A second matador is chronically ill and looks it, spending most of his time in his room though making appearances at meals. He makes passes at Paco’s oldest sister and she rebuffs him, laughing at his cowardice. One of the matadors has become a coward because of being badly gored and consequently puts on a show of joviality to hide his insecurities.
Hemingway presents us with character sketches of the Luarca’s bullfighting residents: three matadors, two picadors, and one banderillero. The protagonist, a young country boy named Paco whose sisters are also employed at the Luarca and who sent for him from a small village, has dreams of becoming a bullfighter himself and romanticizes the Luarca and its residents. It is respectable but cheap, and is full, Hemingway tells us, of “second-rate” bullfighters. The scene opens in Madrid at a small residential hotel called the Pension Luarca in the Calle San Jeronimo.
