The Spanish Bull-Fight 199 
competition with professionals. He was thirty years of age when 
the heavy pay of the matador induced him to risk his life in the 
arena. 
Whatever may be said of his failing as an artistic exponent 
of the art of Cuchdres, he killed his bulls in a resolute manner, 
and re-animated the interest in the corrida, but his example 
was a bad one. Several men emulating his career have en- 
deavoured to become improvised toréros, and, like him, to avoid 
the step-by-step climb to matador’s rank. All have been failures. 
They wanted to begin where the bull-fighter of old left off. 
Mazzantini has retired, unscathed, from his twenty years of 
perilous experience in the arena, and is now a civic light in the 
local government of the city of Madrid. 
Since Guerrita, not a single matador of leading light has 
arisen. Reverte (1891), Antonio Fuentes (1893), and Bombita 
(1894) all attracted a numerous public; and after them we arrive 
at the lesser lights of the present day, Bombita IT. and Machaquito. 
Notwithstanding its present decadence in all the most essential 
qualities, yet the fiesta de toros is still, if not the very heart- 
throb of the nation, at least the single all-embracing symbol of 
the people’s taste as distinguished from that of other lands. 
Racing has been tried and failed; there are no teeming crowds 
at football, nor silent watchers on the cricket-field. La Corrida 
alone makes the Spanish holiday. 
