Chapter 6

IN the town of Antelope, situated on a river of the same name in the State of Texas, every living person was hurrying to the circus. The inhabitants were interested all the more since from the foundation of the town that was the first time that a circus had come to it with dancing women, minstrels, and rope-walkers. The town was recent. Fifteen years before not only was there not one house there, but in all the region round about there were no white people. Moreover, on the forks of the river, on the very spot on which Antelope was situated, stood an Indian village calledChiavatta. That had been the capital of the Black Snakes, who in their time were such an eyesore to the neighboring settlements of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia, that these settlements could endure them no longer. True, the Indians were only defending their “land,” which the State government of Texas had guaranteed to them forever by the most solemn treaties; but what was that to the colonists of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia? It is true that they took from the Black Snakes earth, air, and water, but they brought in civilization in return; the redskins on their part showed gratitude in their own way,—that is, by taking scalps from the heads of the Germans. Such a state of things could not be suffered. Therefore, the settlers from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia assembled on a certain moonlight night to the number of four hundred, and, calling to their aid Mexicans from La Ora, fell upon sleeping Chiavatta.The triumph of the good cause was perfect. Chiavatta was burned to ashes, and the inhabitants, without regard to sex or age, were cut to pieces. Only small parties of warriors escaped who at that time were absent on a hunt. In the town itself not one soul was left living, mainly because the place lay in the forks of a river, which, having overflowed, as is usual in spring-time, surrounded the settlement with an impassable gulf of waters. But the same forked position which ruined the Indians, seemed good to the Germans. From the forks it was difficult to escape, but the place was defensible. Thanks to this thought, emigration set in at once from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia to the forks, in which in the twinkle of an eye, on the site of the wild Chiavatta, rose the civilized town of Antelope. In five years it numbered two thousand inhabitants.In the sixth year they discovered on the opposite bank of the forks a quicksilver mine;the working of this doubled the number of inhabitants. In the seventh year, by virtue of Lynch law, they hanged on the square of the town the last twelve warriors of the Black Snakes, who were caught in the neighboring “Forest of the Dead,”—and henceforth nothing remained to hinder the development of Antelope. Two “Tagblätter” (daily papers) were published in the town, and one “Montagsrevue” (Monday Review). A line of railroad united the place with Rio del Norte and San Antonio; on Opuncia Gasse (Opuncia Street) stood three schools, one of which was a high school. On the square where they had hanged the last Black Snakes, the citizens had erected a philanthropic institution. Every Sunday the pastors taught in the churches love of one’s neighbor, respect for the property of others, and similar virtues essential to a civilized society; a certain travelling lecturer read a dissertation “On the rights of nations.”The richest inhabitants had begun to talkof founding a university, to which the government of the State was to contribute. The citizens were prosperous. The trade in quicksilver, oranges, barley, and wine brought them famous profits. They were upright, thrifty, industrious, systematic, fat. Whoever might visit in later years Antelope with a population nearing twenty thousand would not recognize in the rich merchants of the place those pitiless warriors who fifteen years before had burned Chiavatta. The days passed for them in their stores, workshops, and offices; the evenings they spent in the beer-saloon “Golden Sun” on Rattlesnake Street. Listening to those sounds somewhat slow and guttural of “Mahlzeit, Mahlzeit!” (meal-time, meal-time), to those phlegmatic “Nun ja wissen Sie, Herr Müller, ist das aber möglich?” (Well, now, Herr Müller, but is that possible?), that clatter of goblets, that sound of beer dropping on the floor, that plash of overflowing foam; seeing that calm, that ness,those Philistine faces covered with fat, those fishy eyes,—a man might suppose himself in a beer-garden in Berlin or Monachium, and not on the ruins of Chiavatta. But in the town everything was “ganz gemüthlich” (altogether cosey), and no one had a thought of the ruins. That evening the whole population was hastening to the circus, first, because after hard labor recreation is as praiseworthy as it is agreeable; second, because the inhabitants were proud of its arrival. It is well-known that circuses do not come to every little place; hence the arrival of the Hon. M. Dean’s troupe had confirmed the greatness and magnificence of Antelope. There was, however, a third and perhaps the greatest cause of the general curiosity.No. Two of the programme read as follows:“A walk on a wire extended fifteen feet above the ground will be made to the accompaniment of music by the renowned gymnast Black Vulture,sachem of the Black Snakes, the last descendant of their chiefs, the last man of the tribe. 1. The walk; 2. Springs of the Antelope; 3. The death-dance and death-song.”If that “sachem” could rouse the highest interest in any place, it was surely in Antelope. Hon. M. Dean told at the “Golden Sun” how fifteen years before, on a journey to Santa Fé, he had found, on the Planos de Tornado, a dying old Indian with a boy ten years of age. The old man died from wounds and exhaustion; but before death he declared that the boy was the son of the slain sachem of the Black Snakes, and the heir to that office.The troupe sheltered the orphan, who in time became the first acrobat in it. It was only at the “Golden Sun,” however, that Hon. M. Dean learned first that Antelope was once Chiavatta, and that the famous rope-walker would exhibit himself on the grave of his fathers. This information brought the directorinto perfect humor; he might reckon now surely on agreat attraction, if only he knew how to bring out the effect skilfully. Of course the Philistines of Antelope hurried to the circus to show their wives and children, imported from Germany, the last of the Black Snakes,—those wives and children who in their lives had never seen Indians,—and to say: “See, we cut to pieces men just like that fellow, fifteen years ago!” “Ach, Herr Je!” It was pleasant to hear such an exclamation of wonder from the mouth of Amalchen, or little Fritz. Throughout the town, therefore, all were repeating unceasingly, “Sachem! Sachem!”From early morning the children were looking through cracks in the boards with curious and astonished faces; the older boys, more excited by the warrior spirit, marched home from school in terrible array, without knowing themselves why they did so.It is eight o’clock in the evening,—a wonderful night, clear, starry. A breeze from thesuburbs brings the odor of orange groves, which in the town is mingled with the odor of malt. In the circus there is a blaze of light. Immense pine-torches fixed before the principal gate are burning and smoking. The breeze waves the plumes of smoke and the bright flame which illuminates the dark outlines of the building. It is a freshly erected wooden pile, circular, with a pointed roof, and the starry flag of America on the summit of it. Before the gate are crowds who could not get tickets or had not the wherewithal to buy them; they look at the wagons of the troupe, and principally at the canvas curtain of the great Eastern door, on which is depicted a battle of the whites with the redskins. At moments when the curtain is drawn aside the bright refreshment-bar within is visible, with its hundreds of glasses on the table. Now they draw aside the curtain for good, and the throng enters. The empty passages between the seats begin to resound with the steps of people, and soon the dark moving mass fills all the placefrom the highest point to the floor. It is clear as day in the circus, for though they had not been able to bring in gas pipes, a gigantic chandelier formed of fifty kerosene lamps takes its place. In those gleams are visible the heads of the beer drinkers, fleshy, thrown back to give room to their chins, the youthful faces of women, and the pretty, wondering visages of children, whose eyes are almost coming out of their heads from curiosity. But all the spectators have the curious, self-satisfied look that is usual in an audience at a circus. Amid the hum of conversation interrupted by cries of “Frisch wasser! frisch wasser!” (fresh water), all await the beginning with impatience.At last a bell sounds, six grooms appear in shining boots, and stand in two ranks at the passage from the stables to the arena. Between those ranks a furious horse rushes forth, without bridle or saddle; and on him, as it were a bundle of muslin ribbons and tulle, is the dancer Lina. They begin manœuvring to the soundof music. Lina is so pretty that young Matilda, daughter of the brewer on Opuncia Gasse, alarmed at sight of her beauty, inclines to the ear of Floss, a young grocer from the same street, and asks in a whisper if he loves her yet. Meanwhile the horse gallops, and puffs like an engine; the clowns, a number of whom run after the dancer, crack whips, shout, and strike one another on the faces. The dancer vanishes like lightning; there is a storm of applause. What a splendid representation! But No. One passes quickly. No. Two is approaching. The word “Sachem! sachem!” flies from mouth to mouth among the spectators. No one gives a thought now to the clowns, who strike one another continually. In the midst of the apish movements of the clowns, the grooms bring lofty wooden trestles several yards in height, and put them on both sides of the arena. The band ceases to play Yankee Doodle, and gives the gloomy aria of the Commandore in Don Juan. They extend the wire from one trestle to theother. All at once a shower of red Bengal light falls at the passage, and covers the whole arena with a bloody glare. In that glare appears the terrible sachem, the last of the Black Snakes. But what is that? The sachem is not there, but the manager of the troupe himself, Hon. M. Dean. He bows to the public and raises his voice. He has the honor to beg “the kind and respected gentlemen, as well as the beautiful and no less respected ladies, to be unusually calm, give no applause, and remain perfectly still, for the chief is excited and wilder than usual.” These words produce no little impression, and—a wonderful thing!—those very citizens of Antelope who fifteen years before had destroyed Chiavatta, feel now some sort of very unpleasant sensation. A moment before, when the beautiful Lina was performing her springs on horseback, they were glad to be sitting so near, right there close to the parapet, whence they could see everything so well; and now they look with a certain longing for theupper seats of the circus, and in spite of all laws of physics, find that the lower they are the more stifling it is.But could that sachem remember? He was reared from years of childhood in the troupe of Hon. M. Dean, composed mainly of Germans. Had he not forgotten everything? This seemed probable. His environment and fifteen years of a circus career, the exhibition of his art, the winning of applause, must have exerted their influence.Chiavatta, Chiavatta! But they are Germans, they are on their own soil, and think no more of the fatherland thanbusinesspermits. Above all, man must eat and drink. This truth every Philistine must keep in mind, as well as the last of the Black Snakes.These meditations are interrupted suddenly by a certain wild whistle in the stables, and on the arena appears the sachem expected so anxiously. A brief murmur of the crowd is heard: “That is he, that is he!”—and then silence.But there is hissing from Bengal lights, which burn continually at the passage. All eyes are turned toward the chief, who in the circus will appear on the graves of his fathers. The Indian deserves really that men should look at him. He seems as haughty as a king. A mantle of white ermine—the mark of his chieftainship—covers his figure, which is lofty, and so wild that it brings to mind a badly tamed jaguar. He has a face as it were forged out of bronze, like the head of an eagle, and in his face there is a cold gleam; his eyes are genuinely Indian, calm, indifferent as it were,—and ominous. He glances around on the assembly, as if wishing to choose a victim. Moreover, he is armed from head to foot. On his head plumes are waving, at his girdle he has an ax and a knife for scalping; but in his hand, instead of a bow, he holds a long staff to preserve his balance when walking on the wire. Standing in the middle of the arena he gives forth on a sudden a war cry.Herr Gott!That is the cryof the Black Snakes. Those who massacred Chiavatta remember clearly that terrible howl,—and what is most wonderful, those who fifteen years before had no fear of one thousand such warriors are sweating now before one. But behold! the director approaches the chief and says something to him, as if to pacify and calm him. The wild beast feels the bit; the words have their influence, for after a time the sachem is swaying on the wire. With eyes fixed on the kerosene chandelier he advances. The wire bends much; at moments it is not visible, and then the Indian seems suspended in space. He is walking as it were upward; he advances, retreats, and again he advances, maintaining his balance. His extended arms covered with the mantle seem like great wings. He totters! he is falling!—No. A short interrupted bravo begins like a storm and stops. The face of the chief becomes more and more threatening. In his gaze fixed on the kerosene lamps is gleamingsome terrible light. There is alarm in the circus, but no one breaks the silence. Meanwhile the sachem approaches the end of the wire, stops; all at once a war-song bursts forth from his lips.A strange thing! The chief sings in German. But that is easy to understand. Surely he has forgotten the tongue of the Black Snakes. Moreover, no one notices that. All listen to the song, which rises and grows in volume. It is a half chant, a kind of half call, immeasurably plaintive, wild, and hoarse, full of sounds of attack.The following words were heard: “After the great yearly rains, five hundred warriors went from Chiavatta on the war-path or to the spring hunts; when they came back from war they brought scalps, when they came back from the hunt they brought flesh and the skins of buffaloes; their wives met them with gladness, and they danced in honor of the Great Spirit.“Chiavatta was happy. The women worked in the wigwams, the children grew up to be beautiful maidens, to be brave, fearless warriors. The warriors died on the field of glory, and went to the silver mountains to hunt with the ghosts of their fathers. Their axes were never dipped in the blood of women and children, for the warriors of Chiavatta were high-minded. Chiavatta was powerful; but pale-faces came from beyond distant waters and set fire to Chiavatta. The white warriors did not destroy the Black Snakes in battle, but they stole in as do jackals at night, they buried their knives in the bosoms of sleeping men, women, and children.“Now there is no Chiavatta. In place of it the white men have raised their stone wigwams. The murdered nation and ruined Chiavatta cry out for vengeance.”The voice of the chief became hoarse. Standing on the wire, he seemed a red archangel of vengeance floating above the headsof that throng of people. Evidently the director himself was afraid. A silence as of death settled down in the circus. The chief howled on,—“Of the whole nation there remained only one little child. He was weak and small, but he swore to the spirit of the earth that he would have vengeance,—that he would see the corpses of white men, women, and children, that he would see fire and blood.”The last words were changed into a bellow of fury. In the circus murmurs were heard like the sudden puffs of a whirlwind. Thousands of questions without answer came to men’s minds. What will he do, that mad tiger? What is he announcing? How will he accomplish his vengeance,—he alone? Will he stay here or flee? Will he defend himself, and how? “Was ist das, was ist das?” is heard in the terrified accents of women.All at once an unearthly howl was rent from the breast of the chief. The wire swayed violently,he sprang to the wooden trestle, standing at the chandelier, and raised his staff. A terrible thought flew like a flash through all heads. He will hurl around the lamps and fill the circus with torrents of flaming kerosene. From the breasts of the spectators one shout was just rising; but what do they see? From the arena the cry comes, “Stop! stop!” The chief is gone! Has he jumped down? He has gone through the entrance without firing the circus! Where is he? See, he is coming, coming a second time, panting, tired, terrible. In his hand is a pewter plate, and extending it to the spectators, he calls in a voice of entreaty: “Was gefällig für den letzten der Schwarzen Schlangen?” (What will you give to the last of the Black Snakes?)A stone falls from the breasts of the spectators. You see that was all in the programme, it was a trick of the director for effect. The dollars and half dollars came down in a shower. How could they say “No” to the last of theBlack Snakes, in Antelope reared on the ruins of Chiavatta? People have hearts.After the exhibition, the sachem drank beer and ate dumplings at the “Golden Sun.” His environment had exerted its influence, evidently. He found great popularity in Antelope, especially with the women,—there was even scandal about him.[1]IN the little town of Lupiskory, after the funeral of widow Kaliksta, there were vespers, and after vespers old women, between ten and twenty in number, remained in the church to finish the hymn. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; but, since twilight comes in winter about that hour, it was dark in the church. The great altar, especially, was sunkin deep shade. Only two candles were burning at the ciborium; their flickering flames barely lighted a little the gilding of the doors, and the feet of Christ, hanging on a cross higher up. Those feet were pierced with an enormous nail, and the head of that nail seemed a great point gleaming on the altar.From other candles, just quenched, streaks of smoke were waving, filling the places behind the stalls with a purely church odor of wax.An old man and a small boy were busied before the steps of the altar. One was sweeping; the other was stretching the carpet on the steps. At moments, when the women ceased their singing, either the angry whisper of the old man was heard scolding the boy, or the hammering on the snow-covered windows of sparrows that were cold and hungry outside.The women were sitting on benches nearer the door. It would have been still darker had it not been for a few tallow candles, by the light of which those who had prayer-bookswere reading. One of those candles lighted well enough a banner fastened to the seat just beyond; the banner represented sinners surrounded by devils and flames. It was impossible to see what was painted on the other banners.The women were not singing; they were, rather, muttering with sleepy and tired voices a hymn in which these words were repeated continually,—“And when the hour of death comes,Gain for us, gain from Thy Son.”That church buried in shadow, the banners standing at the seats, the old women with their yellow faces, the lights flickering as if oppressed by the gloom,—all that was dismal beyond expression; nay, it was simply terrible. The mournful words of the song about death found there a fitting background.After a time the singing stopped. One of the women stood up at the seat, and began tosay, with a trembling voice, “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” And others responded, “The Lord is with Thee,” etc.; but since it was the day of Kaliksta’s funeral, each “Hail, Mary,” concluded with the words, “Lord, grant her eternal rest, and may endless light shine on her!”Marysia, the dead woman’s daughter, was sitting on a bench at the side of one of the old women. Just then the snow, soft and noiseless, was falling on the fresh grave of her mother; but the little girl was not ten years old yet, and seemed not to understand either her loss, or the pity which it might rouse in another. Her face, with large blue eyes, had in it the calmness of childhood, and even a certain careless repose. A little curiosity was evident,—nothing beyond that. Opening her mouth, she looked with great attention at the banner on which was painted hell with sinners; then she looked into the depth of the church, and afterward on the window at which the sparrows were hammering.Her eyes remained without thought. Meanwhile, the women began to mutter, sleepily, for the tenth time,—“And when the hour of death comes.”The little girl twisted the tresses of her light-colored hair, woven into two tiny braids not thicker than mice tails. She seemed tired; but now the old man occupied her attention. He went to the middle of the church, and began to pull a knotty rope hanging from the ceiling. He was ringing for the soul of Kaliksta, but he did this in a purely mechanical manner; he was thinking, evidently, of something else.That ringing was also a sign that vespers were ended. The women, after repeating for the last time the prayer for a happy death, went out on the square. One of them led Marysia by the hand.“But, Kulik,” asked another, “what will you do with the girl?”“What will I do? She will go to Leschyntsi. Voytek Margula will take her. But why do you ask me?”“What will she do in Leschyntsi?”“My dears, the same as here. Let her go to where she came from. Even at the mansion they will take in the orphan, and let her sleep in the kitchen.”Thus conversing, they passed through the square to the inn. Darkness was increasing every moment. It was wintry, calm; the sky was covered with clouds, the air filled with moisture and wet snow. Water was dropping from the roofs; on the square lay slush formed of snow and straw. The village, with wretched and tattered houses, looked as gloomy as the church. A few windows were gleaming with light; movement had ceased, but in the inn an organ was playing.It was playing to entice, for there was no one inside. The women entered, drank vodka; Kulik gave Marysia half a glass, saying,—“Drink! Thou art an orphan; thou wilt not meet kindness.”The word “orphan” brought the death of Kaliksta to the minds of the women. One of them said,—“To you, Kulik, drink! Oh, my dears, how thatparalus[paralysis] took her so that she couldn’t stir! She was cold before the priest came to hear her confession.”“I told her long ago,” said Kulik, “that she was spinning fine [near her end]. Last week she came to me. Said I, ‘Ah, better give Marysia to the mansion!’ But she said, ‘I have one little daughter, and I’ll not give her to any one.’ But she grew sorry, and began to sob, and then she went to the mayor to put her papers in order. She paid four zloty and six groshes. ‘But I do not begrudge it for my child,’ said she. My dears, but her eyes were staring, and after death they were staring still more. People wanted to close them, but could not. They say that after death, even, she was looking at her child.”“Let us drink half a quarter over this sorrow!”The organ was playing continually. The women began to be somewhat tender. Kulik repeated, with a voice of compassion, “Poor little thing! poor little thing!” and the second old woman called to mind the death of her late husband.“When he was dying,” said she, “he sighed so, oh, he sighed so, he sighed so!—” and drawling still more, her voice passed into a chant, from a chant into the tone of the organ, till at last she bent to one side, and in following the organ began to sing,—“He sighed, he sighed, he sighed,On that day he sighed.”All at once she fell to shedding hot tears, gave the organist six groshes, and drank some more vodka. Kulik, too, was excited by tenderness, but she turned it on Marysia,—“Remember, little orphan,” said she, “whatthe priest said when they were covering thy mother with snow, that there is a yamyol [an angel] above thee—” Here she stopped, looked around as if astonished, and then added, with unusual energy, “When I say that there is a yamyol, thereisa yamyol!”No one contradicted her. Marysia, blinking with her poor, simple eyes, looked attentively at the woman. Kulik spoke on,—“Thou art a little orphan, that is bad for thee! Over orphans there is a yamyol. He is good. Here are ten groshes for thee. Even if thou wert to start on foot to Leschyntsi, thou couldst go there, for he would guide thee.”The second old woman began to sing:“In the shade of his wings he will keep thee eternally,Under his pinions thou wilt lie without danger.”“Be quiet!” said Kulik. And then she turned again to the child,—“Knowest thou, stupid, who is above thee?”“A yamyol,” said, with a thin voice, the little girl.“Oh, thou little orphan, thou precious berry, thou little worm of the Lord! A yamyol with wings,” said she, with perfect tenderness, and seizing the child she pressed her to her honest, though tipsy, bosom.Marysia burst into weeping at once. Perhaps in her dark little head and in her heart, which knew not yet how to distinguish, there was roused some sort of perception at that moment.The innkeeper was sleeping most soundly behind the counter; on the candle-wicks mushrooms had grown; the man at the organ ceased to play, for what he saw amused him.Then there was silence, which was broken by the sudden plashing of horses’ feet before the door, and a voice calling to the horses,—“Prrr!”Voytek Margula walked into the inn with alighted lantern in his hand. He put down the lantern, began to slap his arms to warm them, and at last said to the innkeeper,—“Give half a quarter.”“Margula, thou chestnut,” cried Kulik, “thou wilt take the little girl to Leschyntsi.”“I’ll take her, for they told me to take her,” replied Margula.Then looking closely to the two women he added,—“But ye are as drunk as—”“May the plague choke thee,” retorted Kulik. “When I tell thee to be careful with the child, be careful. She is an orphan. Knowest thou, fool, who is above her?”Voytek did not see fit to answer that question, but determined evidently to raise another subject, and began,—“To all of you—”But he didn’t finish, for he drank the vodka, made a wry face, and putting down the glass with dissatisfaction, said,—“That’s pure water. Give me a second from another bottle.”The innkeeper poured from another. Margula twisted his face still more:“Ai! haven’t you arrack?”Evidently the same danger threatened Margula that threatened the women; but at that very time, in the mansion at Lupiskory, the landowner was preparing for one of the journals a long and exhaustive article, “On the right of landowners to sell liquor, this right being considered as the basis of society.” But Voytek co-operated only involuntarily to strengthen the basis of society, and that all the more because the sale here, though in a village, was really by the landowner.When he had co-operated five times in succession he forgot, it is true, his lantern, in which the light had gone out, but he took the half-sleeping little girl by the hand, and said,—“But come on, thou nightmare!”The women had fallen asleep in a corner, noone bade farewell to Marysia. The whole story was this: Her mother was in the graveyard and she was going to Leschyntsi.Voytek and the girl went out, sat in the sleigh. Voytek cried to the horses, and they moved on. At first the sleigh dragged heavily enough through the slush of the town, but they came out very soon to fields which were broad and white. Movement was easy then; the snow barely made a noise under the sleigh-runners. The horses snorted at times, at times came the barking of dogs from a distance.They went on and on. Voytek urged the horses, and sang through his nose, “Dog ear, remember thy promise.” But soon he grew silent, and began to “carry Jews” (nod). He nodded to the right, to the left. He dreamt that they were pounding him on the shoulders in Leschyntsi, because he had lost a basket of letters; so, from time to time, he was half awake, and repeated: “To all!” Marysia did not sleep, for she was cold. She looked with widelyopened eyes on the white fields, hidden from moment to moment by the dark shoulders of Margula. She thought also that her “mother was dead;” and thinking thus, she pictured to herself perfectly the pale and thin face of her mother with its staring eyes,—and she felt half consciously that that face was greatly beloved, that it was no longer in the world, and would never be in Leschyntsi again. She had seen with her own eyes how they covered it up in Lupiskory. Remembering this, she would have cried from grief; but as her knees and feet were chilled, she began to cry from cold.There was no frost, it is true, but the air was penetrating, as is usual during thaws. As to Voytek he had, at least in his stomach, a good supply of heat taken from the inn. The landowner at Lupiskory remarked justly: “That vodka warms in winter, and since it is the only consolation of our peasants, to deprive landowners of the sole power of consoling peasants is to deprive them of influence over thepopulace.” Voytek was so consoled at that moment that nothing could trouble him.Even this did not trouble him, that the horses when they came to the forest slackened their pace altogether, though the road there was better, and then walking to one side, the beasts turned over the sleigh into a ditch. He woke, it is true, but did not understand well what had happened.Marysia begun to push him.“Voytek!”“Why art thou croaking?”“The sleigh is turned over.”“A glass?” asked Voytek, and went to sleep for good.The little girl sat by the sleigh, crouching down as best she could, and remained there. But her face was soon chilled, so she began to push the sleeping man again.“Voytek!”He gave no answer.“Voytek, I want to go to the house.”And after a while again: “Voytek, I’ll walk there.”At last she started. It seemed to her that Leschyntsi was very near. She knew the road, too, for she had walked to church over it every Sunday with her mother. But now she had to go alone. In spite of the thaw the snow in the forest was deep, but the night was very clear. To the gleam from the snow was added light from the clouds, so that the road could be seen as in the daytime. Marysia, turning her eyes to the dark forest, could see tree-trunks very far away outlined distinctly, black, motionless, on the white ground; and she saw clearly also snow-drifts blown to the whole height of them. In the forest there was a certain immense calm, which gave solace to the child. On the branches was thick, frozen snow, and from it drops of water were trickling, striking with faint sound against the branches and twigs. But that was the only noise. All else around was still, white, silent, dumb.The wind was not blowing. The snowy branches were not stirring with the slightest movement. Everything was sleeping in the trance of winter. It might seem that the snowy covering on the earth, and the whole silent and shrouded forest, with the pale clouds in the heavens, were all a kind of white, lifeless unity. So it is in time of thaw. Marysia was the only living thing, moving like a little black speck amid these silent greatnesses. Kind, honest forest! Those drops, which the thawing ice let down, were tears, perhaps, over the orphan. The trees are so large, but also so compassionate, above the little creature. See, she is alone, so weak and poor, in the snow, in the night, in the forest, wading along trustfully, as if there is no danger.The clear night seems to care for her. When something so weak and helpless yields itself, trusts so perfectly in enormous power, there is a certain sweetness in the act. In that way all may be left to the will of God. The girl walkedrather long, and was wearied at last. The heavy boots, which were too large, hindered her; her small feet were going up and down in them continually. It was hard to drag out such big boots from the snow. Besides, she could not move her hands freely, for in one of them, closed rigidly, she held with all her strength those ten groshes which Kulik had given her. She feared to drop them in the snow. She began at times to cry aloud, and then she stopped suddenly, as if wishing to know if some one had heard her. Yes, the forest had heard her! The thawing ice sounded monotonously and somewhat sadly. Besides, maybe some one else had heard her. The child went more and more slowly. Could she go astray? How? The road, like a white, broad, winding ribbon, stretches into the distance, lies well marked between two walls of dark trees. An unconquerable drowsiness seized the little girl.She stepped aside and sat down under a tree. The lids dropped over her eyes. After atime, she thought that her mother was coming to her along the white road from the graveyard. No one was coming. Still, the child felt certain that some one must come. Who? A yamyol. Hadn’t old Kulik told her that a yamyol was above her? Marysia knew what a yamyol is. In her mother’s cottage there was one painted with a shield in his hand and with wings. He would come, surely. Somehow the ice began to sound more loudly. Maybe that is the noise of his wings, scattering drops more abundantly. Stop! Some one is coming really; the snow, though soft, sounds clearly; steps are coming, and coming quietly but quickly. The child raises her sleepy eyelids with confidence.“What is that?”Looking at the little girl intently is a gray three-cornered face with ears, standing upright,—ugly, terrible!IT is Sunday! Great posters, affixed for a number of days to the corners of Puerta del Sol, Calle Alcala, and all streets on which there was considerable movement, announce to the city that to-day, “Si el tiempo lo permite” (if the weather permits), will take place bull-fight XVI., in which Cara-Ancha Lagartijo and the renowned Frascuello are to appear as “espadas” (swords).Well, the weather permits. There was rain in the morning; but about ten o’clock the wind broke the clouds, gathered them into heaps, and drove them away off somewhere in the direction of the Escurial. Now the wind itself has ceased; the sky as far as the eye can reach is blue, and over the Puerta del Sol a bright sun is shining,—such a Madrid sun, which not only warms, not only burns, but almost bites.Movement in the city is increasing, and on people’s faces satisfaction is evident.Two o’clock.The square of the Puerta del Sol is emptying gradually, but crowds of people are advancing through the Calle Alcala toward the Prado. In the middle is flowing a river of carriages and vehicles. All that line of equipages is moving very slowly, for on the sidewalks there is not room enough for pedestrians, many of whom are walking along the sides of the streets and close to the carriages. The police, on white horses and in showy uniforms and three-cornered hats, preserve order.It is Sunday, that is evident, and an afternoon hour; the toilets are carefully made, the attire is holiday. It is evident also that the crowds are going to some curious spectacle. Unfortunately the throng is not at all many-colored; no national costumes are visible,—neither the short coats, yellow kerchiefsá la contrabandista, with one end dropping down to the shoulder, nor the round Biscay hats, nor girdles, nor the Catalan knives behind the girdles.Those things may be seen yet in the neighborhood of Granada, Seville, and Cordova; but in Madrid, especially on holidays, the cosmopolitan frock is predominant. Only at times do you see a black mantilla pinned to a high comb, and under the mantilla eyes blacker still.In general faces are dark, glances quick, speech loud. Gesticulation is not so passionate as in Italy, where when a man laughs he squirms like a snake, and when he is angry he gnaws off the top of his hat; still, it is energeticand lively. Faces have well-defined features and a resolute look. It is easy to understand that even in amusement these people retain their special and definite character.However, they are a people who on weekdays are full of sedateness, bordering on sloth, sparing of words, and collected. Sunday enlivens them, as does also the hope of seeing a bloody spectacle.Let us cut across the Prado and enter an alley leading to the circus.The crowd is becoming still denser. Here and there shouts are rising, the people applauding single members of the company, who are going each by himself to the circus.Here is an omnibus filled with “capeadors,” that is, partakers in the fight, whose whole defence is red capes with which they mislead and irritate the bull. Through the windows are visible black heads with pigtails, and wearing three-cornered hats. The coats of various colors worn by the capeadors are embroidered withgold and silver tinsel. These capeadors ride in an omnibus, for the modest pay which they get for their perilous service does not permit a more showy conveyance.Somewhat farther, three mounted “picadors” push their way through the people. The sun plays on their broad-brimmed white hats. They are athletic in build, but bony and lean. Their shaven faces have a stern, and, as it were, concentrated look. They are sitting on very high wooden saddles, hence they are perfectly visible over the crowd. Each of them holds in his hand a lance, with a wooden ball at the end of it, from which is projecting an iron point not above half an inch long. The picador cannot kill a bull with a weapon like that,—he can only pierce him or stop him for a moment; but in the last case he must have in his arm the strength of a giant.Looking at these men, I remember involuntarily Doré’s illustrations to “Don Quixote.” In fact, each of these horsemen might serve as amodel for the knight “of the rueful visage.” That lean silhouette, outlined firmly on the sky, high above the heads of the multitude, the lance standing upright, and that bare-boned horse under the rider, those purely Gothic outlines of living things,—all answer perfectly to the conception which we form of the knight of La Mancha, when we read the immortal work of Cervantes.But, the picadors pass us, and urging apart the crowd slowly, push forward considerably. Now only three lances are visible, three hats, and three coats embroidered on the shoulders. New men ride up, as incalculably similar to the first as if some mill were making picadors for all Spain on one pattern. There is a difference only in the color of the horses, which, however, are equally lean.Our eyes turn now to the long row of carriages. Some are drawn by mules, but mules so large, sleek, and beautiful that, in spite of the long ears of the animals, the turn-out does notseem ridiculous. Here and there may be seen also Andalusian horses with powerful backs, arched necks, and curved faces. Such may be seen in the pictures of battle-painters of the seventeenth century.In the carriages are sitting the flower of Madrid society. The dresses are black, there is very black lace on the parasols, on the fans, and on the heads of ladies; black hair trimmed in forelocks, from under which are glancing eyes, as it were, of the lava of Vesuvius. Mourning colors, importance, and powder are the main traits of that society.The faces of old and of young ladies also are covered with powder, all of them are equally frigid and pale. A great pity! Were it not for such a vile custom, their complexion would have that magnificent warm tone given by southern blood and a southern sun, and which may be admired in faces painted by Fortuni.In the front seats of the carriages are men dressed with an elegance somewhat exaggerated;they have a constrained and too holiday air,—in other words, they cannot wear fine garments with that free inattention which characterizes the higher society of France.But the walls of the circus are outlined before us with growing distinctness. There is nothing especial in the building: an enormous pile reared expressly to give seats to some tens of thousands of people,—that is the whole plan of it.Most curious is the movement near the walls. Round about, it is black from carriages, equipages, and heads of people. Towering above this dark mass, here and there, is a horseman, a policeman, or a picador in colors as brilliant as a poppy full blown.The throng sways, opens, closes, raises its voice; coachmen shout; still louder shout boys selling handbills. These boys squeeze themselves in at all points among footmen and horsemen; they are on the steps of carriages and between the wheels; some climb up on the buttresses of the circus; some areon the stone columns which mark the way for the carriages. Their curly hair, their gleaming eyes, their expressive features, dark faces, and torn shirts open in the bosom, remind me of our gypsies, and of boys in Murillo’s pictures. Besides programmes some of them sell whistles. Farther on, among the crowds, are fruit-venders; water-sellers with bronze kegs on their shoulders; in one place are flower dealers; in another is heard the sound of a guitar played by an old blind woman led by a little girl.Movement, uproar, laughter; fans are fluttering everywhere as if they were wings of thousands of birds; the sun pours down white light in torrents from a spotless sky of dense blue.Suddenly and from all sides are heard cries of “mira, mira!” (look, look!) After a while these cries are turned into a roar of applause, which like real thunder flies from one extreme to another; now it is quiet, now it rises and extends around the whole circus.What has happened? Surely the queen is approaching, and with her the court?No! near by is heard “eviva Frascuello!” That is the most famous espada, who is coming for laurels and applause.All eyes turn to him, and the whole throng of women push toward his carriage. The air is gleaming with flowers thrown by their hands to the feet of that favorite, that hero of every dream and imagining, that “pearl of Spain.” They greet him the more warmly because he has just returned from a trip to Barcelona, where during the exhibition he astonished all barbarous Europe with thrusts of his sword; now he appears again in his beloved Madrid, more glorious, greater,—a genuine new Cid el Campeador.Let us push through the crowd to look at the hero. First, what a carriage, what horses! More beautiful there are not in the whole of Castile. On white satin cushions sits, or reclines, we should say, a man whose age it isdifficult to determine, for his face is shaven most carefully. He is dressed in a coat of pale lily-colored satin, and knee-breeches of similar material trimmed with lace. His coat and the side seams of his breeches are glittering and sparkling from splendid embroidery, from spangles of gold and silver shining like diamonds in the sun. The most delicate laces ornament his breast. His legs, clothed in rose-colored silk stockings, he holds crossed carelessly on the front seat,—the very first athlete in the hippodrome at Paris might envy him those calves.Madrid is vain of those calves,—and in truth she has reason.The great man leans with one hand on the red hilt of his Catalan blade; with the other he greets his admirers of both sexes kindly. His black hair, combed to his poll, is tied behind in a small roll, from beneath which creeps forth a short tress. That style of hair-dressing and the shaven face make him somewhat like awoman, and he reminds one besides of some actor from one of the provinces; taken generally, his face is not distinguished by intelligence, a quality which in his career would not be a hindrance, though not needed in any way.The crowds enter the circus, and we enter with them.Now we are in the interior. It differs from other interiors of circuses only in size and in this,—that the seats are of stone. Highest in the circle are the boxes; of these one in velvet and in gold fringe is the royal box. If no one from the court is present at the spectacle this box is occupied by the prefect of the city. Around are seated the aristocracy and high officials; opposite the royal box, on the other side of the circus, is the orchestra. Half-way up in the circus is a row of arm-chairs; stone steps form the rest of the seats. Below, around the arena, stretches a wooden paling the height of a man’s shoulder. Between this paling and the first row of seats, which is raised considerablyhigher for the safety of the spectators, is a narrow corridor, in which the combatants take refuge, in case the bull threatens them too greatly.One-half of the circus is buried in shadow, the other is deluged with sunlight. On every ticket, near the number of the seat, is printed “sombra” (shadow) or “sol” (sun). Evidently the tickets “sombra” cost considerably more. It is difficult to imagine how those who have “sol” tickets can endure to sit in such an atmosphere a number of hours and on those heated stone steps, with such a sun above their heads.The places are all filled, however. Clearly the love of a bloody spectacle surpasses the fear of being roasted alive.In northern countries the contrast between light and shadow is not so great as in Spain; in the north we find always a kind of half shade, half light, certain transition tones; here the boundary is cut off in black with a firm linewithout any transitions. In the illuminated half the sand seems to burn; people’s faces and dresses are blazing; eyes are blinking under the excess of glare; it is simply an abyss of light, full of heat, in which everything is sparkling and gleaming excessively, every color is intensified tenfold. On the other hand, the shaded half seems cut off by some transparent curtain, woven from the darkness of night. Every man who passes from the light to the shade, makes on us the impression of a candle put out on a sudden.At the moment when we enter, the arena is crowded with people. Before the spectacle the inhabitants of Madrid, male and female, must tread that sand on which the bloody drama is soon to be played. It seems to them that thus they take direct part, as it were, in the struggle. Numerous groups of men are standing, lighting their cigarettes and discoursing vivaciously concerning the merits of bulls from this herd or that one. Small boys tease and pursueone another. I see how one puts under the eyes of another a bit of red cloth, treating him just as a “capeador” treats a bull. The boy endures this a while patiently; at last he rolls his eyes fiercely and runs at his opponent. The opponent deceives him adroitly with motions of a cape, exactly again as the capeador does the bull. The little fellows find their spectators, who urge them on with applause.Along the paling pass venders of oranges proclaiming the merits of their merchandise. This traffic is carried on through the air. The vender throws, at request, with unerring dexterity, an orange, even to the highest row; in the same way he receives a copper piece, which he catches with one hand before it touches the earth. Loud dialogues, laughter, calls, noise, rustling of fans, the movement of spectators as they arrive,—all taken together form a picture with a fulness of life of which no other spectacle can give an idea.All at once from the orchestra come soundsof trumpets and drums. At that signal the people on the arena fly to their places with as much haste as if danger were threatening their lives. There is a crush. But after a while all are seated. Around, it is just black: people are shoulder to shoulder, head to head. In the centre remains the arena empty, deluged with sunlight.Opposite the royal box a gate in the paling is thrown open, and in ride two “alguazils.” Their horses white, with manes and tails plaited, are as splendid as if taken from pictures. The riders themselves, wearing black velvet caps with white feathers, and doublets of similar material, with lace collars, bring to mind the incomparable canvases of Velasquez, which may be admired in the Museo del Prado. It seems to us that we are transferred to the times of knighthood long past. Both horsemen are handsome, both of showy form. They ride stirrup to stirrup, ride slowly around the whole arena to convince themselves that no incautiousspectator has remained on it. At last they halt before the royal box, and with a movement full of grace uncover their heads with respect.Whoso is in a circus for the first time will be filled with admiration at the stately, almost middle-age, ceremonial, by the apparel and dignity of the horsemen. The alguazils seem like two noble heralds, giving homage to a monarch before the beginning of a tournament. It is, in fact, a prayer for permission to open the spectacle, and at the same time a request for the key of the stables in which the bulls are confined. After a while the key is let down from the box on a gold string; the alguazils incline once again and ride away. Evidently this is a mere ceremonial, for the spectacle was authorized previously, and the bulls are confined by simple iron bolts. But the ceremony is beautiful, and they never omit it.In a few minutes after the alguazils have vanished, the widest gate is thrown open, and a whole company enters. At the head of itride the same two alguazils whom we saw before the royal box; after them advance a rank of capeadors; after the capeadors come “banderilleros,” and the procession is concluded by picadors. This entire party is shining with all the colors of the rainbow, gleaming from tinsel, gold, silver, and satins of various colors. They come out from the dark side to the sunlighted arena, dive into the glittering light, and bloom like flowers. The eye cannot delight itself sufficiently with the many colors of those spots on the golden sand.Having reached the centre, they scatter on a sudden, like a flock of butterflies. The picadors dispose themselves around at the paling, and each one drawing his lance from its rest, grasps it firmly in his right hand; the men on foot form picturesque groups; they stand in postures full of indifference, waiting for the bull.This is perhaps the most beautiful moment of the spectacle, full of originality, so thoroughlySpanish that regret at not being a painter comes on a man in spite of himself. How much color, what sunlight might be transferred from the palette to the canvas!Soon blood will be flowing on that sand. In the circus it is as still as in time of sowing poppy seed,—it is barely possible to hear the sound of fans, which move only in as much as the hands holding them quiver from impatience. All eyes are turned to the door through which the bull will rush forth. Time now is counted by seconds.Suddenly the shrill, and at the same time the mournful, sound of a trumpet is heard in the orchestra; the door of the stable opens with a crash, and the bull bursts into the arena, like a thunderbolt.That is a lordly beast, with a powerful and splendid neck, a head comparatively short, horns enormous and turned forward. Our heavy breeder gives a poor idea of him; for though the Spanish bull is not the equal of oursin bulk of body, he surpasses him in strength, and, above all, in activity. At the first cast of the eye you recognize a beast reared wild in the midst of great spaces; consequently with all his strength he can move almost as swiftly as a deer. It is just this which makes him dangerous in an unheard of degree. His forelegs are a little higher than his hind ones; this is usual with cattle of mountain origin. In fact, the bulls of the circus are recruited especially from the herds in the Sierra Morena. Their color is for the greater part black, rarely reddish or pied. The hair is short, and glossy as satin; only the neck is covered somewhat with longer and curly hair.After he has burst into the arena, the bull slackens his pace toward the centre, looks with bloodshot eyes to the right, to the left,—but this lasts barely two seconds; he sees a group of capeadors; he lowers his head to the ground, and hurls himself on them at random.The capeadors scatter, like a flock of sparrowsat which some man has fired small-shot. Holding behind them red capes, they circle now in the arena, with a swiftness that makes the head dizzy; they are everywhere; they glitter to the right, to the left; they are in the middle of the arena, at the paling, before the eyes of the bull, in front, behind. The red capes flutter in the air, like banners torn by the wind.The bull scatters the capeadors in every direction; with lightning-like movements he chases one,—another thrusts a red cape under his very eyes; the bull leaves the first victim to run after a second, but before he can turn, some third one steps up. The bull rushes at that one! Distance between them decreases, the horns of the bull seem to touch the shoulder of the capeador; another twinkle of an eye and he will be nailed to the paling,—but meanwhile the man touches the top of the paling with his hand, and vanishes as if he had dropped through the earth.What has happened? The capeador has sprung into the passage extending between the paling and the first row of seats.The bull chooses another man; but before he has moved from his tracks the first capeador thrusts out his head from behind the paling, like a red Indian stealing to the farm of a settler, and springs to the arena again. The bull pursues more and more stubbornly those unattainable enemies, who vanish before his very horns; at last he knows where they are hidden. He collects all his strength, anger gives him speed, and he springs like a hunting-horse over the paling, certain that he will crush his foes this time like worms.But at that very moment they hurl themselves back to the arena with the agility of chimpanzees, and the bull runs along the empty passage, seeing no one before him.The entire first row of spectators incline through the barrier, then strike from above at the bull with canes, fans, and parasols. Thepublic are growing excited. A bull that springs over the paling recommends himself favorably. When people in the first row applaud him with all their might, those in the upper rows clap their hands, crying, “Bravo el toro! muy buen! Bravo el toro!” (Bravo the bull! Very well, bravo the bull!)Meanwhile he comes to an open door and runs out again to the arena. On the opposite side of it two capeadors are sitting on a step extending around the foot of the paling, and are conversing without the slightest anxiety. The bull rushes on them at once; he is in the middle of the arena,—and they sit on without stopping their talk; he is ten steps away,—they continue sitting as if they had not seen him; he is five steps away,—they are still talking. Cries of alarm are heard here and there in the circus; before his very horns the two daring fellows spring, one to the right, the other to the left. The bull’s horns strike the paling with a heavy blow. A storm of handclappingbreaks out in the circus, and at that very moment these and other capeadors surround the bull again and provoke him with red capes.His madness passes now into fury: he hurls himself forward, rushes, turns on his tracks; every moment his horns give a thrust, every moment it seems that no human power can wrest this or that man from death. Still the horns cut nothing but air, and the red capes are glittering on all sides; at times one of them falls to the ground, and that second the bull in his rage drives almost all of it into the sand. But that is not enough for him,—he must search out some victim, and reach him at all costs.Hence, with a deep bellow and with bloodshot eyes he starts to run forward at random, but halts on a sudden; a new sight strikes his eye,—that is, a picador on horseback.The picadors had stood hitherto on their lean horses, like statues, their lances pointing upward. The bull, occupied solely with thehated capes, had not seen them, or if he had seen them he passed them.Almost never does it happen that the bull begins a fight with horsemen. The capes absorb his attention and rouse all his rage. It may be, moreover, that the picadors are like his half-wild herdsmen in the Sierra Morena, whom he saw at times from a distance, and before whom he was accustomed to flee with the whole herd.But now he has had capes enough; his fury seeks eagerly some body to pierce and on which to sate his vengeance.For spectators not accustomed to this kind of play, a terrible moment is coming. Every one understands that blood must be shed soon.The bull lowers his head and withdraws a number of paces, as if to gather impetus; the picador turns the horse a little, with his right side to the attacker, so the horse, having his right eye bound with a cloth, shall not push back at the moment of attack. The lance witha short point is lowered in the direction of the bull; he withdraws still more. It seems to you that he will retreat altogether, and your oppressed bosom begins to breathe with more ease.Suddenly the bull rushes forward like a rock rolling down from a mountain. In the twinkle of an eye you see the lance bent like a bow; the sharp end of it is stuck in the shoulder of the bull,—and then is enacted a thing simply dreadful: the powerful head and neck of the furious beast is lost under the belly of the horse, his horns sink their whole length in the horse’s intestines; sometimes the bull lifts horse and rider, sometimes you see only the upraised hind part of the horse, struggling convulsively in the air. Then the rider falls to the ground, the horse tumbles upon him, and you hear the creaking of the saddle; horse, rider, and saddle form one shapeless mass, which the raging bull tramples and bores with his horns.Faces unaccustomed to the spectacle grow pale. In Barcelona and Madrid I have seen Englishwomen whose faces had become as pale as linen. Every one in the circus for the first time has the impression of a catastrophe. When the rider is seen rolled into a lump, pressed down by the weight of the saddle and the horse, and the raging beast is thrusting his horns with fury into that mass of flesh, it seems that for the man there is no salvation, and that the attendants will raise a mere bloody corpse from the sand.But that is illusion. All that is done is in the programme of the spectacle.Under the white leather and tinsel the rider has armor which saves him from being crushed,—he fell purposely under the horse, so that the beast should protect him with his body from the horns. In fact the bull, seeing before him the fleshy mass of the horse’s belly, expends on it mainly his rage. Let me add that the duration of the catastrophe is counted byseconds. The capeadors have attacked the bull from every side, and he, wishing to free himself from them, must leave his victims. He does leave them, he chases again after the capeadors; his steaming horns, stained with blood, seem again to be just touching the capeadors’ shoulders. They, in escaping, lead him to the opposite side of the arena; other men meanwhile draw from beneath the horse the picador, who is barely able to move under the weight of his armor, and throw him over the paling.The horse too tries to raise himself: frequently he rises for a moment, but then a ghastly sight strikes the eye. From his torn belly hangs a whole bundle of intestines with a rosy spleen, bluish liver, and greenish stomach. The hapless beast tries to walk a few steps; but his trembling feet tread on his own entrails, he falls, digs the ground with his hoofs, shudders. Meanwhile the attendants run up, remove the saddle and bridle, and finish the torments ofthe horse with one stab of a stiletto, at the point where head and neck come together.On the arena remains the motionless body, which, lying now on its side, seems wonderfully flat. The intestines are carried out quickly in a basket which is somewhat like a wash-tub, and the public clap their hands with excitement. Enthusiasm begins to seize them: “Bravo el toro! Bravo picador!” Eyes are flashing, on faces a flush comes, a number of hats fly to the arena in honor of the picador. Meanwhile “el toro,” having drawn blood once, kills a number of other horses. If his horns are buried not in the belly but under the shoulder of the horse, a stream of dark blood bursts onto the arena in an uncommon quantity; the horse rears and falls backward with his rider. A twofold danger threatens the man: the horns of the bull or, in spite of his armor, the breaking of his neck. But, as we have said, the body of the horse becomes a protection to the rider; hence, every picadortries to receive battle at the edge of the arena, so as to be, as it were, covered between the body of the horse and the paling. When the bull withdraws, the picador advances, but only a few steps, so that the battle never takes place in the centre.All these precautions would not avail much, and the bull would pierce the horseman at last, were it not for the capeadors. They press on the bull, draw away his attention, rush with unheard of boldness against his rage, saving each moment the life of some participant in the fight. Once I saw an espada, retreating before the raging beast, stumble against the head of a dead horse and fall on his back; death inevitable was hanging over him, the horns of the bull were just ready to pass through his breast, when suddenly between that breast and the horns the red capes were moving, and the bull flew after the capes. It may be said that were it not for that flock of chimpanzees waving red capes, the work of the picadorswould be impossible, and at every representation as many of them as of horses would perish.It happens rarely that a picador can stop a bull at the point of a lance. This takes place only when the bull advances feebly, or the picador is gifted with gigantic strength of arms, surpassing the measure of men. I saw two such examples in Madrid, after which came a hurricane of applause for the picador.But usually the bull kills horses like flies; and he is terrible when, covered with sweat, glittering in the sun, with a neck bleeding from lances and his horns painted red, he runs around the arena, as if in the drunkenness of victory. A deep bellow comes from his mighty lungs; at one moment he scatters capeadors, at another he halts suddenly over the body of a horse, now motionless, and avenges himself on it terribly,—he raises it on his horns, carries it around the arena, scattering drops of stiff blood on spectators in thefirst row; then he casts it again on the stained sand and pierces it a second time. It seems to him, evidently, that the spectacle is over, and that it has ended in his triumph.But the spectacle has barely passed through one-half of its course. Those picadors whose horses have survived the defeat, ride out, it is true, from the arena; but in place of them run in with jumps, and amid shouts, nimble banderilleros. Every one of them in his upraised hands has two arrows, each an ell long, ornamented, in accordance with the coat of the man, with a blue, a green, or a red ribbon, and ending with a barbed point, which once it is under the skin will not come out of it. These men begin to circle about the bull, shaking the arrows, stretching toward him the points, threatening and springing up toward him. The bull rolls his bloodshot eyes, turns his head to the right, to the left, looking to see what new kind of enemies these are. “Ah,” says he, evidently, to himself, “you have hadlittle blood, you want more—you shall have it!” and selecting the man, he rushes at him.But what happens? The first man, instead of fleeing, runs toward the bull,—runs past his head, as if he wished to avoid him; but in that same second something seems hanging in the air like a rainbow: the man is running away empty-handed with all the strength of his legs, toward the paling, and in the neck of the bull are two colored arrows.After a moment another pair are sticking in him, and then a third pair,—six altogether, with three colors. The neck of the beast seems now as if ornamented with a bunch of flowers, but those flowers have the most terrible thorns of any on earth. At every movement of the bull, at every turn of his head, the arrows move, shake, fly from one side of his neck to the other, and with that every point is boring into the wound. Evidently from pain the animal is falling into the madness of rage; butthe more he rushes the greater his pain. Hitherto the bull was the wrong-doer, now they wrong him, and terribly. He would like to free himself from those torturing arrows; but there is no power to do that. He is growing mad from mere torment, and is harassed to the utmost. Foam covers his nostrils, his tongue is protruding; he bellows no longer, but in the short intervals between the wild shouts, the clapping, and the uproar of the spectators, you may hear his groans, which have an accent almost human. The capeadors harassed him, every picador wounded him, now the arrows are working into his wounds; thirst and heat complete his torments.It is his luck that he did not get another kind of “banderille.” If—which, however, happens rarely—the bull refuses to attack the horses and has killed none, the enraged public rise, and in the circus something in the nature of a revolution sets in. Men with their canes and women with their parasols and fans turn tothe royal box; wild, hoarse voices of cruel cavaliers, and the shrill ones of senoritas, shout only one word: “Fuego! fuego! fuego!” (Fire, fire, fire!)The representatives of the government withhold their consent for a long time. Hence “Fuego!” is heard ever more threateningly, and drowns all other voices; the threat rises to such an intensity as to make us think that the public may pass at any instant from words to a mad deed of some kind. Half an hour passes: “Fuego! fuego!” There is no help for it. The signal is given, and the unfortunate bull gets a banderille which when thrust into his neck blazes up that same instant.The points wound in their own way, and in their own way rolls of smoke surround the head of the beast, the rattle of fireworks stuns him; great sparks fall into his wounds, small congreve rockets burst under his skin; the smell of burnt flesh and singed hair fill the arena.In truth, cruelty can go no further; but the delight of the public rises now to its zenith. The eyes of women are covered with mist from excitement, every breast is heaving with pleasure, their heads fall backward, and between their open moist lips are gleaming white teeth. You would say that the torment of the beast is reflected in the nerves of those women with an answering degree of delight. Only in Spain can such things be seen. There is in that frenzy something hysterical, something which recalls certain Phœnician mysteries, performed on the altar of Melitta.The daring and skill of the banderilleros surpass every measure. I saw one of them who had taken his place in the middle of the arena in an arm-chair; he had stretched his legs carelessly before him,—they were in rose-colored stockings,—he crossed them, and holding above his head a banderille, was waiting for the bull. The bull rushed at him straightway; the next instant, I saw only that the banderillewas fastened in the neck, and the bull was smashing the chair with mad blows of his head. In what way the man had escaped between the chair and the horns, I know not,—that is the secret of his skill. Another banderillero, at the same representation, seizing the lance of a picador at the moment of attack, supported himself with it, and sprang over the back and whole length of the bull. The beast was dumb-founded, could not understand where his victim had vanished.A multitude of such wonders of daring and dexterity are seen at each representation.One bull never gets more than three pairs of banderilles. When the deed is accomplished, a single trumpet is heard in the orchestra with a prolonged and sad note,—and the moment the most exciting and tragic in the spectacle approaches. All that was done hitherto was only preparation for this. Now a fourth act of the drama is played.On the arena comes out the “matador” himself,—thatis, the espada. He is dressed like the other participants in the play, only more elaborately and richly. His coat is all gold and tinsel: costly laces adorn his breast. He may be distinguished by this too,—that he comes out bareheaded always. His black hair, combed back carefully, ends on his shoulders in a small tail. In his left hand he holds a red cloth flag, in his right a long Toledo sword. The capeadors surround him as soldiers their chief, ready at all times to save him in a moment of danger, and he approaches the bull, collected, cool, but terrible and triumphant.In all the spectators the hearts are throbbing violently, and a moment of silence sets in.In Barcelona and Madrid I saw the four most eminent espadas in Spain, and in truth I admit, that besides their cool blood, dexterity, and training, they have a certain hypnotic power, which acts on the animal and fills him with mysterious alarm. The bull simply bearshimself differently before the espada from what he did before the previous participants in the play. It is not that he withdraws before him; on the contrary, he attacks him with greater insistence perhaps. But in former attacks, in addition to rage, there was evident a certain desire. He hunted, he scattered, he killed; he was as if convinced that the whole spectacle was for him, and that the question was only in this, that he should kill. Now, at sight of that cold, awful man with a sword in his hand, he convinces himself that death is there before him, that he must perish, that on that bloody sand the ghastly deed will be accomplished in some moments.This mental state of the beast is so evident that every man can divine it. Perhaps even this, by its tragic nature, becomes the charm of the spectacle. That mighty organism, simply seething with a superabundance of vitality, of desire, of strength, is unwilling to die, will not consent to die for anything in the world! anddeath, unavoidable, irresistible, is approaching; hence unspeakable sorrow, unspeakable despair, throbs through every movement of the bull. He hardly notices the capeadors, whom before he pursued with such venom; he attacks the espada himself, but he attacks with despair completely evident.The espada does not kill him at once, for that is not permitted by the rules of the play. He deceives the bull with movements of the flag, himself he pushes from the horns by turns slight and insignificant; he waits for the moment, withdraws, advances. Evidently he wishes to sate the public; now, this very instant, he’ll strike, now he lowers his sword again.The struggle extends over the whole arena; it glitters in the sun, is dark in the shade. In the circus applause is heard, now general, now single from the breast of some señorita who is unable to restrain her enthusiasm. At one moment bravos are thundering; at another, ifthe espada has retreated awkwardly or given a false blow, hissing rends the ear. The bull has now given some tens of blows with his horns,—always to the flag; the public are satisfied; here and there voices are crying: “Mata el toro! mata el toro!” (Kill the bull! kill the bull!)And now a flash comes so suddenly that the eye cannot follow it; then the group of fighters scatter, and in the neck of the bull, above the colored banderilles, is seen the red hilt of the sword. The blade has gone through the neck, and, buried two thirds of its length, is planted in the lungs of the beast.The espada is defenceless; the bull attacks yet, but he misleads him in the old fashion with the flag, he saves himself from the blows with half turns.Meanwhile it seems that people have gone wild in the circus. No longer shouts, but one bellow and howl are heard, around, from above to below. All are springing from theirseats. To the arena are flying bouquets, cigar-cases, hats, fans. The fight is approaching its end.A film is coming over the eyes of the bull; from his mouth are hanging stalactites of bloody saliva; his groan becomes hoarse. Night is embracing his head. The glitter and heat of the sun concern him no longer. He attacks yet, but as it were in a dream. It is darker and darker for him. At last he collects the remnant of his consciousness, backs to the paling, totters for a moment, kneels on his fore feet, drops on his hind ones, and begins to die.The espada looks at him no longer; he has his eyes turned to the spectators, from whom hats and cigar-cases are flying, thick as hail; he bows; capeadors throw back to the spectators their hats.Meanwhile a mysterious man dressed in black climbs over the paling in silence and puts a stiletto in the bull, where the neckbonemeets the skull; with a light movement he sinks it to the hilt and turns it.That is the blow of mercy, after which the head of the bull drops on its side.All the participants pass out. For a moment the arena is empty; on it are visible only the body of the bull and the eviscerated carcasses of four or five horses, now cold.But after a while rush in with great speed men with mules, splendidly harnessed in yellow and red; the men attach these mules to the bodies and draw them around so that the public may enjoy the sight once again, then with speed equally great they go out through the doors of the arena.But do not imagine that the spectacle is ended with one bull. After the first comes a second, after the second a third, and so on. In Madrid six bulls perish at a representation. In Barcelona, at the time of the fair, eight were killed.Do not think either that the public arewearied by the monotony of the fight. To begin with, the fight itself is varied with personal episodes caused by temperament, the greater or less rage of the bull, the greater or less skill of the men in their work; secondly, that public is never annoyed at the sight of blood and death.The “toreadores” (though in Spain no participant in the fight is called a toreador), thanks to their dexterity, rarely perish; but if that happens, the spectacle is considered as the more splendid, and the bull receives as much applause as the espada. Since, however, accidents happen to people sometimes, at every representation, besides the doctor, there is present a priest with the sacrament. That spiritual person is not among the audience, of course; but he waits in a special room, to which the wounded are borne in case of an accident.Whether in time, under the influence of civilization, bull-fights will be abandoned inSpain, it is difficult to say. The love of those fights is very deep in the nature of the Spanish people. The higher and intelligent ranks of society take part in them gladly. The defenders of these spectacles say that in substance they are nothing more than hazardous hunting, which answers to the knightly character of the nation. But hunting is an amusement, not a career; in hunting there is no audience,—only actors; there are no throngs of women, half fainting from delight at the spectacle of torment and death; finally, in hunting no one exposes his life for hire.Were I asked if the spectacle is beautiful, I should say yes; beautiful especially in its surroundings,—that sun, those shades, those thousands of fans at sight of which it seems as though a swarm of butterflies had settled on the seats of the circus, those eyes, those red moist lips. Beautiful is that incalculable quantity of warm and strong tones, that massof colors, gold, tinsel, that inflamed sand, from which heat is exhaling,—finally those proofs of bold daring, and that terror hanging over the play. All that is more beautiful by far than the streams of blood and the torn bellies of the horses.He, however, who knows these spectacles only from description, and sees them afterwards with his own eyes, cannot but think: what a wonderful people for whom the highest amusement and delight is the sight of a thing so awful, so absolute and inevitable as death. Whence comes that love? Is it simply a remnant of Middle-age cruelty; or is it that impulse which is roused in many persons, for instance at sight of a precipice, to go as near as possible to the brink, to touch that curtain, behind which begin the mystery and the pit?—that is a wonderful passion, which in certain souls becomes irresistible.Of the Spaniards it may be said, that inthe whole course of their history they have shown a tendency to extremes. Few people have been so merciless in warfare; none have turned a religion of love into such a gloomy and bloody worship; finally, no other nation amuses itself by playing with death.Other works by Henryk Sienkiewicz.——————With Fire and Sword. An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the original by Jeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00. Library edition, 2 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $3.00.The Deluge. An Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden, and Russia, a sequel to “With Fire and Sword,” translated from the Polish of Henryk Sienkiewicz by Jeremiah Curtin. With photogravure portrait of the author and map of the country at the period of the stories. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $3.00.Every one should read these remarkable books. They have received the highest praise everywhere. The distinguished writer, Charles Dudley Warner, in a review of “With Fire and Sword” in “Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” says that the author has given, in the character of Zagloba, a new type to the literature of fiction.Of these extraordinary romances it has been truly said thataction in the field has never before been described in any language with such a marvellous expression of energy. The comparisons which have suggested themselves to American critics couple the Polish novelist with such names as Scott, Dumas, Schiller, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Homer. The character of Zagloba has been described as “a curious and fascinating combination of Falstaff and Ulysses.”“The only modern romance with which ‘Fire and Sword’ can be compared,” says the “New York Tribune,” “is ‘The Three Musketeers.’”A new Historical Romance by Henryk Sienkiewicz,completing “With Fire and Sword”and “The Deluge.”Pan Michael. An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey. A sequel to “With Fire and Sword” and “The Deluge.” Translated byJeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00.This great historical romance completes the remarkable series of historical novels by Sienkiewicz, begun by “With Fire and Sword” and continued in “The Deluge.” These powerful works have been received everywhere with enthusiastic commendation, and the publication of the final story of the trilogy can only add to and continue their popularity.——————Without Dogma. A new novel by the author of“With Fire and Sword.”Without Dogma. A Novel of Modern Poland. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish byIza Young. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $1.50.A psychological novel of modern thought, and of great power. Its utter contrast to the author’s historical romances exhibits in a most striking manner the remarkable variety of his genius.A triumph of psychology.—Chicago Times.Belongs to a high order of fiction.—New York Times.A masterly piece of writing.—Pittsburg Bulletin.Intellectually the novel is a masterpiece.—Christian Union.Emphatically a human document.—The Boston Beacon.Displays the most remarkable genius.—Boston Home Journal.Both absorbing and instructive.—Boston Courier.Yanko the Musician and Other Stories.ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. White and gold. $1.25.This charming volume contains the following stories of two continents by the popular author of “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” etc.: I. Yanko the Musician; II. The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall; III. From the Diary of a Tutor in Poznan; IV. A Comedy of Errors, a Sketch of American Life; V. Bartek the Victor. “Yanko the Musician,” the initial story of the volumes, won the author his fame. In a review of Sienkiewicz in Blackwood’s Magazine, this beautiful story was fittingly described asa little poem in prose, absolutely perfect of its kind.“Bartek the Victor” is the story of a hero of the Franco-Prussian war. The Blackwood reviewer, writing of it, says: “The battle of Gravelotte is so admirably described that it is difficult to believe the writer not to have been actively engaged in it himself.”The stories are deeply intellectual.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.The tale of Yanko has wonderful pathos.—Chicago Herald.Exquisite in technical expression.—Boston Beacon.There is an outdoor freshness about these tales, and an impulse which, like Polish music, sets one’s blood a-tingling.—New Haven Register.They are full of powerful interest.—Boston Courier.The simple story of the lighthouse man is a little masterpiece.—New York Times.The admirers of the distinguished Polish novelist will not be disappointed in this volume of short stories, which is beautifully illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett, and daintily bound.—Boston Home Journal.These stories show that he touches nothing without mastery.—Christian Register.The title story is a strangely simple, pathetic story of a weakling child with a passion for music. The careful, loving treatment of the slight plot makes it, even in translation, a beautiful story.—Chicago Figaro.Five stories, all conceived with great power and written with masterly skill.—Boston Gazette.The Blind Musician.Translated from the Russian ofVladimir Korolenkoby Aline Delano. With Introduction by George Kennan, and illustrations by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.This unique and exquisite little book is less a story than a wonderfully faithful and delicate study in psychology. Though told in prose, it is in essence a poem. The volume is inedition de luxe, with dainty and charming bits of vignette illustration and a perfection of finish which gives refined pleasure to the touch as well as to the eye.—Boston Transcript.A Woman of Shawmut. A Romance of Colonial Times. (Boston, 1640.) ByEdmund Janes Carpenter. With 12 charming full-page illustrations and numerous chapter-headings from pen-and-ink drawings by F. T. Merrill. 16mo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, $1.25.Has qualities placing itamong the prose poems of recent literature.—Boston Journal.Clever pictures of old Boston.—Boston Transcript.A decidedly artistic specimen of bookmaking.—Boston Gazette.Carine, a Story of Sweden. ByLouis Énault. Translated from the French by Linda De Kowalewska. With thirty-nine Illustrations by Louis K. Harlow. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25. Uniform with “A Woman of Shawmut.”Swedish life in all its varying domestic aspects, as seen from intimacy with cultivated and refined people, isrevealed with exquisite fidelity; and the portrayal of Carine’s problematic character is elaborated in a veritably artistic manner.The whole story has the idyllic touch.—Boston Beacon.Lyrics and Legends. ByNora Perry, author of “After the Ball,” “A Flock of Girls and Their Friends,” etc. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.Many of the songs have already sung themselves into the hearts of those who love beautiful thought in beautiful form.—Public Opinion.——————LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers.

IN the town of Antelope, situated on a river of the same name in the State of Texas, every living person was hurrying to the circus. The inhabitants were interested all the more since from the foundation of the town that was the first time that a circus had come to it with dancing women, minstrels, and rope-walkers. The town was recent. Fifteen years before not only was there not one house there, but in all the region round about there were no white people. Moreover, on the forks of the river, on the very spot on which Antelope was situated, stood an Indian village calledChiavatta. That had been the capital of the Black Snakes, who in their time were such an eyesore to the neighboring settlements of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia, that these settlements could endure them no longer. True, the Indians were only defending their “land,” which the State government of Texas had guaranteed to them forever by the most solemn treaties; but what was that to the colonists of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia? It is true that they took from the Black Snakes earth, air, and water, but they brought in civilization in return; the redskins on their part showed gratitude in their own way,—that is, by taking scalps from the heads of the Germans. Such a state of things could not be suffered. Therefore, the settlers from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia assembled on a certain moonlight night to the number of four hundred, and, calling to their aid Mexicans from La Ora, fell upon sleeping Chiavatta.The triumph of the good cause was perfect. Chiavatta was burned to ashes, and the inhabitants, without regard to sex or age, were cut to pieces. Only small parties of warriors escaped who at that time were absent on a hunt. In the town itself not one soul was left living, mainly because the place lay in the forks of a river, which, having overflowed, as is usual in spring-time, surrounded the settlement with an impassable gulf of waters. But the same forked position which ruined the Indians, seemed good to the Germans. From the forks it was difficult to escape, but the place was defensible. Thanks to this thought, emigration set in at once from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia to the forks, in which in the twinkle of an eye, on the site of the wild Chiavatta, rose the civilized town of Antelope. In five years it numbered two thousand inhabitants.In the sixth year they discovered on the opposite bank of the forks a quicksilver mine;the working of this doubled the number of inhabitants. In the seventh year, by virtue of Lynch law, they hanged on the square of the town the last twelve warriors of the Black Snakes, who were caught in the neighboring “Forest of the Dead,”—and henceforth nothing remained to hinder the development of Antelope. Two “Tagblätter” (daily papers) were published in the town, and one “Montagsrevue” (Monday Review). A line of railroad united the place with Rio del Norte and San Antonio; on Opuncia Gasse (Opuncia Street) stood three schools, one of which was a high school. On the square where they had hanged the last Black Snakes, the citizens had erected a philanthropic institution. Every Sunday the pastors taught in the churches love of one’s neighbor, respect for the property of others, and similar virtues essential to a civilized society; a certain travelling lecturer read a dissertation “On the rights of nations.”The richest inhabitants had begun to talkof founding a university, to which the government of the State was to contribute. The citizens were prosperous. The trade in quicksilver, oranges, barley, and wine brought them famous profits. They were upright, thrifty, industrious, systematic, fat. Whoever might visit in later years Antelope with a population nearing twenty thousand would not recognize in the rich merchants of the place those pitiless warriors who fifteen years before had burned Chiavatta. The days passed for them in their stores, workshops, and offices; the evenings they spent in the beer-saloon “Golden Sun” on Rattlesnake Street. Listening to those sounds somewhat slow and guttural of “Mahlzeit, Mahlzeit!” (meal-time, meal-time), to those phlegmatic “Nun ja wissen Sie, Herr Müller, ist das aber möglich?” (Well, now, Herr Müller, but is that possible?), that clatter of goblets, that sound of beer dropping on the floor, that plash of overflowing foam; seeing that calm, that ness,those Philistine faces covered with fat, those fishy eyes,—a man might suppose himself in a beer-garden in Berlin or Monachium, and not on the ruins of Chiavatta. But in the town everything was “ganz gemüthlich” (altogether cosey), and no one had a thought of the ruins. That evening the whole population was hastening to the circus, first, because after hard labor recreation is as praiseworthy as it is agreeable; second, because the inhabitants were proud of its arrival. It is well-known that circuses do not come to every little place; hence the arrival of the Hon. M. Dean’s troupe had confirmed the greatness and magnificence of Antelope. There was, however, a third and perhaps the greatest cause of the general curiosity.No. Two of the programme read as follows:“A walk on a wire extended fifteen feet above the ground will be made to the accompaniment of music by the renowned gymnast Black Vulture,sachem of the Black Snakes, the last descendant of their chiefs, the last man of the tribe. 1. The walk; 2. Springs of the Antelope; 3. The death-dance and death-song.”If that “sachem” could rouse the highest interest in any place, it was surely in Antelope. Hon. M. Dean told at the “Golden Sun” how fifteen years before, on a journey to Santa Fé, he had found, on the Planos de Tornado, a dying old Indian with a boy ten years of age. The old man died from wounds and exhaustion; but before death he declared that the boy was the son of the slain sachem of the Black Snakes, and the heir to that office.The troupe sheltered the orphan, who in time became the first acrobat in it. It was only at the “Golden Sun,” however, that Hon. M. Dean learned first that Antelope was once Chiavatta, and that the famous rope-walker would exhibit himself on the grave of his fathers. This information brought the directorinto perfect humor; he might reckon now surely on agreat attraction, if only he knew how to bring out the effect skilfully. Of course the Philistines of Antelope hurried to the circus to show their wives and children, imported from Germany, the last of the Black Snakes,—those wives and children who in their lives had never seen Indians,—and to say: “See, we cut to pieces men just like that fellow, fifteen years ago!” “Ach, Herr Je!” It was pleasant to hear such an exclamation of wonder from the mouth of Amalchen, or little Fritz. Throughout the town, therefore, all were repeating unceasingly, “Sachem! Sachem!”From early morning the children were looking through cracks in the boards with curious and astonished faces; the older boys, more excited by the warrior spirit, marched home from school in terrible array, without knowing themselves why they did so.It is eight o’clock in the evening,—a wonderful night, clear, starry. A breeze from thesuburbs brings the odor of orange groves, which in the town is mingled with the odor of malt. In the circus there is a blaze of light. Immense pine-torches fixed before the principal gate are burning and smoking. The breeze waves the plumes of smoke and the bright flame which illuminates the dark outlines of the building. It is a freshly erected wooden pile, circular, with a pointed roof, and the starry flag of America on the summit of it. Before the gate are crowds who could not get tickets or had not the wherewithal to buy them; they look at the wagons of the troupe, and principally at the canvas curtain of the great Eastern door, on which is depicted a battle of the whites with the redskins. At moments when the curtain is drawn aside the bright refreshment-bar within is visible, with its hundreds of glasses on the table. Now they draw aside the curtain for good, and the throng enters. The empty passages between the seats begin to resound with the steps of people, and soon the dark moving mass fills all the placefrom the highest point to the floor. It is clear as day in the circus, for though they had not been able to bring in gas pipes, a gigantic chandelier formed of fifty kerosene lamps takes its place. In those gleams are visible the heads of the beer drinkers, fleshy, thrown back to give room to their chins, the youthful faces of women, and the pretty, wondering visages of children, whose eyes are almost coming out of their heads from curiosity. But all the spectators have the curious, self-satisfied look that is usual in an audience at a circus. Amid the hum of conversation interrupted by cries of “Frisch wasser! frisch wasser!” (fresh water), all await the beginning with impatience.At last a bell sounds, six grooms appear in shining boots, and stand in two ranks at the passage from the stables to the arena. Between those ranks a furious horse rushes forth, without bridle or saddle; and on him, as it were a bundle of muslin ribbons and tulle, is the dancer Lina. They begin manœuvring to the soundof music. Lina is so pretty that young Matilda, daughter of the brewer on Opuncia Gasse, alarmed at sight of her beauty, inclines to the ear of Floss, a young grocer from the same street, and asks in a whisper if he loves her yet. Meanwhile the horse gallops, and puffs like an engine; the clowns, a number of whom run after the dancer, crack whips, shout, and strike one another on the faces. The dancer vanishes like lightning; there is a storm of applause. What a splendid representation! But No. One passes quickly. No. Two is approaching. The word “Sachem! sachem!” flies from mouth to mouth among the spectators. No one gives a thought now to the clowns, who strike one another continually. In the midst of the apish movements of the clowns, the grooms bring lofty wooden trestles several yards in height, and put them on both sides of the arena. The band ceases to play Yankee Doodle, and gives the gloomy aria of the Commandore in Don Juan. They extend the wire from one trestle to theother. All at once a shower of red Bengal light falls at the passage, and covers the whole arena with a bloody glare. In that glare appears the terrible sachem, the last of the Black Snakes. But what is that? The sachem is not there, but the manager of the troupe himself, Hon. M. Dean. He bows to the public and raises his voice. He has the honor to beg “the kind and respected gentlemen, as well as the beautiful and no less respected ladies, to be unusually calm, give no applause, and remain perfectly still, for the chief is excited and wilder than usual.” These words produce no little impression, and—a wonderful thing!—those very citizens of Antelope who fifteen years before had destroyed Chiavatta, feel now some sort of very unpleasant sensation. A moment before, when the beautiful Lina was performing her springs on horseback, they were glad to be sitting so near, right there close to the parapet, whence they could see everything so well; and now they look with a certain longing for theupper seats of the circus, and in spite of all laws of physics, find that the lower they are the more stifling it is.But could that sachem remember? He was reared from years of childhood in the troupe of Hon. M. Dean, composed mainly of Germans. Had he not forgotten everything? This seemed probable. His environment and fifteen years of a circus career, the exhibition of his art, the winning of applause, must have exerted their influence.Chiavatta, Chiavatta! But they are Germans, they are on their own soil, and think no more of the fatherland thanbusinesspermits. Above all, man must eat and drink. This truth every Philistine must keep in mind, as well as the last of the Black Snakes.These meditations are interrupted suddenly by a certain wild whistle in the stables, and on the arena appears the sachem expected so anxiously. A brief murmur of the crowd is heard: “That is he, that is he!”—and then silence.But there is hissing from Bengal lights, which burn continually at the passage. All eyes are turned toward the chief, who in the circus will appear on the graves of his fathers. The Indian deserves really that men should look at him. He seems as haughty as a king. A mantle of white ermine—the mark of his chieftainship—covers his figure, which is lofty, and so wild that it brings to mind a badly tamed jaguar. He has a face as it were forged out of bronze, like the head of an eagle, and in his face there is a cold gleam; his eyes are genuinely Indian, calm, indifferent as it were,—and ominous. He glances around on the assembly, as if wishing to choose a victim. Moreover, he is armed from head to foot. On his head plumes are waving, at his girdle he has an ax and a knife for scalping; but in his hand, instead of a bow, he holds a long staff to preserve his balance when walking on the wire. Standing in the middle of the arena he gives forth on a sudden a war cry.Herr Gott!That is the cryof the Black Snakes. Those who massacred Chiavatta remember clearly that terrible howl,—and what is most wonderful, those who fifteen years before had no fear of one thousand such warriors are sweating now before one. But behold! the director approaches the chief and says something to him, as if to pacify and calm him. The wild beast feels the bit; the words have their influence, for after a time the sachem is swaying on the wire. With eyes fixed on the kerosene chandelier he advances. The wire bends much; at moments it is not visible, and then the Indian seems suspended in space. He is walking as it were upward; he advances, retreats, and again he advances, maintaining his balance. His extended arms covered with the mantle seem like great wings. He totters! he is falling!—No. A short interrupted bravo begins like a storm and stops. The face of the chief becomes more and more threatening. In his gaze fixed on the kerosene lamps is gleamingsome terrible light. There is alarm in the circus, but no one breaks the silence. Meanwhile the sachem approaches the end of the wire, stops; all at once a war-song bursts forth from his lips.A strange thing! The chief sings in German. But that is easy to understand. Surely he has forgotten the tongue of the Black Snakes. Moreover, no one notices that. All listen to the song, which rises and grows in volume. It is a half chant, a kind of half call, immeasurably plaintive, wild, and hoarse, full of sounds of attack.The following words were heard: “After the great yearly rains, five hundred warriors went from Chiavatta on the war-path or to the spring hunts; when they came back from war they brought scalps, when they came back from the hunt they brought flesh and the skins of buffaloes; their wives met them with gladness, and they danced in honor of the Great Spirit.“Chiavatta was happy. The women worked in the wigwams, the children grew up to be beautiful maidens, to be brave, fearless warriors. The warriors died on the field of glory, and went to the silver mountains to hunt with the ghosts of their fathers. Their axes were never dipped in the blood of women and children, for the warriors of Chiavatta were high-minded. Chiavatta was powerful; but pale-faces came from beyond distant waters and set fire to Chiavatta. The white warriors did not destroy the Black Snakes in battle, but they stole in as do jackals at night, they buried their knives in the bosoms of sleeping men, women, and children.“Now there is no Chiavatta. In place of it the white men have raised their stone wigwams. The murdered nation and ruined Chiavatta cry out for vengeance.”The voice of the chief became hoarse. Standing on the wire, he seemed a red archangel of vengeance floating above the headsof that throng of people. Evidently the director himself was afraid. A silence as of death settled down in the circus. The chief howled on,—“Of the whole nation there remained only one little child. He was weak and small, but he swore to the spirit of the earth that he would have vengeance,—that he would see the corpses of white men, women, and children, that he would see fire and blood.”The last words were changed into a bellow of fury. In the circus murmurs were heard like the sudden puffs of a whirlwind. Thousands of questions without answer came to men’s minds. What will he do, that mad tiger? What is he announcing? How will he accomplish his vengeance,—he alone? Will he stay here or flee? Will he defend himself, and how? “Was ist das, was ist das?” is heard in the terrified accents of women.All at once an unearthly howl was rent from the breast of the chief. The wire swayed violently,he sprang to the wooden trestle, standing at the chandelier, and raised his staff. A terrible thought flew like a flash through all heads. He will hurl around the lamps and fill the circus with torrents of flaming kerosene. From the breasts of the spectators one shout was just rising; but what do they see? From the arena the cry comes, “Stop! stop!” The chief is gone! Has he jumped down? He has gone through the entrance without firing the circus! Where is he? See, he is coming, coming a second time, panting, tired, terrible. In his hand is a pewter plate, and extending it to the spectators, he calls in a voice of entreaty: “Was gefällig für den letzten der Schwarzen Schlangen?” (What will you give to the last of the Black Snakes?)A stone falls from the breasts of the spectators. You see that was all in the programme, it was a trick of the director for effect. The dollars and half dollars came down in a shower. How could they say “No” to the last of theBlack Snakes, in Antelope reared on the ruins of Chiavatta? People have hearts.After the exhibition, the sachem drank beer and ate dumplings at the “Golden Sun.” His environment had exerted its influence, evidently. He found great popularity in Antelope, especially with the women,—there was even scandal about him.

IN the town of Antelope, situated on a river of the same name in the State of Texas, every living person was hurrying to the circus. The inhabitants were interested all the more since from the foundation of the town that was the first time that a circus had come to it with dancing women, minstrels, and rope-walkers. The town was recent. Fifteen years before not only was there not one house there, but in all the region round about there were no white people. Moreover, on the forks of the river, on the very spot on which Antelope was situated, stood an Indian village calledChiavatta. That had been the capital of the Black Snakes, who in their time were such an eyesore to the neighboring settlements of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia, that these settlements could endure them no longer. True, the Indians were only defending their “land,” which the State government of Texas had guaranteed to them forever by the most solemn treaties; but what was that to the colonists of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia? It is true that they took from the Black Snakes earth, air, and water, but they brought in civilization in return; the redskins on their part showed gratitude in their own way,—that is, by taking scalps from the heads of the Germans. Such a state of things could not be suffered. Therefore, the settlers from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia assembled on a certain moonlight night to the number of four hundred, and, calling to their aid Mexicans from La Ora, fell upon sleeping Chiavatta.

The triumph of the good cause was perfect. Chiavatta was burned to ashes, and the inhabitants, without regard to sex or age, were cut to pieces. Only small parties of warriors escaped who at that time were absent on a hunt. In the town itself not one soul was left living, mainly because the place lay in the forks of a river, which, having overflowed, as is usual in spring-time, surrounded the settlement with an impassable gulf of waters. But the same forked position which ruined the Indians, seemed good to the Germans. From the forks it was difficult to escape, but the place was defensible. Thanks to this thought, emigration set in at once from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia to the forks, in which in the twinkle of an eye, on the site of the wild Chiavatta, rose the civilized town of Antelope. In five years it numbered two thousand inhabitants.

In the sixth year they discovered on the opposite bank of the forks a quicksilver mine;the working of this doubled the number of inhabitants. In the seventh year, by virtue of Lynch law, they hanged on the square of the town the last twelve warriors of the Black Snakes, who were caught in the neighboring “Forest of the Dead,”—and henceforth nothing remained to hinder the development of Antelope. Two “Tagblätter” (daily papers) were published in the town, and one “Montagsrevue” (Monday Review). A line of railroad united the place with Rio del Norte and San Antonio; on Opuncia Gasse (Opuncia Street) stood three schools, one of which was a high school. On the square where they had hanged the last Black Snakes, the citizens had erected a philanthropic institution. Every Sunday the pastors taught in the churches love of one’s neighbor, respect for the property of others, and similar virtues essential to a civilized society; a certain travelling lecturer read a dissertation “On the rights of nations.”

The richest inhabitants had begun to talkof founding a university, to which the government of the State was to contribute. The citizens were prosperous. The trade in quicksilver, oranges, barley, and wine brought them famous profits. They were upright, thrifty, industrious, systematic, fat. Whoever might visit in later years Antelope with a population nearing twenty thousand would not recognize in the rich merchants of the place those pitiless warriors who fifteen years before had burned Chiavatta. The days passed for them in their stores, workshops, and offices; the evenings they spent in the beer-saloon “Golden Sun” on Rattlesnake Street. Listening to those sounds somewhat slow and guttural of “Mahlzeit, Mahlzeit!” (meal-time, meal-time), to those phlegmatic “Nun ja wissen Sie, Herr Müller, ist das aber möglich?” (Well, now, Herr Müller, but is that possible?), that clatter of goblets, that sound of beer dropping on the floor, that plash of overflowing foam; seeing that calm, that ness,those Philistine faces covered with fat, those fishy eyes,—a man might suppose himself in a beer-garden in Berlin or Monachium, and not on the ruins of Chiavatta. But in the town everything was “ganz gemüthlich” (altogether cosey), and no one had a thought of the ruins. That evening the whole population was hastening to the circus, first, because after hard labor recreation is as praiseworthy as it is agreeable; second, because the inhabitants were proud of its arrival. It is well-known that circuses do not come to every little place; hence the arrival of the Hon. M. Dean’s troupe had confirmed the greatness and magnificence of Antelope. There was, however, a third and perhaps the greatest cause of the general curiosity.

No. Two of the programme read as follows:

“A walk on a wire extended fifteen feet above the ground will be made to the accompaniment of music by the renowned gymnast Black Vulture,sachem of the Black Snakes, the last descendant of their chiefs, the last man of the tribe. 1. The walk; 2. Springs of the Antelope; 3. The death-dance and death-song.”

If that “sachem” could rouse the highest interest in any place, it was surely in Antelope. Hon. M. Dean told at the “Golden Sun” how fifteen years before, on a journey to Santa Fé, he had found, on the Planos de Tornado, a dying old Indian with a boy ten years of age. The old man died from wounds and exhaustion; but before death he declared that the boy was the son of the slain sachem of the Black Snakes, and the heir to that office.

The troupe sheltered the orphan, who in time became the first acrobat in it. It was only at the “Golden Sun,” however, that Hon. M. Dean learned first that Antelope was once Chiavatta, and that the famous rope-walker would exhibit himself on the grave of his fathers. This information brought the directorinto perfect humor; he might reckon now surely on agreat attraction, if only he knew how to bring out the effect skilfully. Of course the Philistines of Antelope hurried to the circus to show their wives and children, imported from Germany, the last of the Black Snakes,—those wives and children who in their lives had never seen Indians,—and to say: “See, we cut to pieces men just like that fellow, fifteen years ago!” “Ach, Herr Je!” It was pleasant to hear such an exclamation of wonder from the mouth of Amalchen, or little Fritz. Throughout the town, therefore, all were repeating unceasingly, “Sachem! Sachem!”

From early morning the children were looking through cracks in the boards with curious and astonished faces; the older boys, more excited by the warrior spirit, marched home from school in terrible array, without knowing themselves why they did so.

It is eight o’clock in the evening,—a wonderful night, clear, starry. A breeze from thesuburbs brings the odor of orange groves, which in the town is mingled with the odor of malt. In the circus there is a blaze of light. Immense pine-torches fixed before the principal gate are burning and smoking. The breeze waves the plumes of smoke and the bright flame which illuminates the dark outlines of the building. It is a freshly erected wooden pile, circular, with a pointed roof, and the starry flag of America on the summit of it. Before the gate are crowds who could not get tickets or had not the wherewithal to buy them; they look at the wagons of the troupe, and principally at the canvas curtain of the great Eastern door, on which is depicted a battle of the whites with the redskins. At moments when the curtain is drawn aside the bright refreshment-bar within is visible, with its hundreds of glasses on the table. Now they draw aside the curtain for good, and the throng enters. The empty passages between the seats begin to resound with the steps of people, and soon the dark moving mass fills all the placefrom the highest point to the floor. It is clear as day in the circus, for though they had not been able to bring in gas pipes, a gigantic chandelier formed of fifty kerosene lamps takes its place. In those gleams are visible the heads of the beer drinkers, fleshy, thrown back to give room to their chins, the youthful faces of women, and the pretty, wondering visages of children, whose eyes are almost coming out of their heads from curiosity. But all the spectators have the curious, self-satisfied look that is usual in an audience at a circus. Amid the hum of conversation interrupted by cries of “Frisch wasser! frisch wasser!” (fresh water), all await the beginning with impatience.

At last a bell sounds, six grooms appear in shining boots, and stand in two ranks at the passage from the stables to the arena. Between those ranks a furious horse rushes forth, without bridle or saddle; and on him, as it were a bundle of muslin ribbons and tulle, is the dancer Lina. They begin manœuvring to the soundof music. Lina is so pretty that young Matilda, daughter of the brewer on Opuncia Gasse, alarmed at sight of her beauty, inclines to the ear of Floss, a young grocer from the same street, and asks in a whisper if he loves her yet. Meanwhile the horse gallops, and puffs like an engine; the clowns, a number of whom run after the dancer, crack whips, shout, and strike one another on the faces. The dancer vanishes like lightning; there is a storm of applause. What a splendid representation! But No. One passes quickly. No. Two is approaching. The word “Sachem! sachem!” flies from mouth to mouth among the spectators. No one gives a thought now to the clowns, who strike one another continually. In the midst of the apish movements of the clowns, the grooms bring lofty wooden trestles several yards in height, and put them on both sides of the arena. The band ceases to play Yankee Doodle, and gives the gloomy aria of the Commandore in Don Juan. They extend the wire from one trestle to theother. All at once a shower of red Bengal light falls at the passage, and covers the whole arena with a bloody glare. In that glare appears the terrible sachem, the last of the Black Snakes. But what is that? The sachem is not there, but the manager of the troupe himself, Hon. M. Dean. He bows to the public and raises his voice. He has the honor to beg “the kind and respected gentlemen, as well as the beautiful and no less respected ladies, to be unusually calm, give no applause, and remain perfectly still, for the chief is excited and wilder than usual.” These words produce no little impression, and—a wonderful thing!—those very citizens of Antelope who fifteen years before had destroyed Chiavatta, feel now some sort of very unpleasant sensation. A moment before, when the beautiful Lina was performing her springs on horseback, they were glad to be sitting so near, right there close to the parapet, whence they could see everything so well; and now they look with a certain longing for theupper seats of the circus, and in spite of all laws of physics, find that the lower they are the more stifling it is.

But could that sachem remember? He was reared from years of childhood in the troupe of Hon. M. Dean, composed mainly of Germans. Had he not forgotten everything? This seemed probable. His environment and fifteen years of a circus career, the exhibition of his art, the winning of applause, must have exerted their influence.

Chiavatta, Chiavatta! But they are Germans, they are on their own soil, and think no more of the fatherland thanbusinesspermits. Above all, man must eat and drink. This truth every Philistine must keep in mind, as well as the last of the Black Snakes.

These meditations are interrupted suddenly by a certain wild whistle in the stables, and on the arena appears the sachem expected so anxiously. A brief murmur of the crowd is heard: “That is he, that is he!”—and then silence.But there is hissing from Bengal lights, which burn continually at the passage. All eyes are turned toward the chief, who in the circus will appear on the graves of his fathers. The Indian deserves really that men should look at him. He seems as haughty as a king. A mantle of white ermine—the mark of his chieftainship—covers his figure, which is lofty, and so wild that it brings to mind a badly tamed jaguar. He has a face as it were forged out of bronze, like the head of an eagle, and in his face there is a cold gleam; his eyes are genuinely Indian, calm, indifferent as it were,—and ominous. He glances around on the assembly, as if wishing to choose a victim. Moreover, he is armed from head to foot. On his head plumes are waving, at his girdle he has an ax and a knife for scalping; but in his hand, instead of a bow, he holds a long staff to preserve his balance when walking on the wire. Standing in the middle of the arena he gives forth on a sudden a war cry.Herr Gott!That is the cryof the Black Snakes. Those who massacred Chiavatta remember clearly that terrible howl,—and what is most wonderful, those who fifteen years before had no fear of one thousand such warriors are sweating now before one. But behold! the director approaches the chief and says something to him, as if to pacify and calm him. The wild beast feels the bit; the words have their influence, for after a time the sachem is swaying on the wire. With eyes fixed on the kerosene chandelier he advances. The wire bends much; at moments it is not visible, and then the Indian seems suspended in space. He is walking as it were upward; he advances, retreats, and again he advances, maintaining his balance. His extended arms covered with the mantle seem like great wings. He totters! he is falling!—No. A short interrupted bravo begins like a storm and stops. The face of the chief becomes more and more threatening. In his gaze fixed on the kerosene lamps is gleamingsome terrible light. There is alarm in the circus, but no one breaks the silence. Meanwhile the sachem approaches the end of the wire, stops; all at once a war-song bursts forth from his lips.

A strange thing! The chief sings in German. But that is easy to understand. Surely he has forgotten the tongue of the Black Snakes. Moreover, no one notices that. All listen to the song, which rises and grows in volume. It is a half chant, a kind of half call, immeasurably plaintive, wild, and hoarse, full of sounds of attack.

The following words were heard: “After the great yearly rains, five hundred warriors went from Chiavatta on the war-path or to the spring hunts; when they came back from war they brought scalps, when they came back from the hunt they brought flesh and the skins of buffaloes; their wives met them with gladness, and they danced in honor of the Great Spirit.

“Chiavatta was happy. The women worked in the wigwams, the children grew up to be beautiful maidens, to be brave, fearless warriors. The warriors died on the field of glory, and went to the silver mountains to hunt with the ghosts of their fathers. Their axes were never dipped in the blood of women and children, for the warriors of Chiavatta were high-minded. Chiavatta was powerful; but pale-faces came from beyond distant waters and set fire to Chiavatta. The white warriors did not destroy the Black Snakes in battle, but they stole in as do jackals at night, they buried their knives in the bosoms of sleeping men, women, and children.

“Now there is no Chiavatta. In place of it the white men have raised their stone wigwams. The murdered nation and ruined Chiavatta cry out for vengeance.”

The voice of the chief became hoarse. Standing on the wire, he seemed a red archangel of vengeance floating above the headsof that throng of people. Evidently the director himself was afraid. A silence as of death settled down in the circus. The chief howled on,—

“Of the whole nation there remained only one little child. He was weak and small, but he swore to the spirit of the earth that he would have vengeance,—that he would see the corpses of white men, women, and children, that he would see fire and blood.”

The last words were changed into a bellow of fury. In the circus murmurs were heard like the sudden puffs of a whirlwind. Thousands of questions without answer came to men’s minds. What will he do, that mad tiger? What is he announcing? How will he accomplish his vengeance,—he alone? Will he stay here or flee? Will he defend himself, and how? “Was ist das, was ist das?” is heard in the terrified accents of women.

All at once an unearthly howl was rent from the breast of the chief. The wire swayed violently,he sprang to the wooden trestle, standing at the chandelier, and raised his staff. A terrible thought flew like a flash through all heads. He will hurl around the lamps and fill the circus with torrents of flaming kerosene. From the breasts of the spectators one shout was just rising; but what do they see? From the arena the cry comes, “Stop! stop!” The chief is gone! Has he jumped down? He has gone through the entrance without firing the circus! Where is he? See, he is coming, coming a second time, panting, tired, terrible. In his hand is a pewter plate, and extending it to the spectators, he calls in a voice of entreaty: “Was gefällig für den letzten der Schwarzen Schlangen?” (What will you give to the last of the Black Snakes?)

A stone falls from the breasts of the spectators. You see that was all in the programme, it was a trick of the director for effect. The dollars and half dollars came down in a shower. How could they say “No” to the last of theBlack Snakes, in Antelope reared on the ruins of Chiavatta? People have hearts.

After the exhibition, the sachem drank beer and ate dumplings at the “Golden Sun.” His environment had exerted its influence, evidently. He found great popularity in Antelope, especially with the women,—there was even scandal about him.

[1]IN the little town of Lupiskory, after the funeral of widow Kaliksta, there were vespers, and after vespers old women, between ten and twenty in number, remained in the church to finish the hymn. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; but, since twilight comes in winter about that hour, it was dark in the church. The great altar, especially, was sunkin deep shade. Only two candles were burning at the ciborium; their flickering flames barely lighted a little the gilding of the doors, and the feet of Christ, hanging on a cross higher up. Those feet were pierced with an enormous nail, and the head of that nail seemed a great point gleaming on the altar.From other candles, just quenched, streaks of smoke were waving, filling the places behind the stalls with a purely church odor of wax.An old man and a small boy were busied before the steps of the altar. One was sweeping; the other was stretching the carpet on the steps. At moments, when the women ceased their singing, either the angry whisper of the old man was heard scolding the boy, or the hammering on the snow-covered windows of sparrows that were cold and hungry outside.The women were sitting on benches nearer the door. It would have been still darker had it not been for a few tallow candles, by the light of which those who had prayer-bookswere reading. One of those candles lighted well enough a banner fastened to the seat just beyond; the banner represented sinners surrounded by devils and flames. It was impossible to see what was painted on the other banners.The women were not singing; they were, rather, muttering with sleepy and tired voices a hymn in which these words were repeated continually,—“And when the hour of death comes,Gain for us, gain from Thy Son.”That church buried in shadow, the banners standing at the seats, the old women with their yellow faces, the lights flickering as if oppressed by the gloom,—all that was dismal beyond expression; nay, it was simply terrible. The mournful words of the song about death found there a fitting background.After a time the singing stopped. One of the women stood up at the seat, and began tosay, with a trembling voice, “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” And others responded, “The Lord is with Thee,” etc.; but since it was the day of Kaliksta’s funeral, each “Hail, Mary,” concluded with the words, “Lord, grant her eternal rest, and may endless light shine on her!”Marysia, the dead woman’s daughter, was sitting on a bench at the side of one of the old women. Just then the snow, soft and noiseless, was falling on the fresh grave of her mother; but the little girl was not ten years old yet, and seemed not to understand either her loss, or the pity which it might rouse in another. Her face, with large blue eyes, had in it the calmness of childhood, and even a certain careless repose. A little curiosity was evident,—nothing beyond that. Opening her mouth, she looked with great attention at the banner on which was painted hell with sinners; then she looked into the depth of the church, and afterward on the window at which the sparrows were hammering.Her eyes remained without thought. Meanwhile, the women began to mutter, sleepily, for the tenth time,—“And when the hour of death comes.”The little girl twisted the tresses of her light-colored hair, woven into two tiny braids not thicker than mice tails. She seemed tired; but now the old man occupied her attention. He went to the middle of the church, and began to pull a knotty rope hanging from the ceiling. He was ringing for the soul of Kaliksta, but he did this in a purely mechanical manner; he was thinking, evidently, of something else.That ringing was also a sign that vespers were ended. The women, after repeating for the last time the prayer for a happy death, went out on the square. One of them led Marysia by the hand.“But, Kulik,” asked another, “what will you do with the girl?”“What will I do? She will go to Leschyntsi. Voytek Margula will take her. But why do you ask me?”“What will she do in Leschyntsi?”“My dears, the same as here. Let her go to where she came from. Even at the mansion they will take in the orphan, and let her sleep in the kitchen.”Thus conversing, they passed through the square to the inn. Darkness was increasing every moment. It was wintry, calm; the sky was covered with clouds, the air filled with moisture and wet snow. Water was dropping from the roofs; on the square lay slush formed of snow and straw. The village, with wretched and tattered houses, looked as gloomy as the church. A few windows were gleaming with light; movement had ceased, but in the inn an organ was playing.It was playing to entice, for there was no one inside. The women entered, drank vodka; Kulik gave Marysia half a glass, saying,—“Drink! Thou art an orphan; thou wilt not meet kindness.”The word “orphan” brought the death of Kaliksta to the minds of the women. One of them said,—“To you, Kulik, drink! Oh, my dears, how thatparalus[paralysis] took her so that she couldn’t stir! She was cold before the priest came to hear her confession.”“I told her long ago,” said Kulik, “that she was spinning fine [near her end]. Last week she came to me. Said I, ‘Ah, better give Marysia to the mansion!’ But she said, ‘I have one little daughter, and I’ll not give her to any one.’ But she grew sorry, and began to sob, and then she went to the mayor to put her papers in order. She paid four zloty and six groshes. ‘But I do not begrudge it for my child,’ said she. My dears, but her eyes were staring, and after death they were staring still more. People wanted to close them, but could not. They say that after death, even, she was looking at her child.”“Let us drink half a quarter over this sorrow!”The organ was playing continually. The women began to be somewhat tender. Kulik repeated, with a voice of compassion, “Poor little thing! poor little thing!” and the second old woman called to mind the death of her late husband.“When he was dying,” said she, “he sighed so, oh, he sighed so, he sighed so!—” and drawling still more, her voice passed into a chant, from a chant into the tone of the organ, till at last she bent to one side, and in following the organ began to sing,—“He sighed, he sighed, he sighed,On that day he sighed.”All at once she fell to shedding hot tears, gave the organist six groshes, and drank some more vodka. Kulik, too, was excited by tenderness, but she turned it on Marysia,—“Remember, little orphan,” said she, “whatthe priest said when they were covering thy mother with snow, that there is a yamyol [an angel] above thee—” Here she stopped, looked around as if astonished, and then added, with unusual energy, “When I say that there is a yamyol, thereisa yamyol!”No one contradicted her. Marysia, blinking with her poor, simple eyes, looked attentively at the woman. Kulik spoke on,—“Thou art a little orphan, that is bad for thee! Over orphans there is a yamyol. He is good. Here are ten groshes for thee. Even if thou wert to start on foot to Leschyntsi, thou couldst go there, for he would guide thee.”The second old woman began to sing:“In the shade of his wings he will keep thee eternally,Under his pinions thou wilt lie without danger.”“Be quiet!” said Kulik. And then she turned again to the child,—“Knowest thou, stupid, who is above thee?”“A yamyol,” said, with a thin voice, the little girl.“Oh, thou little orphan, thou precious berry, thou little worm of the Lord! A yamyol with wings,” said she, with perfect tenderness, and seizing the child she pressed her to her honest, though tipsy, bosom.Marysia burst into weeping at once. Perhaps in her dark little head and in her heart, which knew not yet how to distinguish, there was roused some sort of perception at that moment.The innkeeper was sleeping most soundly behind the counter; on the candle-wicks mushrooms had grown; the man at the organ ceased to play, for what he saw amused him.Then there was silence, which was broken by the sudden plashing of horses’ feet before the door, and a voice calling to the horses,—“Prrr!”Voytek Margula walked into the inn with alighted lantern in his hand. He put down the lantern, began to slap his arms to warm them, and at last said to the innkeeper,—“Give half a quarter.”“Margula, thou chestnut,” cried Kulik, “thou wilt take the little girl to Leschyntsi.”“I’ll take her, for they told me to take her,” replied Margula.Then looking closely to the two women he added,—“But ye are as drunk as—”“May the plague choke thee,” retorted Kulik. “When I tell thee to be careful with the child, be careful. She is an orphan. Knowest thou, fool, who is above her?”Voytek did not see fit to answer that question, but determined evidently to raise another subject, and began,—“To all of you—”But he didn’t finish, for he drank the vodka, made a wry face, and putting down the glass with dissatisfaction, said,—“That’s pure water. Give me a second from another bottle.”The innkeeper poured from another. Margula twisted his face still more:“Ai! haven’t you arrack?”Evidently the same danger threatened Margula that threatened the women; but at that very time, in the mansion at Lupiskory, the landowner was preparing for one of the journals a long and exhaustive article, “On the right of landowners to sell liquor, this right being considered as the basis of society.” But Voytek co-operated only involuntarily to strengthen the basis of society, and that all the more because the sale here, though in a village, was really by the landowner.When he had co-operated five times in succession he forgot, it is true, his lantern, in which the light had gone out, but he took the half-sleeping little girl by the hand, and said,—“But come on, thou nightmare!”The women had fallen asleep in a corner, noone bade farewell to Marysia. The whole story was this: Her mother was in the graveyard and she was going to Leschyntsi.Voytek and the girl went out, sat in the sleigh. Voytek cried to the horses, and they moved on. At first the sleigh dragged heavily enough through the slush of the town, but they came out very soon to fields which were broad and white. Movement was easy then; the snow barely made a noise under the sleigh-runners. The horses snorted at times, at times came the barking of dogs from a distance.They went on and on. Voytek urged the horses, and sang through his nose, “Dog ear, remember thy promise.” But soon he grew silent, and began to “carry Jews” (nod). He nodded to the right, to the left. He dreamt that they were pounding him on the shoulders in Leschyntsi, because he had lost a basket of letters; so, from time to time, he was half awake, and repeated: “To all!” Marysia did not sleep, for she was cold. She looked with widelyopened eyes on the white fields, hidden from moment to moment by the dark shoulders of Margula. She thought also that her “mother was dead;” and thinking thus, she pictured to herself perfectly the pale and thin face of her mother with its staring eyes,—and she felt half consciously that that face was greatly beloved, that it was no longer in the world, and would never be in Leschyntsi again. She had seen with her own eyes how they covered it up in Lupiskory. Remembering this, she would have cried from grief; but as her knees and feet were chilled, she began to cry from cold.There was no frost, it is true, but the air was penetrating, as is usual during thaws. As to Voytek he had, at least in his stomach, a good supply of heat taken from the inn. The landowner at Lupiskory remarked justly: “That vodka warms in winter, and since it is the only consolation of our peasants, to deprive landowners of the sole power of consoling peasants is to deprive them of influence over thepopulace.” Voytek was so consoled at that moment that nothing could trouble him.Even this did not trouble him, that the horses when they came to the forest slackened their pace altogether, though the road there was better, and then walking to one side, the beasts turned over the sleigh into a ditch. He woke, it is true, but did not understand well what had happened.Marysia begun to push him.“Voytek!”“Why art thou croaking?”“The sleigh is turned over.”“A glass?” asked Voytek, and went to sleep for good.The little girl sat by the sleigh, crouching down as best she could, and remained there. But her face was soon chilled, so she began to push the sleeping man again.“Voytek!”He gave no answer.“Voytek, I want to go to the house.”And after a while again: “Voytek, I’ll walk there.”At last she started. It seemed to her that Leschyntsi was very near. She knew the road, too, for she had walked to church over it every Sunday with her mother. But now she had to go alone. In spite of the thaw the snow in the forest was deep, but the night was very clear. To the gleam from the snow was added light from the clouds, so that the road could be seen as in the daytime. Marysia, turning her eyes to the dark forest, could see tree-trunks very far away outlined distinctly, black, motionless, on the white ground; and she saw clearly also snow-drifts blown to the whole height of them. In the forest there was a certain immense calm, which gave solace to the child. On the branches was thick, frozen snow, and from it drops of water were trickling, striking with faint sound against the branches and twigs. But that was the only noise. All else around was still, white, silent, dumb.The wind was not blowing. The snowy branches were not stirring with the slightest movement. Everything was sleeping in the trance of winter. It might seem that the snowy covering on the earth, and the whole silent and shrouded forest, with the pale clouds in the heavens, were all a kind of white, lifeless unity. So it is in time of thaw. Marysia was the only living thing, moving like a little black speck amid these silent greatnesses. Kind, honest forest! Those drops, which the thawing ice let down, were tears, perhaps, over the orphan. The trees are so large, but also so compassionate, above the little creature. See, she is alone, so weak and poor, in the snow, in the night, in the forest, wading along trustfully, as if there is no danger.The clear night seems to care for her. When something so weak and helpless yields itself, trusts so perfectly in enormous power, there is a certain sweetness in the act. In that way all may be left to the will of God. The girl walkedrather long, and was wearied at last. The heavy boots, which were too large, hindered her; her small feet were going up and down in them continually. It was hard to drag out such big boots from the snow. Besides, she could not move her hands freely, for in one of them, closed rigidly, she held with all her strength those ten groshes which Kulik had given her. She feared to drop them in the snow. She began at times to cry aloud, and then she stopped suddenly, as if wishing to know if some one had heard her. Yes, the forest had heard her! The thawing ice sounded monotonously and somewhat sadly. Besides, maybe some one else had heard her. The child went more and more slowly. Could she go astray? How? The road, like a white, broad, winding ribbon, stretches into the distance, lies well marked between two walls of dark trees. An unconquerable drowsiness seized the little girl.She stepped aside and sat down under a tree. The lids dropped over her eyes. After atime, she thought that her mother was coming to her along the white road from the graveyard. No one was coming. Still, the child felt certain that some one must come. Who? A yamyol. Hadn’t old Kulik told her that a yamyol was above her? Marysia knew what a yamyol is. In her mother’s cottage there was one painted with a shield in his hand and with wings. He would come, surely. Somehow the ice began to sound more loudly. Maybe that is the noise of his wings, scattering drops more abundantly. Stop! Some one is coming really; the snow, though soft, sounds clearly; steps are coming, and coming quietly but quickly. The child raises her sleepy eyelids with confidence.“What is that?”Looking at the little girl intently is a gray three-cornered face with ears, standing upright,—ugly, terrible!

[1]

[1]

IN the little town of Lupiskory, after the funeral of widow Kaliksta, there were vespers, and after vespers old women, between ten and twenty in number, remained in the church to finish the hymn. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; but, since twilight comes in winter about that hour, it was dark in the church. The great altar, especially, was sunkin deep shade. Only two candles were burning at the ciborium; their flickering flames barely lighted a little the gilding of the doors, and the feet of Christ, hanging on a cross higher up. Those feet were pierced with an enormous nail, and the head of that nail seemed a great point gleaming on the altar.

From other candles, just quenched, streaks of smoke were waving, filling the places behind the stalls with a purely church odor of wax.

An old man and a small boy were busied before the steps of the altar. One was sweeping; the other was stretching the carpet on the steps. At moments, when the women ceased their singing, either the angry whisper of the old man was heard scolding the boy, or the hammering on the snow-covered windows of sparrows that were cold and hungry outside.

The women were sitting on benches nearer the door. It would have been still darker had it not been for a few tallow candles, by the light of which those who had prayer-bookswere reading. One of those candles lighted well enough a banner fastened to the seat just beyond; the banner represented sinners surrounded by devils and flames. It was impossible to see what was painted on the other banners.

The women were not singing; they were, rather, muttering with sleepy and tired voices a hymn in which these words were repeated continually,—

“And when the hour of death comes,Gain for us, gain from Thy Son.”

That church buried in shadow, the banners standing at the seats, the old women with their yellow faces, the lights flickering as if oppressed by the gloom,—all that was dismal beyond expression; nay, it was simply terrible. The mournful words of the song about death found there a fitting background.

After a time the singing stopped. One of the women stood up at the seat, and began tosay, with a trembling voice, “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” And others responded, “The Lord is with Thee,” etc.; but since it was the day of Kaliksta’s funeral, each “Hail, Mary,” concluded with the words, “Lord, grant her eternal rest, and may endless light shine on her!”

Marysia, the dead woman’s daughter, was sitting on a bench at the side of one of the old women. Just then the snow, soft and noiseless, was falling on the fresh grave of her mother; but the little girl was not ten years old yet, and seemed not to understand either her loss, or the pity which it might rouse in another. Her face, with large blue eyes, had in it the calmness of childhood, and even a certain careless repose. A little curiosity was evident,—nothing beyond that. Opening her mouth, she looked with great attention at the banner on which was painted hell with sinners; then she looked into the depth of the church, and afterward on the window at which the sparrows were hammering.

Her eyes remained without thought. Meanwhile, the women began to mutter, sleepily, for the tenth time,—

“And when the hour of death comes.”

The little girl twisted the tresses of her light-colored hair, woven into two tiny braids not thicker than mice tails. She seemed tired; but now the old man occupied her attention. He went to the middle of the church, and began to pull a knotty rope hanging from the ceiling. He was ringing for the soul of Kaliksta, but he did this in a purely mechanical manner; he was thinking, evidently, of something else.

That ringing was also a sign that vespers were ended. The women, after repeating for the last time the prayer for a happy death, went out on the square. One of them led Marysia by the hand.

“But, Kulik,” asked another, “what will you do with the girl?”

“What will I do? She will go to Leschyntsi. Voytek Margula will take her. But why do you ask me?”

“What will she do in Leschyntsi?”

“My dears, the same as here. Let her go to where she came from. Even at the mansion they will take in the orphan, and let her sleep in the kitchen.”

Thus conversing, they passed through the square to the inn. Darkness was increasing every moment. It was wintry, calm; the sky was covered with clouds, the air filled with moisture and wet snow. Water was dropping from the roofs; on the square lay slush formed of snow and straw. The village, with wretched and tattered houses, looked as gloomy as the church. A few windows were gleaming with light; movement had ceased, but in the inn an organ was playing.

It was playing to entice, for there was no one inside. The women entered, drank vodka; Kulik gave Marysia half a glass, saying,—

“Drink! Thou art an orphan; thou wilt not meet kindness.”

The word “orphan” brought the death of Kaliksta to the minds of the women. One of them said,—

“To you, Kulik, drink! Oh, my dears, how thatparalus[paralysis] took her so that she couldn’t stir! She was cold before the priest came to hear her confession.”

“I told her long ago,” said Kulik, “that she was spinning fine [near her end]. Last week she came to me. Said I, ‘Ah, better give Marysia to the mansion!’ But she said, ‘I have one little daughter, and I’ll not give her to any one.’ But she grew sorry, and began to sob, and then she went to the mayor to put her papers in order. She paid four zloty and six groshes. ‘But I do not begrudge it for my child,’ said she. My dears, but her eyes were staring, and after death they were staring still more. People wanted to close them, but could not. They say that after death, even, she was looking at her child.”

“Let us drink half a quarter over this sorrow!”

The organ was playing continually. The women began to be somewhat tender. Kulik repeated, with a voice of compassion, “Poor little thing! poor little thing!” and the second old woman called to mind the death of her late husband.

“When he was dying,” said she, “he sighed so, oh, he sighed so, he sighed so!—” and drawling still more, her voice passed into a chant, from a chant into the tone of the organ, till at last she bent to one side, and in following the organ began to sing,—

“He sighed, he sighed, he sighed,On that day he sighed.”

All at once she fell to shedding hot tears, gave the organist six groshes, and drank some more vodka. Kulik, too, was excited by tenderness, but she turned it on Marysia,—

“Remember, little orphan,” said she, “whatthe priest said when they were covering thy mother with snow, that there is a yamyol [an angel] above thee—” Here she stopped, looked around as if astonished, and then added, with unusual energy, “When I say that there is a yamyol, thereisa yamyol!”

No one contradicted her. Marysia, blinking with her poor, simple eyes, looked attentively at the woman. Kulik spoke on,—

“Thou art a little orphan, that is bad for thee! Over orphans there is a yamyol. He is good. Here are ten groshes for thee. Even if thou wert to start on foot to Leschyntsi, thou couldst go there, for he would guide thee.”

The second old woman began to sing:

“In the shade of his wings he will keep thee eternally,Under his pinions thou wilt lie without danger.”

“Be quiet!” said Kulik. And then she turned again to the child,—

“Knowest thou, stupid, who is above thee?”

“A yamyol,” said, with a thin voice, the little girl.

“Oh, thou little orphan, thou precious berry, thou little worm of the Lord! A yamyol with wings,” said she, with perfect tenderness, and seizing the child she pressed her to her honest, though tipsy, bosom.

Marysia burst into weeping at once. Perhaps in her dark little head and in her heart, which knew not yet how to distinguish, there was roused some sort of perception at that moment.

The innkeeper was sleeping most soundly behind the counter; on the candle-wicks mushrooms had grown; the man at the organ ceased to play, for what he saw amused him.

Then there was silence, which was broken by the sudden plashing of horses’ feet before the door, and a voice calling to the horses,—

“Prrr!”

Voytek Margula walked into the inn with alighted lantern in his hand. He put down the lantern, began to slap his arms to warm them, and at last said to the innkeeper,—

“Give half a quarter.”

“Margula, thou chestnut,” cried Kulik, “thou wilt take the little girl to Leschyntsi.”

“I’ll take her, for they told me to take her,” replied Margula.

Then looking closely to the two women he added,—

“But ye are as drunk as—”

“May the plague choke thee,” retorted Kulik. “When I tell thee to be careful with the child, be careful. She is an orphan. Knowest thou, fool, who is above her?”

Voytek did not see fit to answer that question, but determined evidently to raise another subject, and began,—

“To all of you—”

But he didn’t finish, for he drank the vodka, made a wry face, and putting down the glass with dissatisfaction, said,—

“That’s pure water. Give me a second from another bottle.”

The innkeeper poured from another. Margula twisted his face still more:

“Ai! haven’t you arrack?”

Evidently the same danger threatened Margula that threatened the women; but at that very time, in the mansion at Lupiskory, the landowner was preparing for one of the journals a long and exhaustive article, “On the right of landowners to sell liquor, this right being considered as the basis of society.” But Voytek co-operated only involuntarily to strengthen the basis of society, and that all the more because the sale here, though in a village, was really by the landowner.

When he had co-operated five times in succession he forgot, it is true, his lantern, in which the light had gone out, but he took the half-sleeping little girl by the hand, and said,—

“But come on, thou nightmare!”

The women had fallen asleep in a corner, noone bade farewell to Marysia. The whole story was this: Her mother was in the graveyard and she was going to Leschyntsi.

Voytek and the girl went out, sat in the sleigh. Voytek cried to the horses, and they moved on. At first the sleigh dragged heavily enough through the slush of the town, but they came out very soon to fields which were broad and white. Movement was easy then; the snow barely made a noise under the sleigh-runners. The horses snorted at times, at times came the barking of dogs from a distance.

They went on and on. Voytek urged the horses, and sang through his nose, “Dog ear, remember thy promise.” But soon he grew silent, and began to “carry Jews” (nod). He nodded to the right, to the left. He dreamt that they were pounding him on the shoulders in Leschyntsi, because he had lost a basket of letters; so, from time to time, he was half awake, and repeated: “To all!” Marysia did not sleep, for she was cold. She looked with widelyopened eyes on the white fields, hidden from moment to moment by the dark shoulders of Margula. She thought also that her “mother was dead;” and thinking thus, she pictured to herself perfectly the pale and thin face of her mother with its staring eyes,—and she felt half consciously that that face was greatly beloved, that it was no longer in the world, and would never be in Leschyntsi again. She had seen with her own eyes how they covered it up in Lupiskory. Remembering this, she would have cried from grief; but as her knees and feet were chilled, she began to cry from cold.

There was no frost, it is true, but the air was penetrating, as is usual during thaws. As to Voytek he had, at least in his stomach, a good supply of heat taken from the inn. The landowner at Lupiskory remarked justly: “That vodka warms in winter, and since it is the only consolation of our peasants, to deprive landowners of the sole power of consoling peasants is to deprive them of influence over thepopulace.” Voytek was so consoled at that moment that nothing could trouble him.

Even this did not trouble him, that the horses when they came to the forest slackened their pace altogether, though the road there was better, and then walking to one side, the beasts turned over the sleigh into a ditch. He woke, it is true, but did not understand well what had happened.

Marysia begun to push him.

“Voytek!”

“Why art thou croaking?”

“The sleigh is turned over.”

“A glass?” asked Voytek, and went to sleep for good.

The little girl sat by the sleigh, crouching down as best she could, and remained there. But her face was soon chilled, so she began to push the sleeping man again.

“Voytek!”

He gave no answer.

“Voytek, I want to go to the house.”

And after a while again: “Voytek, I’ll walk there.”

At last she started. It seemed to her that Leschyntsi was very near. She knew the road, too, for she had walked to church over it every Sunday with her mother. But now she had to go alone. In spite of the thaw the snow in the forest was deep, but the night was very clear. To the gleam from the snow was added light from the clouds, so that the road could be seen as in the daytime. Marysia, turning her eyes to the dark forest, could see tree-trunks very far away outlined distinctly, black, motionless, on the white ground; and she saw clearly also snow-drifts blown to the whole height of them. In the forest there was a certain immense calm, which gave solace to the child. On the branches was thick, frozen snow, and from it drops of water were trickling, striking with faint sound against the branches and twigs. But that was the only noise. All else around was still, white, silent, dumb.

The wind was not blowing. The snowy branches were not stirring with the slightest movement. Everything was sleeping in the trance of winter. It might seem that the snowy covering on the earth, and the whole silent and shrouded forest, with the pale clouds in the heavens, were all a kind of white, lifeless unity. So it is in time of thaw. Marysia was the only living thing, moving like a little black speck amid these silent greatnesses. Kind, honest forest! Those drops, which the thawing ice let down, were tears, perhaps, over the orphan. The trees are so large, but also so compassionate, above the little creature. See, she is alone, so weak and poor, in the snow, in the night, in the forest, wading along trustfully, as if there is no danger.

The clear night seems to care for her. When something so weak and helpless yields itself, trusts so perfectly in enormous power, there is a certain sweetness in the act. In that way all may be left to the will of God. The girl walkedrather long, and was wearied at last. The heavy boots, which were too large, hindered her; her small feet were going up and down in them continually. It was hard to drag out such big boots from the snow. Besides, she could not move her hands freely, for in one of them, closed rigidly, she held with all her strength those ten groshes which Kulik had given her. She feared to drop them in the snow. She began at times to cry aloud, and then she stopped suddenly, as if wishing to know if some one had heard her. Yes, the forest had heard her! The thawing ice sounded monotonously and somewhat sadly. Besides, maybe some one else had heard her. The child went more and more slowly. Could she go astray? How? The road, like a white, broad, winding ribbon, stretches into the distance, lies well marked between two walls of dark trees. An unconquerable drowsiness seized the little girl.

She stepped aside and sat down under a tree. The lids dropped over her eyes. After atime, she thought that her mother was coming to her along the white road from the graveyard. No one was coming. Still, the child felt certain that some one must come. Who? A yamyol. Hadn’t old Kulik told her that a yamyol was above her? Marysia knew what a yamyol is. In her mother’s cottage there was one painted with a shield in his hand and with wings. He would come, surely. Somehow the ice began to sound more loudly. Maybe that is the noise of his wings, scattering drops more abundantly. Stop! Some one is coming really; the snow, though soft, sounds clearly; steps are coming, and coming quietly but quickly. The child raises her sleepy eyelids with confidence.

“What is that?”

Looking at the little girl intently is a gray three-cornered face with ears, standing upright,—ugly, terrible!

IT is Sunday! Great posters, affixed for a number of days to the corners of Puerta del Sol, Calle Alcala, and all streets on which there was considerable movement, announce to the city that to-day, “Si el tiempo lo permite” (if the weather permits), will take place bull-fight XVI., in which Cara-Ancha Lagartijo and the renowned Frascuello are to appear as “espadas” (swords).Well, the weather permits. There was rain in the morning; but about ten o’clock the wind broke the clouds, gathered them into heaps, and drove them away off somewhere in the direction of the Escurial. Now the wind itself has ceased; the sky as far as the eye can reach is blue, and over the Puerta del Sol a bright sun is shining,—such a Madrid sun, which not only warms, not only burns, but almost bites.Movement in the city is increasing, and on people’s faces satisfaction is evident.Two o’clock.The square of the Puerta del Sol is emptying gradually, but crowds of people are advancing through the Calle Alcala toward the Prado. In the middle is flowing a river of carriages and vehicles. All that line of equipages is moving very slowly, for on the sidewalks there is not room enough for pedestrians, many of whom are walking along the sides of the streets and close to the carriages. The police, on white horses and in showy uniforms and three-cornered hats, preserve order.It is Sunday, that is evident, and an afternoon hour; the toilets are carefully made, the attire is holiday. It is evident also that the crowds are going to some curious spectacle. Unfortunately the throng is not at all many-colored; no national costumes are visible,—neither the short coats, yellow kerchiefsá la contrabandista, with one end dropping down to the shoulder, nor the round Biscay hats, nor girdles, nor the Catalan knives behind the girdles.Those things may be seen yet in the neighborhood of Granada, Seville, and Cordova; but in Madrid, especially on holidays, the cosmopolitan frock is predominant. Only at times do you see a black mantilla pinned to a high comb, and under the mantilla eyes blacker still.In general faces are dark, glances quick, speech loud. Gesticulation is not so passionate as in Italy, where when a man laughs he squirms like a snake, and when he is angry he gnaws off the top of his hat; still, it is energeticand lively. Faces have well-defined features and a resolute look. It is easy to understand that even in amusement these people retain their special and definite character.However, they are a people who on weekdays are full of sedateness, bordering on sloth, sparing of words, and collected. Sunday enlivens them, as does also the hope of seeing a bloody spectacle.Let us cut across the Prado and enter an alley leading to the circus.The crowd is becoming still denser. Here and there shouts are rising, the people applauding single members of the company, who are going each by himself to the circus.Here is an omnibus filled with “capeadors,” that is, partakers in the fight, whose whole defence is red capes with which they mislead and irritate the bull. Through the windows are visible black heads with pigtails, and wearing three-cornered hats. The coats of various colors worn by the capeadors are embroidered withgold and silver tinsel. These capeadors ride in an omnibus, for the modest pay which they get for their perilous service does not permit a more showy conveyance.Somewhat farther, three mounted “picadors” push their way through the people. The sun plays on their broad-brimmed white hats. They are athletic in build, but bony and lean. Their shaven faces have a stern, and, as it were, concentrated look. They are sitting on very high wooden saddles, hence they are perfectly visible over the crowd. Each of them holds in his hand a lance, with a wooden ball at the end of it, from which is projecting an iron point not above half an inch long. The picador cannot kill a bull with a weapon like that,—he can only pierce him or stop him for a moment; but in the last case he must have in his arm the strength of a giant.Looking at these men, I remember involuntarily Doré’s illustrations to “Don Quixote.” In fact, each of these horsemen might serve as amodel for the knight “of the rueful visage.” That lean silhouette, outlined firmly on the sky, high above the heads of the multitude, the lance standing upright, and that bare-boned horse under the rider, those purely Gothic outlines of living things,—all answer perfectly to the conception which we form of the knight of La Mancha, when we read the immortal work of Cervantes.But, the picadors pass us, and urging apart the crowd slowly, push forward considerably. Now only three lances are visible, three hats, and three coats embroidered on the shoulders. New men ride up, as incalculably similar to the first as if some mill were making picadors for all Spain on one pattern. There is a difference only in the color of the horses, which, however, are equally lean.Our eyes turn now to the long row of carriages. Some are drawn by mules, but mules so large, sleek, and beautiful that, in spite of the long ears of the animals, the turn-out does notseem ridiculous. Here and there may be seen also Andalusian horses with powerful backs, arched necks, and curved faces. Such may be seen in the pictures of battle-painters of the seventeenth century.In the carriages are sitting the flower of Madrid society. The dresses are black, there is very black lace on the parasols, on the fans, and on the heads of ladies; black hair trimmed in forelocks, from under which are glancing eyes, as it were, of the lava of Vesuvius. Mourning colors, importance, and powder are the main traits of that society.The faces of old and of young ladies also are covered with powder, all of them are equally frigid and pale. A great pity! Were it not for such a vile custom, their complexion would have that magnificent warm tone given by southern blood and a southern sun, and which may be admired in faces painted by Fortuni.In the front seats of the carriages are men dressed with an elegance somewhat exaggerated;they have a constrained and too holiday air,—in other words, they cannot wear fine garments with that free inattention which characterizes the higher society of France.But the walls of the circus are outlined before us with growing distinctness. There is nothing especial in the building: an enormous pile reared expressly to give seats to some tens of thousands of people,—that is the whole plan of it.Most curious is the movement near the walls. Round about, it is black from carriages, equipages, and heads of people. Towering above this dark mass, here and there, is a horseman, a policeman, or a picador in colors as brilliant as a poppy full blown.The throng sways, opens, closes, raises its voice; coachmen shout; still louder shout boys selling handbills. These boys squeeze themselves in at all points among footmen and horsemen; they are on the steps of carriages and between the wheels; some climb up on the buttresses of the circus; some areon the stone columns which mark the way for the carriages. Their curly hair, their gleaming eyes, their expressive features, dark faces, and torn shirts open in the bosom, remind me of our gypsies, and of boys in Murillo’s pictures. Besides programmes some of them sell whistles. Farther on, among the crowds, are fruit-venders; water-sellers with bronze kegs on their shoulders; in one place are flower dealers; in another is heard the sound of a guitar played by an old blind woman led by a little girl.Movement, uproar, laughter; fans are fluttering everywhere as if they were wings of thousands of birds; the sun pours down white light in torrents from a spotless sky of dense blue.Suddenly and from all sides are heard cries of “mira, mira!” (look, look!) After a while these cries are turned into a roar of applause, which like real thunder flies from one extreme to another; now it is quiet, now it rises and extends around the whole circus.What has happened? Surely the queen is approaching, and with her the court?No! near by is heard “eviva Frascuello!” That is the most famous espada, who is coming for laurels and applause.All eyes turn to him, and the whole throng of women push toward his carriage. The air is gleaming with flowers thrown by their hands to the feet of that favorite, that hero of every dream and imagining, that “pearl of Spain.” They greet him the more warmly because he has just returned from a trip to Barcelona, where during the exhibition he astonished all barbarous Europe with thrusts of his sword; now he appears again in his beloved Madrid, more glorious, greater,—a genuine new Cid el Campeador.Let us push through the crowd to look at the hero. First, what a carriage, what horses! More beautiful there are not in the whole of Castile. On white satin cushions sits, or reclines, we should say, a man whose age it isdifficult to determine, for his face is shaven most carefully. He is dressed in a coat of pale lily-colored satin, and knee-breeches of similar material trimmed with lace. His coat and the side seams of his breeches are glittering and sparkling from splendid embroidery, from spangles of gold and silver shining like diamonds in the sun. The most delicate laces ornament his breast. His legs, clothed in rose-colored silk stockings, he holds crossed carelessly on the front seat,—the very first athlete in the hippodrome at Paris might envy him those calves.Madrid is vain of those calves,—and in truth she has reason.The great man leans with one hand on the red hilt of his Catalan blade; with the other he greets his admirers of both sexes kindly. His black hair, combed to his poll, is tied behind in a small roll, from beneath which creeps forth a short tress. That style of hair-dressing and the shaven face make him somewhat like awoman, and he reminds one besides of some actor from one of the provinces; taken generally, his face is not distinguished by intelligence, a quality which in his career would not be a hindrance, though not needed in any way.The crowds enter the circus, and we enter with them.Now we are in the interior. It differs from other interiors of circuses only in size and in this,—that the seats are of stone. Highest in the circle are the boxes; of these one in velvet and in gold fringe is the royal box. If no one from the court is present at the spectacle this box is occupied by the prefect of the city. Around are seated the aristocracy and high officials; opposite the royal box, on the other side of the circus, is the orchestra. Half-way up in the circus is a row of arm-chairs; stone steps form the rest of the seats. Below, around the arena, stretches a wooden paling the height of a man’s shoulder. Between this paling and the first row of seats, which is raised considerablyhigher for the safety of the spectators, is a narrow corridor, in which the combatants take refuge, in case the bull threatens them too greatly.One-half of the circus is buried in shadow, the other is deluged with sunlight. On every ticket, near the number of the seat, is printed “sombra” (shadow) or “sol” (sun). Evidently the tickets “sombra” cost considerably more. It is difficult to imagine how those who have “sol” tickets can endure to sit in such an atmosphere a number of hours and on those heated stone steps, with such a sun above their heads.The places are all filled, however. Clearly the love of a bloody spectacle surpasses the fear of being roasted alive.In northern countries the contrast between light and shadow is not so great as in Spain; in the north we find always a kind of half shade, half light, certain transition tones; here the boundary is cut off in black with a firm linewithout any transitions. In the illuminated half the sand seems to burn; people’s faces and dresses are blazing; eyes are blinking under the excess of glare; it is simply an abyss of light, full of heat, in which everything is sparkling and gleaming excessively, every color is intensified tenfold. On the other hand, the shaded half seems cut off by some transparent curtain, woven from the darkness of night. Every man who passes from the light to the shade, makes on us the impression of a candle put out on a sudden.At the moment when we enter, the arena is crowded with people. Before the spectacle the inhabitants of Madrid, male and female, must tread that sand on which the bloody drama is soon to be played. It seems to them that thus they take direct part, as it were, in the struggle. Numerous groups of men are standing, lighting their cigarettes and discoursing vivaciously concerning the merits of bulls from this herd or that one. Small boys tease and pursueone another. I see how one puts under the eyes of another a bit of red cloth, treating him just as a “capeador” treats a bull. The boy endures this a while patiently; at last he rolls his eyes fiercely and runs at his opponent. The opponent deceives him adroitly with motions of a cape, exactly again as the capeador does the bull. The little fellows find their spectators, who urge them on with applause.Along the paling pass venders of oranges proclaiming the merits of their merchandise. This traffic is carried on through the air. The vender throws, at request, with unerring dexterity, an orange, even to the highest row; in the same way he receives a copper piece, which he catches with one hand before it touches the earth. Loud dialogues, laughter, calls, noise, rustling of fans, the movement of spectators as they arrive,—all taken together form a picture with a fulness of life of which no other spectacle can give an idea.All at once from the orchestra come soundsof trumpets and drums. At that signal the people on the arena fly to their places with as much haste as if danger were threatening their lives. There is a crush. But after a while all are seated. Around, it is just black: people are shoulder to shoulder, head to head. In the centre remains the arena empty, deluged with sunlight.Opposite the royal box a gate in the paling is thrown open, and in ride two “alguazils.” Their horses white, with manes and tails plaited, are as splendid as if taken from pictures. The riders themselves, wearing black velvet caps with white feathers, and doublets of similar material, with lace collars, bring to mind the incomparable canvases of Velasquez, which may be admired in the Museo del Prado. It seems to us that we are transferred to the times of knighthood long past. Both horsemen are handsome, both of showy form. They ride stirrup to stirrup, ride slowly around the whole arena to convince themselves that no incautiousspectator has remained on it. At last they halt before the royal box, and with a movement full of grace uncover their heads with respect.Whoso is in a circus for the first time will be filled with admiration at the stately, almost middle-age, ceremonial, by the apparel and dignity of the horsemen. The alguazils seem like two noble heralds, giving homage to a monarch before the beginning of a tournament. It is, in fact, a prayer for permission to open the spectacle, and at the same time a request for the key of the stables in which the bulls are confined. After a while the key is let down from the box on a gold string; the alguazils incline once again and ride away. Evidently this is a mere ceremonial, for the spectacle was authorized previously, and the bulls are confined by simple iron bolts. But the ceremony is beautiful, and they never omit it.In a few minutes after the alguazils have vanished, the widest gate is thrown open, and a whole company enters. At the head of itride the same two alguazils whom we saw before the royal box; after them advance a rank of capeadors; after the capeadors come “banderilleros,” and the procession is concluded by picadors. This entire party is shining with all the colors of the rainbow, gleaming from tinsel, gold, silver, and satins of various colors. They come out from the dark side to the sunlighted arena, dive into the glittering light, and bloom like flowers. The eye cannot delight itself sufficiently with the many colors of those spots on the golden sand.Having reached the centre, they scatter on a sudden, like a flock of butterflies. The picadors dispose themselves around at the paling, and each one drawing his lance from its rest, grasps it firmly in his right hand; the men on foot form picturesque groups; they stand in postures full of indifference, waiting for the bull.This is perhaps the most beautiful moment of the spectacle, full of originality, so thoroughlySpanish that regret at not being a painter comes on a man in spite of himself. How much color, what sunlight might be transferred from the palette to the canvas!Soon blood will be flowing on that sand. In the circus it is as still as in time of sowing poppy seed,—it is barely possible to hear the sound of fans, which move only in as much as the hands holding them quiver from impatience. All eyes are turned to the door through which the bull will rush forth. Time now is counted by seconds.Suddenly the shrill, and at the same time the mournful, sound of a trumpet is heard in the orchestra; the door of the stable opens with a crash, and the bull bursts into the arena, like a thunderbolt.That is a lordly beast, with a powerful and splendid neck, a head comparatively short, horns enormous and turned forward. Our heavy breeder gives a poor idea of him; for though the Spanish bull is not the equal of oursin bulk of body, he surpasses him in strength, and, above all, in activity. At the first cast of the eye you recognize a beast reared wild in the midst of great spaces; consequently with all his strength he can move almost as swiftly as a deer. It is just this which makes him dangerous in an unheard of degree. His forelegs are a little higher than his hind ones; this is usual with cattle of mountain origin. In fact, the bulls of the circus are recruited especially from the herds in the Sierra Morena. Their color is for the greater part black, rarely reddish or pied. The hair is short, and glossy as satin; only the neck is covered somewhat with longer and curly hair.After he has burst into the arena, the bull slackens his pace toward the centre, looks with bloodshot eyes to the right, to the left,—but this lasts barely two seconds; he sees a group of capeadors; he lowers his head to the ground, and hurls himself on them at random.The capeadors scatter, like a flock of sparrowsat which some man has fired small-shot. Holding behind them red capes, they circle now in the arena, with a swiftness that makes the head dizzy; they are everywhere; they glitter to the right, to the left; they are in the middle of the arena, at the paling, before the eyes of the bull, in front, behind. The red capes flutter in the air, like banners torn by the wind.The bull scatters the capeadors in every direction; with lightning-like movements he chases one,—another thrusts a red cape under his very eyes; the bull leaves the first victim to run after a second, but before he can turn, some third one steps up. The bull rushes at that one! Distance between them decreases, the horns of the bull seem to touch the shoulder of the capeador; another twinkle of an eye and he will be nailed to the paling,—but meanwhile the man touches the top of the paling with his hand, and vanishes as if he had dropped through the earth.What has happened? The capeador has sprung into the passage extending between the paling and the first row of seats.The bull chooses another man; but before he has moved from his tracks the first capeador thrusts out his head from behind the paling, like a red Indian stealing to the farm of a settler, and springs to the arena again. The bull pursues more and more stubbornly those unattainable enemies, who vanish before his very horns; at last he knows where they are hidden. He collects all his strength, anger gives him speed, and he springs like a hunting-horse over the paling, certain that he will crush his foes this time like worms.But at that very moment they hurl themselves back to the arena with the agility of chimpanzees, and the bull runs along the empty passage, seeing no one before him.The entire first row of spectators incline through the barrier, then strike from above at the bull with canes, fans, and parasols. Thepublic are growing excited. A bull that springs over the paling recommends himself favorably. When people in the first row applaud him with all their might, those in the upper rows clap their hands, crying, “Bravo el toro! muy buen! Bravo el toro!” (Bravo the bull! Very well, bravo the bull!)Meanwhile he comes to an open door and runs out again to the arena. On the opposite side of it two capeadors are sitting on a step extending around the foot of the paling, and are conversing without the slightest anxiety. The bull rushes on them at once; he is in the middle of the arena,—and they sit on without stopping their talk; he is ten steps away,—they continue sitting as if they had not seen him; he is five steps away,—they are still talking. Cries of alarm are heard here and there in the circus; before his very horns the two daring fellows spring, one to the right, the other to the left. The bull’s horns strike the paling with a heavy blow. A storm of handclappingbreaks out in the circus, and at that very moment these and other capeadors surround the bull again and provoke him with red capes.His madness passes now into fury: he hurls himself forward, rushes, turns on his tracks; every moment his horns give a thrust, every moment it seems that no human power can wrest this or that man from death. Still the horns cut nothing but air, and the red capes are glittering on all sides; at times one of them falls to the ground, and that second the bull in his rage drives almost all of it into the sand. But that is not enough for him,—he must search out some victim, and reach him at all costs.Hence, with a deep bellow and with bloodshot eyes he starts to run forward at random, but halts on a sudden; a new sight strikes his eye,—that is, a picador on horseback.The picadors had stood hitherto on their lean horses, like statues, their lances pointing upward. The bull, occupied solely with thehated capes, had not seen them, or if he had seen them he passed them.Almost never does it happen that the bull begins a fight with horsemen. The capes absorb his attention and rouse all his rage. It may be, moreover, that the picadors are like his half-wild herdsmen in the Sierra Morena, whom he saw at times from a distance, and before whom he was accustomed to flee with the whole herd.But now he has had capes enough; his fury seeks eagerly some body to pierce and on which to sate his vengeance.For spectators not accustomed to this kind of play, a terrible moment is coming. Every one understands that blood must be shed soon.The bull lowers his head and withdraws a number of paces, as if to gather impetus; the picador turns the horse a little, with his right side to the attacker, so the horse, having his right eye bound with a cloth, shall not push back at the moment of attack. The lance witha short point is lowered in the direction of the bull; he withdraws still more. It seems to you that he will retreat altogether, and your oppressed bosom begins to breathe with more ease.Suddenly the bull rushes forward like a rock rolling down from a mountain. In the twinkle of an eye you see the lance bent like a bow; the sharp end of it is stuck in the shoulder of the bull,—and then is enacted a thing simply dreadful: the powerful head and neck of the furious beast is lost under the belly of the horse, his horns sink their whole length in the horse’s intestines; sometimes the bull lifts horse and rider, sometimes you see only the upraised hind part of the horse, struggling convulsively in the air. Then the rider falls to the ground, the horse tumbles upon him, and you hear the creaking of the saddle; horse, rider, and saddle form one shapeless mass, which the raging bull tramples and bores with his horns.Faces unaccustomed to the spectacle grow pale. In Barcelona and Madrid I have seen Englishwomen whose faces had become as pale as linen. Every one in the circus for the first time has the impression of a catastrophe. When the rider is seen rolled into a lump, pressed down by the weight of the saddle and the horse, and the raging beast is thrusting his horns with fury into that mass of flesh, it seems that for the man there is no salvation, and that the attendants will raise a mere bloody corpse from the sand.But that is illusion. All that is done is in the programme of the spectacle.Under the white leather and tinsel the rider has armor which saves him from being crushed,—he fell purposely under the horse, so that the beast should protect him with his body from the horns. In fact the bull, seeing before him the fleshy mass of the horse’s belly, expends on it mainly his rage. Let me add that the duration of the catastrophe is counted byseconds. The capeadors have attacked the bull from every side, and he, wishing to free himself from them, must leave his victims. He does leave them, he chases again after the capeadors; his steaming horns, stained with blood, seem again to be just touching the capeadors’ shoulders. They, in escaping, lead him to the opposite side of the arena; other men meanwhile draw from beneath the horse the picador, who is barely able to move under the weight of his armor, and throw him over the paling.The horse too tries to raise himself: frequently he rises for a moment, but then a ghastly sight strikes the eye. From his torn belly hangs a whole bundle of intestines with a rosy spleen, bluish liver, and greenish stomach. The hapless beast tries to walk a few steps; but his trembling feet tread on his own entrails, he falls, digs the ground with his hoofs, shudders. Meanwhile the attendants run up, remove the saddle and bridle, and finish the torments ofthe horse with one stab of a stiletto, at the point where head and neck come together.On the arena remains the motionless body, which, lying now on its side, seems wonderfully flat. The intestines are carried out quickly in a basket which is somewhat like a wash-tub, and the public clap their hands with excitement. Enthusiasm begins to seize them: “Bravo el toro! Bravo picador!” Eyes are flashing, on faces a flush comes, a number of hats fly to the arena in honor of the picador. Meanwhile “el toro,” having drawn blood once, kills a number of other horses. If his horns are buried not in the belly but under the shoulder of the horse, a stream of dark blood bursts onto the arena in an uncommon quantity; the horse rears and falls backward with his rider. A twofold danger threatens the man: the horns of the bull or, in spite of his armor, the breaking of his neck. But, as we have said, the body of the horse becomes a protection to the rider; hence, every picadortries to receive battle at the edge of the arena, so as to be, as it were, covered between the body of the horse and the paling. When the bull withdraws, the picador advances, but only a few steps, so that the battle never takes place in the centre.All these precautions would not avail much, and the bull would pierce the horseman at last, were it not for the capeadors. They press on the bull, draw away his attention, rush with unheard of boldness against his rage, saving each moment the life of some participant in the fight. Once I saw an espada, retreating before the raging beast, stumble against the head of a dead horse and fall on his back; death inevitable was hanging over him, the horns of the bull were just ready to pass through his breast, when suddenly between that breast and the horns the red capes were moving, and the bull flew after the capes. It may be said that were it not for that flock of chimpanzees waving red capes, the work of the picadorswould be impossible, and at every representation as many of them as of horses would perish.It happens rarely that a picador can stop a bull at the point of a lance. This takes place only when the bull advances feebly, or the picador is gifted with gigantic strength of arms, surpassing the measure of men. I saw two such examples in Madrid, after which came a hurricane of applause for the picador.But usually the bull kills horses like flies; and he is terrible when, covered with sweat, glittering in the sun, with a neck bleeding from lances and his horns painted red, he runs around the arena, as if in the drunkenness of victory. A deep bellow comes from his mighty lungs; at one moment he scatters capeadors, at another he halts suddenly over the body of a horse, now motionless, and avenges himself on it terribly,—he raises it on his horns, carries it around the arena, scattering drops of stiff blood on spectators in thefirst row; then he casts it again on the stained sand and pierces it a second time. It seems to him, evidently, that the spectacle is over, and that it has ended in his triumph.But the spectacle has barely passed through one-half of its course. Those picadors whose horses have survived the defeat, ride out, it is true, from the arena; but in place of them run in with jumps, and amid shouts, nimble banderilleros. Every one of them in his upraised hands has two arrows, each an ell long, ornamented, in accordance with the coat of the man, with a blue, a green, or a red ribbon, and ending with a barbed point, which once it is under the skin will not come out of it. These men begin to circle about the bull, shaking the arrows, stretching toward him the points, threatening and springing up toward him. The bull rolls his bloodshot eyes, turns his head to the right, to the left, looking to see what new kind of enemies these are. “Ah,” says he, evidently, to himself, “you have hadlittle blood, you want more—you shall have it!” and selecting the man, he rushes at him.But what happens? The first man, instead of fleeing, runs toward the bull,—runs past his head, as if he wished to avoid him; but in that same second something seems hanging in the air like a rainbow: the man is running away empty-handed with all the strength of his legs, toward the paling, and in the neck of the bull are two colored arrows.After a moment another pair are sticking in him, and then a third pair,—six altogether, with three colors. The neck of the beast seems now as if ornamented with a bunch of flowers, but those flowers have the most terrible thorns of any on earth. At every movement of the bull, at every turn of his head, the arrows move, shake, fly from one side of his neck to the other, and with that every point is boring into the wound. Evidently from pain the animal is falling into the madness of rage; butthe more he rushes the greater his pain. Hitherto the bull was the wrong-doer, now they wrong him, and terribly. He would like to free himself from those torturing arrows; but there is no power to do that. He is growing mad from mere torment, and is harassed to the utmost. Foam covers his nostrils, his tongue is protruding; he bellows no longer, but in the short intervals between the wild shouts, the clapping, and the uproar of the spectators, you may hear his groans, which have an accent almost human. The capeadors harassed him, every picador wounded him, now the arrows are working into his wounds; thirst and heat complete his torments.It is his luck that he did not get another kind of “banderille.” If—which, however, happens rarely—the bull refuses to attack the horses and has killed none, the enraged public rise, and in the circus something in the nature of a revolution sets in. Men with their canes and women with their parasols and fans turn tothe royal box; wild, hoarse voices of cruel cavaliers, and the shrill ones of senoritas, shout only one word: “Fuego! fuego! fuego!” (Fire, fire, fire!)The representatives of the government withhold their consent for a long time. Hence “Fuego!” is heard ever more threateningly, and drowns all other voices; the threat rises to such an intensity as to make us think that the public may pass at any instant from words to a mad deed of some kind. Half an hour passes: “Fuego! fuego!” There is no help for it. The signal is given, and the unfortunate bull gets a banderille which when thrust into his neck blazes up that same instant.The points wound in their own way, and in their own way rolls of smoke surround the head of the beast, the rattle of fireworks stuns him; great sparks fall into his wounds, small congreve rockets burst under his skin; the smell of burnt flesh and singed hair fill the arena.In truth, cruelty can go no further; but the delight of the public rises now to its zenith. The eyes of women are covered with mist from excitement, every breast is heaving with pleasure, their heads fall backward, and between their open moist lips are gleaming white teeth. You would say that the torment of the beast is reflected in the nerves of those women with an answering degree of delight. Only in Spain can such things be seen. There is in that frenzy something hysterical, something which recalls certain Phœnician mysteries, performed on the altar of Melitta.The daring and skill of the banderilleros surpass every measure. I saw one of them who had taken his place in the middle of the arena in an arm-chair; he had stretched his legs carelessly before him,—they were in rose-colored stockings,—he crossed them, and holding above his head a banderille, was waiting for the bull. The bull rushed at him straightway; the next instant, I saw only that the banderillewas fastened in the neck, and the bull was smashing the chair with mad blows of his head. In what way the man had escaped between the chair and the horns, I know not,—that is the secret of his skill. Another banderillero, at the same representation, seizing the lance of a picador at the moment of attack, supported himself with it, and sprang over the back and whole length of the bull. The beast was dumb-founded, could not understand where his victim had vanished.A multitude of such wonders of daring and dexterity are seen at each representation.One bull never gets more than three pairs of banderilles. When the deed is accomplished, a single trumpet is heard in the orchestra with a prolonged and sad note,—and the moment the most exciting and tragic in the spectacle approaches. All that was done hitherto was only preparation for this. Now a fourth act of the drama is played.On the arena comes out the “matador” himself,—thatis, the espada. He is dressed like the other participants in the play, only more elaborately and richly. His coat is all gold and tinsel: costly laces adorn his breast. He may be distinguished by this too,—that he comes out bareheaded always. His black hair, combed back carefully, ends on his shoulders in a small tail. In his left hand he holds a red cloth flag, in his right a long Toledo sword. The capeadors surround him as soldiers their chief, ready at all times to save him in a moment of danger, and he approaches the bull, collected, cool, but terrible and triumphant.In all the spectators the hearts are throbbing violently, and a moment of silence sets in.In Barcelona and Madrid I saw the four most eminent espadas in Spain, and in truth I admit, that besides their cool blood, dexterity, and training, they have a certain hypnotic power, which acts on the animal and fills him with mysterious alarm. The bull simply bearshimself differently before the espada from what he did before the previous participants in the play. It is not that he withdraws before him; on the contrary, he attacks him with greater insistence perhaps. But in former attacks, in addition to rage, there was evident a certain desire. He hunted, he scattered, he killed; he was as if convinced that the whole spectacle was for him, and that the question was only in this, that he should kill. Now, at sight of that cold, awful man with a sword in his hand, he convinces himself that death is there before him, that he must perish, that on that bloody sand the ghastly deed will be accomplished in some moments.This mental state of the beast is so evident that every man can divine it. Perhaps even this, by its tragic nature, becomes the charm of the spectacle. That mighty organism, simply seething with a superabundance of vitality, of desire, of strength, is unwilling to die, will not consent to die for anything in the world! anddeath, unavoidable, irresistible, is approaching; hence unspeakable sorrow, unspeakable despair, throbs through every movement of the bull. He hardly notices the capeadors, whom before he pursued with such venom; he attacks the espada himself, but he attacks with despair completely evident.The espada does not kill him at once, for that is not permitted by the rules of the play. He deceives the bull with movements of the flag, himself he pushes from the horns by turns slight and insignificant; he waits for the moment, withdraws, advances. Evidently he wishes to sate the public; now, this very instant, he’ll strike, now he lowers his sword again.The struggle extends over the whole arena; it glitters in the sun, is dark in the shade. In the circus applause is heard, now general, now single from the breast of some señorita who is unable to restrain her enthusiasm. At one moment bravos are thundering; at another, ifthe espada has retreated awkwardly or given a false blow, hissing rends the ear. The bull has now given some tens of blows with his horns,—always to the flag; the public are satisfied; here and there voices are crying: “Mata el toro! mata el toro!” (Kill the bull! kill the bull!)And now a flash comes so suddenly that the eye cannot follow it; then the group of fighters scatter, and in the neck of the bull, above the colored banderilles, is seen the red hilt of the sword. The blade has gone through the neck, and, buried two thirds of its length, is planted in the lungs of the beast.The espada is defenceless; the bull attacks yet, but he misleads him in the old fashion with the flag, he saves himself from the blows with half turns.Meanwhile it seems that people have gone wild in the circus. No longer shouts, but one bellow and howl are heard, around, from above to below. All are springing from theirseats. To the arena are flying bouquets, cigar-cases, hats, fans. The fight is approaching its end.A film is coming over the eyes of the bull; from his mouth are hanging stalactites of bloody saliva; his groan becomes hoarse. Night is embracing his head. The glitter and heat of the sun concern him no longer. He attacks yet, but as it were in a dream. It is darker and darker for him. At last he collects the remnant of his consciousness, backs to the paling, totters for a moment, kneels on his fore feet, drops on his hind ones, and begins to die.The espada looks at him no longer; he has his eyes turned to the spectators, from whom hats and cigar-cases are flying, thick as hail; he bows; capeadors throw back to the spectators their hats.Meanwhile a mysterious man dressed in black climbs over the paling in silence and puts a stiletto in the bull, where the neckbonemeets the skull; with a light movement he sinks it to the hilt and turns it.That is the blow of mercy, after which the head of the bull drops on its side.All the participants pass out. For a moment the arena is empty; on it are visible only the body of the bull and the eviscerated carcasses of four or five horses, now cold.But after a while rush in with great speed men with mules, splendidly harnessed in yellow and red; the men attach these mules to the bodies and draw them around so that the public may enjoy the sight once again, then with speed equally great they go out through the doors of the arena.But do not imagine that the spectacle is ended with one bull. After the first comes a second, after the second a third, and so on. In Madrid six bulls perish at a representation. In Barcelona, at the time of the fair, eight were killed.Do not think either that the public arewearied by the monotony of the fight. To begin with, the fight itself is varied with personal episodes caused by temperament, the greater or less rage of the bull, the greater or less skill of the men in their work; secondly, that public is never annoyed at the sight of blood and death.The “toreadores” (though in Spain no participant in the fight is called a toreador), thanks to their dexterity, rarely perish; but if that happens, the spectacle is considered as the more splendid, and the bull receives as much applause as the espada. Since, however, accidents happen to people sometimes, at every representation, besides the doctor, there is present a priest with the sacrament. That spiritual person is not among the audience, of course; but he waits in a special room, to which the wounded are borne in case of an accident.Whether in time, under the influence of civilization, bull-fights will be abandoned inSpain, it is difficult to say. The love of those fights is very deep in the nature of the Spanish people. The higher and intelligent ranks of society take part in them gladly. The defenders of these spectacles say that in substance they are nothing more than hazardous hunting, which answers to the knightly character of the nation. But hunting is an amusement, not a career; in hunting there is no audience,—only actors; there are no throngs of women, half fainting from delight at the spectacle of torment and death; finally, in hunting no one exposes his life for hire.Were I asked if the spectacle is beautiful, I should say yes; beautiful especially in its surroundings,—that sun, those shades, those thousands of fans at sight of which it seems as though a swarm of butterflies had settled on the seats of the circus, those eyes, those red moist lips. Beautiful is that incalculable quantity of warm and strong tones, that massof colors, gold, tinsel, that inflamed sand, from which heat is exhaling,—finally those proofs of bold daring, and that terror hanging over the play. All that is more beautiful by far than the streams of blood and the torn bellies of the horses.He, however, who knows these spectacles only from description, and sees them afterwards with his own eyes, cannot but think: what a wonderful people for whom the highest amusement and delight is the sight of a thing so awful, so absolute and inevitable as death. Whence comes that love? Is it simply a remnant of Middle-age cruelty; or is it that impulse which is roused in many persons, for instance at sight of a precipice, to go as near as possible to the brink, to touch that curtain, behind which begin the mystery and the pit?—that is a wonderful passion, which in certain souls becomes irresistible.Of the Spaniards it may be said, that inthe whole course of their history they have shown a tendency to extremes. Few people have been so merciless in warfare; none have turned a religion of love into such a gloomy and bloody worship; finally, no other nation amuses itself by playing with death.Other works by Henryk Sienkiewicz.——————With Fire and Sword. An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the original by Jeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00. Library edition, 2 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $3.00.The Deluge. An Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden, and Russia, a sequel to “With Fire and Sword,” translated from the Polish of Henryk Sienkiewicz by Jeremiah Curtin. With photogravure portrait of the author and map of the country at the period of the stories. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $3.00.Every one should read these remarkable books. They have received the highest praise everywhere. The distinguished writer, Charles Dudley Warner, in a review of “With Fire and Sword” in “Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” says that the author has given, in the character of Zagloba, a new type to the literature of fiction.Of these extraordinary romances it has been truly said thataction in the field has never before been described in any language with such a marvellous expression of energy. The comparisons which have suggested themselves to American critics couple the Polish novelist with such names as Scott, Dumas, Schiller, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Homer. The character of Zagloba has been described as “a curious and fascinating combination of Falstaff and Ulysses.”“The only modern romance with which ‘Fire and Sword’ can be compared,” says the “New York Tribune,” “is ‘The Three Musketeers.’”A new Historical Romance by Henryk Sienkiewicz,completing “With Fire and Sword”and “The Deluge.”Pan Michael. An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey. A sequel to “With Fire and Sword” and “The Deluge.” Translated byJeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00.This great historical romance completes the remarkable series of historical novels by Sienkiewicz, begun by “With Fire and Sword” and continued in “The Deluge.” These powerful works have been received everywhere with enthusiastic commendation, and the publication of the final story of the trilogy can only add to and continue their popularity.——————Without Dogma. A new novel by the author of“With Fire and Sword.”Without Dogma. A Novel of Modern Poland. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish byIza Young. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $1.50.A psychological novel of modern thought, and of great power. Its utter contrast to the author’s historical romances exhibits in a most striking manner the remarkable variety of his genius.A triumph of psychology.—Chicago Times.Belongs to a high order of fiction.—New York Times.A masterly piece of writing.—Pittsburg Bulletin.Intellectually the novel is a masterpiece.—Christian Union.Emphatically a human document.—The Boston Beacon.Displays the most remarkable genius.—Boston Home Journal.Both absorbing and instructive.—Boston Courier.Yanko the Musician and Other Stories.ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. White and gold. $1.25.This charming volume contains the following stories of two continents by the popular author of “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” etc.: I. Yanko the Musician; II. The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall; III. From the Diary of a Tutor in Poznan; IV. A Comedy of Errors, a Sketch of American Life; V. Bartek the Victor. “Yanko the Musician,” the initial story of the volumes, won the author his fame. In a review of Sienkiewicz in Blackwood’s Magazine, this beautiful story was fittingly described asa little poem in prose, absolutely perfect of its kind.“Bartek the Victor” is the story of a hero of the Franco-Prussian war. The Blackwood reviewer, writing of it, says: “The battle of Gravelotte is so admirably described that it is difficult to believe the writer not to have been actively engaged in it himself.”The stories are deeply intellectual.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.The tale of Yanko has wonderful pathos.—Chicago Herald.Exquisite in technical expression.—Boston Beacon.There is an outdoor freshness about these tales, and an impulse which, like Polish music, sets one’s blood a-tingling.—New Haven Register.They are full of powerful interest.—Boston Courier.The simple story of the lighthouse man is a little masterpiece.—New York Times.The admirers of the distinguished Polish novelist will not be disappointed in this volume of short stories, which is beautifully illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett, and daintily bound.—Boston Home Journal.These stories show that he touches nothing without mastery.—Christian Register.The title story is a strangely simple, pathetic story of a weakling child with a passion for music. The careful, loving treatment of the slight plot makes it, even in translation, a beautiful story.—Chicago Figaro.Five stories, all conceived with great power and written with masterly skill.—Boston Gazette.The Blind Musician.Translated from the Russian ofVladimir Korolenkoby Aline Delano. With Introduction by George Kennan, and illustrations by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.This unique and exquisite little book is less a story than a wonderfully faithful and delicate study in psychology. Though told in prose, it is in essence a poem. The volume is inedition de luxe, with dainty and charming bits of vignette illustration and a perfection of finish which gives refined pleasure to the touch as well as to the eye.—Boston Transcript.A Woman of Shawmut. A Romance of Colonial Times. (Boston, 1640.) ByEdmund Janes Carpenter. With 12 charming full-page illustrations and numerous chapter-headings from pen-and-ink drawings by F. T. Merrill. 16mo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, $1.25.Has qualities placing itamong the prose poems of recent literature.—Boston Journal.Clever pictures of old Boston.—Boston Transcript.A decidedly artistic specimen of bookmaking.—Boston Gazette.Carine, a Story of Sweden. ByLouis Énault. Translated from the French by Linda De Kowalewska. With thirty-nine Illustrations by Louis K. Harlow. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25. Uniform with “A Woman of Shawmut.”Swedish life in all its varying domestic aspects, as seen from intimacy with cultivated and refined people, isrevealed with exquisite fidelity; and the portrayal of Carine’s problematic character is elaborated in a veritably artistic manner.The whole story has the idyllic touch.—Boston Beacon.Lyrics and Legends. ByNora Perry, author of “After the Ball,” “A Flock of Girls and Their Friends,” etc. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.Many of the songs have already sung themselves into the hearts of those who love beautiful thought in beautiful form.—Public Opinion.——————LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers.

IT is Sunday! Great posters, affixed for a number of days to the corners of Puerta del Sol, Calle Alcala, and all streets on which there was considerable movement, announce to the city that to-day, “Si el tiempo lo permite” (if the weather permits), will take place bull-fight XVI., in which Cara-Ancha Lagartijo and the renowned Frascuello are to appear as “espadas” (swords).

Well, the weather permits. There was rain in the morning; but about ten o’clock the wind broke the clouds, gathered them into heaps, and drove them away off somewhere in the direction of the Escurial. Now the wind itself has ceased; the sky as far as the eye can reach is blue, and over the Puerta del Sol a bright sun is shining,—such a Madrid sun, which not only warms, not only burns, but almost bites.

Movement in the city is increasing, and on people’s faces satisfaction is evident.

Two o’clock.

The square of the Puerta del Sol is emptying gradually, but crowds of people are advancing through the Calle Alcala toward the Prado. In the middle is flowing a river of carriages and vehicles. All that line of equipages is moving very slowly, for on the sidewalks there is not room enough for pedestrians, many of whom are walking along the sides of the streets and close to the carriages. The police, on white horses and in showy uniforms and three-cornered hats, preserve order.

It is Sunday, that is evident, and an afternoon hour; the toilets are carefully made, the attire is holiday. It is evident also that the crowds are going to some curious spectacle. Unfortunately the throng is not at all many-colored; no national costumes are visible,—neither the short coats, yellow kerchiefsá la contrabandista, with one end dropping down to the shoulder, nor the round Biscay hats, nor girdles, nor the Catalan knives behind the girdles.

Those things may be seen yet in the neighborhood of Granada, Seville, and Cordova; but in Madrid, especially on holidays, the cosmopolitan frock is predominant. Only at times do you see a black mantilla pinned to a high comb, and under the mantilla eyes blacker still.

In general faces are dark, glances quick, speech loud. Gesticulation is not so passionate as in Italy, where when a man laughs he squirms like a snake, and when he is angry he gnaws off the top of his hat; still, it is energeticand lively. Faces have well-defined features and a resolute look. It is easy to understand that even in amusement these people retain their special and definite character.

However, they are a people who on weekdays are full of sedateness, bordering on sloth, sparing of words, and collected. Sunday enlivens them, as does also the hope of seeing a bloody spectacle.

Let us cut across the Prado and enter an alley leading to the circus.

The crowd is becoming still denser. Here and there shouts are rising, the people applauding single members of the company, who are going each by himself to the circus.

Here is an omnibus filled with “capeadors,” that is, partakers in the fight, whose whole defence is red capes with which they mislead and irritate the bull. Through the windows are visible black heads with pigtails, and wearing three-cornered hats. The coats of various colors worn by the capeadors are embroidered withgold and silver tinsel. These capeadors ride in an omnibus, for the modest pay which they get for their perilous service does not permit a more showy conveyance.

Somewhat farther, three mounted “picadors” push their way through the people. The sun plays on their broad-brimmed white hats. They are athletic in build, but bony and lean. Their shaven faces have a stern, and, as it were, concentrated look. They are sitting on very high wooden saddles, hence they are perfectly visible over the crowd. Each of them holds in his hand a lance, with a wooden ball at the end of it, from which is projecting an iron point not above half an inch long. The picador cannot kill a bull with a weapon like that,—he can only pierce him or stop him for a moment; but in the last case he must have in his arm the strength of a giant.

Looking at these men, I remember involuntarily Doré’s illustrations to “Don Quixote.” In fact, each of these horsemen might serve as amodel for the knight “of the rueful visage.” That lean silhouette, outlined firmly on the sky, high above the heads of the multitude, the lance standing upright, and that bare-boned horse under the rider, those purely Gothic outlines of living things,—all answer perfectly to the conception which we form of the knight of La Mancha, when we read the immortal work of Cervantes.

But, the picadors pass us, and urging apart the crowd slowly, push forward considerably. Now only three lances are visible, three hats, and three coats embroidered on the shoulders. New men ride up, as incalculably similar to the first as if some mill were making picadors for all Spain on one pattern. There is a difference only in the color of the horses, which, however, are equally lean.

Our eyes turn now to the long row of carriages. Some are drawn by mules, but mules so large, sleek, and beautiful that, in spite of the long ears of the animals, the turn-out does notseem ridiculous. Here and there may be seen also Andalusian horses with powerful backs, arched necks, and curved faces. Such may be seen in the pictures of battle-painters of the seventeenth century.

In the carriages are sitting the flower of Madrid society. The dresses are black, there is very black lace on the parasols, on the fans, and on the heads of ladies; black hair trimmed in forelocks, from under which are glancing eyes, as it were, of the lava of Vesuvius. Mourning colors, importance, and powder are the main traits of that society.

The faces of old and of young ladies also are covered with powder, all of them are equally frigid and pale. A great pity! Were it not for such a vile custom, their complexion would have that magnificent warm tone given by southern blood and a southern sun, and which may be admired in faces painted by Fortuni.

In the front seats of the carriages are men dressed with an elegance somewhat exaggerated;they have a constrained and too holiday air,—in other words, they cannot wear fine garments with that free inattention which characterizes the higher society of France.

But the walls of the circus are outlined before us with growing distinctness. There is nothing especial in the building: an enormous pile reared expressly to give seats to some tens of thousands of people,—that is the whole plan of it.

Most curious is the movement near the walls. Round about, it is black from carriages, equipages, and heads of people. Towering above this dark mass, here and there, is a horseman, a policeman, or a picador in colors as brilliant as a poppy full blown.

The throng sways, opens, closes, raises its voice; coachmen shout; still louder shout boys selling handbills. These boys squeeze themselves in at all points among footmen and horsemen; they are on the steps of carriages and between the wheels; some climb up on the buttresses of the circus; some areon the stone columns which mark the way for the carriages. Their curly hair, their gleaming eyes, their expressive features, dark faces, and torn shirts open in the bosom, remind me of our gypsies, and of boys in Murillo’s pictures. Besides programmes some of them sell whistles. Farther on, among the crowds, are fruit-venders; water-sellers with bronze kegs on their shoulders; in one place are flower dealers; in another is heard the sound of a guitar played by an old blind woman led by a little girl.

Movement, uproar, laughter; fans are fluttering everywhere as if they were wings of thousands of birds; the sun pours down white light in torrents from a spotless sky of dense blue.

Suddenly and from all sides are heard cries of “mira, mira!” (look, look!) After a while these cries are turned into a roar of applause, which like real thunder flies from one extreme to another; now it is quiet, now it rises and extends around the whole circus.

What has happened? Surely the queen is approaching, and with her the court?

No! near by is heard “eviva Frascuello!” That is the most famous espada, who is coming for laurels and applause.

All eyes turn to him, and the whole throng of women push toward his carriage. The air is gleaming with flowers thrown by their hands to the feet of that favorite, that hero of every dream and imagining, that “pearl of Spain.” They greet him the more warmly because he has just returned from a trip to Barcelona, where during the exhibition he astonished all barbarous Europe with thrusts of his sword; now he appears again in his beloved Madrid, more glorious, greater,—a genuine new Cid el Campeador.

Let us push through the crowd to look at the hero. First, what a carriage, what horses! More beautiful there are not in the whole of Castile. On white satin cushions sits, or reclines, we should say, a man whose age it isdifficult to determine, for his face is shaven most carefully. He is dressed in a coat of pale lily-colored satin, and knee-breeches of similar material trimmed with lace. His coat and the side seams of his breeches are glittering and sparkling from splendid embroidery, from spangles of gold and silver shining like diamonds in the sun. The most delicate laces ornament his breast. His legs, clothed in rose-colored silk stockings, he holds crossed carelessly on the front seat,—the very first athlete in the hippodrome at Paris might envy him those calves.

Madrid is vain of those calves,—and in truth she has reason.

The great man leans with one hand on the red hilt of his Catalan blade; with the other he greets his admirers of both sexes kindly. His black hair, combed to his poll, is tied behind in a small roll, from beneath which creeps forth a short tress. That style of hair-dressing and the shaven face make him somewhat like awoman, and he reminds one besides of some actor from one of the provinces; taken generally, his face is not distinguished by intelligence, a quality which in his career would not be a hindrance, though not needed in any way.

The crowds enter the circus, and we enter with them.

Now we are in the interior. It differs from other interiors of circuses only in size and in this,—that the seats are of stone. Highest in the circle are the boxes; of these one in velvet and in gold fringe is the royal box. If no one from the court is present at the spectacle this box is occupied by the prefect of the city. Around are seated the aristocracy and high officials; opposite the royal box, on the other side of the circus, is the orchestra. Half-way up in the circus is a row of arm-chairs; stone steps form the rest of the seats. Below, around the arena, stretches a wooden paling the height of a man’s shoulder. Between this paling and the first row of seats, which is raised considerablyhigher for the safety of the spectators, is a narrow corridor, in which the combatants take refuge, in case the bull threatens them too greatly.

One-half of the circus is buried in shadow, the other is deluged with sunlight. On every ticket, near the number of the seat, is printed “sombra” (shadow) or “sol” (sun). Evidently the tickets “sombra” cost considerably more. It is difficult to imagine how those who have “sol” tickets can endure to sit in such an atmosphere a number of hours and on those heated stone steps, with such a sun above their heads.

The places are all filled, however. Clearly the love of a bloody spectacle surpasses the fear of being roasted alive.

In northern countries the contrast between light and shadow is not so great as in Spain; in the north we find always a kind of half shade, half light, certain transition tones; here the boundary is cut off in black with a firm linewithout any transitions. In the illuminated half the sand seems to burn; people’s faces and dresses are blazing; eyes are blinking under the excess of glare; it is simply an abyss of light, full of heat, in which everything is sparkling and gleaming excessively, every color is intensified tenfold. On the other hand, the shaded half seems cut off by some transparent curtain, woven from the darkness of night. Every man who passes from the light to the shade, makes on us the impression of a candle put out on a sudden.

At the moment when we enter, the arena is crowded with people. Before the spectacle the inhabitants of Madrid, male and female, must tread that sand on which the bloody drama is soon to be played. It seems to them that thus they take direct part, as it were, in the struggle. Numerous groups of men are standing, lighting their cigarettes and discoursing vivaciously concerning the merits of bulls from this herd or that one. Small boys tease and pursueone another. I see how one puts under the eyes of another a bit of red cloth, treating him just as a “capeador” treats a bull. The boy endures this a while patiently; at last he rolls his eyes fiercely and runs at his opponent. The opponent deceives him adroitly with motions of a cape, exactly again as the capeador does the bull. The little fellows find their spectators, who urge them on with applause.

Along the paling pass venders of oranges proclaiming the merits of their merchandise. This traffic is carried on through the air. The vender throws, at request, with unerring dexterity, an orange, even to the highest row; in the same way he receives a copper piece, which he catches with one hand before it touches the earth. Loud dialogues, laughter, calls, noise, rustling of fans, the movement of spectators as they arrive,—all taken together form a picture with a fulness of life of which no other spectacle can give an idea.

All at once from the orchestra come soundsof trumpets and drums. At that signal the people on the arena fly to their places with as much haste as if danger were threatening their lives. There is a crush. But after a while all are seated. Around, it is just black: people are shoulder to shoulder, head to head. In the centre remains the arena empty, deluged with sunlight.

Opposite the royal box a gate in the paling is thrown open, and in ride two “alguazils.” Their horses white, with manes and tails plaited, are as splendid as if taken from pictures. The riders themselves, wearing black velvet caps with white feathers, and doublets of similar material, with lace collars, bring to mind the incomparable canvases of Velasquez, which may be admired in the Museo del Prado. It seems to us that we are transferred to the times of knighthood long past. Both horsemen are handsome, both of showy form. They ride stirrup to stirrup, ride slowly around the whole arena to convince themselves that no incautiousspectator has remained on it. At last they halt before the royal box, and with a movement full of grace uncover their heads with respect.

Whoso is in a circus for the first time will be filled with admiration at the stately, almost middle-age, ceremonial, by the apparel and dignity of the horsemen. The alguazils seem like two noble heralds, giving homage to a monarch before the beginning of a tournament. It is, in fact, a prayer for permission to open the spectacle, and at the same time a request for the key of the stables in which the bulls are confined. After a while the key is let down from the box on a gold string; the alguazils incline once again and ride away. Evidently this is a mere ceremonial, for the spectacle was authorized previously, and the bulls are confined by simple iron bolts. But the ceremony is beautiful, and they never omit it.

In a few minutes after the alguazils have vanished, the widest gate is thrown open, and a whole company enters. At the head of itride the same two alguazils whom we saw before the royal box; after them advance a rank of capeadors; after the capeadors come “banderilleros,” and the procession is concluded by picadors. This entire party is shining with all the colors of the rainbow, gleaming from tinsel, gold, silver, and satins of various colors. They come out from the dark side to the sunlighted arena, dive into the glittering light, and bloom like flowers. The eye cannot delight itself sufficiently with the many colors of those spots on the golden sand.

Having reached the centre, they scatter on a sudden, like a flock of butterflies. The picadors dispose themselves around at the paling, and each one drawing his lance from its rest, grasps it firmly in his right hand; the men on foot form picturesque groups; they stand in postures full of indifference, waiting for the bull.

This is perhaps the most beautiful moment of the spectacle, full of originality, so thoroughlySpanish that regret at not being a painter comes on a man in spite of himself. How much color, what sunlight might be transferred from the palette to the canvas!

Soon blood will be flowing on that sand. In the circus it is as still as in time of sowing poppy seed,—it is barely possible to hear the sound of fans, which move only in as much as the hands holding them quiver from impatience. All eyes are turned to the door through which the bull will rush forth. Time now is counted by seconds.

Suddenly the shrill, and at the same time the mournful, sound of a trumpet is heard in the orchestra; the door of the stable opens with a crash, and the bull bursts into the arena, like a thunderbolt.

That is a lordly beast, with a powerful and splendid neck, a head comparatively short, horns enormous and turned forward. Our heavy breeder gives a poor idea of him; for though the Spanish bull is not the equal of oursin bulk of body, he surpasses him in strength, and, above all, in activity. At the first cast of the eye you recognize a beast reared wild in the midst of great spaces; consequently with all his strength he can move almost as swiftly as a deer. It is just this which makes him dangerous in an unheard of degree. His forelegs are a little higher than his hind ones; this is usual with cattle of mountain origin. In fact, the bulls of the circus are recruited especially from the herds in the Sierra Morena. Their color is for the greater part black, rarely reddish or pied. The hair is short, and glossy as satin; only the neck is covered somewhat with longer and curly hair.

After he has burst into the arena, the bull slackens his pace toward the centre, looks with bloodshot eyes to the right, to the left,—but this lasts barely two seconds; he sees a group of capeadors; he lowers his head to the ground, and hurls himself on them at random.

The capeadors scatter, like a flock of sparrowsat which some man has fired small-shot. Holding behind them red capes, they circle now in the arena, with a swiftness that makes the head dizzy; they are everywhere; they glitter to the right, to the left; they are in the middle of the arena, at the paling, before the eyes of the bull, in front, behind. The red capes flutter in the air, like banners torn by the wind.

The bull scatters the capeadors in every direction; with lightning-like movements he chases one,—another thrusts a red cape under his very eyes; the bull leaves the first victim to run after a second, but before he can turn, some third one steps up. The bull rushes at that one! Distance between them decreases, the horns of the bull seem to touch the shoulder of the capeador; another twinkle of an eye and he will be nailed to the paling,—but meanwhile the man touches the top of the paling with his hand, and vanishes as if he had dropped through the earth.

What has happened? The capeador has sprung into the passage extending between the paling and the first row of seats.

The bull chooses another man; but before he has moved from his tracks the first capeador thrusts out his head from behind the paling, like a red Indian stealing to the farm of a settler, and springs to the arena again. The bull pursues more and more stubbornly those unattainable enemies, who vanish before his very horns; at last he knows where they are hidden. He collects all his strength, anger gives him speed, and he springs like a hunting-horse over the paling, certain that he will crush his foes this time like worms.

But at that very moment they hurl themselves back to the arena with the agility of chimpanzees, and the bull runs along the empty passage, seeing no one before him.

The entire first row of spectators incline through the barrier, then strike from above at the bull with canes, fans, and parasols. Thepublic are growing excited. A bull that springs over the paling recommends himself favorably. When people in the first row applaud him with all their might, those in the upper rows clap their hands, crying, “Bravo el toro! muy buen! Bravo el toro!” (Bravo the bull! Very well, bravo the bull!)

Meanwhile he comes to an open door and runs out again to the arena. On the opposite side of it two capeadors are sitting on a step extending around the foot of the paling, and are conversing without the slightest anxiety. The bull rushes on them at once; he is in the middle of the arena,—and they sit on without stopping their talk; he is ten steps away,—they continue sitting as if they had not seen him; he is five steps away,—they are still talking. Cries of alarm are heard here and there in the circus; before his very horns the two daring fellows spring, one to the right, the other to the left. The bull’s horns strike the paling with a heavy blow. A storm of handclappingbreaks out in the circus, and at that very moment these and other capeadors surround the bull again and provoke him with red capes.

His madness passes now into fury: he hurls himself forward, rushes, turns on his tracks; every moment his horns give a thrust, every moment it seems that no human power can wrest this or that man from death. Still the horns cut nothing but air, and the red capes are glittering on all sides; at times one of them falls to the ground, and that second the bull in his rage drives almost all of it into the sand. But that is not enough for him,—he must search out some victim, and reach him at all costs.

Hence, with a deep bellow and with bloodshot eyes he starts to run forward at random, but halts on a sudden; a new sight strikes his eye,—that is, a picador on horseback.

The picadors had stood hitherto on their lean horses, like statues, their lances pointing upward. The bull, occupied solely with thehated capes, had not seen them, or if he had seen them he passed them.

Almost never does it happen that the bull begins a fight with horsemen. The capes absorb his attention and rouse all his rage. It may be, moreover, that the picadors are like his half-wild herdsmen in the Sierra Morena, whom he saw at times from a distance, and before whom he was accustomed to flee with the whole herd.

But now he has had capes enough; his fury seeks eagerly some body to pierce and on which to sate his vengeance.

For spectators not accustomed to this kind of play, a terrible moment is coming. Every one understands that blood must be shed soon.

The bull lowers his head and withdraws a number of paces, as if to gather impetus; the picador turns the horse a little, with his right side to the attacker, so the horse, having his right eye bound with a cloth, shall not push back at the moment of attack. The lance witha short point is lowered in the direction of the bull; he withdraws still more. It seems to you that he will retreat altogether, and your oppressed bosom begins to breathe with more ease.

Suddenly the bull rushes forward like a rock rolling down from a mountain. In the twinkle of an eye you see the lance bent like a bow; the sharp end of it is stuck in the shoulder of the bull,—and then is enacted a thing simply dreadful: the powerful head and neck of the furious beast is lost under the belly of the horse, his horns sink their whole length in the horse’s intestines; sometimes the bull lifts horse and rider, sometimes you see only the upraised hind part of the horse, struggling convulsively in the air. Then the rider falls to the ground, the horse tumbles upon him, and you hear the creaking of the saddle; horse, rider, and saddle form one shapeless mass, which the raging bull tramples and bores with his horns.

Faces unaccustomed to the spectacle grow pale. In Barcelona and Madrid I have seen Englishwomen whose faces had become as pale as linen. Every one in the circus for the first time has the impression of a catastrophe. When the rider is seen rolled into a lump, pressed down by the weight of the saddle and the horse, and the raging beast is thrusting his horns with fury into that mass of flesh, it seems that for the man there is no salvation, and that the attendants will raise a mere bloody corpse from the sand.

But that is illusion. All that is done is in the programme of the spectacle.

Under the white leather and tinsel the rider has armor which saves him from being crushed,—he fell purposely under the horse, so that the beast should protect him with his body from the horns. In fact the bull, seeing before him the fleshy mass of the horse’s belly, expends on it mainly his rage. Let me add that the duration of the catastrophe is counted byseconds. The capeadors have attacked the bull from every side, and he, wishing to free himself from them, must leave his victims. He does leave them, he chases again after the capeadors; his steaming horns, stained with blood, seem again to be just touching the capeadors’ shoulders. They, in escaping, lead him to the opposite side of the arena; other men meanwhile draw from beneath the horse the picador, who is barely able to move under the weight of his armor, and throw him over the paling.

The horse too tries to raise himself: frequently he rises for a moment, but then a ghastly sight strikes the eye. From his torn belly hangs a whole bundle of intestines with a rosy spleen, bluish liver, and greenish stomach. The hapless beast tries to walk a few steps; but his trembling feet tread on his own entrails, he falls, digs the ground with his hoofs, shudders. Meanwhile the attendants run up, remove the saddle and bridle, and finish the torments ofthe horse with one stab of a stiletto, at the point where head and neck come together.

On the arena remains the motionless body, which, lying now on its side, seems wonderfully flat. The intestines are carried out quickly in a basket which is somewhat like a wash-tub, and the public clap their hands with excitement. Enthusiasm begins to seize them: “Bravo el toro! Bravo picador!” Eyes are flashing, on faces a flush comes, a number of hats fly to the arena in honor of the picador. Meanwhile “el toro,” having drawn blood once, kills a number of other horses. If his horns are buried not in the belly but under the shoulder of the horse, a stream of dark blood bursts onto the arena in an uncommon quantity; the horse rears and falls backward with his rider. A twofold danger threatens the man: the horns of the bull or, in spite of his armor, the breaking of his neck. But, as we have said, the body of the horse becomes a protection to the rider; hence, every picadortries to receive battle at the edge of the arena, so as to be, as it were, covered between the body of the horse and the paling. When the bull withdraws, the picador advances, but only a few steps, so that the battle never takes place in the centre.

All these precautions would not avail much, and the bull would pierce the horseman at last, were it not for the capeadors. They press on the bull, draw away his attention, rush with unheard of boldness against his rage, saving each moment the life of some participant in the fight. Once I saw an espada, retreating before the raging beast, stumble against the head of a dead horse and fall on his back; death inevitable was hanging over him, the horns of the bull were just ready to pass through his breast, when suddenly between that breast and the horns the red capes were moving, and the bull flew after the capes. It may be said that were it not for that flock of chimpanzees waving red capes, the work of the picadorswould be impossible, and at every representation as many of them as of horses would perish.

It happens rarely that a picador can stop a bull at the point of a lance. This takes place only when the bull advances feebly, or the picador is gifted with gigantic strength of arms, surpassing the measure of men. I saw two such examples in Madrid, after which came a hurricane of applause for the picador.

But usually the bull kills horses like flies; and he is terrible when, covered with sweat, glittering in the sun, with a neck bleeding from lances and his horns painted red, he runs around the arena, as if in the drunkenness of victory. A deep bellow comes from his mighty lungs; at one moment he scatters capeadors, at another he halts suddenly over the body of a horse, now motionless, and avenges himself on it terribly,—he raises it on his horns, carries it around the arena, scattering drops of stiff blood on spectators in thefirst row; then he casts it again on the stained sand and pierces it a second time. It seems to him, evidently, that the spectacle is over, and that it has ended in his triumph.

But the spectacle has barely passed through one-half of its course. Those picadors whose horses have survived the defeat, ride out, it is true, from the arena; but in place of them run in with jumps, and amid shouts, nimble banderilleros. Every one of them in his upraised hands has two arrows, each an ell long, ornamented, in accordance with the coat of the man, with a blue, a green, or a red ribbon, and ending with a barbed point, which once it is under the skin will not come out of it. These men begin to circle about the bull, shaking the arrows, stretching toward him the points, threatening and springing up toward him. The bull rolls his bloodshot eyes, turns his head to the right, to the left, looking to see what new kind of enemies these are. “Ah,” says he, evidently, to himself, “you have hadlittle blood, you want more—you shall have it!” and selecting the man, he rushes at him.

But what happens? The first man, instead of fleeing, runs toward the bull,—runs past his head, as if he wished to avoid him; but in that same second something seems hanging in the air like a rainbow: the man is running away empty-handed with all the strength of his legs, toward the paling, and in the neck of the bull are two colored arrows.

After a moment another pair are sticking in him, and then a third pair,—six altogether, with three colors. The neck of the beast seems now as if ornamented with a bunch of flowers, but those flowers have the most terrible thorns of any on earth. At every movement of the bull, at every turn of his head, the arrows move, shake, fly from one side of his neck to the other, and with that every point is boring into the wound. Evidently from pain the animal is falling into the madness of rage; butthe more he rushes the greater his pain. Hitherto the bull was the wrong-doer, now they wrong him, and terribly. He would like to free himself from those torturing arrows; but there is no power to do that. He is growing mad from mere torment, and is harassed to the utmost. Foam covers his nostrils, his tongue is protruding; he bellows no longer, but in the short intervals between the wild shouts, the clapping, and the uproar of the spectators, you may hear his groans, which have an accent almost human. The capeadors harassed him, every picador wounded him, now the arrows are working into his wounds; thirst and heat complete his torments.

It is his luck that he did not get another kind of “banderille.” If—which, however, happens rarely—the bull refuses to attack the horses and has killed none, the enraged public rise, and in the circus something in the nature of a revolution sets in. Men with their canes and women with their parasols and fans turn tothe royal box; wild, hoarse voices of cruel cavaliers, and the shrill ones of senoritas, shout only one word: “Fuego! fuego! fuego!” (Fire, fire, fire!)

The representatives of the government withhold their consent for a long time. Hence “Fuego!” is heard ever more threateningly, and drowns all other voices; the threat rises to such an intensity as to make us think that the public may pass at any instant from words to a mad deed of some kind. Half an hour passes: “Fuego! fuego!” There is no help for it. The signal is given, and the unfortunate bull gets a banderille which when thrust into his neck blazes up that same instant.

The points wound in their own way, and in their own way rolls of smoke surround the head of the beast, the rattle of fireworks stuns him; great sparks fall into his wounds, small congreve rockets burst under his skin; the smell of burnt flesh and singed hair fill the arena.In truth, cruelty can go no further; but the delight of the public rises now to its zenith. The eyes of women are covered with mist from excitement, every breast is heaving with pleasure, their heads fall backward, and between their open moist lips are gleaming white teeth. You would say that the torment of the beast is reflected in the nerves of those women with an answering degree of delight. Only in Spain can such things be seen. There is in that frenzy something hysterical, something which recalls certain Phœnician mysteries, performed on the altar of Melitta.

The daring and skill of the banderilleros surpass every measure. I saw one of them who had taken his place in the middle of the arena in an arm-chair; he had stretched his legs carelessly before him,—they were in rose-colored stockings,—he crossed them, and holding above his head a banderille, was waiting for the bull. The bull rushed at him straightway; the next instant, I saw only that the banderillewas fastened in the neck, and the bull was smashing the chair with mad blows of his head. In what way the man had escaped between the chair and the horns, I know not,—that is the secret of his skill. Another banderillero, at the same representation, seizing the lance of a picador at the moment of attack, supported himself with it, and sprang over the back and whole length of the bull. The beast was dumb-founded, could not understand where his victim had vanished.

A multitude of such wonders of daring and dexterity are seen at each representation.

One bull never gets more than three pairs of banderilles. When the deed is accomplished, a single trumpet is heard in the orchestra with a prolonged and sad note,—and the moment the most exciting and tragic in the spectacle approaches. All that was done hitherto was only preparation for this. Now a fourth act of the drama is played.

On the arena comes out the “matador” himself,—thatis, the espada. He is dressed like the other participants in the play, only more elaborately and richly. His coat is all gold and tinsel: costly laces adorn his breast. He may be distinguished by this too,—that he comes out bareheaded always. His black hair, combed back carefully, ends on his shoulders in a small tail. In his left hand he holds a red cloth flag, in his right a long Toledo sword. The capeadors surround him as soldiers their chief, ready at all times to save him in a moment of danger, and he approaches the bull, collected, cool, but terrible and triumphant.

In all the spectators the hearts are throbbing violently, and a moment of silence sets in.

In Barcelona and Madrid I saw the four most eminent espadas in Spain, and in truth I admit, that besides their cool blood, dexterity, and training, they have a certain hypnotic power, which acts on the animal and fills him with mysterious alarm. The bull simply bearshimself differently before the espada from what he did before the previous participants in the play. It is not that he withdraws before him; on the contrary, he attacks him with greater insistence perhaps. But in former attacks, in addition to rage, there was evident a certain desire. He hunted, he scattered, he killed; he was as if convinced that the whole spectacle was for him, and that the question was only in this, that he should kill. Now, at sight of that cold, awful man with a sword in his hand, he convinces himself that death is there before him, that he must perish, that on that bloody sand the ghastly deed will be accomplished in some moments.

This mental state of the beast is so evident that every man can divine it. Perhaps even this, by its tragic nature, becomes the charm of the spectacle. That mighty organism, simply seething with a superabundance of vitality, of desire, of strength, is unwilling to die, will not consent to die for anything in the world! anddeath, unavoidable, irresistible, is approaching; hence unspeakable sorrow, unspeakable despair, throbs through every movement of the bull. He hardly notices the capeadors, whom before he pursued with such venom; he attacks the espada himself, but he attacks with despair completely evident.

The espada does not kill him at once, for that is not permitted by the rules of the play. He deceives the bull with movements of the flag, himself he pushes from the horns by turns slight and insignificant; he waits for the moment, withdraws, advances. Evidently he wishes to sate the public; now, this very instant, he’ll strike, now he lowers his sword again.

The struggle extends over the whole arena; it glitters in the sun, is dark in the shade. In the circus applause is heard, now general, now single from the breast of some señorita who is unable to restrain her enthusiasm. At one moment bravos are thundering; at another, ifthe espada has retreated awkwardly or given a false blow, hissing rends the ear. The bull has now given some tens of blows with his horns,—always to the flag; the public are satisfied; here and there voices are crying: “Mata el toro! mata el toro!” (Kill the bull! kill the bull!)

And now a flash comes so suddenly that the eye cannot follow it; then the group of fighters scatter, and in the neck of the bull, above the colored banderilles, is seen the red hilt of the sword. The blade has gone through the neck, and, buried two thirds of its length, is planted in the lungs of the beast.

The espada is defenceless; the bull attacks yet, but he misleads him in the old fashion with the flag, he saves himself from the blows with half turns.

Meanwhile it seems that people have gone wild in the circus. No longer shouts, but one bellow and howl are heard, around, from above to below. All are springing from theirseats. To the arena are flying bouquets, cigar-cases, hats, fans. The fight is approaching its end.

A film is coming over the eyes of the bull; from his mouth are hanging stalactites of bloody saliva; his groan becomes hoarse. Night is embracing his head. The glitter and heat of the sun concern him no longer. He attacks yet, but as it were in a dream. It is darker and darker for him. At last he collects the remnant of his consciousness, backs to the paling, totters for a moment, kneels on his fore feet, drops on his hind ones, and begins to die.

The espada looks at him no longer; he has his eyes turned to the spectators, from whom hats and cigar-cases are flying, thick as hail; he bows; capeadors throw back to the spectators their hats.

Meanwhile a mysterious man dressed in black climbs over the paling in silence and puts a stiletto in the bull, where the neckbonemeets the skull; with a light movement he sinks it to the hilt and turns it.

That is the blow of mercy, after which the head of the bull drops on its side.

All the participants pass out. For a moment the arena is empty; on it are visible only the body of the bull and the eviscerated carcasses of four or five horses, now cold.

But after a while rush in with great speed men with mules, splendidly harnessed in yellow and red; the men attach these mules to the bodies and draw them around so that the public may enjoy the sight once again, then with speed equally great they go out through the doors of the arena.

But do not imagine that the spectacle is ended with one bull. After the first comes a second, after the second a third, and so on. In Madrid six bulls perish at a representation. In Barcelona, at the time of the fair, eight were killed.

Do not think either that the public arewearied by the monotony of the fight. To begin with, the fight itself is varied with personal episodes caused by temperament, the greater or less rage of the bull, the greater or less skill of the men in their work; secondly, that public is never annoyed at the sight of blood and death.

The “toreadores” (though in Spain no participant in the fight is called a toreador), thanks to their dexterity, rarely perish; but if that happens, the spectacle is considered as the more splendid, and the bull receives as much applause as the espada. Since, however, accidents happen to people sometimes, at every representation, besides the doctor, there is present a priest with the sacrament. That spiritual person is not among the audience, of course; but he waits in a special room, to which the wounded are borne in case of an accident.

Whether in time, under the influence of civilization, bull-fights will be abandoned inSpain, it is difficult to say. The love of those fights is very deep in the nature of the Spanish people. The higher and intelligent ranks of society take part in them gladly. The defenders of these spectacles say that in substance they are nothing more than hazardous hunting, which answers to the knightly character of the nation. But hunting is an amusement, not a career; in hunting there is no audience,—only actors; there are no throngs of women, half fainting from delight at the spectacle of torment and death; finally, in hunting no one exposes his life for hire.

Were I asked if the spectacle is beautiful, I should say yes; beautiful especially in its surroundings,—that sun, those shades, those thousands of fans at sight of which it seems as though a swarm of butterflies had settled on the seats of the circus, those eyes, those red moist lips. Beautiful is that incalculable quantity of warm and strong tones, that massof colors, gold, tinsel, that inflamed sand, from which heat is exhaling,—finally those proofs of bold daring, and that terror hanging over the play. All that is more beautiful by far than the streams of blood and the torn bellies of the horses.

He, however, who knows these spectacles only from description, and sees them afterwards with his own eyes, cannot but think: what a wonderful people for whom the highest amusement and delight is the sight of a thing so awful, so absolute and inevitable as death. Whence comes that love? Is it simply a remnant of Middle-age cruelty; or is it that impulse which is roused in many persons, for instance at sight of a precipice, to go as near as possible to the brink, to touch that curtain, behind which begin the mystery and the pit?—that is a wonderful passion, which in certain souls becomes irresistible.

Of the Spaniards it may be said, that inthe whole course of their history they have shown a tendency to extremes. Few people have been so merciless in warfare; none have turned a religion of love into such a gloomy and bloody worship; finally, no other nation amuses itself by playing with death.

Other works by Henryk Sienkiewicz.

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With Fire and Sword. An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the original by Jeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00. Library edition, 2 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $3.00.

The Deluge. An Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden, and Russia, a sequel to “With Fire and Sword,” translated from the Polish of Henryk Sienkiewicz by Jeremiah Curtin. With photogravure portrait of the author and map of the country at the period of the stories. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $3.00.

Every one should read these remarkable books. They have received the highest praise everywhere. The distinguished writer, Charles Dudley Warner, in a review of “With Fire and Sword” in “Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” says that the author has given, in the character of Zagloba, a new type to the literature of fiction.

Of these extraordinary romances it has been truly said thataction in the field has never before been described in any language with such a marvellous expression of energy. The comparisons which have suggested themselves to American critics couple the Polish novelist with such names as Scott, Dumas, Schiller, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Homer. The character of Zagloba has been described as “a curious and fascinating combination of Falstaff and Ulysses.”

“The only modern romance with which ‘Fire and Sword’ can be compared,” says the “New York Tribune,” “is ‘The Three Musketeers.’”

A new Historical Romance by Henryk Sienkiewicz,completing “With Fire and Sword”and “The Deluge.”

Pan Michael. An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey. A sequel to “With Fire and Sword” and “The Deluge.” Translated byJeremiah Curtin. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.00.

This great historical romance completes the remarkable series of historical novels by Sienkiewicz, begun by “With Fire and Sword” and continued in “The Deluge.” These powerful works have been received everywhere with enthusiastic commendation, and the publication of the final story of the trilogy can only add to and continue their popularity.

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Without Dogma. A new novel by the author of“With Fire and Sword.”

Without Dogma. A Novel of Modern Poland. ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish byIza Young. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $1.50.

A psychological novel of modern thought, and of great power. Its utter contrast to the author’s historical romances exhibits in a most striking manner the remarkable variety of his genius.

A triumph of psychology.—Chicago Times.

Belongs to a high order of fiction.—New York Times.

A masterly piece of writing.—Pittsburg Bulletin.

Intellectually the novel is a masterpiece.—Christian Union.

Emphatically a human document.—The Boston Beacon.

Displays the most remarkable genius.—Boston Home Journal.

Both absorbing and instructive.—Boston Courier.

Yanko the Musician and Other Stories.

ByHenryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. White and gold. $1.25.

This charming volume contains the following stories of two continents by the popular author of “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” etc.: I. Yanko the Musician; II. The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall; III. From the Diary of a Tutor in Poznan; IV. A Comedy of Errors, a Sketch of American Life; V. Bartek the Victor. “Yanko the Musician,” the initial story of the volumes, won the author his fame. In a review of Sienkiewicz in Blackwood’s Magazine, this beautiful story was fittingly described asa little poem in prose, absolutely perfect of its kind.

“Bartek the Victor” is the story of a hero of the Franco-Prussian war. The Blackwood reviewer, writing of it, says: “The battle of Gravelotte is so admirably described that it is difficult to believe the writer not to have been actively engaged in it himself.”

The stories are deeply intellectual.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.

The tale of Yanko has wonderful pathos.—Chicago Herald.

Exquisite in technical expression.—Boston Beacon.

There is an outdoor freshness about these tales, and an impulse which, like Polish music, sets one’s blood a-tingling.—New Haven Register.

They are full of powerful interest.—Boston Courier.

The simple story of the lighthouse man is a little masterpiece.—New York Times.

The admirers of the distinguished Polish novelist will not be disappointed in this volume of short stories, which is beautifully illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett, and daintily bound.—Boston Home Journal.

These stories show that he touches nothing without mastery.—Christian Register.

The title story is a strangely simple, pathetic story of a weakling child with a passion for music. The careful, loving treatment of the slight plot makes it, even in translation, a beautiful story.—Chicago Figaro.

Five stories, all conceived with great power and written with masterly skill.—Boston Gazette.

The Blind Musician.Translated from the Russian ofVladimir Korolenkoby Aline Delano. With Introduction by George Kennan, and illustrations by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.

This unique and exquisite little book is less a story than a wonderfully faithful and delicate study in psychology. Though told in prose, it is in essence a poem. The volume is inedition de luxe, with dainty and charming bits of vignette illustration and a perfection of finish which gives refined pleasure to the touch as well as to the eye.—Boston Transcript.

A Woman of Shawmut. A Romance of Colonial Times. (Boston, 1640.) ByEdmund Janes Carpenter. With 12 charming full-page illustrations and numerous chapter-headings from pen-and-ink drawings by F. T. Merrill. 16mo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, $1.25.

Has qualities placing itamong the prose poems of recent literature.—Boston Journal.

Clever pictures of old Boston.—Boston Transcript.

A decidedly artistic specimen of bookmaking.—Boston Gazette.

Carine, a Story of Sweden. ByLouis Énault. Translated from the French by Linda De Kowalewska. With thirty-nine Illustrations by Louis K. Harlow. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25. Uniform with “A Woman of Shawmut.”

Swedish life in all its varying domestic aspects, as seen from intimacy with cultivated and refined people, isrevealed with exquisite fidelity; and the portrayal of Carine’s problematic character is elaborated in a veritably artistic manner.The whole story has the idyllic touch.—Boston Beacon.

Lyrics and Legends. ByNora Perry, author of “After the Ball,” “A Flock of Girls and Their Friends,” etc. Illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25.

Many of the songs have already sung themselves into the hearts of those who love beautiful thought in beautiful form.—Public Opinion.

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LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers.

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