Bernardo's dress of blue and silver was very superb, and cost him five
hundred dollars. The signal was given--the gates were thrown open, and a
bull sprang into the arena; not a great, fierce-looking animal, as they are
in Spain, but a small, angry, wild-looking beast, with a troubled eye.

"Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The den expands, and expectation mute
Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls.
Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,
And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot
The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe;
Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit
His first attack, wide waving to and fro
His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow."

A picture equally correct and poetical. That first _pose_ of the bull is
superb! Pasta, in her Medea, did not surpass it. Meanwhile the matadors and
the _banderilleros_ shook their coloured scarfs at him--the picadors poked
at him with their lances. He rushed at the first, and tossed up the scarfs
which they threw at him, while they sprung over the arena; galloped after
the others, striking the horses, so that along with their riders they
occasionally rolled in the dust; both, however, almost instantly recovering
their equilibrium, in which there is no time to be lost. Then the matadors
would throw fireworks, crackers adorned with streaming ribbons, which stuck
on his horns, as he tossed his head, enveloped him in a blaze of fire.
Occasionally the picador would catch hold of the bull's tail, and passing
it under his own right leg, wheel his horse round, force the bullock to
gallop backwards, and throw him on his face.