bull-fight are lamenting the death of the _torero_, but
the poor of Cordoba mourn the loss of their 'Senor Rafael.'"

[Illustration: PLAZA DE TOROS. THE PROCESSION]

The wives of the _toreros_ are generally celebrated for their beauty,
their wit, and their devotion to their husbands--indeed, the men have a
large choice before them when choosing their helpmates for life. To
their wives is due much of the making and all the keeping up of the
elaborate and costly dress of the _torero_. They are, as someone has
said, "ferociously virtuous," and share in the open-handed generosity of
their husbands. The earnings of a successful _torero_ are very large. In
some cases, they make as much as L4000 or L5000 a year of English money,
during the height of their popularity, and retire to end their days in
their native and beloved Andalucia.

Whatever may be said by foreigners of the brutalising effect of the
Spanish popular game, it certainly has no more effect on those who
witness or practise it than fox-hunting has on Englishmen, and it is
doubtful whether there is any more cruelty in one sport than in the
other. The foxes are fostered and brought up for the sole purpose of
being harried to death, without even a semblance of fair play being
allowed to them, and if a fox-hunter risks his life it is only as a bad
rider that he does so. There is no danger and certainly no dignity in
the English sport, even if it indirectly keeps up the breed of horses.

A curious incident is related by Count Vasili as having happened in the
Bull-Ring in Madrid some years ago during a _corrida_ of Cuchares, the
celebrated _espada_. It is usual during _fiestas_ of charity to enclose
live sparrows in the _banderillas_ which it is part of the play to
affix, at great risk to the _torero_, in the shoulders of the bull; the
paper envelope bursts, and the birds are set at liberty. Crossing the
arena, one of the men carelessly hit at a bird turning wildly about in
its efforts to escape, and killed it. "In my life," says the Count, "I
have never seen such a spectacle. Ten thousand spectators, standing up,
wildly gesticulating, shouting for death on the 'cruel _torero_'; nay,
some even threw themselves into the arena, ready to lynch the heartless
creature!"

Horse-racing may now be said to have been fairly established in Spain in
most of the great centres, and the Hippodrome in Madrid is little behind
one of England's popular race-courses in its crowds, the