated himself in an arm-chair; the farmer's daughter busied herself putting on his shoes, for he had rushed down in his slippers.

Nacional, wishing to show signs of existence and tranquillized now by the courteous aspect of the visitor, appeared with a bottle of native wine and glasses.

"I know thee, also," said the bandit with as much politeness as to the picador. "I have seen thee lodge the banderillas. When thou wishest thou dost it well; but thou shouldst get closer."

Potaje and the maestro laughed at this counsel. When he went to raise his glass, Plumitas was embarrassed by his carbine, which he held between his knees.

"Say, man, put that down," said the picador. "Must thou keep on guard even when thou goest on a visit?"

The bandit grew serious. It was all right where it was; it was his custom. The rifle accompanied him always, even when he slept. And this allusion to the weapon, which was like an additional member, ever united to his body, turned him grave again. He looked in all directions with a nervous restlessness. Anxiety showed in his face the habit of living alert, of trusting nobody, with no other reliance than his own strength, having a presentiment of danger near him every hour.

A herder walked through the kitchen in the direction of the door.

"Where's that man going?"

As he said this he rose in his seat, drawing the rifle towards his breast with his knees.

He was bound for a large field nearby where the farm laborers were working. Plumitas settled himself peacefully again.

"Listen, Señor Juan. I have come for the pleasure of seeing you and because I know you are a gentleman, incapable of breathing a whisper against me. Besides, you must have heard talk of Plumitas. 'Tis not easy to catch him and whoever does it shall pay for it."

The picador intervened before his maestro could speak.

"Plumitas, don't be silly. Here thou art among comrades while thou dost behave and carry thyself decently."

And the bandit, becoming suddenly relieved, began to talk to the picador about his mare, boasting of her merits. The two men met on a common ground of enthusiasm as fearless riders, which caused them to regard horses with more affection than people.

Gallardo, still somewhat restless, walked about the kitchen, while the brown, broad-shouldered women of the farm stirred the fire and prepared breakfast, looking out of the corners of their eyes at the celebrated Plumitas. In one of his evolutions he drew near Nacional. He must go to Doña Sol's room and beg her not to come down. The bandit would surely go after breakfast. Why let herself be seen by this annoying personage?

The banderillero disappeared, and Plumitas noticing that the maestro was taking no part in the conversation, turned to him, asking him with interest about the rest of the season's bull-fights.

"I am a Gallardist, you know. I have applauded you more times than you can imagine. I have seen you in Seville, in Jaén, in Córdova, in many places."

Gallardo was surprised at this. How could he, who had a veritable army of persecutors at his heels, quietly attend bull-fights? Plumitas smiled with an expression of superiority.

"Bah! I go where I wish. I am everywhere."

Then he told of the occasions when he had seen the matador on the way to the plantation, sometimes accompanied, sometimes alone, passing him close in the road without being noticed, as though he were a humble herder riding on his nag to carry a message to some nearby hut.

"When you came from Seville to buy the two mills you have below, I met you on the road. You were carrying five thousand duros. Were you not? Tell the truth. You see I know all about it. Again I saw you in one of those 'animals' they call automobiles, with another gentleman from Seville, your manager, I think. You were going to sign the papers for the Priests' olive orchard and you were carrying a still larger bag of money."

Gallardo little by little recalled the exactness of these facts, and looked with astonishment at this man who was informed of everything. And the bandit went on to tell how little respect he had for obstacles.

"You see those things they call automobiles? Mere trifles! Such vermin I stop with nothing but this." And he touched his rifle. "In Córdova I had accounts to settle with a rich señor who was my enemy. I planted my mare on one side of the road and when the beast came along, raising dust and stinking of petroleum, I shouted 'Halt!' It wouldn't stop, and I let the thing that goes around the wheel have a ball. To abbreviate: the auto stopped a little farther on and I set out at a gallop to join the señor and settle accounts. A man that can send a ball where he wants to can stop anything on the road."

Gallardo listened in astonishment to Plumitas' calm professional talk of his deeds on the highway.

"There was no reason for stopping you. You do not belong to the rich. You spring from the poor as I do, but with better luck, with more of fortune in your work than I, and if you have made money you have well earned it. I have great respect for you, Señor Juan. I like you because you are a brave matador and I have a weakness for valiant men. We two are almost comrades; we both live by exposing our lives. So, although you did not know me, I was there, watching you pass, without even asking for a cigarette, to see that nobody dared so much as touch one of your finger nails; to see that no shameless fellow took advantage of you by riding out into the road and saying he was Plumitas, for stranger things have happened."

An unexpected apparition ended the bandit's speech and moved the bull-fighter's countenance to anger. "Damn it! Doña Sol!" But hadn't Nacional given her his message? The banderillero followed the lady, and as he stood in the kitchen door he made gestures of despair to indicate to the maestro that his prayers and counsel had been useless.

Doña Sol came in wearing her travelling cloak, her golden hair loosely combed and knotted in all haste. Plumitas at the plantation! What joy! She had been thinking of him half the night with sweet thrills of terror, proposing to herself to ride over all the lonely places near La Rinconada, hoping good luck would cause her to fall in with the interesting bandit. And, as if her thoughts had exercised a power of attraction, the highwayman had obeyed her desires and presented himself at the plantation early in the morning!

Plumitas! That name brought to her mind the typical figure of a bandit. She hardly needed to meet him; she would scarcely experience surprise. She imagined him tall, well-formed, well-browned, with a three-cornered hat above a red handkerchief, from beneath which fell jet black curls; his agile body dressed in black velvet; his tapering waist bound by a belt of purple silk; his legs encased in date-colored leather leggings—a knight errant of the Andalusian steppes, almost like those elegant tenors she had seen in "Carmen" who discard the soldiers' uniform and become contrabandists for the sake of love.

Her eyes, wide with curiosity, wandered over the kitchen without finding a three-cornered hat or an ancient fire-lock. She saw an unknown man who rose to his feet; a kind of a country guard with a carbine, like those she had often met on the family estates.

"Good-day, Señora Marquesa. And your uncle, the Marquis, does he keep well?"

The gaze of all, converging upon this man, told her the truth. Ah! this was Plumitas!

He had removed his hat with rough courtesy, embarrassed by the lady's presence; he continued standing, the carbine in one hand and the old felt hat in the other.

Gallardo wondered at the bandit's words. The man knew everybody. He knew who Doña Sol was and with a respectful impulse he gave her the family title.

The lady, recovering from her surprise, made a sign for him to be seated and to cover himself, but, although he obeyed the former, he put his hat on a nearby chair. As if divining a question in Doña Sol's eyes, which were fixed on him, he added:

"Let the Señora Marquesa not be surprised that I know her; I have seen her many times with the Marquis and other gentlemen when they were going to test calves. I have also seen from a distance how the lady attacked the beasts. The Señora is very brave and the finest girl I have seen in this, God's own country! It is perfect joy to see her on horseback, with her three-cornered hat, her cravat, and her belt. The men must follow in crowds after her heavenly little eyes!"

The bandit allowed himself to be drawn by his Southern enthusiasm into the greatest frankness, seeking new expressions of praise for the lady.

She turned pale, her eyes grew large with happy terror, and she began to find the bandit interesting. Could he have come to the plantation solely on her account? Did he intend to kidnap her and carry her away to his hiding-place in the mountains with the hungry rapacity of a bird of prey who returns from the plain to his nest on the heights?

The bull-fighter also grew alarmed on hearing these expressions of rude admiration. Damn it! In his own house and in his very face! If this kept up he was going upstairs after his gun, and even though this were Plumitas, they should see who would have her!

The bandit suddenly seemed to understand the annoyance his words caused and he adopted a respectful attitude.

"Pardon, Señora Marquesa. It is only banter. I have a wife and four children. The poor girl weeps more on my account than ever wept the Virgin of Agonies. I am a peaceful Moor; an unfortunate fellow that is what he is because an evil shadow follows him."

And as though he took pains to be agreeable to Doña Sol, he broke out into enthusiastic praises of her family. The Marquis of Moraima was one of the men he most respected in all the world.

"If all the rich were like that! My father worked for him, and told us about his charity. I had the fever in a herder's hut in a pasture of his. He knew it but he said nothing. At his farmhouses he leaves an order for them to give me what I ask and to leave me in peace. Such things are never forgotten. When I least expect it I meet him alone, mounted on his horse like a young fellow, as if he did not feel the passing of the years. 'God be with you, Señor Marqués.' 'Greeting, boy.' He does not guess who I am because I carry my companion"—and he motioned to his carbine—"under my blanket. I long to stop him and ask his hand, not to clasp it, no, not that; how could such a good man clasp hands with me, who have so many killed and maimed to my account? No, to kiss it, as though he were my father, to kneel before him and give him thanks for what he does for me."

The earnestness with which he spoke of his gratitude did not move Doña Sol. So that was the famous Plumitas! A poor man; a mild rabbit of the plains whom all thought a wolf, deceived by his fame.

"There are also bad rich men," continued the bandit. "How some of them make the poor suffer! Near my town there is one that lends money and is meaner than Judas. I sent him word not to grind the poor so, and the vile thief, instead of paying attention to me, told the civil guard to catch me. Well, I burned a barnful of straw for him and I did other little things to him and it has been over half a year since he has dared go to Seville, or even out of the town for fear of meeting Plumitas. Another one was going to turn out a poor little old woman because for a year she hadn't paid the rent of the miserable hut she had held ever since her father's time. I went to see the señor, just at nightfall, when he was going to sit down to supper with his family. 'My master, I am Plumitas, and I need a hundred duros.' He gave them to me and I went to the old woman with them. 'Grandmother, take this; pay that Jew; what is left over is for you and may it serve your good health.'"

Doña Sol contemplated the bandit with more interest.

"And killed?" she asked. "How many have you killed?"

"Señora, let us not speak of that," said the bandit gravely. "You would feel repugnance for me and I am only a poor, unfortunate, persecuted fellow who must defend himself as he can."

A long silence fell.

"You know not how I live, Señora Marquesa," he continued. "The wild beasts fare better than I. I sleep where I can, or I do not sleep at all. I get up in one end of the province to lie down in the other. One must keep his eye well open and his hand firm so they will respect and not betray one. The poor are good, but poverty is an ugly thing and turns the best bad. If they hadn't been afraid of me they would have handed me over to the guards many times. I have no true friends but my mare and this"—holding up his carbine. "Suddenly I feel a longing to see my wife and babies, and I enter my town at night while all the people who recognize me open their eyes wide. But some day it will end wrong. There are days when I get tired of being by myself and I need to see people. Long have I wanted to come to La Rincona'. Why should I not see at close range the Señor Juan Gallardo, I who appreciate him and have often applauded him? But I always saw you with many friends, or else your wife and your mother and the children were here. I understand that; they would have been scared to death at the mere sight of Plumitas. Now it is different. This time you came with the Señora Marquesa, and I said to myself: 'Let's go and greet those fine people and chat with them a while.'"

The peculiar smile that accompanied these words seemed to recognize a difference between the bull-fighter's family and the lady, and made it clear that Gallardo's relations with Doña Sol were no secret to him. Respect for the legitimacy of matrimony dwelt in the soul of this poor countryman, and he felt that he was authorized in taking greater liberties with the bull-fighter's aristocratic friend than with the poor women who composed his family.

Doña Sol paid no attention to these words and besieged the highwayman with questions, wishing to know how he had come to his present state.

"Nothing, Señora Marquesa; an injustice; one of those misfortunes that fall on us poor people. I was one of the cleverest in my town and the workmen always chose me as spokesman when there was anything to be asked of the rich. I know how to read and write. As a boy I was a sacristan and they gave me the nickname of Plumitas because I was always after the chickens to pull out their feathers for my writings."

A rough caress from Potaje's strong hand interrupted him.

"Compadre, the minute I saw thee I guessed that thou wert a church rat or something like that."

Nacional held his peace, respecting these confidences, but he smiled slightly. A sacristan converted into a bandit! What things Don Joselito would say when he told him that!

"I married my wife and we had our first baby. One night a couple of guards came to the house and took me outside the town to the threshing-floor. Some shots had been fired into a rich man's door, and those good gentlemen were determined that it was I who did it. I denied it and they beat me with their guns. I denied it again and they beat me more. To abbreviate, they kept me till daybreak, beating me all over, sometimes with the barrel, sometimes with the butt-end, until they were worn out and I lay on the ground senseless. They had me tied hand and foot, and beat me as if I were a bale of goods. And all the while they kept saying to me, 'Art thou not the bravest man in the town? Come on, defend thyself; let's see how far thy brags can carry thee.' This was what hurt most, their jibes. My poor little wife cured me as best she could, but I never rested, I could not endure the remembrance of those blows and jibes. To abbreviate again, one day one of the guards was found dead on that same threshing-floor and I, to avoid trouble, took to the mountains—and I have lived there to this day."

"Boy, thou hast a good hand," said Potaje with admiration. "And the other?"

"I don't know; he must be somewhere in the world. He left the town; he asked for transfer in spite of his bravery, but I don't forget him. I have a message for him. I get sudden news that he is on the other side of Spain and I go there; I would follow him even into the very Hell itself. I leave the mare and the carbine with some friend to keep for me, and I take the train like a gentleman. I have been in Barcelona, in Valladolid, in many cities. I take my place near the jail and I look over the guards that go and come. 'This is not my man, nor this either.' They have given me wrong information, but it doesn't matter. It is years since I began looking for him, but I shall find him—unless he is dead, which would be a pity."

Doña Sol followed this tale with interest. An original creature was this Plumitas! She had made a mistake in thinking him a rabbit. The bandit became silent, knitting his brows as if he feared he had said too much, and meant to avoid a new outburst of confidence.

"With your permission," he said to the swordsman, "I'll go to the stable and see how the mare has been treated. Wilt thou come along, comrade? Thou shalt see something worth while."

Potaje, accepting the invitation, went out of the kitchen with him.

When the two were left alone, the bull-fighter and the lady, he showed his ill-humor. Why had she come down? It was foolhardy to present herself before a man like that; a bandit whose name was the terror of the people.

But Doña Sol, pleased with the excellent success of her encounter, laughed at the bull-fighter's fears. The bandit seemed to her a decent man, a poor fellow whose mischievousness was exaggerated by popular fancy. He was almost a servant in her family.

"I imagined him different, but anyway I am glad I have seen him. We will give him an alms when he goes. What an original land this is! What types! And how interesting his pursuit of that civil guard all over Spain! What a thrilling article one could write about that!"

The women of the ranch lifted off the flames of the fireplace two great frying-pans that shed an agreeable odor of sausage.

"Come to breakfast, gentlemen," shouted Nacional, who assumed the functions of mayordomo at his master's farmhouse.

In the centre of the kitchen stood a great table covered with a cloth, on which were placed round loaves of bread and numerous bottles of wine. Plumitas and Potaje and several farm hands answered the call, the overseer, the farmer, and all those who filled places of greater trust. They began seating themselves on two benches placed along the length of the table, while Gallardo glanced undecided at Doña Sol. She ought to eat upstairs in the rooms set apart for the family. But the lady, smiling at this suggestion, seated herself at the head of the table. She enjoyed rustic life and thought it interesting to eat with these people. She was born to be a soldier. And with a manly air she invited the matador to be seated, dilating her nostrils with a voluptuous enjoyment of the savory odor of the sausages. A very rich dish! How hungry she was!

"This is right," sententiously remarked Plumitas, looking over the table; "the masters and servants eating together, as they say was the custom in olden times. I have never seen it before." And he seated himself near the picador, without letting go of his carbine, which he held between his knees.

"Move over, guasón," he said, shoving Potaje with his body.

The picador, who treated him with rude camaraderie, answered with another shove and the two strong fellows laughed as they pushed back and forth, amusing every one at the table by their horse-play.

"But, damn it!" said the picador. "Get that blunder-bus out from between thy knees. Dost thou not see that it is aiming straight at me? An accident may happen."

The bandit's carbine, resting between his knees, was pointing its black muzzle at the picador.

"Hang that up, malaje!" he insisted. "Dost thou need it to eat with?"