A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as _toreadors_, came
out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a wonderfully
handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering his head with all
the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain, led her solemnly in to
a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised dais above the
arena. The children grouped themselves all round, fluttering their big
fans and whispering to each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor
stood laughing at the entrance. Even the Duchess--the Camerera-Mayor as
she was called--a thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not
look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill smile
flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin bloodless lips.
It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the Infanta
thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought to see at
Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father.
Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobby-horses
brandishing long javelins with gay streamers of bright ribands attached
to them; others went on foot waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull,
and vaulting lightly over the barrier when he charged them; and as for
the bull himself, he was just like a live bull, though he was only made
of wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running
round the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams of
doing. He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got so
excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace
handkerchiefs and cried out: _Bravo toro_! _Bravo toro_! just as
sensibly as if they had been grown-up people. At last, however, after a
prolonged combat, during which several of the hobby-horses were gored
through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the young Count of
Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and having obtained
permission from the Infanta to give the _coup de grace_, he plunged his
wooden sword into the neck of the animal with such violence that the head
came right off, and disclosed the laughing face of little Monsieur de
Lorraine, the son of the French Ambassador at Madrid.
The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead
hobby-horses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow and
black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a French
posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian puppets
appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of _Sophonisba_ on the stage of a
small theatre that had been built up for the purpose. They acted so
well, and their gestures were so extremely natural, that at the close of
the play the eyes of the Infanta were quite dim with tears. Indeed some
of the children really cried, and had to be comforted with sweetmeats,
and the Grand Inquisitor himself was so affected that he could not help
saying to Don Pedro that it seemed to him intolerable that things made
simply out of wood and coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires,
should be so unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.--_The
Birthday of the Infanta_.