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The most famous school of radicalism is utilitarian and systematic. Douglas was, emphatically, neither. He was impulsive, epigrammatic, sentimental. He dashed gaily against an institution, like a picador at a bull. He never sat down, like the regular workers of his party, to calculate the expenses of monarchy or the extravagance of the civil list. He had no notion of any sort of "economy."
Off started Transom for the doctor, and into the room rushed Don Picador and Campana, and, from the sounds in the sick chamber, all seemed bustle and confusion; at length the former appeared to be endeavouring to lift the poor sufferer, so as to enable her to sit up in bed; in the meantime her coughing had gradually abated into a low suffocating convulsive gasp.
Next followed the women of the family, covered up with all the cloaks and spare garments that could be collected; then came Don Picador Cangrejo, with Ricardo Campana, the skipper, Aaron Bang, and myself; the procession being closed by the household negroes, with more lights, which all burned steadily and clear.
The picador sustained some terrific falls, and in his quality of horse had to be taken out repeatedly and sewed up; the banderilleros tormented and eluded the toro with table-covers, one red and two drab, till the espada took him from them, and with due ceremony, after a speech to the president, drove his blade home to the bull's heart.
We shook hands with old Don Picador, mounted our mules, and bid a last adieu to the Valley of the Hurricane. We ambled along for some time in silence. At length the skipper dropped astern, until he got alongside of me. "I say, Tom" I was well aware that he never called me Tom unless he was fou, or his heart was full, honest man "Tom, what think you of Francesca Cangrejo?"
When the unfortunate picador was killed, in place of a general exclamation of horror and loud expressions of pity, the universal cry was 'Que es bravo ese toro! I did not perceive a single female avert her head or betray the slightest symptom of wounded feeling." Vol. i., p. 195. A correct system of public instruction develops a character widely different from that here brought to light.
He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then the carrion-heap. "The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets him with a spear-thrust in the shoulder. He flinches with the pain, and the picador skips out of danger.
I, as a mere spectator, looked on with admiration at this combat at those evolutions, flights, and pursuits, executed with such order and courage, and with a precision that was truly extraordinary. I had often witnessed bull-fights, and often had I shuddered at seeing the toreadors adopt a similar method in order to turn the furious animal from the pursuit of the picador.
Though some of the names are not happily chosen, they call up many episodes of parade gaiety and jauntiness, or warlike fire. The "Liberty Bell," "Directorate," "High School Cadets," "King Cotton," "Manhattan Beach," "'Sound Off!" "Washington Post," "Picador," and others, are all stirring works; his best, I think, is a deeply patriotic march, "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
Then he charged the nearest picador, literally leaped so high at him that head and cruel horns crossed above the horse's neck, his own great chest striking the horse just behind the shoulder with such force that man and mount hit the ground stunned and helpless.
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