"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 G.o.d 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, p.a.w.ned 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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, a.s.sisting 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 ident.i.ty. 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 circ.u.mstance--pa.s.sing 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 superst.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sengers.

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 exact.i.tude 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 cla.s.s 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 compa.s.sion.

"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?"