defiance.  That is the moment seized by the watchful buttero for accepting the challenge.  With a sudden spring at the animal he seizes him by the horns, and with a sudden vigorous and knowingly-applied wrench throws him to the ground on his side.  Then burst forth the plaudits from the well-dressed crowd, more heartily bestowed perhaps by the ladies than by their kid-gloved cavaliers, who are conscious that they could not have done so much to save their own lives or those of the fair dames by their side.  With the fall of the beast to the ground the work is done.  All the rest is without difficulty, and is completed in a minute.  Other men come forward and apply the brand to the struggling but comparatively helpless brute, who in the next minute finds himself free from his persecutors and at liberty to trot off out of the enclosure.

Thus matters pass in a case where the buttero is master of his business, where he is in his own best condition of muscular force and activity, and where he is not matched against a beast of exceptional strength.  It frequently occurs, however, that all these conditions are not fulfilled.  Some men are cleverer at it than others.  It will be readily understood that, as in wrestling, the knack of the thing counts for much, and sometimes, either from want of this or some other circumstance of disadvantage, the struggle is prolonged.  Man and beast put forth their utmost strength.  They sway backward and forward; the ground becomes trampled into mud; the strong muscles of the creature’s brawny neck resist every effort of his enemy.  Not a man of the group within the area comes to the assistance of his comrade.  They watch the contest indeed with vigilant eyes, and should real danger to the man’s life ensue they are ready to throw themselves forward and overpower or drive off the buffalo.  But short of this the fight must be a duel.  The man must throw his beast, or be thrown.  Not unfrequently, the latter occurs; and then the city crowd, who were so loud in their plaudits of the victor—­cruel as their ancestors whose upturned thumbs condemned the conquered gladiator in the Coliseum—­are equally loud in their hooting of the prostrate buttero.  But only his self-love and self-respect, and not his life, in these days pays the penalty.  As he falls worsted his fellows, watchful to prevent mischief, though perhaps not sorry for a rival’s discomfiture, rush forward and overpower the conquering brute.

And this goes on until the assembled butteri and their aids have got through their day’s work and marked all the animals that were awaiting the brand, and the merca for that year is finished.  The citizens, dames and dandies get them back to their carriages and to the city, while the butteri, victors and vanquished alike, spend the night in discussing the vicissitudes of the merca and worshiping Bacchus with rites which in this most conservative of all lands two thousand years have done but little to change.