They would wait for the passing of the next train, bivouacing in the open air, or if they found they were being watched would start to walk over the deserted fields to the next station, in the hope that there they would be more fortunate. And so they arrived at Madrid after an adventurous journey of many days, with long waits and not a few cuffs. In the Calle de Sevilla and the Puerta del Sol, they admired the groups of unemployed toreros, superior beings, from whom they ventured to beg—without any result—a little alms to continue their journey. A servant of the Plaza de Toros who came from Seville had pity on them, and let them sleep in the stables, procuring them further the delight of seeing a corrida of young bulls in the famous circus, which, however, did not seem to them as imposing as the one in their own country.

Frightened at their own daring, and seeing the end of their excursion ever further and further off, they decided to return to Seville in the same way that they had come, but from that time they took a pleasure in these stolen journeys on the railway. They travelled to many places of small importance in the different Andalusian provinces, whenever they heard vague rumours of "fiestas" with their corresponding "capeas." In this way they travelled as far as La Mancha, and Estremadura, and if bad luck obliged them to go on foot, they took refuge in the hovels of the peasants, credulous, good-natured people, who were astounded at their youth, their daring and their bombastic talk, and took them for real toreros.

made them exercise the [Pg 72]cunning of primitive man to satisfy their wants. In the neighbourhood of country houses, they would crawl on their stomachs to steal the vegetables without being seen. They would watch whole hours for a solitary hen to come near them, and having wrung her neck would proceed on their tramp, to light a fire of dry wood in the middle of the day, and swallow the poor bird scorched and half raw with the voracity of little savages. The field mastiffs they feared more than bulls; these watchdogs were difficult brutes to fight, when they rushed upon the boys showing their fangs, as if the strange aspect of the latter infuriated them and they scented enemies to personal property The Prince was very much alarmed when he perceived that Selbst was growing so rapidly..

Sometimes when they were sleeping in the open air near a station waiting for a train to pass, a couple of Civil Guards would rouse them. However, the guardians of law and order were pacified when they saw the red cloth bundles which served these vagabonds as pillows. Very civilly they would take off the urchins' caps, and finding the hairy appendage of the pig-tail, they would move off laughing, and make no further enquiries. They were not little thieves; they were "aficionados" going to the "capeas." In this tolerance there was a mixture of sympathy for the national pastime, and respect towards the obscurity of the future. Who could tell if perhaps one of these ragged lads, with poverty stricken exterior, might not become in the future a "star of the art," a great man who would pledge[57] bulls to kings, would live like a prince, and whose exploits and sayings would be recorded in the newspapers!