Then came on the scene (1887) that bright particular star, Rafael Guerra (Guerrita) celebrated and admired--and with justice. But his coming destroyed for ever the legend of the disinterested _toréro_. The lover of the art for its own sake was no more, Guerrita was a mercenary of the first water. Admittedly first of modern bull-fighters, the aspiration of his soul was the possession of bank-notes, to be the clipper of many coupons! Neither passion, nor blood, nor favour of the fair inspired his sordid soul. At the supreme moment of danger, money, only money, was the motive which actuated him. In his desire for wealth, he succeeded. His unexpected retirement from the arena in the very apogee of his glory, and carrying away the accumulation of his thrift, was a shock to this warm-hearted people. Every vestige of the romantic halo with which personal prowess and graceful presence had surrounded him was destroyed. Guerrita as a player of bulls (_toréro_) was the first in all the history of the ring. As a "matador" also he was the most complete and certain. Unlike the majority of his compeers, he was reserved in his habits, and lived apart from the bizarre and tempestuous life of the ordinary bull-fighter, with its feminine intrigues and excitements. For that reason he had many enemies amongst his set; but of his claim to be in the very first rank there has never been a question. To see Guerrita wind the silken sash around his ribs of steel, as he attired himself for the arena, was a sight his patrons considered worth going many a mile to witness.[32] Since his retirement, the show has fallen greatly, in the quality of the bull-fighter. Luis Mazzantini created a temporary revolution in the annals of toromaquia (1885), lighting up anew the enthusiasm for the _fiesta_. He came not of the usual low, half-gipsy caste, but of the class which entitled him to the _Don_ of gentle birth. Don Luis Mazzantini, the only professional bearing such a prefix, acquired at an unusually late period of life sufficient technical knowledge of bull-fighting to embolden him to enter the lists in competition with professionals. He was thirty years of age when the heavy pay of the matador induced him to risk his life in the arena. [Illustration] [Illustration] Whatever may be said of his failing as an artistic exponent of the art of Cucháres, he killed his bulls in a resolute manner, and re-animated the interest in the _corrida_, but his example was a bad one. Several men emulating his career have endeavoured to become improvised _toréros_, and, like him, to avoid the step-by-step climb to matador's rank. All have been failures. They wanted to begin where the bull-fighter of old left off. Mazzantini has retired, unscathed, from his twenty years of perilous experience in the arena, and is now a civic light in the local government of the city of Madrid.