The _plaza_ is too sure of its essential virtue to expend energy in architectural display. Here it scores another point over the modern theater whose plush and murals and tapestries and candelabras so often overbear the paleness of the play. The plaza has tiers of backless seats terracing up to balcony and boxes. The seats are of stone: the upper reaches are a series of plain arcades. The plaza is grim and silent. It is stripped for action. It is prepared to receive intensity. The human mass that fills it takes from the sand of the arena, glowing in the sun, a color of rapt anticipation. These thousands of men and women, since the moment when they have bought their tickets, have lived in a sweet excitement. Hours before the bugle, they are on their way. They examine the great brutes whose deaths they are to witness. They march up and down the sand which will soon rise with blood. Bright shawls are flung on the palcos. Women’s voices paint the murmur of the men. A bugle sounds, and there is silence. The crimson and gold _mantones_ stand like fixed fires in this firmament of attention. The multitudinous eyes are rods holding in diapason the sky and the arena. Two horsemen (_alguaciles_) prance forward through the gates. Black velvet capes fold above their doublets. From their black hats wave red and yellow plumes. They salute the royal or presidential box; circle the ring in opposite directions and return to the gate. The music flares. They proceed once more on their proud stallions, and behind them file the actors in the drama. The toreros are first: four of them: they wear gold-laid jackets, gold-fronted breeches backed in blue, rose-colored stockings. The banderilleros in silver drape their pied _capas_ across their arms. The _picadores_ follow. They are heavy brutish men, with chamois leggings and trousers drawn like gloves over their wooden armor. They are astride pitiful nags, each of which is Rocinante. The shoes are encased in stirrups of steel; the spurs are savage against the pitiful flanks. Behind the picadores are the red-bloused grooms, costumed like villains. It is their task to clean up entrails and gore. And the procession closes with two trios of mules, festooned and belled, who draw the drag to which the bodies of slaughtered bulls and horses will be attached. The cavalcade crosses and salutes. Toreros, banderilleros, picadores on nervous nags, scatter along the barriers. Again, the bugle sounds. Doors open on the interior passage which two high barriers hold as a protective cordon between the audience and the arena. A bull leaps into the glare.