By this time the audience was shouting out: "No quiere!"[9] but at last the bull charged, the picador thrust his lance, and the bull with a great thrust of its head overturned both horse and man. Immediately the bull was surrounded by the toreros who with flapping cloaks distracted its attention. Man and horse were lifted up again.
Large numbers of Spaniards do not like bullfighting, but a great many Spaniards who do not in principle object to bullfighting do object to the horse-slaughter. One, cutting to the roots of the truth, said it was "not æsthetic." He was right. There should be a strong sense of the æsthetic in sport--it is a thing more subtle than mere "fair play," and when this sense of the æsthetic is ignored the sport becomes brutality. This horse-slaughter more than oversteps the line of the æsthetic, so for us did the bolt-holes provided for the toreros. For us bullfighting would begin to be a serious sport if the men and the bull stood on the same conditions.
One picador, who by means of his lance kept the bull off from his horse, received a round of well-earned applause. The bugle sounded once more and the picadors were led out of the ring. There followed another rather dull interval of cloak-flapping. One of the matadors, however, gave an exhibition of passes which made the bull charge repeatedly within a foot or so of the man's body, during which the torero did not move his feet. When the bull, baffled and panting with exhaustion at his fruitless tosses, paused, the torero went upon one knee before the animal. The spectators shrieked applause and flung their hats into the ring. But this exhibition was very different from the usual cloak-flapping followed by a scamper for the bolt-hole: nor, indeed, was it shown often.
A torero who had carried an exceedingly faded violet cloak, and who had been perhaps most hasty in his dashes for the safety gaps, now discarded his cloak, and waving a pair of pink banderillas stepped into the centre of the ring. Like a foreigner at cricket we naturally missed much of the subtlety, but it was obvious that there were certain conditions under which the banderillero would meet the bull and others under which he would not. When the toreador seemed to think the bull in a good position, he waved his banderillas and stamped his feet as though about to fence. But the bull did not want banderillas stuck into him. Again and again he declined the invitation while the populace howled "No quiere, no quiere!" Personally I should have sent the bull home and ordered another with more ginger in it. At last, exasperated, the bull charged, the banderillero ran towards it in a slightly circular path, planted his two sticks, each some thirty inches long, into the bull's neck, and, curving out more widely, avoided by a few inches the upward thrust of the bull's horns. This piece of work looked dangerous, and the pay of a banderillero amounts to between £3 and £4 an afternoon. I think that he earns his money. What surprised us was to see the torero who had appeared such a scamperer with the faded purple cloak performing most pluckily with the paper-covered sticks. I suppose it is the case of a good batsman and good bowler--the arts are not interchangeable.