Mary developed a recurrence of anemia, and when the doctor recommended a more temperate climate, Ernest issued emergency marching orders. "She is down to 3,200,000," Ernest informed me, "which isn't funny. Eisenhower has 5,000,000. Black Dog 5,200,000." I had gone to live in Rome and it was there that I heard from Ernest when he arrived in Paris. His plans were to drive to Madrid in a Lancia, larger than his last one, which was being driven over from Italy. He wanted to know if I would like to join him for the feria of Zaragoza, where the young matador Antonio Ordonez, with whom he had been so impressed in 1954, was performing. We met at the Gran Hotel in Zaragoza the afternoon before the feria was to start. Zaragoza is in northern Spain, 323 kilometers northeast of Madrid. It is an unattractive, crowded industrial city, with what must surely be the homeliest cathedral in Christendom—a cavernous, square, fortlike structure which at night glows with neon trim that runs all around it, and the inside resembles the waiting room of a suburban-Chicago railroad station.
