But the Sundays were not enough. Every Catholic feast-day called for its sacrifice. Granada could not do fitting honor to Corpus Christi with less than three "_magnificas corridas_." The royal saint of Aranjuez, Fernando, must have his pious birthday kept by an orgy of blood. At the _fiesta_ of Christ's Ascension all Spain was busy staining his earth with the life-stream of His creatures. Valladolid was, indeed, ashamed to have torn to death only seven horses, but Segovia rejoiced in an expert who sat at his work and killed his bulls with drawing-room ease. Bordeaux improved the occasion, with aid of two celebrated Spanish _espadas_, by opening a French _Plaza de Toros_, and Valencia had the excitement of sending to the infirmary one _torero_ with a broken leg and another with a crushed foot. Such accidents are by no means uncommon. A _matador_ was mortally wounded in the Valencia ring that summer, a _banderillero_ was trampled at the Escorial, and those favorite stabbers, Reverte and Bombita, were themselves stabbed by avenging horns.
If there is a temporary dearth of saint days, Spanish ingenuity will nevertheless find excuse for _corridas_. Bulls must bleed for holy charity,--for hospitals, foundling asylums, the families of workmen out on strike. If the French squadron is at Cadiz, hospitality demands a bull-fight. In the interests of popular education, an historical _corrida_ was arranged, with instructed _toreros_ to display the special styles of bull-killing that have prevailed from the Cid to Guerrita. Again, as a zoölogical by-play, an elephant was pitted against the bulls. This, too, had precedent, for did not Philip IV once keep his birthday by turning in among the horned herd a lion, a tiger, a camel, and a bear, "all Noah's ark and Æsop's fables"? A bull of Xarama vanquished them every one and received the gracious reward of being shot dead by Philip himself.
It was on a Wednesday afternoon, at one of the three grand _corridas_ of the Seville _Feria_, that I became an accomplice in this Spanish crime. Our friends in Seville, people of cultivation and liberal views, had declared from the first that we could have no conception of Spanish life and character without sharing in the national _fiesta_. "We ourselves are not enthusiasts," they said. "In fact, we disapprove the bull-fight. We regard it as demoralizing to the community at large. It is, nevertheless, a thing scientific, artistic, heroic, _Spanish_. Besides, a large portion of the proceeds goes to charity. We do not attend the _corridas_, except now and then, especially when we have foreign guests who wish to see them. Before going they all regard bull-fighting as you do, as an atrocity, a barbarity, but invariably they return from the _Plaza de Toros_ filled with delight and admiration. They say their previous ideas were all wrong, that it is a noble and splendid spectacle, that they want to see it again and again, that they cannot be too grateful to us for having delivered them from prejudice."