Aplomado is the third and last general stage the bull goes through. When he is aplomado he has been made heavy, he is like lead; he has usually lost his wind, and while his strength is still intact, his speed is gone. He no longer carries his head high; he will charge if provoked; but whoever cites him must be closer and closer. For in this state the bull does not want to charge unless he is sure of his objective, since he has obviously been beaten, to himself as well as the spectator, in everything he has attempted up to that time; but he is still supremely dangerous.

It is when he is aplomado that the bull is usually killed; especially in the modern bullfight. The extent of his wearing out, of his heaviness and tiredness, depends upon the amount he has charged, and been punished by, the picadors, the number of times he has followed the capes, the amount his vigor has been lessened by the banderillas and the effect that the matador's work with the muleta has had upon him.

All of these phases have had, for practical end, the regulating of the way he carries his head, the cutting of his speed, and the correcting of whatever tendencies he may have had to hook to one side or the other. If they have been accomplished properly the bull arrives at the final stage of the fight with his great neck muscles fatigued so that he holds his head neither too high nor too low, his speed less than half what it was at the start of the fight, his attention fixed on the object that is presented him, and any tendency to hooking to one side or the other, but especially with his right horn, corrected.

Those are the three main states that the bull goes through in the course of the fight; they are the natural progress of his fatigue if the fatigue has been properly induced. If the bull has not been fought properly he may arrive at the hour of killing uncertain, chopping with his head, unable to be fixed in one spot, purely on the defensive; his offensive spirit, that is so necessary to a good bullfight, uselessly wasted. He is then unwilling to charge and altogether unfit for the bullfighter to perform with brilliantly. He may be ruined in the course of the fight by a picador sinking the point of his pic into a shoulder blade or placing it far back in the centre of the bull's spine, instead of the muscles of his neck, thereby laming him or injuring his spine; he may be ruined by a banderillero nailing the banderillas into a wound made by a picador, driving them in so deep that the shafts stick up straight instead of hanging down the bull's flank with the barbs caught only under the skin as they should be placed; or he may be destroyed for any possibility of brilliant work by the way in which the banderilleros handle him with the capes. If they turn him on himself again and again, twisting his spinal column, straining the tendons and muscles of his legs, sometimes catching the sack of his scrotum between his hind legs, they can destroy his force and much of his bravery, ruining him by quick turns and twists instead of fatiguing him honestly by his own efforts in straight charging. But if the bull is fought properly he will go through the three stages, modified as they will be by his own individual force and temperament, and will arrive slowed but intact at the moment of the last third of the fight when the matador himself should wear him down to the proper degree with the muleta before killing him.

The first reason that the bull must be slowed is so that he may be played properly with the muleta, with the man planning and controlling the passes and increasing their danger by his own volition, that is going on the offensive himself rather than merely being forced to defend himself against the bull, and secondly so that he may be killed properly with the sword. The only way this slowness can be produced in a normal manner, without the loss of bravery and the harm to the bull's muscular structure, caused by the constant, jerking deception of the cape, is by his charging of the horses where he wears himself down by his efforts in attacking an object that it is possible to attain, thus finding that his bravery is rewarded rather than that he is steadily deceived. A bull that has successfully charged the horses and has killed or wounded one or several of his opponents goes on to the rest of the fight believing that his charges lead to something and if he continues to charge, he will get the horn into something again. On such a bull the bullfighter can play to the extent of his artistic ability as an organist can play on a pipe organ that is pumped for him. The pipe organ, and let us say the steam calliope, if the symbols are becoming too delicate, are, I believe, the only musical instruments in which the musician utilizes a force which is already there, simply releasing this force in the directions /?/ chooses rather than applying force in a varying degree himself to produce music. So the pipe organ and the steam calliope are the only musical instruments whose players can be compared to the matador. A bull that does not charge is like an unpumped pipe organ or a steamless calliope and the performance the bullfighter can give with such a bull is only comparable in brilliance and lucidity with that which would be given by an organist who had also to pump his pipe organ or a calliopeist who must at the same time stoke his calliope.

Aside from the normal physical and mental stages the bull goes through in the ring each individual bull changes his mental state all through the fight. The most common, and to me the most interesting, thing that passes in the bull's brain is the development of querencias. A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring; a preferred locality. That is a natural querencia and such are well known and fixed, but an accidental querencia is more than that. It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill. If a bullfighter goes in to kill a bull in his querencia rather than to bring him out of it he is almost certain to be gored. The reason for this is that the bull, when he is in querencia, is altogether on the defensive, his horn stroke is a riposte rather than an attack, a counter rather than a lead, and the speed of eye and stroke being equal the riposte will always beat the attack since it sees the attack coming and parries or beats it to the touch. The attacker must lay himself open and the counter is certain to arrive if it is as fast as the attack, since it has the opening before it while the attack must try to create that opening. In boxing Gene Tunney was an example of a counter-puncher; all those boxers who have lasted longest and taken least punishment have been counter-punchers too. The bull, when he is in querencia, counters the sword stroke with his horn when he sees it coming as the boxer counters a lead, and many men have paid with their lives, or with bad wounds, because they did not bring the bull out of his querencia before they went in to kill.

The natural querencias of all bulls are the door of the passageway through which they entered the ring and the wall of the barrera. The first because it is familiar to them; it is the last place they remember; and the second because it gives them something to get their back against so they feel safe from attack in the rear. These are the known querencias and a bullfighter utilizes them in many ways. He knows that a bull, at the conclusion of a pass or a series of passes, will probably have a tendency to make for the natural querencia and in so doing will pay little or no attention to what is in his way. A bullfighter can, therefore, place a prepared and very statuesque pass as the bull goes by him on the way to his refuge. Such passes can be very brilliant; the man standing firm, his feet together, seemingly giving no importance to the bull's charge, letting the whole bulk of the bull rush by him without making the slightest movement of retreat, the horns sometimes passing only a fraction of an inch from his chest; but to the person who knows bullfighting they are valueless except as tricks. They seem dangerous but they are not, for the bull is really intent on reaching his querencia and the man has only placed himself beside his path. It is the bull that controls the direction, speed and aim, therefore to the real lover of bullfighting it is valueless since in real bullfighting, not circus bullfighting, the man should force the bull to charge as he wants him to; should make him curve rather than go straight, should control his direction, not merely profit by his charges to posture as the bull goes by. The Spaniards say, torear es parar, templar y mandar. That is, in real bullfighting the matador should remain still, should measure the speed of the bull by the movement of his wrists and arms holding the cloth, and should dominate and direct the bull's course. Any other way of fighting, such as making statuesque passes in the direction of the bull's natural voyage, no matter how brilliant, is not true bullfighting, since it is the animal that is dominating, not the man. A bull's accidental querencias that come up in his brain during the fight may be, and most often are, the places where he has had some success; killed a horse, for example. That is the most common querencia of a brave bull, although another very usual one on a hot day is any place on the sand of the ring where it has been dampened and cooled, often the mouth of the underground pipe to which a hose is screwed on during the intermission to be used in laying the dust of the arena; where the sand feels cool under the bull's hooves. The bull too may take up his querencia in a place where a horse has been killed in a previous fight, where he smells the blood; a place where he has tossed a bullfighter, or any part of the ring for no apparent reason at all; simply because he feels at home there. You can see the idea of the querencia establishing itself in his brain during the course of the fight. He will go first tentatively, then with more purpose, and finally, unless the bullfighter has noticed his tendency and deliberately kept him away from his chosen spot, the bull will go to his querencia constantly, will take his place there with his back or his flank to the barrier and will refuse to leave. It is then that the bullfighters sweat the big drop. The bull must be brought out; but he is gone completely on the defensive and will not respond to the cape and will cut at them with his horns, refusing altogether to charge. The only way to get him out is to get so close to him that he is absolutely sure he can get the man, and with short pulling jerks of the cape, or by dropping the cape under his muzzle on the ground and pulling it a little at a time, tempt him a few steps at a time, from his querencia. There is nothing pretty about it, it is only dangerous, and usually, the fifteen minutes allotted the matador for killing the bull are passing steadily, he is getting angrier each minute, the banderilleros working more dangerously and the bull becoming more entrenched. But if the matador, impatient, finally says, "All right, if he wants to die there let him die there," and goes in to kill, that will probably be the last thing he will remember until he comes down out of the air with or without a horn wound. For the bull will watch him as he comes in, will knock up the muleta and sword, and will catch the man every time. When the capes and muleta are powerless to get a bull out of his querencia, sometimes fire banderillas are tried, pushed into his rump over the barrera, to smoulder and then go off in a series of explosions and smell of black powder and burning pasteboard; but I have seen a bull, the explosive banderillas in him, leave his querencia perhaps twenty feet, stimulated by the noise, and then return at once to pay no attention to any further means for dislodging him. In such a case the matador is justified in killing the bull in any way that least exposes the man. He may start at one side of the bull and run in a half circle past his head, stabbing him in passing while a banderillero attracts his attention with the cape as the man passes, or he may kill him in any other way that, to attempt with a brave bull, would risk his being lynched by the crowd. The thing to do is to kill him quickly, not well, for a bull who knows how to use his horns and who cannot be made to leave his querencia is as dangerous for the man to come within range of as a rattlesnake and as impossible to make a bullfight with. But the man should not have allowed him to make such a firm querencia. He should have started to keep him away, get him out into the ring and away from the back-to-the-wall feeling of security, and take him to other parts of the ring long before he took a definite and final stand in his chosen position. Once, about ten years ago, I saw a bullfight in which all six bulls, one after another, took up firm querencias, refused to leave them, and died in them. It was a corrida of Miura bulls in Pamplona. They were enormous roan-colored bulls, high on their legs, long, with huge shoulders and neck muscles and formidable horns. They were the finest-looking bulls I have ever seen and every one of them went on the defensive from the minute they came into the ring. You could not call them cowardly because they defended their lives seriously, desperately, wisely and ferociously, taking up a querencia soon after they came into the ring and refusing to leave it. The corrida lasted until dark, and there was not one graceful or artistic moment, it was an afternoon and early evening of bulls defending themselves against man and man trying to butcher bulls under extreme danger and difficulty. It was about as brilliant an action as the battle of Passchendaele; with apologies for comparing a commercial spectacle with a battle. There were present, for the first time at bullfights, some people to whom I had spoken of the brilliance, the art, the and so forth of bullfighting at great length. I had held forth a long time, stimulated to eloquence by two or three absinthes at the Café Kutz, and before they went had them all pretty eager to see a bullfight and especially this bullfight. None of them spoke to me after the fight and two, including one on whom I had hoped to make a good impression, were quite ill. I enjoyed the fight very much myself for I learned more about the mentality of the non-cowardly bull that still will not charge, a rare thing in bullfights, than I might have learned in a season, but the next time I see such a fight I hope that I go alone. I also hope that I am not fond of, nor a friend of, any of the bullfighters involved.