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That is all you will see of the killing; but the mechanics of it are these. Bulls are not killed properly by a sword thrust in the heart. The sword is not long enough to reach the heart, if driven in where it should go high up between the shoulder blades. It goes past the vertebrae between the top of the ribs and, if it kills instantly, cuts the aorta. That is the end of a perfect sword thrust and to make it the man must have the good luck that the sword point should not strike either the spine or the ribs as it goes in. No man can go toward a bull, reach over the top of his head if it is carried high, and put a sword in between his shoulders. The instant the bull's head is up the sword is not long enough to reach from his head to his shoulders. For it to be possible for the man to put the sword into the place where it is designed to go to kill the bull he must have the bull's head down so that this place is exposed and even then the man must lean forward over the bull's lowered head and neck to get the sword in. Now, if when the bull raises his head as the sword goes in the man is not to go up in the air, one of two things must be happening; either the bull must be in motion past the man, guided by the muleta in the man's left arm as he shoves the sword in with his right or else the man must be in motion past the bull who is guided away from the man by the muleta held by the left hand which is crossed low in front of and to the left of the man's body as he goes in over the bull's head and comes out along his flank. Killing can be tricked by having both the man and bull in motion.
These are the mechanical principles of the two ways to kill bulls properly; either the bull must come to and pass the man, cited, drawn on, controlled and going out and away from the man by a movement of the muleta while the sword is being inserted between his shoulders; or else the man must fix the bull in position, his front feet together and his hind feet square with them, his head neither too high nor too low, must test him by raising and lowering the cloth to see if he follows it with his eyes and then, with the muleta in his left hand making a cross in front of him so that if the bull follows it he will pass to the man's right, go in toward the bull and as he lowers his head after the cloth which is to guide him away from the man, put the sword in and come out along the bull's flank. When the man awaits the charge of the bull it is called killing recibiendo.
When the man goes in on the bull it is called a volapié or flying with the feet. Preparing to go in, left shoulder toward the bull, sword pointed along the man's body, muleta held furled in the left hand, is called profiling. The closer it is done to the animal the less chance the man has to deviate and escape if the bull does not follow the cloth as the man goes in. The movement made to swing the left arm holding the muleta, which is crossed in front of the body, out and past the right side to get rid of the bull is called crossing. Any time the man does not make this cross he will have the bull under him. Unless he swings him far enough out the horn is certain to catch him. To make this cross successfully necessitates a wrist movement which will swing the folds of the furled muleta out and to the side as well as a simple arm movement across and away from the body. Bullfighters say that a bull is killed more with the left hand which controls the muleta and guides the animal than with the right which shoves in the sword. There is no great force needed to put in the sword if the point does not strike bone; properly guided by the muleta if the man leans after the blade the bull will seem sometimes to pluck the sword out from his hand. Other times, hitting bone, it will seem as though he had struck a wall of rubber and cement.
In the old days bulls were killed recibiendo, the matador provoking and awaiting the final charge and those bulls which were too heavy on their feet to charge were ham-strung with a half-moon-shaped blade attached to a long pole and then killed with a dagger stroke between the vertebrae of the neck after they were helpless. This repugnant business was made u
The killing of a bull recibiendo; the man now standing still and erect his feet only a little apart after he has provoked the charge by bending one leg forward and swinging the muleta toward the bull, letting the bull come until man and bull become one figure as the sword goes in; then the figure broken by the shock of the encounter, there coming a moment when they are joined by the sword that seems to slip in an inch at a time, is the most arrogant dealing of death and is one of the finest things you can see in bullfighting. You may never see it because the volapié, dangerous enough when properly executed, is so much less dangerous than the suerte de recibir that only very rarely does a fighter ever receive a bull in our times. I have seen it properly completed only four times in over fifteen hundred bulls I have seen killed. You will see it attempted, but unless the man really waits out the encounter and gets rid of the bull with an arm-and-wrist movement rather than by tricking with a sidestepping at the end it is no receiving. Maera did it, Nino de la Palma did it once in Madrid, and faked it several times, and Luis Freg did it. Few bulls come now to the end of a fight in proper condition to be received, but there are even fewer fighters to receive them. One reason for the decadence of this form of killing is that if the bull leaves the cloth as he reaches the man the horn wound will be in the chest. In fighting with the cape the first wound or catching will usually be in the lower leg or thigh. Where the second one is, if the bull passes the man from one horn to another, is a matter of luck. In the muleta or in killing by the volapié the wound is nearly always in the right thigh as that is where the bull's horn passes when it is lowered, although a man who has gone well over the horn may be caught under the arm or even at the neck if the bull raises his head before the man has passed him. But in killing recibiendo if anything goes wrong the horn chop hits the chest and so you hardly ever see it attempted any more except by some one who has drawn such a fine bull and done such a splendid faena that at the end he wants to make a super-emotional climax so he tries to kill recibiendo and usually he has used his bull up with the muleta or else the man lacks the experience to receive properly and the faena ends in an anticlimax or in a goring.
The volapié, if properly executed, that is slowly, closely and well-timed, is a fine enough way to kill. I have seen bullfighters gored in the chest, have heard the rib crack, literally, with the shock and seen a man turn on the horn with the horn in him and out of sight, muleta and sword in the air, then on the ground, the bull thrusting head and man high and the man not leaving the horn when he is tossed to come off the next toss into the air and be caught by the other horn and come down, try to get up, put his hands where he was breathing through his chest and be carried with his teeth knocked out to die within an hour in the infirmary still in his clothes, the wound too big to do anything with. I have seen that man's, Isidoro Todo's, face while he was in the air, he being fully conscious all of the time on the horn and after and able to talk in the infirmary before he died, although the blood in his mouth made his words unintelligible, so I see the bullfighters' viewpoint about killing recibiendo when they know the cornada comes in the chest.
According to historians Pedro Romero, who was a matador in Spain at the time of the American revolution, killed five thousand six hundred bulls recibiendo between the years of 1771 and 1779 and lived to die in his bed at the age of ninety-five. If this is true we live in a very decadent time indeed when it is an event to see a matador even attempt to receive a bull, but we do not know how many bulls Romero would have lived to receive if he had tried to pass them as close as Juan Belmonte with the cape and muleta. Nor do we know how many of those five thousand he received well, waiting quietly and getting the sword in high up between the shoulders or how many he received badly; side-stepping and letting the sword go into the neck. Historians speak highly of all dead bullfighters. To read any history of the great fighters of the past it would seem impossible that they ever had bad days or that the public was ever dissatisfied with them. It may be that they never were dissatisfied with them before 1873 because I have not had time to read the contemporary account any farther back than that, but since that time bullfighting has always been considered by contemporary chroniclers to be in a period of decadence. During what you now hear referred to as the golden age of all golden ages, that of Lagartijo and Frascuelo, which really was a golden age, there was a generally expressed opinion that things were in a bad way; the bulls were much smaller and younger, or else they were big and they were cowardly. Lagartijo was no killer; Frascuelo, yes, but he was mean as dirt to his cuadrilla and impossible to get along with; Lagartijo was chased from the ring by the crowd on his final performance in Madrid. When in the accounts we come to Guerrita, another golden-age hero, who corresponds to the period just before, during and after the Spanish-American war you read that the bulls are small and young again; gone are the giant animals of phenomenal bravery of the days of Lagartijo and Frascuelo. Guerrita is no Lagartijo we read, it is sacrilege to compare the two and this florid monkey business makes those who remember the serious honesty (no longer ugly mea