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'Colonel Garth is a much better judge than I am, replied Mr. Ferrers. 'I confess I have no taste for guerilla chieftains, or Bedouin robbers. I am not at all romantic. And here he attracted her attention to what he called an attempt at a bull-fight; the conversation dropped, and Lord Bohun was forgotten. A fortnight passed away, and Mr. Ferrers was still a visitant of our Mediterranean isle.
"I knew it," she said; "I knew he would look like that." "There is no other man who can slay a bull as he can," said José. "Let him slay them," answered Pepita. And she stood and waved her fan with the prettiest inscrutable air in the world. The journey to the Plaza de Toros was almost as delightful as the bull-fight itself to Pepita.
The bull-fight has not always enjoyed the royal favor. Isabel the Catholic would fain have abolished bathing and bull-fighting together. The Spaniards, who willingly gave up their ablutions, stood stoutly by their bulls, and the energetic queen was baffled.
Not so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its source that pleasant pastime, you must not go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, but not to beast.
"See," said the Spaniards, looking up at the glorious sky with its great, white fleets drawn off upon the horizon "see heaven smiles upon the bull-fight!" In the high upper seats of the rude amphitheatre sat the gayly-decked wives and daughters of the Gascons, from the métaries along the Ridge, and the chattering Spanish women of the Market, their shining hair un-bonneted to the sun.
Gabriel had often spoken to the cadet, for when the youth met him in the cloister he always stopped to speak, endeavouring by the platitudes of his conversation to justify his presence in the Claverias; but Luna was surprised to meet him there on a festival afternoon. "Are you not going to the bull-fight?" he inquired. "I thought everyone from the academy would be in the Plaza."
After the manner of the matador in a bull-fight, he conducted his steed, prancing in his pride, up to the arch at which the Guicowar stood, and saluted him with the grace of a knight-errant whose head was full of ladies. The elephant is said to have an especial aversion to a horse; and the tormented beast in the ring at once manifested the prejudice of his race, for he made a dart for him.
He wanted to drift back to the idleness and adventure and the "easy money" of the old anarchist days in Cadiz and Madrid. He was sick for the patio and the plaza, for the bull-fight, for the siesta in the sun, for the lazy glamour of the gardens and the red wine of Valladolid, for the redolent cigarette of the roadside tavern.
"I am exhilarated to know that you watched me. Yes, at a bull-fight the primitive man in me has its way, although I have the grace to be ashamed of myself afterward. In that I am at least one degree more civilized than your race, which never repents."
The bull-fight which was arranged for our benefit at Parang was staged in a field of about two acres just outside the town, the spectators being kept at a safe distance by a troop of Moro horsemen under the direction of the old Panglima.
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