CHAPTER XLII

MADRID

We took seats in the omnibus belonging to the Hôtel de Paris, drawn by three richly harnessed grey mules with half-shaven tails like poodles. After lunch we went out for a stroll round the town, which does not differ greatly from other European cities. There is a continual thoroughfare in the streets of Madrid. We made our way with difficulty through a crowd of lookers-on surrounding a mountebank who was selling an elixir against toothache of his own concoction. He was standing on a chariot, dressed up in a swallow-tail and silk hat, and uttered in a loud voice the panegyric of his remedy. When passing the Royal Palace we saw a squadron of Blue Hussars, a company of infantry and two cannon drawn by mules, who came to relieve the guard. This ceremony takes place every day, and always gathers a great crowd, kept back by a line of soldiers. Before returning to the hotel we went through the Museum where we admired the marvels of art painted by Murillo, Velasquez, Michael Angelo and other celebrities. Murillo’s “Madonna Anunziata” and Tintoretto’s “Paradise,” an immense picture in which appears, between the chorus of angels, the lovely face of the painter’s wife, attracted particularly our attention. A party of negroes, very up-to-date, were walking about the Museum and seemed very interested with all they saw.

After dinner we went to see the “Arenas” where barbarous bull-fights, the favourite spectacle of the Spaniards, take place. The bull-ring is a large round building which can hold up to 16,000 spectators. We entered a chapel where Toreadors, Matadors as they are called here, say prayers before starting for the bull-fight. In the next room we saw six beds prepared for the wounded Matadors. We were also shown the stalls where stood thirty horses doomed for the next courses. The poor animals didn’t get any food or drink, “It wasn’t worth while,” said one of the grooms, as they would all be embowelled on the following day! The bulls travel by train to Madrid in a box put on wheels hardly big enough to hold them. On arriving at Madrid mules are harnessed to these boxes, and the bulls are brought behind the bull-ring where they are being kept in some dark place, and just before the beginning of the “Corrida” they are pushed into the arena, with long sharp iron rods, through a door which is opened from the top galleries by a cord on a pulley.

We drove back to the hotel through two beautiful parks, “Del Retiro” and “Reservado.” After dinner we went to the Apollo to see a modern play “La Grande Via,” about which the town was raving. The theatre was packed to the very ceiling. I perceived in one of the boxes a very ugly Matador who did not at all resemble Carmen’s Toreador. After the second