"When the Stuart came from far,
Led by his love's sweet pain,
To Mary, the guiding star
That shone in the heaven of Spain."
And the memory of that dazzling occasion was renewed by Ferdinand VII.
in the year of his death, when he called upon his subjects to swear
allegiance to his baby Isabel. This festival took place in the Plaza
Mayor. The king and court occupied the same balconies which Charles and
his royal friend and model had filled two centuries before. The
champions were poor nobles, of good blood but scanty substance, who
fought for glory and pensions, and had quadrilles of well-trained
bull-fighters at their stirrups to prevent the farce from becoming
tragedy. The royal life of Isabel of Bourbon was inaugurated by the
spilled blood of one hundred bulls save one. The gory prophecy of that
day has been well sustained. Not one year has passed since then free
from blood shed in her cause.
But these extraordinary attractions are not necessary to make a festival
of bulls the most seductive of all pleasures to a Spaniard. On any
pleasant Sunday afternoon, from Easter to All Souls, you have only to go
into the street to see that there is some great excitement fusing the
populace into one living mass of sympathy. All faces are turned one way,
all minds are filled with one purpose. From the Puerta del Sol down the
wide Alcala a vast crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as a
kaleidoscope.
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