THE SPANISH LILITH
With the extreme violence characteristic of the changeable and erratic
climate of Madrid in the midspring the temperature gave a jump
backwards.
It was cold. The gray sky was lavish of terrific rains, accompanied
sometimes by flakes of snow. The people, already dressed in light
clothing, opened wardrobes and chests to get out wraps and overcoats.
The rain blackened and ruined the white spring hats.
No functions had been given in the bull plaza for two weeks. The Sunday
_corrida_ was postponed until a week-day when the weather should be
fine. The management, the employees of the plaza, and the innumerable
devotees whom this forced suspension cast into an ill humor, watched the
firmament with the anxiety of the peasant who fears for his crops. A
clearing in the sky, or the appearance of a few stars at midnight when
they left the _cafes_, made them cheerful again.
"It's going to clear up--bull-fight day after to-morrow."
But the clouds gathered again, the dark gloomy weather with its
continual rain persisted, and the devotees of the game grew indignant at
a climate that seemed to have declared war on the national sport.
Unhappy country! Even bull-fights were becoming impossible in it!
Gallardo had spent two weeks in enforced rest. His _cuadrilla_
complained of the inactivity. In any other town in Spain the
bull-fighters would have endured this lack of work resignedly. The
_matador_ paid their board in the hotels everywhere except in Madrid. It
was a bad rule established long ago by the _maestros_ who lived in the
capital. It was assumed that all bull-fighters must have their own home
in the court city. And the poor lackeys and _picadores_, who lived at a
miserable boarding-house kept by the widow of a _banderillero_, cut down
their living by all manner of economies, smoking little and standing in
the doors of _cafes_. They thought of their families with the longing of
men who in exchange for their blood receive but a handful of _pesetas_.
When the two bull-fights were over the proceeds from them would already
be eaten up.
The _matador_ was equally ill-humored in the solitude of his hotel, not
because of the weather, but rather on account of his poor luck. He had
fought his first _corrida_ in Madrid with a deplorable result. The
public had changed toward him. He still had partisans of dauntless faith
who were strong in his defence; but these enthusiasts, noisy and
aggressive a year ago, now showed a certain indifference, and when they
found occasion to applaud him they did so with timidity. On the other
hand, his enemies and that great mass of the public that look for
dangers and deaths,--how unjust in their condemnations! How bold in
insulting him! What they tolerated in other _matadores_ they prohibited
in him.
With the eagerness of a celebrity who feels that he is losing prestige,
Gallardo exhibited himself prodigally in the places frequented by the
devotees of the game. He went into the Cafe Ingles, where the partisans
of the Andalusian bull-fighters gather, and by his presence prevented
implacable commentaries being heaped upon his name. He himself, smiling
and modest, started the conversation with a humility that disarmed the
most hostile.
"It's true I didn't do well; I know it. But you will see at the next
bull-fight, when the weather clears up. What can be done will be done."
He dared not enter certain _cafes_ near the Puerta del Sol, where other
devotees of a more modest class gathered. They were the enemies of
Andalusian bull-fighting, genuine _Madrilenos_, embittered by the unfair
prevalence of _matadores_ from Cordova and Seville, while the capital
had not a single glorious representative. The memory of Frascuelo, whom
they considered a son of Madrid, was perpetuated in these gatherings
like the veneration of a miraculous saint. There were among them some
who for many years had not gone to the plaza, not since the Negro
retired. Why go? They contented themselves by reading the reviews in the
newspapers, convinced that there were no bulls, nor even bull-fighters,
since Frascuelo's death--Andalusian boys, nothing else; dancers who made
monkey-shines with their capes and bodies without knowing what it was to
_receive_ a bull.
Occasionally a breath of hope circulated among them. Madrid was going to
have a great _matador_. They had just discovered a bullock fighter, a
son of the suburbs, who, after covering himself with glory in the plazas
of Vallecas and Tetuan, worked in the great plaza Sundays in cheap
bull-fights.
His name became popular. In the barber-shops in the lesser wards they
talked of him with enthusiasm, prophesying great triumphs. The hero went
from tavern to tavern drinking and increasing the nucleus of his
partisans.
But time passed and their prophecies remained unfulfilled. Either this
hero fell with a mortal horn wound, with no other recognition of his
glory than four lines in the newspapers, or another subsided after a
goring, becoming one of the many tramps who exhibit the _coleta_ at the
Puerta del Sol, waiting for imaginary contracts. Then the devotees
turned their eyes on other beginners, expecting with an Hebraic faith
the coming of the _matador_ glory to Madrid.
Gallardo dared not go near these tauromachic demagogues who had always
hated him and hailed his decadence. The majority of them did not go to
see him in the ring, nor did they admire the present-day bull-fighters.
They were waiting for their Messiah before deciding to return to the
plaza.
When he wandered at nightfall through the centre of Madrid near the
Puerta del Sol and Seville Street, he allowed himself to be accosted by
the vagabonds of the profession who form groups at these places,
boasting of their achievements. They were youths who greeted him as
"_maestro_," or "Senor Juan"; many with a hungry air, leading up to a
petition for a few _pesetas_, but well dressed, clean, spick and span,
adopting gallant airs, as if they were surfeited with the pleasures of
existence, and wearing a scandalous display of brass in rings and
imitation chains. Some were honorable fellows who were trying to make
their way in tauromachy to maintain their families on something more
than the workman's daily wage. Others, less scrupulous, had female
friends who worked at unmentionable occupations, willing to sacrifice
their bodies to support and keep decent some fine fellow, who, to
believe his words, would sometime be a celebrity.
Without other belongings than the clothes they wore they strutted from
morning till night in the centre of Madrid, talking about the contracts
they had not cared to make, and spying on one another to find out who
had money and could treat his comrades. When one, by a capricious turn
of luck, managed to get a fight of young bullocks in some place in the
province, he first had to redeem his glittering costume from a pawn
shop--venerable and tarnished garments that had belonged to various
heroes of the past.
Among this tauromachic crowd, embittered by misfortune, and kept in
obscurity through stupidity or fear, there were men who commanded
general respect. One who fled before the bulls was feared for the skill
with which he used his knife. Another had been in prison for killing a
man with his fist. The famous _Swallow-hats_ enjoyed the honors of
celebrity since one afternoon when, in a tavern at Vallecas, he ate a
Cordovan felt hat torn into pieces and fried, with wine at discretion to
make the mouthfuls go down.
Some, suave mannered, always well dressed and freshly shaved, fastened
themselves upon Gallardo, accompanying him on his walks in the hope that
he would invite them to dine. Others with an arrogant look in their bold
eyes entertained the swordsman gayly with the relation of their
adventures.
On sunny mornings they went to the Castellana in search of game, when
the governesses of the great houses take the children out for an airing.
These were English misses or German _frauleins_, who had just come to
Madrid with their heads filled with picturesque ideas about this land of
legend, and when they saw a young fellow with shaven face and broad hat,
they immediately imagined him to be a bull-fighter--a bull-fighter
lover--how fine!
"They are girls as insipid as bread without salt, you know, _maestro_.
Big feet and hempen hair, but they have their good points, you bet they
have! As they scarcely catch on to what one says to them, they're all
smiles, showing their teeth, which are very white. And they open their
big eyes wide. They don't talk Christian but they understand when one
makes signs of asking a tip, and as one is a gentleman and is always
lucky, they give money for tobacco and other things--and one manages to
live. I have three on hand now."
The speaker boasted of his indefatigable cleverness which absorbed the
savings of the governesses.
Others devoted themselves to the foreign women of the music-halls,
dancers and singers who came to Spain with the desire of immediately
experiencing the joys of having a bull-fighter lover. They were lively
French women, with snub noses and straight corsets, so spiritually
slender there seemed to be nothing tangible under their perfumed and
rustling, cabbage-like, crimpled skirts; German girls with solid flesh,
heavy, imposing, and blonde as Valkyries; Italians with black, oily
hair, with a greenish brown complexion and a tragic air.
The young bull-fighters laughed, recollecting their first private
interviews with these devout enthusiasts. The foreign woman was always
afraid of being deceived, dreading to find that her legendary hero was
but an ordinary man. Really, was he a bull-fighter? And they looked for
his queue, smiling complacently at their wit when they felt the hairy
appendage in their fingers, which was equivalent to a certificate of
identification.
"You know what these women are, _maestro_. They spend the whole evening
kissing and caressing the _coleta_. To entertain them one has to jump up
and perform in the middle of the room and explain how bulls are fought,
turning over a chair, doing cape-work with a sheet, and lodging
_banderillas_ with the fingers. Holy Sea! And then, as they are girls
who go about the world dragging money out of every Christian that comes
near them, they begin their begging in their broken Spanish that even
God himself couldn't understand: 'Bull-fighter sweetheart, wilt thou
give me one of thy capes, all embroidered in gold, to wear when I come
on to dance?' You see, _maestro_, how greedy these girls are. As if one
bought capes as freely as newspapers. As if one had oceans of them--!"
The young bull-fighter promised the cape with generous arrogance. All
bull-fighters are rich. And while the gorgeous gift was on the way, they
became more intimate, and the lover asked loans of his friend, who, if
she did not have money, pawned a jewel; and he, growing bolder, began
helping himself to anything that lay within reach of his hand. When she
happened to awaken from her amorous dream, protesting at such liberties,
the fine fellow demonstrated the vehemence of his passion and returned
the loans to her legendary hero in the form of a beating.
Gallardo enjoyed this tale, particularly when he heard the last part.
"Aha! thou doest well!" he said with savage joy. "Be firm with those
girls. Thou knowest them. Thus they love thee more! The worst thing a
Christian can do is to humble himself before certain women. Man must
make himself respected."
He ingenuously admired the lack of scruple in these youths who lived by
levying a contribution on the illusions of passing foreign women, and he
pitied himself thinking of his weakness before a certain one.
At sunset, one afternoon, the swordsman on entering Alcala Street from
the Puerta del Sol, stopped, struck by surprise. A blonde lady was
getting out of a carriage at the door of the Hotel de Paris. A man who
looked like a foreigner gave her his hand, assisting her to alight, and
after speaking a few words he drove away while she went into the hotel.
It was Dona Sol. The bull-fighter did not doubt her identity. Neither
did he doubt the relations that united her to the foreigner after seeing
her glances and the smile with which they said farewell. Thus she used
to look at him, thus she used to smile at him in those happy days when
they rode together in the deserted fields illuminated by the soft
rose-color of the setting sun--"Curse it!"
He spent the evening in ill-humor in the company of some friends; then
he slept badly, many scenes of the past being reproduced in his dreams.
When he rose the dark and livid light of a gloomy day entered through
the balconies. It was raining, the water drops mingled with flakes of
snow. Everything was black; the sky, the walls opposite, a dripping
gable within view, the muddy pavement, the roofs of the coaches shining
like mirrors, the movable cupolas of the umbrellas.
Eleven o'clock! Should he go to see Dona Sol? Why not! The night before
he had put aside this thought with a rush of anger. That would be to
humble himself. She had run away from him without any explanation
whatever, and later, when she heard of his being wounded unto death, she
had scarcely interested herself in his health. A simple telegram at
first and nothing more, not even a poor letter of a few lines; she, who
with such ease wrote to her friends. No; he would not go to see her. He
was very proud.
But the next morning his determination seemed to have softened during
the night. "Why not?" he asked himself. He must see her again. For him
she was first among all the women he had ever known; she attracted him
with a force different from the affection he felt for others. "I have a
right to her," the bull-fighter said to himself, realizing his weakness.
Ah! how he had felt the violent separation!
The atrocious goring in the plaza of Seville, with the rigor of physical
pain, had softened the force of his amorous torment. Illness, and then
his tender reinstatement in the good graces of Carmen during
convalescence, had made him resigned to his fate. But forget? Never! He
had made every effort not to think of the past, but the most
insignificant circumstance--passing along a road on which he had
galloped with the beautiful Amazon; meeting on the street an English
blonde; contact with those young Sevillian gentlemen who were her
relatives, all resurrected the image of Dona Sol. Ah, this woman! He
would never find another like her. When he lost her, Gallardo believed
the decadence of his life had begun. He was no longer the same. He
deemed himself many steps lower in social consideration. He even
attributed his downfall in his art to this abandonment. When he had her
he was more valiant. When the blonde girl fled bad luck had begun for
the bull-fighter. If she would return to him, surely the sun of his
glory would rise again. His spirit, at times sustained, at others
weakened by the mirage of superstition, believed this firmly.
Perhaps his desire to see her might stir again a joyful heart-throb,
like that which had often saved him in the ring. Why not? He had great
confidence in himself. His easy triumphs with women dazzled by his
success made him believe in the irresistible charm of his person. It
might be that Dona Sol, seeing him after a long absence--who could tell!
The first time they were alone it happened so.
And Gallardo, trusting in his lucky star, with the arrogant tranquillity
of a man of fortune, who necessarily must awaken desire wherever his
gaze falls, marched over to the Hotel de Paris, which was situated a
short distance from his own.
He had to wait more than half an hour subjected to the curious gaze of
employees and guests who turned their faces on hearing his name.
A servant invited him to enter the elevator and conducted him to a
little _salon_ on the next floor from which the Puerta del Sol could be
seen with the black roofs of the houses opposite, the pavements
concealed beneath the meeting streams of umbrellas, and the shining
asphalt of the plaza furrowed by swift coaches, which seemed to whip
the rain, or by tram cars that crossed in every direction and rang an
incessant warning to the foot passengers.
A little door concealed by hangings opened and Dona Sol appeared, amid a
rustling of silk, and a sweet perfume of fresh pink flesh, in all the
splendor of the summer of her existence.
Gallardo devoured her with his eyes, inspecting her with the exactitude
of one who knew her well and did not forget details.
Just as she was in Seville! No--more beautiful, if possible, with the
added temptation of a long absence.
She presented herself in elegant abandon, wearing an odd costume with
strange jewels, as he first saw her in her house in Seville. Her feet
were thrust into slippers covered with heavy gold embroideries which,
when she sat down and crossed her limbs, hung loose, ready to fall off
her pointed toes. She extended him her hand, smiling with amiable
frigidity.
"How are you, Gallardo? I knew you were in Madrid. I have seen you."
You! She no longer used the _thou_ of the great lady, to which he had
responded with respectful courtesy as her lover in a class beneath. This
_you_ that seemed to put them on a level drove the swordsman to despair.
He wished to be a kind of serf, elevated by love to the great lady's
arms, and he found himself treated with the cold and courteous
consideration which an ordinary friend inspires.
She explained that she had attended the only bull-fight Gallardo had
given in Madrid and had seen him there. She had gone to see the bulls
with a foreigner who desired a glimpse of things Spanish; a friend who
accompanied her on her travels but who lived in another hotel.
Gallardo responded to this with an affirmative movement of the head. He
remembered the foreigner; he had seen him with her.
The two fell into a long silence, not knowing what to say. Dona Sol was
the first to break the pause.
She found the bull-fighter looking well; she vaguely recollected about a
great wound he had received; she was almost certain of having
telegraphed to Seville, asking for news of him. With the life she lived,
with continual change of country and new friendships, her thoughts were
in such confusion! But he appeared now as usual, and in the _corrida_ he
had seemed to her arrogant and strong, although rather unlucky. She did
not understand much about bulls. "Was it nothing, that goring?"
Gallardo was irritated by the accent of indifference with which the
woman asked the question. And he, when he considered himself between
life and death, had thought only of her!
With the gloom of dismay he told her about his being caught, and of his
convalescence which had lasted all winter.
She listened to him with feigned interest, while her eyes revealed
indifference. The misfortunes of the gladiator were of no importance to
her. They were accidents of his trade which could only be of interest to
him.
Gallardo, as he spoke of his convalescence at the plantation, thought of
the man he and Dona Sol had met together there. "And Plumitas? Do you
remember that poor fellow? He was killed. I don't know whether you
heard about it."
Dona Sol also vaguely remembered this. Possibly she had read it in the
Paris newspapers, which printed a great deal about the bandit as an
interesting type of picturesque Spain.
"Poor man," said Dona Sol with indifference. "I barely recall him as a
clownish and uninteresting rustic. At a distance things are seen at
their true values. What I do remember is the day he breakfasted with us
at the farmhouse."
Gallardo had not forgotten this event. Poor Plumitas! With what emotion
he took the flower offered by Dona Sol! Did she not remember?
Dona Sol's eyes showed sincere astonishment.
"Are you sure?" she asked. "Is that so? I swear I remember nothing about
it. Ah! that land of the sun! The intoxication of the picturesque! The
follies one commits!"
Her exclamations, revealed a vague repentance. Then she began to laugh.
"And maybe that poor rustic kept the flower until his last moment; no,
Gallardo? Don't tell me he did not. Perhaps no one ever gave him a
flower before in all his life. And it is possible also they found that
dried flower on his dead body, a mysterious token no one could explain.
Don't you know anything about it, Gallardo? Didn't the newspapers
mention it? Hush; don't tell me no; don't dispel my illusions. It must
have been so; I want it to be so. Poor Plumitas! How interesting! And I
had forgotten all about the flower! I will tell my friend, who thinks he
will write on things Spanish."
The recollection of this friend, who within a few minutes was brought
into the conversation for a second time, depressed the bull-fighter.
He sat gazing steadily at the beautiful lady with a tearful melancholy
in his Moorish eyes which seemed to implore compassion.
"Dona Sol! Dona Sol!" he murmured with an accent of despair, as if he
would reproach her for her cruelty.
"What is it, my friend?" she asked smiling. "What is the matter with
you?"
Gallardo kept silence and bowed his head, intimidated by the ironic
reflection in those blue eyes, sparkling with their tiny flakes of gold.
After a moment he sat erect as does one who adopts a resolution.
"Where have you been all this time, Dona Sol?"
"Travelling about the world," she answered simply. "I am a bird of
passage. In innumerable cities whose very names you do not know."
"And that foreigner who accompanies you now--is--?"
"He is a friend," she said coldly. "A friend who has had the kindness to
accompany me, taking advantage of the opportunity to see Spain; a fine
man who bears an illustrious name. From here we go to Andalusia when he
gets through seeing the museums. What more do you desire to know?"
In that question, asked with hauteur, an imperious intention of keeping
the bull-fighter at a distance was apparent, of establishing social
differences between the two. Gallardo was disconcerted.
"Dona Sol!" he moaned with ingenuousness. "God cannot forgive what you
have done to me! You have been unkind to me, very unkind. Why did you
run away without a word?"
His eyes moistened, he clenched his fists in desperation.
"Don't act so, Gallardo. What I did was a great favor to you. Don't you
know me well enough yet? Did you not weary of that affair? If I were a
man I would run away from women of my character. The unhappy man who
falls in love with me is a suicide."
"But why did you go?" insisted Gallardo.
"I went because I was bored. Do I speak clearly? And when a woman is
bored, I believe she has a right to escape in search of new diversions.
I am bored to death everywhere; pity me."
"But I love you with all my soul!" exclaimed the bull-fighter with a
dramatic and ingenuous expression that would have been ridiculous in
another man.
"I love you with all my soul!" repeated Dona Sol imitating his accent
and gesture. "And what of that? Ah, these egotistical men, who are
applauded by the people and imagine that everything has been created for
them. 'I love thee with all my soul and therefore thou must love me
also'--But no, _senor_. I do not love you, Gallardo. You are my friend
and nothing more. That affair in Seville was a dream, a mad caprice,
which I barely recollect and which you should forget."
The bull-fighter rose, drawing near Dona Sol with extended hands. In his
ignorance he did not know what to say, divining that his rude words were
inefficient to convince that woman. He trusted his desires and hopes to
action, with the vehemence of an impulsive man, intending to overpower
the woman, to attract her and dispel by contact the chill which
separated them.
"Dona Sol!" he supplicated, grasping her hands.
But she, with a simple turn of her agile right hand, disengaged herself
from the bull-fighter. A flash of pride and anger darted from her eyes
and she bent forward aggressively, as if she had suffered an insult.
"Silence, Gallardo! If you go on thus you will not be my friend and I
will show you the door."
The bull-fighter's attitude changed to one of despair; he was humbled
and ashamed.
"Don't be a baby," she said. "Why remember what is no longer possible?
Why think of me? You have your wife, who, I hear, is pretty and simple;
a good companion. And if not she, there are others. Think how many
clever girls you can find there in Seville, those who wear the
_mantilla_, with flowers in their hair, those that used to please me so
much, who would think it a joy to be loved by Gallardo. My infatuation
is over. It hurts your pride, being a famous man accustomed to success;
but so it is; it's over; friend and nothing more. I am changed. I have
become bored and I never retrace my steps. My illusions last but a short
time and pass, leaving no trace. I deserve pity, believe me."
She gazed at the bull-fighter with eyes of commiseration, with pitying
curiosity, as if she suddenly saw him in all his defects and crudeness.
"I think things that you could not understand," she continued. "You seem
to me changed. The Gallardo of Seville was different from the one here.
Are you really the same person? I do not doubt it, yet to me you are a
different man. How can I explain it to you? Once I met a rajah in
London. Do you know what a rajah is?"
Gallardo negatively shook his head blushing at his ignorance.
"It is an Indian prince."
The old-time ambassadress recalled the Hindoo magnate, his coppery face
shaded by a black beard, his enormous white turban with a great dazzling
diamond above his forehead and the rest of his body enwrapped in white
vestments of thin and innumerable veils, like the petals of a flower.
"He was handsome, he was young, he adored me with the mysterious eyes of
an animal of the forest, but he seemed to me ridiculous, and I jested at
him every time he stammered one of his Oriental compliments in English.
He shook with cold, the fogs made him cough, he moved around like a bird
in the rain, waving his veils as if they were wet wings. When he talked
to me of love, gazing at me with his moist gazelle-like eyes, I longed
to buy him an overcoat and a cap, so that he would not shake any longer.
However, I realized that he was handsome and could have been the joy,
for quite a few months, of a woman desirous of something extraordinary.
It was a question of atmosphere, of scene. You, Gallardo, do you know
what that is?"
And Dona Sol remained pensive, recalling the poor rajah always shaking
with cold in his absurd vestments amid the foggy light of London. In her
imagination she beheld him there in his own country transfigured by the
majesty of power and by the light of the sun, his coppery complexion,
with the greenish reflexions of the tropical vegetation, taking on a
tone of artistic bronze. She saw him mounted on his elephant on parade,
with long golden hangings that swept the ground, escorted by warlike
horsemen and slaves bearing censers with perfumes, his great turban
crowned with white feathers set with precious stones, his bosom covered
with breast-plates of diamonds, his waist bound by a belt of emeralds,
from which hung a golden scimitar; she saw him surrounded by bayaderes
with painted eyes and firm breasts, forests of lances, and, in the
background, pagodas with multiple roofs one above another, with little
bells that chimed mysterious symphonies at the slightest whisper of the
breeze; palaces of more mystery; dense thickets in whose shadows leaped
and growled ferocious multicolored animals. Ah, atmosphere! Seeing the
poor rajah thus, proud as a god, beneath an arid sky of intense blue,
and in the splendor of an ardent sun, it would never have occurred to
her to present him with an overcoat. It was almost certain that she
herself might have fallen into his arms giving herself up as a serf of
love.
"You remind me of the rajah, friend Gallardo. There in Seville, in your
native costume, with the lance over your shoulder, you were all right.
You were a complement to the landscape. But here! Madrid has become very
much Europeanized; it is a city like others. Native costumes are no
longer worn. Manila shawls are seldom seen off the stage. Don't be
offended, Gallardo; but I don't know why you remind me of the rajah."
She looked through the windows at the wet ground and the rainy sky, at
the scattering flakes of snow, and the crowd that moved with accelerated
step under the dripping umbrellas. Then she turned her gaze on the
swordsman, stared strangely at the braid hanging from his head, at the
way his hair was combed, at his hat, at all the details that revealed
his profession, which contrasted with his elegant and modern costume.
The bull-fighter was--in Dona Sol's opinion--out of his element. Ah,
this Madrid; rainy and dismal! Her friend who had come with the illusion
of a Spain of eternal blue sky, was disappointed. She herself, seeing on
the walk near the hotel the groups of young bull-fighters in gallant
attitudes, inevitably thought of exotic animals brought from sunny
countries to zoological gardens beneath a rainy sky in a gray light.
There in Andalusia Gallardo was the hero, the spontaneous product of a
cattle country. Here he seemed to her a comedian, with his shaven face
and the stage manners of one accustomed to public homage; a comedian who
instead of speaking dialogues with his equals awoke the tragic thrill in
combat with wild beasts.
Ah! The seductive mirage of the lands of the sun! The deceitful
intoxication of light and color! And she had been able to love that
rough, uncouth fellow a few months, she had extolled the crudities of
his ignorance, and she had even demanded that he should not abandon his
habits, that he should smell of bulls and horses, so as not to dispel
with perfumes the odors of wild animals that enveloped his person! Ah,
atmosphere! To what mad deeds it drives one!
She remembered the danger in which she had stood of being killed by a
bull's horns; then the breakfast with a bandit, to whom she had listened
speechless with admiration and in the end had given a flower. What
nonsense! And how far away it seemed now!
Nothing remained of this past which caused her to feel repentance for
its absurdity except that lusty youth motionless before her with his
supplicating eyes and his infantile effort to resurrect those days. Poor
man! As if the madness could be repeated when one thinks calmly, and
illusion, blind enchantress of life, has vanished!
"It is all over," said the lady. "The past must be forgotten, now that
looking back it does not appear in the same colors. What would I not
give to have the eyes I used to have! On returning to Spain I find it
changed. You also are different. It even seemed to me the other day,
seeing you in the plaza, that you were less daring--that the people were
less enthusiastic."
She said this simply, without malice, but Gallardo imagined he divined
in her voice a trace of mockery; he bowed his head and his cheeks
reddened.
"Curse it!" Professional worries surged through his mind. Everything
that happened was because he no longer got _close_ to the bulls. She had
said it plainly. He seemed to her a different man. If he became the
Gallardo of former times perhaps she would receive him better. Women
love none but the brave.
The bull-fighter deceived himself with these illusions, taking what was
a caprice, dead forever, for a momentary aversion that he could conquer
by force of prowess.
Dona Sol arose. The call had been long and the bull-fighter did not seem
disposed to go; he was content to be near her, vaguely trusting to
circumstance to draw them together. But he was obliged to imitate her.
She excused herself, pleading an engagement. She was expecting her
friend; they were going together to the Prado Gallery.
Then she invited him to breakfast the next morning; a quiet breakfast in
her apartments. Her friend would also come. Undoubtedly it would be a
pleasure to him to see a bull-fighter at close range. He scarcely spoke
Spanish but he would be pleased to meet Gallardo.
The swordsman pressed her hand, answering with incoherent words, and
left the room. Fury clouded his vision; his ears buzzed.
Thus she bade him good-bye--coldly, as she would an occasional friend.
And that was the same woman he had known in Seville! And she invited him
to breakfast with her friend who would amuse himself by examining him
close at hand, as if he were a rare beast.
Curse it! He was a brave man. He was done. He would never go to see her
again.