work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running round
the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams of
doing. He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got so
excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace
handkerchiefs and cried out: Bravo toro! Bravo toro! just as
sensibly as if they had been grown-up people. At last, however,
after a prolonged combat, during which several of the hobby-horses
were gored through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the
young Count of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and
having obtained permission from the Infanta to give the coup de
grace, he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with
such violence that the head came right off, and disclosed the
laughing face of little Monsieur de Lorraine, the son of the French
Ambassador at Madrid.

The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead
hobbyhorses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow
and black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a
French posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian
puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of Sophonisba on the
stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose.
They acted so well, and their gestures were so extremely natural,
that at the close of the play the eyes of the Infanta were quite
dim with tears. Indeed some of the children really cried, and had
to be comforted with sweetmeats, and the Grand Inquisitor himself
was so affected that he could not help saying to Don Pedro that it
seemed to him intolerable that things made simply out of wood and
coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires, should be so
unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.