Plumitas stopped, and gazing at Gallardo added:

"Besides, there are the admirers, the pupils, the young fellows that come chasing along behind. Señor Juan, tell the truth, which tire you more, the bulls, or all those hungry young bull-fighters who are always wanting favors of the maestro? The same thing happens to me. Didn't I tell you that we are equals! In every town there's some fine young fellow who dreams of being my heir and hopes to catch me some day sleeping in the shade of a tree and-blow my head off. A fine advertisement it will be for him who catches Plumitas!"

After this he got up and went to the stable followed by Potaje, and a quarter of an hour afterward he led out into the courtyard his strong mare, the inseparable companion of his wanderings. The big-boned animal seemed larger and handsomer after the brief hours of feasting in the mangers at La Rinconada. Plumitas stopped arranging his blanket over the horn to caress her flanks. She might indeed be content. Seldom would she be so well treated as at this hacienda of Señor Juan Gallardo. Now she must behave, for the journey would be long.

"And where art thou going, comrade?" said Potaje.

"You shouldn't ask that. Abroad through the land! I myself know not. To meet whatever comes along."

"What is that?" said the bandit. "Money? Thanks, Señor Juan. You have heard that it is best to give me something when I leave an hacienda, but that is for others, for the rich who earn their money in flowery ease. You earn it by exposing your life. We are companions. Keep it, Señor Juan."

Señor Juan put the bills back, somewhat annoyed by the bandit's refusal and by his determination to treat him as a comrade.

"You may tender me a bull if we ever meet in the ring," added Plumitas. "That is worth more than all the gold in the world."

Doña Sol advanced till she stood close to one of the horseman's legs, and unfastening an autumn rose she wore on her breast she offered it silently, gazing at him with her gold-green eyes.

"For me?" asked the bandit in tones of surprise and wonder. "For me, Señora Marquesa?"

Seeing the lady's nod of affirmation he accepted the flower with embarrassment, handling it stupidly as if it were of astonishing weight, not knowing where to put it, till at last he thrust it into a buttonhole of his blouse, between the two ends of the red handkerchief he wore around his neck.

The rough horseman seemed touched and disturbed at the same time by the feminine character of the gift. Roses for him—!

He pulled at his mare's reins.

"Health to all, gentlemen! Until we meet again! Health, brave fellow! Sometime I'll throw thee a cigar if thou dost stick thy lance in well."

He bade the picador farewell, giving him a blow with his hand, and the centaur answered him with a slap on the thigh that made the bandit's vigorous muscles tremble. What a fine fellow, that Plumitas! Potaje, in his mellow state of intoxication, wished to take to the mountains in company with him.

"Adios! Adios!"

And setting spurs to his steed he rode away from the hacienda at a swift trot.

Gallardo manifested satisfaction on seeing him go. Then he looked at Doña Sol, who stood motionless, following the horseman with her eyes as he vanished in the distance.

"What a woman!" murmured the swordsman with dismay. "What a mad lady!"

IT seems a lie, Sebastián. A man like thee, with a wife and children, lending thyself to such wickedness. And I thought better of thee and had confidence in thee when thou wert travelling with Juaniyo! I worried not because he went with a person of character. Where are all those fine things, the honorable ideas and thy religion? Is this what is commanded in those Jew meetings that gather at the house of Don Joselito, the teacher?"

Nacional, alarmed at the indignation of Gallardo's mother, and moved by Carmen's tears as she wept in silence, her face hidden in her kerchief, defended himself stupidly. But as he heard the last words he sat erect with priestly gravity.

"Seña' Angustia', touch not my ideas and leave Don Joselito in peace, an it please you, for he has nothing to do with all this. By the life of the blue dove! I went to La Rincona' because my matador ordered me. Do you know what a cuadrilla is? Just the same as an army: discipline and servility! The matador commands and one must obey. For these bull-fight customs descend from the times of the Inquisition and there is no more conservative trade."

"You have said it, Seña' Angustia'. Juaniyo feeds me, that's it. And since he feeds me, I have to obey him. But look here, Señora; put yourself in my place. My matador tells me I must go to La Rincona'. Good! And at the hour of leaving I find myself in the automobile with a very fine great lady. What can I do? My matador commands. Moreover, I didn't go alone. Potaje went along and he is a person of years and respect."

The bull-fighter's mother was more indignant at this excuse.

"Potaje! A bad man, that Juaniyo would not keep in his cuadrilla if he had any pride! Don't talk to me about that drunkard that beats his wife and keeps his children starving."

But Carmen interrupted him with a plaintive voice, broken by sighs.

"In my house!" she groaned with an expression of agony. "At the hacienda! And she slept in my bed! I knew all about it before and I kept still, I kept still! But this! Josú! This—there's not another man in all Seville would dare do as much!"

Nacional intervened kindly.

"Be calm, Señora Carmen. Why, that was of no importance! Merely the visit of a female admirer of the maestro's to the plantation, one who desired to see at close range how he lived in the country. These half foreign ladies are always capricious and queer. You ought to have seen the French women when the cuadrilla went to fight at Nîmes and Arles! The whole thing is nothing! the whole thing, liquid! Man alive! by the blue dove! I would like to see the tattler that brought such news!"

Carmen continued weeping without listening to the banderillero's indignant protestations, while Seña' Angustias, seated in an arm-chair against which her super-abundant obesity rose and fell, frowned and compressed her hairy, wrinkled lips.

"Shut up, Sebastián, and don't lie," said the old woman. "I know it all. That trip to the hacienda was an indecent carousal, a gypsy's revel. They even say you had Plumitas, the robber, with you."

"Liquid! All liquid! What say you about Plumitas? Everything was decent there. Man alive! Nothing was lacking but that a citizen like myself, who carries to the voting boxes more than a hundred votes from my ward, should be accused of being a friend of Plumitas!"

Señora Angustias, overcome by Nacional's protests, and a little uncertain about this last report, ceased insisting on it. Good; nothing about Plumitas! But the other thing! The trip to the hacienda with that—woman! And firm in the blindness of motherhood, which would put all the responsibility for her son's misdeeds upon his companions, she went on scolding Nacional.

"I shall tell thy wife what thou art. The poor thing killing herself in her shop from daybreak till nightfall, and thou going off on revels like a lad. Thou shouldst be ashamed. At thy years! With such a troop of children—"

The banderillero departed, fleeing from Señora Angustias, who in the storm of her indignation displayed the same nimble tongue as in the days when she worked in the Tobacco Factory. He resolved not to return to his master's house.

"Things are going bad, Juaniyo. I shall never go to thy house again, even though they try to drag me there. Thy mother insults me as though I were a gypsy of Triana. Thy wife weeps and looks at me, as though it was all my fault. Man, do me the favor to not remember me again. Take another associate when thou goest with women."

Gallardo smiled amiably. That was nothing. That would soon pass. He had faced worse trials.

"What thou must do is to keep on coming. With many people there is no riot."

"I?" exclaimed Nacional. "To a priest's house first!"

The matador knew it was useless to insist after that. He spent most of the day out of the house, away from the women's silent and tearful reproaches, and when he returned it was with an escort, shielding himself by his manager and other friends.

One day Carmen sent for the banderillero to come to see her. She received Nacional in her husband's office, where they could be alone, instead of in the busy courtyard or the dining-room. Gallardo was at his club on Sierpes Street. He fled from the house, and to avoid meeting his wife, he dined outside many days, going with companions to the Eritaña inn.

Nacional seated himself on a divan, his head bowed and his hat in his hands, not wishing to look at his master's wife. How she had failed! Her eyes were red and encircled by deep, dark hollows. Her cheeks were sallow and the end of her nose shone with a rosy color that told of much rubbing with the handkerchief.

The banderillero assented with a nod while awaiting her question. What did the Señora Carmen wish to know?

"Tell me what happened at La Rincona', what you saw, and what you think."

Ah! good Nacional! With what noble pride he held his head high, happy to be able to do good and to comfort the forlorn soul. See? He had seen nothing wrong!

"I swear it by my father, I swear it—by my ideas."

And without fear he took his oath on the most holy testimony of his ideas, for in reality he had seen nothing and not seeing it, he logically thought, in the pride of his perspicacity and wisdom, that nothing wrong could have happened.

"I think they are no more than friends—now—if there has been anything between them before—I don't know. The people say—they talk—they invent so many lies! Pay no attention, Seña' Carmen. To be happy and to be alive, that is reality!"

She insisted again. But what had happened at the hacienda? The hacienda was her home, and it angered her to see, in addition to infidelity, something that seemed a sacrilege, a direct insult to her person.

Nacional thought it necessary to interrupt, seeing that Carmen was moved by these memories and was beginning to cry.

"And do you believe lies, child? Don't you see they are the inventions of people that want to hurt him? Envy, nothing more."

She spoke with energy, her eyes shining with the glow of hatred.

"And if he should have an accident, and have to retire as others do!

"He has even wanted to change me, just as he is changed. The señor shows, when he comes home after visiting his Doña Sol, or Doña Devil, that his mamita and I seem to him very out of date in our shawls and our loose gowns such as are worn by all the daughters of the land. He it is who has made me wear those hats brought from Madrid in which I look so hideous, just like one of those monkeys that dance to the hand-organs. The mantilla is so rich! And he has bought that hell-wagon, that automobile, that I am always afraid to ride in and which smells to heaven. If we would let him he would even put a hat with rooster's tails on poor Mamita. He is a vain fellow who thinks only of that other woman and wants to make us like her so that he won't be ashamed of us."

The banderillero broke forth in protests. Not so! Juan was good-hearted and he did all this because he loved his family and wanted them to have luxuries.

"What you say about Juaniyo may be true, Seña' Carmen, but he must be forgiven some things. Come! How many there are who die with envy at sight of you! Is it nothing to be the wife of the bravest of all the bull-fighters, with handfuls of money and a marvel of a house, of which you are absolute mistress?—for the master gives you charge of everything!"

Carmen's eyes grew moist and she raised her handkerchief to her eyes.

The banderillero departed from this interview with his head bent low and went in search of the maestro, meeting him at the door of the Forty-five.

"Juan, I have seen thy wife. The affair grows worse and worse. Try to make up with her, to straighten things out."

"Damn it! May sickness end her, thee, and me! This is not living. God permit that Sunday a bull may catch me and so it will all be ended! What is life worth!"

He was partially drunk. He was desperate over the sullen frown he met in his house and still more (though he confessed it to none), over the flight of Doña Sol without leaving a word for him, not even a paper with four lines of farewell. They had put him out of the door; had treated him worse than if he had been a servant. He did not even know where the woman was. The Marquis had interested himself but little in his niece's journey. The maddest girl! She had not told him, either, about her going, but not on that account would he think her lost in the world. She would soon give signs of existence from some strange country where her caprices had carried her.

Gallardo did not conceal his desperation in his own house. At the silence of his wife, who kept her eyes lowered, or looked at him frowning and refusing to converse, the matador burst forth into deadly curses.

"Damn my fate! I hope a Miura will hook me Sunday and shake me like a bell, and that they will bring me home on a stretcher!"

"Don't say that, malaje!" wailed Señora Angustias. "Don't tempt God. See if that don't bring bad luck."

"Never mind, Mamita. There isn't a bull alive that can touch him!"

Sunday was the last bull-fight of the year in which Gallardo was to work. He spent the morning without the vague fears and superstitious preoccupations of other occasions. He dressed himself joyfully, with a nervous excitement that seemed to augment the vigor of his arms and legs. What joy that he would be able to rush out upon the yellow sand and astound twelve thousand spectators by his gallantry and daring! His art was the only reality—something which awakened the enthusiasm of the multitudes and brought in money without measure. All the rest, family and love, but served to complicate existence and cause unhappiness. Ah! What sword-thrusts he was going to make! He felt the strength of a giant within himself. He was a different man, he had neither fear nor dread. He even showed impatience that it was not yet the hour for going to the plaza, contrary to other times when he had put off the dreaded moment. His fury at his domestic unhappiness and at that flight which wounded his vanity, made him long to throw himself upon the bulls.

"Thou art finer than Roger de Flor himself," Gallardo told him gayly. "Get into the coach—and I'll take thee to the plaza."

His brother-in-law seated himself near the great man, trembling with pride as he rode along the streets of Seville, that all should see him seated among the silken capes and the heavy gold embroideries of the bull-fighters.

The plaza was full. This important corrida at the end of autumn had attracted a great audience, not only from the city but from the country as well. Upon the "bleachers" in the sun were seated many people from the surrounding country towns.

From the first instant Gallardo showed the nervous activity that possessed him. He was to be seen far from the barrera advancing to meet the bull, distracting him with his cape-work, while the picadores awaited the moment in which the bull would attack their miserable horses.

A certain antagonism of the public against the bull-fighter could be felt. They applauded him as usual, but the demonstrations of enthusiasm were more hearty and warm on the shady side than on the rows of seats in the sun, where many sat in their shirt-sleeves in the burning rays.

He killed his first bull with middling luck. He threw himself as bravely as ever between the horns, but the sword struck bone. His admirers applauded him. The thrust was well aimed and he was not to be blamed for the futility of his effort. But the second time he went in to kill, the bull, on chasing after the muleta, shook the blade out of the wound, sending it flying away. Then, taking a new sword from Garabato's hands, he turned toward the wild beast, which awaited him, with fore-feet planted forward, his neck streaming blood and his dripping mouth almost touching the sand. The maestro holding his muleta before the bull's eyes was tranquilly laying back with the point of his sword the shafts of the banderillas that hung over his head. He was going to kill him by a stab in the spinal cord. He placed the steel point on the top of the bull's head, searching between the horns for the sensitive spot. With an effort he thrust in the sword and the animal shuddered painfully, but still kept his feet, resisting the steel with a violent tossing of his head.

"One!" clamored the audience on the bleachers in mocking tones.

"Damn it!" Why did those people attack him with such injustice?

He raised the sword again and thrust, managing this time to reach the vulnerable spot. The bull fell instantly, as if struck by a lightning flash in the very nerve-centre of his life, and he lay with his horns dug into the ground, his legs rigid in the air.

"Niño litri! Aristocrat!"

Gallardo turned his back to these protests and saluted the enthusiasts with his muleta and sword. The insults of the populace which had always been friendly to him hurt him and caused him to clench his fists.

"But what do those people want? The bull gave no better account of himself. Damn it! This is the work of enemies."

He passed a great part of the corrida close to the barrera gazing disdainfully at what his companions were doing, accusing them mentally of having prepared these marks of displeasure against him in advance.

He also broke into curses against the bull and the herder that raised him. He had come so well prepared to do great deeds and he had encountered a beast which would not permit him to shine! The breeders that turned out such animals ought to be shot.

When he again took up the instruments of death, he ordered Nacional and another of his peones to draw the bull with the cape toward the part of the plaza where the populace was seated.

He knew the public. He must humor the citizens in the sun, those tumultuous and terrible demagogues who carried class hatred into the plaza but easily changed hisses into applause when a slight show of consideration flattered their pride.

The fierce beast, as he stood alone on that side of the plaza, began to attack the dead body of a horse. He thrust his head into the open belly and raised the miserable carcass on his horns like a limp rag. It fell to the ground, lying almost doubled, and the bull backed away with indecisive step. He returned again to sniff it with deep bellowings, while the audience laughed at his stupid tenacity, at this search for life in the inanimate body.

"Jam him hard there! Thou hast lots of strength, boy! Keep it up, or he'll turn on thee!"

But every one's attention was withdrawn from this venting of the bull's fury to Gallardo who was crossing the plaza with a short swinging step, in one hand the rolled muleta, in the other flourishing his sword as though it were a cane.

The entire audience in the sun applauded, grateful to have the swordsman come over to them.

"Thou hast put them into thy pocket," said Nacional, who stood near the bull with the cape ready.

The multitude gesticulated, calling to the bull-fighter—"Here, here!"

Each one wished him to kill the bull before his seat that he might not lose the slightest detail, and the swordsman hesitated between the contradictory calls of thousands of mouths. With one foot on the vaulting wall of the barrier he calculated where best to end the bull. He must be drawn farther away. The dead horse seemed to fill that whole side of the plaza and disturbed the bull-fighter.

"Good-afternoon, Señor Juan. We are going to applaud reality!"

He saw in the first row, under the panel of the inner barrier, a folded jacket on the edge of the wall, a pair of arms in shirt sleeves crossed over it, and a broad face recently shaved resting in the hands, with a hat drawn down to the ears. He looked like a good-natured rustic, come from a country town to witness the bull-fight.

Gallardo recognized him. It was Plumitas.

He had fulfilled his promise and there he was among twelve thousand people who did not know him, greeting the matador, who felt a certain gratitude for this display of confidence. Gallardo marvelled at his temerity. To come down to Seville, to enter the plaza, far from the hills and the deserts where defence was easy for him, without the aid of his two companions, his mare and his carbine, and all—to see him kill bulls! Of the two, that man was the brave one. He thought of his plantation which was at Plumitas' mercy, of the country life which was only possible by maintaining good relations with this extraordinary personage. The bull must be for him.

He smiled at the bandit, who continued contemplating him with placid countenance; he took off his cap and shouted, turning toward the boisterous multitude, but with his eyes on Plumitas.

"Vaya! In honor of you!"

He continued making pases at the bull, accompanied by the exclamations of the people a few feet away. Seeing him near they gave him advice. "Take care, Gallardo!" The bull was perfectly sound. He must not let himself get between him and the barrier. He must keep his retreat clear.

Others more enthusiastic excited him to deeds of daring with audacious counsel.

"Let him have one of thy best! Zas! A sword-thrust and thou hast him in thy pocket!"

The animal was too big and too cautious to be put in the pocket. He was excited by the proximity of the dead horse, and kept returning to it as if the odor intoxicated him.

In one of his evolutions, the bull, tired by the muleta, stood motionless. Gallardo had the dead horse behind him. It was a bad situation, but out of worse he had come victorious. He wished to take advantage of the horse's position. The public excited him to it. Among the men on the bleachers who had risen to their feet, and were leaning forward to lose no detail of the decisive moment, he recognized many popular devotees who had begun to cool toward him but were now applauding him again, moved by consideration for the populace.

"Score a point, there! Good boy! Now we'll see the real thing! Strike true!"

"For you, comrade!"

He squared himself with the sword presented ready to kill—but at that instant the earth seemed to shake and he felt himself hurled to a great distance; then the plaza fell, everything turned black, and a fierce hurricane of voices seemed to blow in from off the sea. His body vibrated painfully, his head buzzed as if it would burst; a mortal anguish contracted his breast—and he fell into a dark and limitless void, as into the unconsciousness of death.

The bull, at the very instant in which Gallardo made ready to thrust, had suddenly thrown himself upon him, attracted by the horse behind him. It was a brutal encounter, in which the body of the bull-fighter with its silk and gold trappings rolled away and disappeared beneath his feet. He did not gore him with his horns, but the blow was horrible, staggering. With head and horns the wild beast felled the man as though he had been struck by a sledge hammer.

The bull, which saw only the horse, felt an obstacle near his feet, and scorning the dead body, turned to attack again the brilliant puppet that lay motionless on the sand. He raised it with one horn, tossed it some feet away after giving it a brief shaking, and then started to return to a third attack.

The audience almost forgot the swordsman, so impressed was it by this new incident. Nacional was going to fall also; he could not get out from between the horns; the wild beast already had him almost hooked. Men shouted as if their cries could aid him; women wailed with anguish, turning away their faces and clutching one another convulsively, until the banderillero, taking advantage of the moment in which the wild beast lowered his head to charge, rushed from between the horns, stepping to one side, while the animal ran on blindly, the torn cape hanging before his eyes.

Then there broke forth deafening applause. The fickle multitude, impressed only by the danger of the moment, applauded Nacional. It was one of the happiest moments of his life. The audience, taken up with him, scarcely noticed Gallardo's inanimate body as it was carried out of the ring, the head hanging limp, by bull-fighters and employees of the plaza.

Terrifying news circulated along Sierpes Street exaggerated by Southern hyperbolic commentary. Poor Gallardo had just died. He who gave the sad news had seen him in a bed in the infirmary of the plaza, white as paper, a cross in his hands. Another presented himself with less lugubrious news. He was not dead yet, but he would die any moment.

"He has lost everything! Everything! Disembowelled! The brute has left the poor fellow punctured like a sieve."

Guards had been placed at the entrances to the plaza so that the people, anxious for news, should not invade the infirmary. The multitude surged outside the ring asking news of the master's condition from those who came and went.

Nacional, still dressed in his fighting costume, peered out several times, ill-humored and frowning, blustering and angry, because arrangements for moving the maestro to his house had not been made. The people seeing the banderillero forgot the injured man and congratulated him.

"Señor Sebastián, you have done very well. If it hadn't been for you—!"

But what mattered it to him what he had done? All—liquid. The only thing of importance was poor Juan who lay in the infirmary fighting death.

"And how is he, Señor Sebastián?"

"Very bad. He has just regained his senses. He has one leg ground to dust; a horn-stab under the arm; and what more I know not! The poor boy is as dear to me as my patron-saint. We are going to carry him home."

The doctors from the plaza walked behind and with them the Marquis of Moraima and Don José, who seemed ready to faint and fall into the arms of companions from the Forty-five, who were all jumbled together and mixed in with the ragged mob that followed the bull-fighter.

The crowd was in a state of consternation. It was a gloomy procession, as if one of those national disasters that overcome differences of class and level all men by general misfortune had taken place.

"What a calamity, Señor Marqués," said a chubby-cheeked, blonde rustic, his jacket hanging over one shoulder.

Twice he had rudely shoved away one of the stretcher bearers in his desire to help carry it. The Marquis looked at him sympathetically. He must be one of those country men who were accustomed to greet him on the high-road.

"Yes; a great calamity, boy."

"Do you think he will die, Señor Marqués?"

"They fear so—unless a miracle saves him. He is ground to dust."

The Marquis, laying his right hand on the stranger's shoulder, seemed to be grateful for the sadness reflected in his countenance.

The stretcher was carried into a room off the courtyard and the matador was moved to a bed with great care. He was enwrapped in cloths and blood-stained bandages that smelled of strong antiseptics. A pink stocking was all that remained of his fighting costume. His underclothing was torn in some places and cut by scissors in others.

His coleta hung about his neck disordered and tangled; his face had the pallor of death. He opened his eyes as he felt a hand pressed into one of his and smiled slightly on seeing Carmen, a Carmen as white as himself, with dry eyes, livid lips, and an expression of dread, as if this were her husband's last moment.

Gallardo's grave gentlemen friends prudently intervened. That could not continue; Carmen must retire. As yet, only preliminary treatment had been given the wound, and there was still much work for the doctors, so the wife was taken out of the room. The wounded man made a sign with his eyes to Nacional, who bent over him straining to catch his faint whisper.

"Juan says," he murmured, going out into the courtyard, "to telegraph to Doctor Ruiz."

After this, Don José continued questioning the doctors who had treated him in the plaza. Their first, perturbation over, they grew more optimistic. It was possible he might not die. His constitution was so strong! The greatest thing to fear was the shock he had suffered, the shaking which was enough to kill another instantly; but he had already come out of the first collapse and had recovered his senses, although his weakness was great. As for the wounds, they did not consider them dangerous. That on the arm was a slight thing; perhaps it would be less agile than before. As for the leg, there was less hope. The bone was fractured; Gallardo might be left lame.

Don José, who had made every effort to be impassive when, hours before, the swordsman's death was considered inevitable, shuddered on hearing this. His matador lame? Then he could never again fight bulls! He was indignant at the calmness with which the doctors talked of the possibility of Gallardo's being left useless for bull-fighting.

"That cannot be. Do you think it logical that Juan will live and not fight bulls? Who would take his place? It cannot be, I say! The greatest man in the world, and they want him to retire!"

As he entered the sick room the bull-fighter, who seemed overcome with weakness, opened his eyes and recognized him, and his face lighted with a smile of confidence. Ruiz, after listening in a corner to the whispers of the doctors who had given first aid, approached the invalid with a resolute air.

"Courage, my good fellow, thou are not going to die of this! Thou hast ever such rare luck!"

And then he added, turning to his colleagues: "But what a magnificent animal this Juanillo is! Any other, by this time, would not have left us anything to do."

He examined him with care. A bad horn-wound; but he had seen many worse! In cases of sickness that he called ordinary, he vacillated undecided, not venturing to express an opinion. But the goring of a bull was his speciality and he always expected the most remarkable recoveries, as if the horns gave the wound and the remedy at once.

"The man that doesn't die in the ring itself," he said, "can almost say he is saved. The cure is just a question of time."

"Who said thou wouldst be left useless for fighting?" exclaimed the doctor, happy in his skill. "Thou wilt fight bulls again, son; the public will still be obliged to applaud thee much."

The manager assented to these words. He had thought the same. Could that youth, who was the greatest man in the world, die thus?

By Doctor Ruiz' order, the bull-fighter's family had moved to Don José's house. The women bothered him; their proximity was intolerable during operating hours. A moan from the bull-fighter was enough to awaken instant response from all parts of the house; the mother's and sister's screams were like painful echoes. Carmen had to be held by force, and she fought like a mad woman in her desire to go to her husband's side.

Grief had changed the wife, making her forget her animosity. Often her tears were caused by remorse, for she believed herself the unconscious author of the calamity.

"The fault is mine; I know it," she said in despair to Nacional. "He said over and over again he wished a bull would gore him to finish it all! I have been very wicked. I have embittered his life."

When the operations were over, the family returned to the house. Carmen entered the wounded man's room with a light step and lowered eyes, as if ashamed of her former hostility.

"How art thou?" she asked, clasping one of Juan's hands between both her own. She remained thus, silent and timid in the presence of Dr. Ruiz and other friends who stayed by the sick man's bedside. Had she been left alone perhaps she would have knelt beside her husband asking his forgiveness. Poor fellow! She had made him desperate by her cruelty, sending him to his death. She wished to forget it all. And her simple soul looked out of her eyes with self-abnegation, her humility mingled with wifely love and tenderness.

Gallardo seemed to have grown smaller with so much suffering; he was thin, pale, and shrunken. Nothing was left of the arrogant youth who fired the public with his daring. He complained of his inactivity and of his useless leg, heavy as lead. The terrible operations he had undergone in full consciousness seemed to have made him a coward. His fortitude in bearing pain had disappeared and he groaned at the slightest molestation.

His room was like a place of reunion through which the most celebrated connoisseurs of the city passed. The smoke of their cigars was mingled with the stench of iodoform and strong liniments. Bottles of wine that had been presented by the callers stood on the tables among medicine flasks and packages of cotton and bandages.

The doctor was equally encouraging.

FAR into the night the doctor, the manager, and members of the cuadrilla kept the wounded man company. When Potaje came he sat near the table trying to keep the bottles within reach of his hand. The conversation between Ruiz, the manager, and Nacional was always about bulls. It was impossible to be with Don José and talk of anything else. They commented on all bull-fighters' defects, discussed their merits and the money they earned, while the convalescent listened in forced inactivity or fell into a drowsy torpor stupefied by the murmur of conversation.

Generally the doctor was the only one who talked, followed in his pompous argument by Nacional's grave and admiring eyes. "Bull-fighting is an evolution," said he. "Dost thou understand, Sebastián? A development from the customs of our country, a modification of the popular diversions which Spaniards of olden times were given to; those times of which Don Joselito must often have talked of to thee."

Dr. Ruiz, with a glass in one hand, talked and talked, only stopping to take a sip.

The doctor related the history of the national sport for centuries past. Only on rare occasions, when kings married, when a treaty of peace was signed, or a chapel in a cathedral was dedicated, were such events as bull-fights celebrated. There was no regularity in the repetition of these feasts, nor were there any professional fighters. Titled gentlemen dressed in costumes of silks went into the bull-ring mounted on their chargers to spear the beast, or to fight it with lances before the eyes of the ladies. If the bull managed to throw them off their horses they drew their swords, and with the assistance of their lackeys put it to death, wounding it wherever they could, without conforming to any rules. When the corrida was for the people the multitude descended into the arena, attacking the bull en masse until they succeeded in routing it, killing it by dagger thrusts.

"Bull-fights did not exist," continued the doctor. "That was hunting wild cattle. In fact, the people had other occupations, and reckoned on other sports peculiar to their epoch, and did not need to perfect this diversion."

Ruiz insisted on his idea. In the middle of the eighteenth century when Spain retired within herself, renouncing distant wars, and new colonizations, and when religious cruelty languished for lack of atmosphere, then was the time when bull-fighting flourished forth. Popular heroism needed new heights to scale for notoriety and fortune. The ferocity of the multitude, accustomed to orgies of death, needed a safety valve to give expansion to its soul, educated for centuries to the contemplation of torture. The Order of the Inquisition was replaced by the bull-fight. He who a century before would have been a soldier in Flanders, or a military colonizer in the solitudes of the New World, became a bull-fighter. The people, finding their avenues of expansion closed, saw in the new national sport a glorious opening for all the ambitious ones who had valor and courage.

And the doctor railed against horse-races, in which many more men are killed than in bull-fights; against fox hunting with trained dogs, witnessed by civilized spectators; against many modern games out of which the champions come with broken legs, fractured skulls, or flattened noses; against the duel, fought in the majority of cases without other cause than an unhealthy desire for publicity.

"The bull and the horse," railed Ruiz, "bring to tears the very people that don't raise the slightest outcry in their own countries when they see a racing animal fall in the hippodrome, ruptured, or with broken legs, the very people who think the establishment of a zoölogical garden the complement to the beauty of every great city."

"They insult us because we have become weak," said Ruiz, waxing indignant over what he considered universal injustice. "Our world is like a monkey that imitates the gestures and joys of the one he respects as a master. Just now England leads, and both hemispheres approve horse-racing; crowds stupidly gather to watch lank nags run around a race-track, a spectacle that could not be surpassed in insipidity. If in the days of Spain's supremacy bull-fighting had been as popular as to-day, there would now be bull-rings in many European countries. Don't talk to me about the superior foreigners! I admire them because they have made revolutions, and we owe much of our thought to them; but regarding bulls, heavens, man, they talk nothing but nonsense!"

After a stay of ten days in Seville the doctor had to return to Madrid.

"Well, young fellow," he said to the sick man, "thou dost not need me now and I have a great deal to do. Don't be imprudent. After two months thou wilt be well and strong. It is possible thou mayest be a little stiff in the leg, but thou hast a constitution of iron and thou wilt mend."

Gallardo's recovery took place within the time set by Ruiz. When at the end of a month his leg was freed from its enforced quiet, the bull-fighter, weak and limping slightly, could go out and sit in an arm-chair in the courtyard, where he received his friends.

During his illness, when the fever was high and he was lost in delirium, one thought, ever the same, held firm in the midst of his imaginative wanderings. Doña Sol—did that woman know of his misfortune?

While he was still in bed he ventured to ask his manager about her one day when they were alone.

"Yes, man," said Don José, "she has thought of thee. She sent me a telegram from Nice, asking about thy health three days after the accident. Doubtless she heard of it through the newspapers. They have talked about thee everywhere, as if thou wert a king."

The manager had answered the telegram but had heard nothing from her since.

But the bull-fighter's sorrow at thinking himself forgotten obliged Don José to lie out of pity. Days before he had received a short note from Italy in which Doña Sol asked for news of the wounded man.

"Let me see it," said Gallardo eagerly.

When he pretended to have forgotten it at home, Gallardo implored him, "Bring it to me. I so long to see her writing, to convince myself that she remembers me."

To avoid new complications, Don José invented a correspondence which never reached his hands because it was directed to some one else. Doña Sol wrote, according to him, to the marquis in regard to business connected with her fortune, and at the end of every letter she asked about Gallardo's health. Again, the letters were to a cousin of hers and in them was the same thought of the bull-fighter.

Gallardo heard this news joyfully but at the same time shook his head with a doubtful expression. When would he see her again! Would he ever see her? Ah, that erratic woman, who had flown without reason at the caprice of her strange disposition!

Gallardo raised his head proudly, as if something dishonorable had been proposed to him. Give up bull-fighting? Pass a year without being seen in the ring? Was it possible the public could be resigned to such an absence?

"Accept, Don José. From now till spring there is time to get strong. I will fight whatever they put before me. You can make a contract for the Easter bull-fight. It seems to me this leg is going to give me a good deal of trouble, but by then, God willing, I'll be as if made of iron."

It was two months before the bull-fighter grew strong. He limped slightly and felt less agility in his arms; but he made light of these troubles as insignificant when he began to feel the power of health reanimating his vigorous body.

Finding himself alone in his wife's room (for he had returned to it when he abandoned the sick chamber), he stood before a mirror and squared himself as though facing a bull, placing one arm above the other in the form of a cross as though holding the sword and muleta in his hands. Zas! A sword-thrust at the invisible bull. To the very hilt! He smiled proudly thinking how his enemies were going to be deceived, those who prophesied his immediate decadence whenever he was gored.

He decided to pass the rest of the winter at La Rinconada with his family, to gain strength. Hunting and long trips would improve his broken leg. Besides, he would ride on horseback overseeing the work, he would visit the flocks of goats, the herds of swine, the droves of cattle and horses pastured in the meadows. The administration of the plantation was not getting on well. Everything cost him more than other proprietors and the profits were less. It was the estate of a bull-fighter of generous habits accustomed to earning great quantities of money without knowing the restriction of economy. His travels during a part of the year, and his accident, which had brought stupefaction and disorder into his house, caused business to go awry.

Antonio, his brother-in-law, who had established himself at the plantation for a season with the airs of a dictator intending to set everything in order, had only impeded the progress of the work and provoked the ire of the laborers. Fortunately Gallardo counted on certain returns from the bull-fights, an inexhaustible source of wealth for repairing his prodigality.

The occasion was a popular event. The gardeners of the Macarena ward were called upon by the master's mother, and the Church of San Gil was filled with flowers arranged in tall heaps like pyramids on the altars, or hanging in garlands between the arches and suspended from the lamps in great clusters.

The sacred ceremony took place one bright morning. In spite of its being a week-day the church was filled with the best families of the nearby wards; stout women with black eyes and short necks, with waists and hips outlined in coarse curves, wearing black silk gowns with lace mantillas over their pale faces; workmen recently shaven, in new suits, round hats, and with great gold chains on their waistcoats. Beggars came in bands as if a wedding were to be celebrated and stood at the doors of the temple in double file. The good wives of the ward, unkempt and with babies in their arms, formed groups, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Gallardo and his family.

A mass was to be sung with accompaniment of orchestra and voices, something extraordinary, like the opera in the theatre of San Fernando at Christmas time. Then the priests would sing the Te Deum as a thanksgiving for the recovery of Señor Juan Gallardo, just as when the king entered Seville.

The cortège appeared making its way through the crowd. The bull-fighter's mother and wife, with relatives and friends, walked in advance, while the heavy silk of their skirts rustled as they passed, smiling sweetly beneath their mantillas.

Gallardo was grave. He was a sincere believer. He thought little about God and blasphemed Him in difficult moments with the automatism of custom; but this was a different thing; he was going to give thanks to the Most Holy Macarena, and he entered the temple with an air of pious compunction.

All went in except Nacional, who abandoned his wife and offspring and remained outside in the churchyard.

"I am a free-thinker," he believed the time opportune to declare before a group of friends. "I respect all beliefs; but what is going on inside, for me is—liquid! I don't want to be lacking in respect to the Macarena, nor to rob her of her due, but, comrade, if I had not arrived in time to attract the bull away when Juaniyo was stretched on the ground—!"

The sound of the instruments was borne out to the churchyard, with the voices of the singers, a sweet, voluptuous harmony, accompanied by breaths of perfume from the flowers and the odor of wax candles.

The bull-fighters and devotees of Gallardo who were gathered outside the temple smoked cigarette after cigarette. From time to time some of them strayed off to while away the time in the nearest tavern.

When the company came forth again the poor appeared smiling and gesticulating, their hands full of coin. There was money for all. The maestro Gallardo was liberal.

At the door of the church the matador, smiling and magnificent, gave his arm to his wife, who walked tremulous with emotion and with lowered eyes, a tear quivering on her lashes.