There Is A Bugle
Flourish, The Door Flies Open, And The Bull Rushes Out, Blind With The
Staring Light, Furious With Rage, Trembling In Every Limb.
This is the
most intense moment of the day.
The glorious brute is the target of
twelve thousand pairs of eyes. There is a silence as of death, while
every one waits to see his first movement. He is doomed from the
beginning; the curtain has risen on a three-act tragedy, which will
surely end with his death, but the incidents which are to fill the
interval are all unknown. The minds and eyes of all that vast assembly
know nothing for the time but the movements of that brute. He stands for
an instant recovering his senses. He has been shot suddenly out of the
darkness into that dazzling light. He sees around him a sight such as he
never confronted before, - a wall of living faces lit up by thousands of
staring eyes. He does not dwell long upon this, however; in his pride
and anger he sees a nearer enemy. The horsemen have taken position near
the gate, where they sit motionless as burlesque statues, their long
ashen spears, iron-tipped, in rest, their wretched nags standing
blindfolded, with trembling knees, and necks like dromedaries, not
dreaming of their near fate. The bull rushes, with a snort, at the
nearest one. The picador holds firmly, planting his spear-point in the
shoulder of the brute. Sometimes the bull flinches at this sharp and
sudden punishment, and the picador, by a sudden turn to the left, gets
away unhurt.
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