conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Miracle in Seville about Seville, America's, Spain with the genre: Literature & Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: America's bestselling author transports readers to magical Seville, Spain, at Easter time, a season of splendid pageantry, exciting bullfights, deep piety--and miracles. An American journalist, sent to Seville on assignment to cover the efforts of a rancher to revive his once proud line of bulls--uncovers a story that shakes his newspaperman's hard-bitten pragmatism. 26 illustrations.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story titled Miracle in Seville.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Miracle in Seville: The story draws on religious themes, interweaving gypsy traditions, belief in the intervening power of the Virgin Mary, and the hope of God's forgiveness and redemption, into the Spanish tradition of bullfighting.\nThe action occurs during Holy Week in Spain, and Michener competently captures the religious processions.\nHe provides meticulous detail of bull fights (although some reviewers have taken umbrage at supposedly erroneous details in his narrative).\nThe tale involves a Gypsy matador (Lazaro López), his sister (Magdalena López) who reads fortunes, a cross-eyed Virgin Mary (La Bizca), the American writer (Shenstone), the Spanish bull breeder (Don Cayetano Mota) who is struggling to revive his once-famed herd, and of course the many bulls in Mota's herd.\nDespite his initial skepticism, the American is drawn into Mota's efforts, which involve fervent prayers to The Virgin and Herculean acts undertaken during Holy Week to prove his devotion and piety.\nHe knows that his prayers will eventually be rewarded, and this knowledge allows him to live with the often-humiliating performance of his bulls in the arena vis-a-vis the arrogant Gómez.\nWe learn that Lazaro López is also being aided by a powerful female, his sister, who may have the ability to curse the bulls that her brother must face.\nShe is determined that her brother must prevail.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about Seville, America's, Spain.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Miracle in Seville: The story draws on religious themes, interweaving gypsy traditions, belief in the intervening power of the Virgin Mary, and the hope of God's forgiveness and redemption, into the Spanish tradition of bullfighting.\nThe action occurs during Holy Week in Spain, and Michener competently captures the religious processions.\nHe provides meticulous detail of bull fights (although some reviewers have taken umbrage at supposedly erroneous details in his narrative).\nThe tale involves a Gypsy matador (Lazaro López), his sister (Magdalena López) who reads fortunes, a cross-eyed Virgin Mary (La Bizca), the American writer (Shenstone), the Spanish bull breeder (Don Cayetano Mota) who is struggling to revive his once-famed herd, and of course the many bulls in Mota's herd.\nDespite his initial skepticism, the American is drawn into Mota's efforts, which involve fervent prayers to The Virgin and Herculean acts undertaken during Holy Week to prove his devotion and piety.\nHe knows that his prayers will eventually be rewarded, and this knowledge allows him to live with the often-humiliating performance of his bulls in the arena vis-a-vis the arrogant Gómez.\nWe learn that Lazaro López is also being aided by a powerful female, his sister, who may have the ability to curse the bulls that her brother must face.\nShe is determined that her brother must prevail.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Miracle in Seville
  Now, reflecting calmly two decades later, I suspect that what I experienced was some shadowy glimpse of a truth we men do not like to acknowledge: that women possess an arcane power to influence men, making them see visions and influencing them to perform acts they would not normally commit. I'd struggled through a messy divorce and was already contemplating remarrying, so my thoughts were concentrated on the relationships between women and men. Was I translating my own confusion about women into universal truth regarding their potency? Certainly in Seville I witnessed a battle between two powerful women, and to me they remain as forceful as they were when they involved me in their combat.
  Since I specialized in bizarre stories, it was my good luck to have seen much of the world's playful nonsense, such as the performance of Argentine gauchos working wonders on the pampas with their bolo ropes, which they could twist perfectly around the rear legs of a galloping horse, or the daring fellows who canoed down the Yukon River during the turbulent spring floods.
  In the Madrid bullfight magazine he tossed to me I saw the full-moon face of Don Cayetano Mota, owner of the historic Mota Ranch for fighting bulls. He was, the story explained, sixty-eight years old, five feet five, and looked as round as an English toby mug in its three-cornered hat. His thick gray hair was rumpled, just like his suit, and I had the feeling that a man with a build and a face like that ought to be smiling, but he was frowning as if to say: With me, things are not going well.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me another paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was not to be. The Gypsy was even more shameful with his second adversary, for as soon as he had to work with the muleta, he complained to the president and the crowd that the bull had been fought before and that it was following him, not the muleta. Assuming the role of a heroic man asked to face an impossible animal, he begged the president tc have the bull taken from the ring as unfightable. At this disgraceful appeal, patrons screamed and began throwing things, and now López had just cause to fear attacking his bull with his sword, because a thrown cushion might really imperil him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As soon as he was gone, Morgan Wendell looked at me and said, 'Well, that's that,' and he began edging me away from the hole. I showed no inclination to go, whereupon a very firm hand gripped my arm and led me back toward town. I decided that prudence required my acquiescence, for Morgan Wendell was a tall, heavy-set man who weighed a good deal more than I and had a much longer reach.
  When we got to First Street, just opposite Wendell Place, the old headquarters of the family, I said, as casually as I could, 'Well, I'll have some chili at Flor de Méjico.'
  When I left him, keeping my glance carefully ahead but watching as much as I could out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rush back to the exposed hole and climb in. He was there for some time, perhaps fifteen minutes, after which he climbed out carrying something wrapped in his coat. He walked south along the bank of Beaver Creek, crossed the highway and went into his office building.
  As soon as he was out of sight I ran to the opening, climbed down and found myself inside a cave, not large but very secure... until the back-hoe punctured the roof. It had been formed, I judged, by the action of water on soft limestone and must have been very old. Along the western side there was a small bench, not formed by man yet appearing almost to have been made as a piece of built-in furniture. At the far end of this bench lay an item which Morgan Wendell had apparently overlooked: a small bone, which I suspected was human.
  I placed it in my pocket and climbed out of the little cave. I was none too soon, for the back-hoe operator, who was then on the other side of the creek, was now directed by Morgan Wendell to bring his lumbering machine back to the western side, come up the creek bank and begin filling in the cave and tamping it down with his machine. When he had finished, Wendell inspected the job and satisfied himself that no one would be likely to detect that a long-lost cave had been accidentally laid bare that afternoon.