" I do not remember to have mentioned this plan to
anyone until we reached Madrid in April, 1888.
We had been to see a bull fight rendered in the most magnificent
Spanish style, where greatly to my surprise and horror, I found
that I had seen, with comparative indifference, five bulls and
many more horses killed. The sense that this was the last
survival of all the glories of the amphitheater, the illusion
that the riders on the caparisoned horses might have been knights
of a tournament, or the matadore a slightly armed gladiator
facing his martyrdom, and all the rest of the obscure yet vivid
associations of an historic survival, had carried me beyond the
endurance of any of the rest of the party. I finally met them in
the foyer, stern and pale with disapproval of my brutal
endurance, and but partially recovered from the faintness and
disgust which the spectacle itself had produced upon them. I had
no defense to offer to their reproaches save that I had not
thought much about the bloodshed; but in the evening the natural
and inevitable reaction came, and in deep chagrin I felt myself
tried and condemned, not only by this disgusting experience but
by the entire moral situation which it revealed. It was suddenly
made quite clear to me that I was lulling my conscience by a
dreamer's scheme, that a mere paper reform had become a defense
for continued idleness, and that I was making it a raison d'etre
for going on indefinitely with study and travel.
Pages:
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107