[rajnish manga]

A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as TOREADORS, came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain, led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised dais above the arena. The children grouped themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing at the entrance. Even the Duchess - the Camerera-Mayor as she was called - a thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin bloodless lips.

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, theInfantathought, than the real bull-fight that she had been broughtto at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobby-horses brandishing long javelins with gaystreamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on footwaving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightlyover the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull,he was just like a live bull, though he was only made of wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running roundthe arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever ofdoing. He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got soexcited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace handkerchiefs and cried out: BRAVO TORO! BRAVO TORO! just assensibly as if they had been grown-up people.