The bugle signals for the final action. Belmonte has risen; has exchanged the capa for the small _muleta_ with which he covers his steel. Now he withdraws the muleta from the slender sword. It is a flexible two-edged steel, dipped at the end. He stands still before the brute whose sweat rolls red from the heaving rugose flanks. He stands with heels clicked together, holding the brute with his eye, and raises the blade deliberately forward. The steel points not at the head, but slightly above it. In that mountain of flesh beyond the deadly horns there is an unmarked spot which the sword must find. It is the tiny crutch formed by the bones of the shoulder. Within its aperture the blade can strike, unimpeded, to the heart. Anywhere else, the blade will not bring death but a mere ugly plunging rage. Belmonte has chosen to stand and make the bull plunge on him. He is frail and erect. His shoulders are flexed; his head is slightly forward. Grace becomes subtly rigor. The bull obeys. He leaps. The blade sinks to the gemmed hilt. A wave of blood gushes to the sand, as the dead bull sinks. * * * * * This is the archetype of the Spanish bull fight. It describes a masterpiece. And in an art so profound and dangerous, the masterwork is rare, even as in other æsthetic fields. But if great toreros are rare, one actor in the play is constant and is always masterful. The crowds of Spain, against the agitation of intellectuals and of Church, hold to their dear drama. In the _corrida_, all the desires which history has bred and then denied an issue, find an issue. Conflict is the stratified peace of the Spanish soul. For too many ages has the Spaniard lived on war to be able to do without it. In war, the lusts of the world and the lust for God became one. Christ and Priapus were joined in its full ecstasy. And in this dumb show of a man and a bull, they are conjoined again. Gross comedy of blood; sex, dionysian and sadistic; the ancient rites of the brute and of the Christ meet here in the final image of stability. Spain’s warring elements reach their locked fusion--Spain’s ultimate form. For although everything is in the bull ring, and although anything may happen, _nothing happens_. Circus, blood, dance, death equate to nullity.[25] Like life in Spain, this spectacle is self-sufficient, issueless.... _b. Man and Woman_