I Never Saw A Matador Come Carelessly
To His Work.
He is usually pale and alert.
He studies the bull for a
moment with all his eyes. He waves the blood-red engano, or lure, before
his face. If the bull rushes at it with his eyes shut, the work is easy.
He has only to select his own stroke and make it. But if the bull is
jealous and sly, it requires the most careful management to kill him.
The disposition of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of the
red flag. This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nerves
of the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd was
aroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreat
at the moment of decision. All at once the matador seizes the favorable
instant. He poises his sword as the bull rushes upon him. The point
enters just between the left shoulder and the spine; the long blade
glides in up to the hilt. The bull reels and staggers and dies.
Sometimes the matador severs the vertebrae. The effect is like magic. He
lays the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a
lady who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls dead as a
stone.
If the blow is a clean, well-delivered one, the enthusiasm of the people
is unbounded. Their approval comes up in a thunderous shout of "Well
done!
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