to your long sentences, and give you a short answer, I have swallowed two pieces of green fat, without tasting the flavour. I beg you to let me enjoy my present happiness in peace and quiet.” The bull is the hero of the scene; yet, like Satan in the Paradise Lost, he is foredoomed. Nothing can save him from a certain fate, which awaits all, whether brave or cowardly. The poor creatures sometimes endeavour in vain to escape, and have favourite retreats, to which they fly; or they leap over the barrier, among the spectators, creating a vast hubbub and fun, upsetting water-carriers and fancy men, putting sentinels and old women to flight, and affording infinite delight to all who are safe in the boxes; for, as Bacon remarks, “It is pleasant to see a battle from a distant hill.” Bulls which exhibit this cowardlike activity are insulted: cries of “fuego” and “perros,” fire and dogs, resound, and he is condemned to be baited. As the Spanish dogs have by no means the pluck of the English assailants of bulls, they are longer at the work, and many are made minced-meat of:-- “Up to the stars the growling mastiffs fly And add new monsters to the frighted sky.” [Sidenote: CHULOS AND SECOND ACT.] When at length the poor brute is pulled down, he is stabbed in the spine, as if he were only fit for the shambles, being a civilian ox, not a soldierlike bull. All these processes are considered as deadly insults; and when more than one bull exhibits these craven propensities to baulk nobler expectancies, then is raised the cry of “_Cabestros al circo!_” tame oxen to the circus. This is a mortal affront to the _empresa_, or management, as it infers that it has furnished animals fitter for the plough than for the arena. The indignation of the mob is terrible; for, if disappointed in the blood of bulls, it will lap that of men. The bull is sometimes teased with stuffed figures, men of straw with leaded feet, which rise up again as soon as he knocks them down. An old author relates that in the time of Philip IV. “a despicable peasant was occasionally set upon a lean horse, and exposed to death.” At other times, to amuse the populace, a monkey is tied to a pole in the arena. This art of ingeniously tormenting is considered as unjustifiable homicide by certain lively philosimious foreigners; and, indeed, all these episodes are despised as irregular _hors d’œuvres_, by the real and business-like amateur. [Sidenote: THE MATADOR AND THIRD ACT.]