elighted at his size and strength and
apparent ferocity, cheered and applauded loudly while, still further
excited by the sudden glare of light and the deafening noise, the
creature galloped round the sandy ring.

Jet-black, sleek-coated, and with a long pair of slender, tapering
horns, sharply pointed, crowning his great head, he was a magnificent
animal, far finer in make and shape than any of these brutes round him
who had come to see him die. As he galloped round the ring, I saw that
he was looking wildly, eagerly, for somewhere to escape. The animals
have no innate savagery, as man has. They do not love inflicting pain,
torture, and death upon others. That vile instinct has been given to
man alone. They kill for food. They fight for their mates. But no
animal fights or kills for the love of blood as we do.

And now this great monarch of the hills and plains, in all the pride
and glory of his strength, had no wish to attack or kill; he bounded
round and across the sandy space hoping to find some outlet, longing
to be again upon his wild Andalusian hills he was never to see again.

Another burst of music, a great fanfare of trumpets, and then slowly
in triumphal procession the picadors, mounted bull-fighters with
lances, entered the ring.

Theoretically, when these men enter, the savage beast they are
supposed to be encountering immediately makes a terrible charge upon
them; but, as a matter of fact, the bull never wishes to fight or
attack any one, and does not, until his brutal captors absolutely
force him into doing so. That is why a bull-fight, as well as being
hideously degrading and cruel, is also dull and tedious.

If one were watching the grand natural passion of an animal fighting
for his life on the prairie, against another, with an equal fortune of
war for both, there would be excitement in it. But in this case one
sees an unwilling animal tortured into a fight, which it neither seeks
nor understands, and which it has from the start no chance of winning.

In this case, as in all I have seen, the beautiful Andalusian, having
made his gallop round the ring and finding no chance of escape, had
subsided into a quiet trot and when the picadors entered he stood
still, demurely regarding them from the opposite side of the arena.

The sunlight fell full upon him, on his glossy sides and grand head,
from which the noble, lustrous brown eyes looked out with benign and
gentle dignity on the great multitude, th