It was on a June afternoon of the year 184--that Don Andres de Salcedo--a cavalier of good family, competent fortune, handsome exterior, amiable character, and four-and-twenty years of age--emerged from a house in the Calle San Bernardo at Madrid, where he had passed a wearisome hour in practising a duet of Bellini's with Dona Feliciana Vasquez de los Rios. This young lady, still in her teens, moderately pretty and tolerably rich, Andres had from childhood been affianced with, and was accustomed to consider as his future wife, although his sentiments towards her were, in fact, of a very tepid description. Betrothed as children by their parents, there was little real love between them: they met without pleasure and parted without pain; their engagement was an affair of habit, not of the heart. It was a _dia de toros_, as Monday is called in Madrid--that being the day when bull-fights usually take place--and Andres, passionately addicted to the Spanish sport, left the mansion of his mistress without any lover-like reluctance, and hurried to the bull-ring. Through the spacious street of Alcala, then crowded to suffocation with vehicles of every description, horsemen, and pedestrians, all hurrying to the point of grand attraction, the young man pressed onward with that alert and active step peculiar to Spaniards--unquestionably the best walkers in the world--joyfully fingering his ticket of _Sombra por la tarde_.[11] It entitled him to a place close to the barrier; for Andres, despising the elegance of the boxes, preferred leaning against the ropes intended to prevent the bulls from leaping amongst the spectators. Thence each detail of the combat is distinctly seen, each blow appreciated at its just value; and in consideration of these advantages, Andres willingly resigned his elbows to the contact of motley-jacketed muleteers, and his curls to the perfume of the manolo's cigar.