"And are you sure that the foundations are solid?"

"Certainly. They're all facts. Here they are," and Roberto drew from his pocket a folded paper. "This is the genealogical tree of my family. This red circle is Don Fermin Nunez de Latona, priest of Labraz, who goes to Venezuela at the end of the seventeenth century, and returns to Spain during the Trafalgar epoch. On his journey home an English vessel captures the Spanish ship on which the priest is sailing and takes him and the other passengers prisoner, transporting them to England. Don Fermin reclaims his fortune of the English government, it is returned to him and he deposits it in the Bank of England, and sails back to Spain during the War of Independence. As money was none too safe in Spain at that time, Don Fermin leaves his fortune in the Bank of England, and on one occasion, desiring to withdraw a large sum for the purchase of certain estates, he goes to England with a cousin's niece;—the cousin was his only relation and was named Juan Antonio. This niece—" and Roberto pointed to a circle upon the sheet, "marries an Irish gentleman, Bandon, and dies after three years. The priest Don Fermin decides to return to Spain and orders his fortune to be remitted to the San Fernando Bank, but before the money is transferred Don Fermin dies. Bandon, the Irishman, presents a will in which the priest names his niece as sole heir, and proves, moreover, that he had a son by his wife, who died directly after baptism. Don Fermin's cousin, Juan Antonio, of Labraz, brings suit against Bandon, and the suit lasts for nearly twenty years. Juan Antonio dies and the Irishman is thus enabled to collect part of the inheritance.

"Juan Antonio's other daughter marries a cousin of hers, a merchant of Haro, and has three children, two boys and a girl. The girl enters a nunnery, one of the boys dies in the Carlist war and the other goes into business and leaves for America.

"This fellow, Juan Manuel Nunez makes a regular fortune and marries a native and has two daughters: Augusta and Margarita. Augusta, the younger, marries my father, Ricardo Hasting, who was a madcap and ran away from his home; Margarita weds a soldier, colonel Buenavida. They all come to Spain with plenty of money; my father plunges into disastrous business schemes, and after he has been utterly ruined he learns, I don't know how, that the fortune of the priest Nunez de Latona is at the disposition of the heirs. He goes to England, enters his claim; they demand his documents, he brings forth the baptismal records of his wife's ancestors and it is found that the priest Don Fermin's birth registration is missing. Soon my father gives up writing and years and years go by; at the end of more than ten we receive a letter telling us that he has died in Australia.

"Margarita, my mother's sister, is left a widow with a daughter, marries a second time, and her husband turns out a rascal of the worst brand who leaves her without a centimo. Rosa, the daughter of the first marriage, unable to put up with her step-father, elopes with an actor and nothing more is heard of her.

"If," added Roberto, "you have followed my explanations, you will have seen that the only remaining relatives of Don Fermin Nunez de Latona are my sisters and I, because Margarita's daughter Rosa Nunez has died.

"Now, the point is to prove this relationship, and this relationship is proved, for I have the baptismal documents that show our descent in a direct line from Juan Antonio, Fermin's brother. But why doesn't Fermin Nunez de Latona's name appear in the parish register of Labraz? That's what's been bothering me, and I've settled it. That Irishman Bandon, when his rival Juan Antonio died, sent to Spain an agent named Shaphter, who caused the disappearance of Don Fermin's baptismal certificate. How? I don't know as yet. In the meantime, I'm continuing the claim in London, just to keep the case in the courts, and the Hastings are the ones who are pushing the suit."

"And how much does this fortune amount to?" asked Manuel.

"Reckoning principal and interest, to a million pounds sterling."

"And is that much?"

"Without allowing for exchange, about one hundred million reales; allowing for exchange, a hundred and thirty."

Manuel burst out laughing.

"And all for you alone?"

"For me and my sisters. You can just imagine, when I collect that sum, what these cheap carriages and such things will mean to me. Nothing at all."

"And now, in the meantime, you haven't a peseta."

"Such is life. You've got to wait. It can't be helped. Now, when nobody believes me, I enjoy the recognition of my own strength more than I'll enjoy my subsequent triumph. I have reared a whole mountain; a dense mist prevents people from seeing it; tomorrow the clouds will scatter and the mountain will stand forth with snow-crowned crests."

Manuel thought it silly to be talking of all this opulence when neither of them had enough to buy a meal. Pretending important matters, he took leave of Roberto.



CHAPTER IV,

Dolores the Scandalous—Pastiri's Tricks—Tender Savagery—A Modest Out-of-the-way Robbery.

After a week spent in sleeping in the open Manuel decided one day to rejoin Vidal and Bizco and to take up their evil ways.

He inquired after his friends in the taverns on the Andalucia cart-road, at La Llorosa, Las Injurias, and a chum of El Bizco, who was named El Chingui, told him that El Bizco was staying at Las Cambroneras, at the home of a well-known thieving strumpet called Dolores the Scandalous.

Manuel went off to Las Cambroneras, asked for Dolores and was shown a door in a patio inhabited by gipsies.

Manuel knocked, but Dolores refused to open the door; finally, after hearing the boy's explanations, she allowed him to come in.

Dolores' home consisted of a room about three metres square; in the rear could be made out a bed where El Bizco was sleeping in his clothes, beside a sort of vaulted niche with a chimney and a tiny fireplace. The furnishings of the room consisted of a table, a trunk, a white shelf containing plates and earthenware pots, and a pine wall-bracket that supported an oil-lamp.

Dolores was a woman of about fifty; she wore black clothes, a red kerchief knotted around her forehead like a bandage and another of some indistinct colour over her head.

Manuel called to El Bizco and, when the cross-eyed fellow awoke, asked after Vidal.

"He'll be here right away," said El Bizco, and then, turning upon the old lady, he growled: "Hey, you, fetch my boots."

Dolores was slow in executing his orders, whereupon El Bizco, wishing to show off his domination over the woman, struck her.

The woman did not even mumble; Manuel looked coldly at El Bizco, in disgust; the other averted his gaze.

"Want a bite?" asked El Bizco of Manuel when he had got out of bed.

"If you have anything good...."

Dolores drew from the fire a pan filled with meat and potatoes.

"You take good care of yourselves," murmured Manuel, whom hunger had made profoundly cynical.

"They trust us at the butcher's," said Dolores, to explain the abundance of meat.

"If you and I didn't work hard hereabouts," interjected El Bizco, "much we'd be eating."

The woman smiled modestly. They finished their lunch and Dolores produced a bottle of wine.

"This woman," declared El Bizco, "just as you behold her there, beats them all. Show him what we have in the corner."

"Not now, man."

"And why not?"

"Suppose some one should come?"

"I'll bolt the door."

"All right."

El Bizco bolted the door. Dolores pushed the table to the middle of the room, went over to the wall, pulled away a scrap of kalsomined canvas about a yard square, and revealed a gap crammed with ribbons, cords, lace edging and other objects of passementerie.

"How's that?" said El Bizco. "And it's all of her own collecting."

"You must have quite a bit of money there."

"Yes. It's worth quite a bit," agreed Dolores. Then she let the strip of canvas fall into place against the excavation in the wall, fastened it and drew up the bed before it. El Bizco unbolted the door. In a few moments there was a knock.

"That must be Vidal," said El Bizco, adding in a low voice, as he turned to Manuel, "See here, not a word to him."

Vidal strutted in with his carefree air, expressed his pleasure at Manuel's coming, and the three left for the street.

"Are you going to be around here?" asked the old woman.

"Yes."

"Don't come late, then, eh?" added Dolores, addressing Bizco.

The cross-eyed bully did not deign to make any reply.

The three chums went to the square that faces Toledo bridge; near by, at a stand owned by Garatusa, a penitentiary graduate who ran a "fence" for thieves and didn't lose any money at it, they had a drink and then, walking along Ocho Hilos Avenue they came to the Ronda de Toledo.

The vicinity of El Rastro was thronged with Sunday crowds.

Along the wall of Las Grandiosas Americas, in the space between the Slaughter-house and the Veterninary School, a long row of itinerant hawkers had set up their stands.

Some, garbed like beggars, stood dozing motionless against the wall, indifferently contemplating their wares: old pictures, new chromographs, books; useless, damaged, filthy articles which they felt sure none of the public would purchase. Others were gesticulating and arguing with their customers; several repulsive, grimy old women with huge straw hats on their heads, dirty hands, arms akimbo and indecencies quivering upon their lips, were chattering away like magpies.

The gipsy women in their motley garments were combing their little brunettes and their black-skinned, large-eyed churumbeles in the sun; a knot of vagrants was carrying on a serious discussion; mendicants wrapped in rags, maimed, crippled, were shouting, singing, wailing, and the Sunday throng, in search of bargains, scurried back and forth, stopping now and then to question, to pry, while folks passed by with faces congested by the heat of the sun,—a spring sun that blinded one with the chalky reflection of the dusty soil, glittering and sparkling with a thousand glints in the broken mirrors and the metal utensils displayed in heaps upon the ground. To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones.

Manuel, El Bizco and Vidal strolled to the head of El Rastro and turned down again. At the door of Las Americas they met Pastiri sniffing around the place.

Catching sight of Manuel and the other two, the fellow of the three cards approached and said:

"Shall we have some wine?"

"Sure."

They entered one of the taverns of the Ronda. Pastiri was alone that day, as his companion had gone off to the Escorial; since he had no one to act as his confederate in the game he hadn't made a centimo. Now, if they would consent to act as bait to induce the inquisitive onlookers to play, he'd give them a share of the profits.

"Ask him how much?" said El Bizco to Vidal.

"Don't be an idiot."

Pastiri explained the matter for El Bizco's benefit; the confederates were to place bets and then proclaim in a loud voice that they had won. Then he'd see to making the spectators eager to play.

"All right. We know what to do," said Vidal.

"You agree to the scheme?"

"Yes, man."

Pastiri gave them three pesetas apiece and the four left the tavern, crossed the Ronda and made their way in the crowds of El Rastro.

Every once in a while Pastiri would stop, thinking he had caught sight of a prospective dupe; El Bizco or Manuel would place a bet; but the fellow who looked like an easy victim would smile as he saw them lay the snare or else pass on indifferently, quite accustomed to this type of trickery.

Soon Pastiri noticed a group of rustics with their broad hats and short trousers.

"Aluspiar, here come a few birds and we may work them for something," he said, and he planted himself and his card table directly in the path of the country-folk and began his game.

El Bizco bet two pesetas and won; Manuel followed suit with the same results.

"This fellow is a cinch," said Vidal in a loud voice, turning to the group of hayseeds. "Have you seen all the money he's losing? That soldier there just won six duros."

Hearing this, one of the rustics drew near, and seeing that Manuel and El Bizco were winning, he wagered a peseta and won. The fellow's companions advised him to retire with his winnings; but his greed got the best of him and he returned to bet two pesetas, losing them.

Then Vidal bet a duro.

"Here's a five-peseta piece," he declared, ringing the coin upon the ground, He picked out the right card and won.

Pastiri made a gesture of anoyance.

The rustic wagered another duro and lost; he glanced anxiously at his fellow countrymen, extracted another duro and lost that, too.

At this moment a guard happened along and the group broke up; noting Pastiri's movement of flight, the hayseed tried to seize him, grabbing at his coat, but the trickster gave a rude tug and escaped in the crowd.

Manuel, Vidal and El Bizco made their way across the Plaza del Rastro to Embajadores Street.

El Bizco had four pesetas, Manuel six and Vidal fourteen.

"And what are we going to return to that guy?" asked El Bizco.

"Return? Nothing," answered Vidal.

"Why, that would be robbing him of his whole year's profits," objected Manuel.

"What of it? Deuce take him," retorted Vidal. "We came darn near getting caught ourselves, with nothing for our trouble."

It was lunch hour and they wondered where to go; Vidal settled it, saying that as long as they were on Embajadores Street, the Society of the Three, in plenary session, might as well continue on the way down till they got to La Manigua restaurant.

The suggestion was accepted and the associates spent that Sunday afternoon in royal fashion; Vidal was splendid, spending Pastiri's money right and left, inviting several girls to their table and dancing all the chulo steps.

To Manuel this beginning of his free life seemed not at all bad. At night the three comrades, somewhat the worse for wine, ambled up Embajadores Street, turning into the surrounding road.

"Where am I going to sleep?" asked Manuel.

"Come over to my house," answered Vidal.

When they came in sight of Casa Blanca, El Bizco left them.

"Thank the Lord that tramp has gone," muttered Vidal.

"Have you had a scrap with him?"

"He's a beastly fellow. He lives with La Escandalosa, who's an old fox in truth, sixty years at the very least, and spends everything she robs with her lovers. But she feeds him and he ought to have some consideration for her. Nothing doing, though; he's always kicking her and punching her and pricking her with his dirk, and one time he even heated an iron and wanted to burn her. If he takes her money, well and good; but what's the sense of his burning her?"

They reached Casa Blanca, a squalid section consisting of a single street; Vidal opened a door with his key; he lighted a match and the pair climbed up to a tiny room with a mattress placed on the bricks.

"You'll have to sleep on the floor," said Vidal. "This bed belongs to my girl."

"All right."

"Take this for your head," and he threw him a woman's rolled-up skirt.

Manuel pillowed his head against the skirt and fell asleep. He awoke at dawn. He opened his eyes and sat down upon the floor without a thought as to where he might be. Through a tiny window came a pale glow. Vidal, stretched out on the mattress, was snoring; beside him slept a girl, breathing with her mouth wide open; long streaks of rouge stained her cheeks.

Manuel felt nauseated by the excess of the previous day's drink; he was deeply dejected. He gave serious thought to his life-problems.

"I'm not made for this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going to do, then?"

A thousand things occurred to him, for the most part impossible of attainment; he imagined all manner of involved projects. Within him, vaguely, his maternal inheritance, with its respect for all established custom, struggled against his anti-social, vagrant instincts that were fed by his mode of living.

"Vidal and Bizco," he said to himself, "are luckier chaps than myself. They don't hesitate; they have no scruples. They've got a start on their careers...."

In the end, he considered, they would come to the gallows or to the penitentiary; but in the meantime the one experienced no suffering because he was too beastly to know what it meant, and the other because he was too lazy, and both of them let themselves float tranquilly with the stream.

Despite his scruples and his remorse, Manuel spent the summer under the protection of El Bizco and Vidal, living in Casa Blanca with his cousin and his cousin's mistress, a girl who sold newspapers and practised thievery at the same time.

The Society of the Three carried on its operations in the suburbs and Las Ventas, La Prosperidad and the Dona Carlota section, the Vallecas bridge and the Four Roads; and if the existence of this society never came to be suspected and never figured in the annals of crime, it is because its misdemeanours were limited to modest burglaries of the sort facilitated by the carelessness of property owners.

The three associates were not content to operate in the suburbs of Madrid; they extended the radius of their activities to the nearby towns and to all places in general where crowds came together.

The market and the small squares were test localities, for the booty might be of a larger quantity but on the other hand the police were especially vigilant.

In general, they exploited the laundries more than any other place.

Vidal, like the clever fellow he was, managed to Convince El Bizco that he was the most gifted of the three for the work. The cross-eyed thug, out of sheer vanity, always undertook the most difficult part of the task, seizing the booty, while Vidal and Manuel kept a sharp lookout.

Vidal would say to Manuel, at the very moment of the robbery, when El Bizco already had the stolen sheet or chemise under his coat:

"If anyone happens along, don't say a word; nothing. Let them arrest him; we'll shut up tight as clams, absolutely motionless; if they ask anything, we know nothing. Right-o?"

"Agreed."

Sheets, chemises, cloaks and all the other articles they robbed they would sell at the second-hand shop on La Ribera de Curtidores, which Don Telmo used to visit. The owner, employe or whatever he was of the shop, would purchase everything the thieves brought, at a very low price.

This "fence," which profited by the oversight of some base officer (for the police lists did not bother with these things), was presided over by a fellow called Uncle Perquique. He spent his whole life passing to and fro in front of his establishment. To deceive the municipal guard he sold shoe-laces and bargains that came from the old-clothes shop he conducted.

In the spring this fellow would don a cook's white cap and cry out his tarts with a word that he scarcely pronounced and which he liked to alter constantly. Sometimes the word seemed to be Perquique! Perquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into Perqueque or Parquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended to infinity.

The origin of this word Perquique, which cannot be found in the dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the white cap brought five centimos apiece and he would cry "A perra chica! A perra Chica! Only five pesetas apiece! A five-peseta piece!" As a result of his lazy enunciation he suppressed the first A and converted the other two into E, thus transforming his cry into "Perre chique! Perre chique!" Later, Perre chique turned into Perquique.

The "fence" guard, a jolly soul, was a specialist in crying wares; he shaded his cries most artistically; he would go from the highest notes to the lowest or vice versa. He would begin, for example, on a very high note, shouting:

"Look here! A real! Only one real! Ladies' and gents' hosiery at a real a pair! Look-a-here now! A real a pair!" Then, lowering his register, he would continue, gravely: "A nice Bayonne waistcoat. A splendid bargain!" And as a finale, he would add in a basso profundo: "Only twenty pesetas!"

Uncle Perquique knew the Society of the Three, and he would favour El Bizco and Vidal with his advice.

Safer and more profitable than dealing with the stolen-goods purchasers of the second-hand shop was the plan followed by Dolores la Escandalosa, who sold the ribbons and the lace that she pilfered to itinerant hawkers who paid very well. But the members of the Society of the Three were eager to get their dividends quickly.

The sale completed, the three would repair to a tavern at the end of Embajadores avenue, corner of Las Delicias, which they called the Handkerchief Corner.

The associates were especially careful not to rob twice in the same place and never to appear together in those vicinities where unfavourable surveillance was suspected.

Some days, which did not come often, when theft brought no plunder, the three companions were compelled to work in the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, scattering heaps of wood and gathering it together with rakes after it had been properly aired and dried.

Another of the Society's means of subsistence was cat-hunting. El Bizco, who was endowed with no talent (his head, as Vidal said, was a salted melon) had a really great gift for catching cats. All he needed was a sack and a stick and he did famously. Every living cat in sight was soon in his game-bag.

The members made no distinction between slender or consumptive cats, or pregnant tabbies. Every puss that came along was devoured with the same ravenous appetite. They would sell the skins in El Rastro; when there were no ready funds, the innkeeper of the Handkerchief Corner would let them have wine and bread on tick, and the Society would indulge in a Sardanapalesque banquet....

One afternoon in August Vidal, who had dined in Las Ventas the previous day with his girl, proposed to his comrades a scheme to rob an abandoned house on the East Road.

The project was discussed in all seriousness, and on the afternoon of the following day the three went out to look the territory over.

It was Sunday, there was a bull-fight; omnibuses and street cars, packed with people, rolled along Alcala Street beside open hacks occupied by harlots in Manila mantles and men of knavish mien.

Outside the bull-ring the throng was denser than ever; from the street cars came pouring streams of people who ran for the entrance; the ticket-speculators rushed upon them with a shout; amidst the black multitude shone the white helmets of the mounted guards. From the inside of the ring came a muffled roar like the tide.

Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel, chagrined that they could not go in, continued on their way, passed Las Ventas and took the road to Vicalvaro. The south wind, warm and sultry, laid a white sheet of dust over the fields; along the road from different directions drove black and white hearses, for adults and children respectively, followed by gigs containing mourners.

Vidal indicated the house: it stood back from the road and seemed abandoned. It was fronted by a garden with its gate; behind extended an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than three hundred metres distant.

From the neighbourhood of the house could be made out the East cemetery, girded by arid yellow fields and barren hillocks; in the opposite direction rose the Bull Ring with its bright banner and the outlying houses of Madrid. The dusty road to the burial-ground ran between ravines and green slopes, among abandoned tile-kilns and excavations that showed the reddish ochre bowels of the earth.

After a minute examination of the house and its surroundings, the three returned to Las Ventas. At night they felt like going back to Madrid, but Vidal suggested that they had better remain where they were, so that they could commit the robbery at dawn of the next day. This was decided upon and they lay down in a tile-kiln, in the passageway formed by two walls of heaped-up bricks.

A cold wind blew violently throughout the night. Manuel was the first to awake and he roused the other two. They left the passageway formed by the walls of bricks. It was still night; from time to time a segment of the moon peered through the dark clouds; now it hid, now it seemed to rest upon the bosom of one of those dense clouds which it silvered so delicately.

In the distance, above Madrid a bright glow began to appear, irradiated by the lights of the city; a few tombstones in the cemetery cast a pallid shimmer.

Dawn was already tinting the heavens with its melancholy flush when the three robbers approached the house.

Manuel's heart was pounding with agitation.

"Ah, by the way," said Vidal. "If by any accident we should be surprised, we mustn't run; we've got to stick right in the house."

El Bizco burst into laughter; Manuel, who knew that his cousin wasn't talking just for the sake of hearing his voice, asked:

"Why?"

"Because if they catch us in the house it's only a balked attempt at robbery, and the punishment isn't severe; on the other hand, if they catch us in flight, that would be a successful robbery and the penalty would be great. So I was told yesterday."

"Well, I'll escape if I can."

"Do as you please."

They scaled the wall; Vidal remained astride of it, leaning forward and watching for signs of any one. Manuel and El Bizco, making their way astraddle along the wall, approached the house and, entrusting their feet to the roof of a shed, jumped down to a terrace with a bower slightly higher than the orchard.

The rear door and the balconies of the ground floor led to this gallery; but both the door and the balconies were so well fastened that it was impossible to open them.

"Can't you make it?" whispered Vidal from his perch.

"No."

"Here, take my knife." And Vidal threw it dawn to the gallery.

Manuel tried to pry the balconies open with the knife but met with no success; El Bizco attempted to force the door with his shoulder and it yielded enough to leave a chink, whereupon Manuel introduced the blade of the knife and worked the catch of the lock back until he could open the door. El Bizco and Manuel then went in.

The lower floor of the house consisted of a vestibule, which formed the bottom of a staircase leading to a corridor, and two rooms whose balconies overlooked the orchard.

The first thing that came to Manuel's head was to open the lock of the door that led to the road.

"Now," said El Bizco to him, after admiring this prudent precaution, "let's see what there is in the place."

They set about calmly and deliberately to take an inventory of the house; there wasn't three ochavos' worth of material in the entire establishment. They were forcing the dining-room closet when of a sudden they heard the bark of a dog close by and they ran in fright to the gallery.

"What's the matter?" they asked Vidal.

"A damned dog's begun to bark and he'll certainly attract somebody's attention."

"Throw a stone at him."

"Where'll I get it?"

"Scare him."

"He'll bark all the more."

"Jump down here, or they'll surely see you."

Vidal jumped down into the orchard. The dog, who must have been a moral animal and a defender of private property, continued his loud barking.

"But the deuce!" growled Vidal at his friends. "Haven't you finished yet?"

"There's nothing!"

The three returned to the rooms trembling; they seized a napkin and stuffed into it whatever they laid hands upon: a copper clock, a white metal candlestick, a broken electric bell, a mercury barometer, a magnet and a toy cannon.

Vidal climbed up the wall with the bundle.

"Here he is," he whispered in fright.

"Who?"

"The dog."

"I'll go down first," mumbled Manuel, and placing the knife between his teeth he let himself drop. The dog, instead of setting upon him, withdrew a short distance, but he continued his barking.

Vidal did not dare to jump down with the bundle in his hands; so he threw it carefully upon some bushes; as it fell, only the barometer broke; the rest was already broken. El Bizco and Vidal then jumped down and the three associates set out on a cross-country run, pursued by the canine defender of private property, who barked at their heels.

"What damned fools we are!" exclaimed Vidal, stopping. "If a guard should see us running like this he'd certainly arrest us."

"And if we pass the city gate they'll recognize what we're carrying in this bundle and we'll be stopped," added Manuel.

The Society halted to deliberate and choose a course of action. The booty was left at the foot of a wall. They lay down on the ground.

"A great many rag-dealers and dustmen pass this way," said Vidal, "on the road to La Elipa. Let's offer this to the first one that comes along."

"For three duros," corrected El Bizco.

"Why, of course."

They waited a while and soon a ragpicker hove into view, bearing an empty sack and headed for Madrid. Vidal called him over and offered to sell their bundle.

"What'll you give us for these things?"

The ragdealer looked over the contents of the bundle, made a second inventory, and then in a jesting tone, with a rough voice, asked:

"Where did you steal this?"

The three associates chorused their protestation, but the ragpicker paid no heed.

"I can't give you more than three pesetas for the whole business."

"No," answered Vidal. "Rather than accept that we'll take the bundle with us."

"All right. The first guard I meet I'll inform against you and tell him that you're carrying stolen goods on your person."

"Come across with the three pesetas," said Vidal. "Take the bundle."

Vidal took the money and the ragdealer, laughing, took the package.

"The first guard we see we'll tell that you've got stolen goods in your sack," shouted Vidal to the ragdealer. The man with the sack got angry and gave chase to the trio.

"Hey there! Come back! Come back!" he bellowed.

"What do you want?"

"Give me my three pesetas and take your bundle."

"Nix. Give us a duro and we won't say a word."

"Like hell."

"Give us only two pesetas more."

"Here's one, you rascal."

Vidal seized the coin that the ragdealer threw at him, and, as none was sure of himself, they made off hurriedly. When they reached Dolores' house in Las Cambroneras, they were bathed in perspiration, exhausted.

They ordered a flask of wine from the tavern, "A rotten bungle we made of it, hang it all," grumbled Vidal.

After the wine was paid for there remained ten reales; this they divided among the three, receiving eighty centimos apiece. Vidal summed up the day's work with the remark that this committing robberies in out-of-the-way spots was all disadvantages and no advantages, for besides exposing oneself to the danger of being sent to the penitentiary almost for life and getting a beating and being chewed up by a moral dog, a fellow ran the risk of being wretchedly fooled.



CHAPTER V

Gutter Vestals—The Troglodytes.

"No use. We've got to get rid of that beastly Bizco. Every time I see him hate him more and he disgusts me more."

"Why?"

"Because he's a brute. Let him go off to his old fox, Dolores. You and I can go to the theatre every night."

"How?"

"With the claque. We don't have to pay. All we have to do is applaud when we get the signal."

This condition seemed to Manuel so easy to fulfil that he asked his cousin:

"But listen. How is it, then, that everybody doesn't go to the theatre like that?"

"Because they don't all know the head of the claque as I do."

And as a matter of fact they went to the Apollo. For the first few days all Manuel could do was think of the plays and the actresses. Vidal, with his superior manner in all things, learned the songs right away; Manuel secretly envied him.

Between the acts the members of the claque would adjourn to a tavern on Barquillo Street, varying this occasionally with a visit to another place on the Plaza, del Rey. This latter resort was the rendezvous of the claquers that worked in Price's Circus.

Almost all the legion of applauders were youngsters; a few of them worked in shops here and there; for the most part they were loafers and organgrinders who wound up by becoming supernumeraries, chorus men or ticket-speculators.

There were among them effeminate, clean-shaven types with a woman's face and a shrill voice.

At the entrance to the theatre Vidal and Manuel made the acquaintance of a group of girls, from thirteen to eighteen years of age, who wandered about Alcala Street approaching well-to-do pillars of the middle class; they pretended to be news-vendors and always had a copy of the Heraldo with them.

Vidal cultivated the intimacy of the girls; they were almost all homely, but this did not interfere with his plans, which consisted of extending the radius of his activities and his knowledge.

"We must leave the suburbs and work our way toward the centre," said Vidal.

Vidal wished Manuel to help him, but Manuel had no gift for it. Vidal came to be the cadet for four girls who lived together in Cuatro Caminos and were named, respectively, La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos and Engracia; they had come to form, together with Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel another Society, though this one was anonymous.

The poor girls needed protection; they were pursued more than the other loose women by the police because they paid no graft to the inspectors. They would be forever fleeing from the guards and agents, who, whenever there was a round-up, would take them to the station and thence to the Convento de las Trinitarias.

The thought of being immured in the convent struck genuine terror into their hearts.

"To think of never seeing the street," they moaned, as if this were a most horrible punishment.

And the abandonment at night in the unprotected thoroughfares, which inspired horror in others; the cold, the rain, the snow,—were to them liberty and life.

They all spoke in a rough manner; their grammar and word-forms were incorrect; language in them leaped backwards into a curious atavic regression.

They spiced their talk with a long string of theatrical lines and "gags."

The four led a terrible life; they spent the morning and the afternoon in bed sleeping and didn't go to sleep again till dawn.

"We're like cats," La Mella would say. "We hunt at night and sleep by day."

La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos and Engracia would go at night to the centre of Madrid, accompanied by a white-bearded beggar with a smiling face and a striped cap.

The old man came to beg alms; he was a neighbour of the girls and they called him Uncle Tarrillo, bantering him upon his frequent sprees. He was utterly daft and loved to talk upon the corruption of popular manners.

La Mella said that Uncle Tarrillo had tried, one night after they had returned alone from the Jardinillos del Deposito de Agua, to violate her and that he had made her laugh so much that it was impossible.

The mendicant would wax indignant at the tale and would pursue the indiscreet maid with all the ardour of an old faun.

Of the four girls the ugliest was La Mella; with her big, deformed head, her black eyes, her wide mouth and broken teeth, her dumpy figure, she looked like the lady-jester of some ancient princess. She had been on the point of becoming a chorus-girl; she was balked, however, for despite her good voice and excellent ear for music, she could not pronounce the words clearly because of her missing teeth.

La Mella was always in high spirits, singing and laughing at all hours of the day and night. She carried in her apron-pocket a tiny powder-puff with a mirror on the inside of the cover; she would stop at every other step to gaze at herself by the light of a street-lantern and powder her face.

She was affectionate and kind-hearted. Her excessive ugliness made Manuel gag. The lass was eager to win him but Vidal advised his cousin not to take up with her; La Goya suited him better, for she made more money.

La Mella was not at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of an handorgan.

This organ-grinder took all the receipts of La Goya, who, as the prettiest of the quartet, enjoyed the most numerous patronage; El Soldadito watched her and when she went off with anybody, followed, waiting for her to come out of the house of assignation so that he could collect her earnings.

Vidal, of the four, condescended to choose La Rabanitos and Engracia as the objects of his protection; the two girls were forever disputing over him. La Rabanitos looked like a pocket-edition of a woman; a white little face with blue streaks about her nose and her mouth; a rachetic, wizened body; thin lips and large eyes of schlerotic blue; she dressed like an old woman, with her sombre little cloak and her black dress; such was La Rabanitos. She was bothered with frequent hemorrhages; she spoke with all the mannerisms of a granny, making queer twists and turns, and she spent all her spare change on dry salt tunny fish, caramels and other dainties.

Engracia, Vidal's other favourite, was the typical brothel inmate: her face was white with rice powder; her dark, flashing eyes had an expression of purely animal melancholy; as she spoke she showed her blue teeth, which contrasted with the whiteness of her powdered countenance. She leaped from joy to dejection without transition. She could not smile. Her face was as soon darkened by stupidity as it was illuminated by a ribald merriment, insulting and cynical.

Engracia had little to say and when she spoke it was to utter something particularly bestial and filthy, of involved cynicism and pornography. Her imagination was of monstrous fertility.

A macabrous sculptor might have hit upon a work of genius by cutting the thoughts of this girl into the stone representing some infernal Dance of Death.

Engracia could not read. She wore loud waists, blue and pink; a white kerchief on her head and a coloured apron; she trotted along with a swaying movement, so that the coins in her purse kept jingling. She had been eight years in this brothel life, and was only sixteen in all. She was sorry to have grown up, for she said that she had earned far more as a little girl.

The friendship of Manuel and Vidal with these girls lasted a couple of months; Manuel could not make up his mind to take up with La Mella; she was too repulsive; Vidal widened the horizons of his activity, tippled with a gang of chulos and devoted himself to the conquest of a flower-girl who sold carnations.

Engracia and La Rabanitos conceived a violent hatred for the lass.

"That strumpet?" La Rabanitos would say. "Why, she's already as disreputable as us...."

One night Vidal did not put in his usual appearance at Casa Blanca, and two or three days later he showed up at the Puerta del Sol with a tall, buxom woman garbed in grey.

"Who's that?" asked Manuel of his cousin.

"Her name's Violeta; I've taken up with her."

"And the other one, at Casa Blanca?"

Vidal shrugged his shoulders.

"You can have her if you wish," he said.

Vidal's former sweetheart likewise disappeared from Casa Blanca and, after he had been unable to collect the two weeks' rent, the administrator put Manuel out into the street and sold the furnishings: a few empty bottles, a stew-pot and a bed.

For several days Manuel slept upon the benches of the Plaza de Oriente and on the chairs of La Castellana and Recoletos. It was getting toward the end of summer and he could still sleep in the open. A few centimos that he earned by carrying valises from the stations helped him to exist, though badly, until October.

There were days when the only thing he ate was the cabbage stalks that he picked up in the marketplaces; other days, on the contrary, he treated himself to seventy-eight centimo banquets in the chop-houses.

October came around and Manuel began to feel cold at night; his eldest sister gave him a frayed overcoat and a muffler; but despite these, whenever he could find no roof to shelter him he almost froze to death in the street.

One night in the early part of November Manuel stumbled against El Bizco at the entrance to a cafe on La Cabecera del Rastro; the cross-eyed ragamuffin was bent over, almost naked, his arms crossed against his chest, barefoot; he presented a painful picture of poverty and cold.

Dolores La Escandalosa had left him for another.

"Where can we go to sleep?" Manuel asked him.

"Let's try the caves of La Montana," answered El Bizco.

"But can we get in there?"

"Yes, if there aren't too many."

"Come on, then."

The two crossed through the Puerta de Moros and Mancebos Street to the Viaduct; they traversed the Plaza de Oriente, following along Bailen and Ferraz Streets, and, as they reached the Montana del Principe Pio, ascended a narrow path bordered by recently planted pines.

El Bizco and Manuel went along in the dark from one side to the other, exploring the hollows of the mountain, until a ray of light issuing from a crevice in the earth betrayed one of the caves.

They approached the hole; from within came the interrupted hum of hoarse voices.

By the flickering light of a candle which was held in position on the ground by two rocks, more than a dozen outcasts, some seated and some on their knees, formed a knot of card-players. In the corners might be discerned the hazy outlines of men stretched out on the sand.

A fetid vapour was exhaled by the cave.

The flame flickered, illuminating now a corner of the den, now the pale face of one of the players, and as the light blinked, the shadows of the men grew long or short on the sandy walls. From time to time was heard a curse or a blasphemy.

Manuel thought that he had beheld something like this before in one of his feverish nightmares.

"I'm not going in," he said to El Bizco.

"Why?" asked his companion.

"I'd rather freeze."

"As you please, then. I know one of these fellows. He's El Interprete."

"And who is this Interprete?"

"The captain of all the mountain vagabonds."

Despite these assurances Manuel hesitated.

"Who's there?" came a voice from inside.

"I," answered El Bizco.

Manuel dashed off at full speed. Near the cave stood a group of two or three huts, with a yard in the middle, surrounded by a rough stone wall.

This, according to the ironic name given to it by the ragamuffins, was the Crystal Palace, the nest of some low-flying turtledoves who frequented the Montana barracks and who, at night, were joined by friendly hawks and gerfalcons.

The entrance to the yard was closed by a double-panelled door.

Manuel examined it to see if it yielded, but it was strong, and was armoured with tins that were stretched out and nailed down upon mats.

He thought that nobody could be there and tried to climb the wall; he scaled the low rubble inclosure and as he advanced, got caught in a wire; a stone fell noisily from the wall, a dog began to bark furiously, and a curse echoed from inside.

Manuel, convinced that the nest was not empty, took to flight. He sought shelter in a doorway that was somewhat protected from the rain and huddled down to sleep.

It was still night when he awoke shivering with the cold, trembling from head to foot. He started to run so as to warm himself; he reached the Paseo de Rosales and strode up and down several times.

It seemed that the night would never end.

The rain ceased; the sun came out in the morning; Manuel took refuge in a hollow on the slope of the embankment. The sun began to warm him most deliciously. Manuel dreamed of a very white, exceedingly beautiful woman with golden tresses. Frozen almost to death, he drew near the lady, and she wrapped him in her golden strands and he nestled tenderly, ever so tenderly in her lap....



CHAPTER VI

Senor Custodio and His Establishment—The Free Life.

... And he was in the midst of the most ravishing dreams when a harsh voice recalled him to the bitter, impure realities of existence.

"What are you doing there, loafer?" some one was asking him.

"I!" mumbled Manuel, opening his eyes and staring at his questioner. "I'm not doing anything."

"Yes, I can see that. I can see that."

Manuel got up; before him he beheld an old man with greyish hair and gloomy mien, with a sack across his shoulder and a hook in his hand. The fellow wore a fur cap, a sort of yellowish overcoat and a reddish muffler rolled around his neck.

"Have you a home?" asked the man.

"No, sir."

"And you sleep in the open?"

"Well, as I haven't any home...."

The ragpicker began to rake over the ground, fished up some objects and various papers, shoved them into the sack and turning his gaze again upon Manuel, added:

"You'd be better off if you went to work."

"If I had work, I'd work; but I haven't, so ..."—and Manuel, wearied of these useless words, huddled into his corner to continue his slumbers.

"See here," said the ragdealer, "you come along with me. I need a boy ... I'll feed you."

Manuel looked at the man without replying.

"Well, do you want to or not? Hurry up and decide."

Manuel lazily arose. The rag man, sack slung across his shoulder, climbed the slope of the embankment until he reached Rosales Street, where he had a cart drawn by two donkeys. The man told them to move on and they ambled down toward the Paseo de la Florida, thence through Virgen del Puerto Avenue to the Ronda de Segovia. The cart, with its license plate and number, was a tumbledown affair, held together by strips of brass, and was laden with two or three sacks, buckets and baskets.

The ragman, Senor Custodio,—that was what he gave as his name,—looked like a good-natured soul.

From time to time he would bend over, pick up something from the street and throw it into the cart.

Underneath the cart, attached to it by a chain, jogged along in leisurely fashion a dog with yellowish locks, long and lustrous,—an amiable creature who appeared to Manuel as good a canine as his master was a human being.

* * * * *

Between the Segovia and Toledo bridges, not far from the head of Imperial Avenue, there opens a dark depression with a cluster of two or three squalid, wretched huts. It is a quadrangular ditch, blackened by smoke and coal dust, hemmed in by crumbling walls and heaps of rubbish.

As he reached the edge of this depression, the rag-dealer stopped and pointed out to Manuel a hovel standing next to a broken-down merry-go-round and some swings, saying:

"That's my house; take the cart down there and unload it. Can you do that?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Then tell my wife to give you a bite."

Manuel accompanied the cart into the hollow over an embankment of rubbish. The ragdealer's house was the largest in the vicinity and had a yard as well as an adjoining shed.

Manuel stopped before the door of the hut; an old woman came out to meet him.

"What do you want, kid?" she asked. "Who sent you here?"

"Senor Custodio. He told me to ask you where to put the stuff that's in the cart."

The woman pointed out the shed.

"He told me also," added the boy, "to say that you should give me something to eat."

"I know you, you foxy creature," mumbled the old woman. And after grumbling for a long time and waiting for Manuel to dump out the contents of the cart, she gave him a slice of bread and a piece of cheese.

The woman unharnessed the two mules and released the dog, who began to bark and play with contentment; he snapped playfully at the mules, one black and the other a silvery grey, who turned their eyes upon him and showed their teeth; desperately he gave chase to a white cat with a tail that bristled like a feather-duster, then approached Manuel, who, seated in the sun, was nibbling at his bit of cheese and his slice of bread, waiting for something. They both had lunch.

Manuel walked around the dwelling and looked it over. One of its narrow sides was composed of two bathing-houses.

These two bathing-houses were not joined, but left between them a space filled in by a rusty iron door such as is used to fasten shops.

The two longer walls of the ragdealer's hovel were formed of stakes paid with pitch, and the wall opposite to that built of the bathing-houses was constructed of thick, irregular rocks and curved outward with a swelling like that of a church presbytery. Within, this curve corresponded to a hollow in the manner of a wide vaulted niche occupied by the hearth.

The house, despite its tiny size, had no uniform system of roofing; in some spots tiles were substituted by strips of tin with heavy rocks holding them in place and the interstices chinked with straw; in others, the slate was mortared together with mud; in still others, sheets of zinc provided protection.

The construction of the house betrayed each phase of its growth. As the shell of the tortoise augments with the development of the reptile, so did the rag-dealer's hovel little by little increase. At first it must have been a place for only one person, something like a shepherd's hut; then it widened, grew longer, divided into rooms, afterwards adding its annexes, its shed and its yard.

Before the door to the dwelling, on a flat stretch of tamped earth, stood a carrousel surrounded by a low, octagonal impalement; the stakes, decayed by the action of moisture and heat, still showed a vestige of their original blue paint.

Those poor merry-go-round steeds, painted red, offered to the gaze of the indifferent spectator the most comical, and at the same time the most pathetic sight. One of the coursers was of indeterminate hue; the other must have forgotten his paws in his mad race; one of them, in a most elegantly uncomfortable pose, symbolized humble sadness and honest, refined modesty.

At the side of the merry-go-round rose a frame formed of two tripods upon which rested a beam, whose hooks served as the support of swings.

The black ditch harboured three other hovels, all three constructed of tins, rubbish, planks, ruins and other similar building materials. One of the shacks, owing either to old age or deficient architecture, threatened to collapse, and the owner, no doubt, had sought to prevent its fall by sinking a row of stakes along one of the walls, against which it leaned like a lame man upon his crutch; another house flaunted like a flagstaff a long stick on its roof with a pot stuck on the top....

After eating Manuel informed the old woman that Senor Custodio had told him he might remain there.

"Tell me whether there's anything else for me to do," he concluded.

"All right. Stay here. Take care of the fire. If the pot boils, let it; if it doesn't, throw a bit of coal into the flames. Reverte! Reverte!" shouted the woman to the dog. "Let him remain here."

She went off and Manuel was left alone with the dog. The stew boiled merrily. Manuel, followed by Reverte, made an inspection tour of the house. It was divided into three compartments: a tiny kitchen and a large room into which the light entered through two high, small windows.

In this room or store-room, on all sides, from the walls and from the ceiling, hung old wares of various hue, white clothes, red boinas and Catalonian caps, strips of crape cloaks. On the shelves and on the floor, separated according to class and size, were flasks, bottles, jars, canisters, a veritable army of glass and porcelain pots; the ranks were broken by those huge, green, dropsical pharmacy bottles, and several heavy-paunched demi-johns; then came half-gallon bottles, tall and dark; straw-covered vases; this was followed by the section devoted to medicinal waters, the most varied and numerous of all, for it included Seltzer-water siphons, oxygenized-water siphons, bottles of gaseous water, Vichy, Mondariz, Carabana; after this came the small fry, the perfume phials, the pots, the cold-cream jars, the cosmetic receptacles.

In addition to this department of bottles there were others: canned-goods tins and pans ranged on shelves; buttons and keys kept in chests; remnants, ribbons and laces rolled around spools or cardboard.

All this struck Manuel as quite pleasant. Everything was in its proper place, relatively spick and span; the hand of a methodical, neat person was in evidence.

In the kitchen, which was kalsomined, shone the few scullery utensils. On the hearth, above the white ashes, an earthenware stew-pot was boiling away with a gentle purring.

From outside there scarcely came the distant noises of the city, which filtered in like a pale sound; it was as quiet as in a remote hamlet; now and then a dog would bark, some cart would creak as it bumped along the road, then silence would be restored and in the kitchen nothing would be heard save the glu glu of the pot, like a soft, confidential murmur....

Manuel cast a look of satisfaction through the chink of the door to the dark ditch outside. In the corral the hens were scratching the earth; a hog was rooting about, running in fright from one side to the other, grunting and quivering with nervous tremours; Reverte was yawning, blinking gravely, and one of the donkeys was wallowing delightedly amidst broken pots, decayed baskets and heaps of refuse, while the other, as if scandalized by such unrefined comportment, contemplated him with the utmost surprise.

All this black earth filled Manuel with an impression of ugliness, yet at the same time with a sense of tranquillity and shelter; it seemed a proper setting for him. This soil formed the daily deposits of the dumping-place; this earth, whose sole products were old sardine-cans, oyster shells, broken combs and shattered pots; this earth, black and barren, composed of the detritus of civilization, of bits of lime and mortar and factory refuse, of all that the city had cast off as useless, seemed to Manuel a place made especially for him, for he himself was a bit of the flotsam and jetsam likewise cast adrift by the life of the city.

Manuel had seen no other fields than the sad, rocky meadows of Soria and the still sadder ones of the Madrilenian suburbs. He did not suspect that in spots uncultivated by man there were green meadows, leafy woods, beds of flowers; he thought that trees and flowers were born only in the gardens of the rich....

Manuel's first days in Senor Custodio's house seemed too burdened; but as there is plenty of free roaming in the ragdealer's life, he soon grew accustomed to it.

Senor Custodio arose when it was still night, woke Manuel, and they both harnessed the two donkeys to the cart and took the direction to Madrid, on their daily hunt for the old boot and the discarded tatter. Sometimes they went by way of Melancolicos Avenue; others, by the Rondas or through Segovia Street.

Winter was coming on; at the hour when they sallied forth Madrid was in complete darkness. The ragdealer had his fixed itinerary and his schedule of call stations. When he went by way of the Rondas and drove up Toledo Street, which was his most frequent route, he would halt at the Plaza de la Cebada and the Puerta de Moros, fill his hamper with vegetables and continue toward the heart of the city.

On other days he travelled through Melancolicos Avenue to the Virgen del Puerto, from here to La Florida, then to Rosales Street, where he rummaged in the rubbish deposited by the tip-carts, continuing to the Plaza de San Marcial and arriving at the Plaza de los Mostenses.

On the way Senor Custodio let nothing escape his eye; he would examine it and keep it if it were worth the trouble. The leaves of vegetables went into the hampers; rags, paper and bones went into the sacks; the half-burned coke and coal found a place in a bucket and dung was thrown into the back of the cart.

Manuel and the ragdealer returned early in the morning; they unloaded the cart on the flat earth before the door, and husband, wife and the boy would separate and classify the day's collection. The rag-dealer and his wife were amazingly skilful and quick at this work.

On rainy days the assorting was done in the shed. During such weather the depression became a dismal, repellant swamp, and in order to cross it one had to sink into the mud, in places half way up to the knee. Everything would drip water; the hog in the yard would wallow in mire; the hens would appear with their wings all black and the dog scampered about coated with mud to the ears.

After the sorting of the collection, Senor Custodio and Manuel, each with a basket, would wait for the dump-carts to arrive, and as the refuse was tipped out, they would set about sorting it on the very dumping-grounds: pasteboard, rags, glass and bones.

In the afternoon Senor Custodio would go to certain stables in the Argueelles district to clean out the manure and take it to the orchards on the Manzanares.

Between one thing and another Senor Custodio made enough to live in a certain comfort; he had a firm grasp upon his business and as he was under no compulsion to sell his wares promptly, he would wait for the most opportune occasion so that he could sell with advantage.

The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard factories; they gave him from thirty or forty centimos per arroba. The manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Senor Custodio dried it in the sun. As they tried at times to get the best of him in weight, he used to place in each sack two or three full arrobas, weighed with a steelyard; on the cloth of the sack he would inscribe a number in ink, indicating the amount of arrobas it contained, and these sacks he held in a sort of cellar or ship's hold that he had dug into the ground of the shed.

When there was a great quantity of paper he sold it to a pasteboard factory on Acacias Avenue. Senor Custodio's journey was not in vain, for in addition to selling the goods at a fancy price, he would, on the way back, drive his cart in the direction of a pitch factory of the vicinity, and there he picked up from the ground a very fine coal that burned excellently and gave as much heat as slag.

He sold the bottles to wine houses, to liquor and beer distilleries; the medicine flasks he disposed of to pharmacists; the bones went to the refineries and the rags to the paper factories.

The bread leavings, vegetable leaves and fruit cores were reserved for the feed of the pigs and hens, and what was of no use at all was cast into the rotting-place, converted into manure and sold to the orchards near the river.

On the first Sunday that Manuel spent there, Senor Custodio and his wife took the afternoon off. For many a day they had never gone out together because they were afraid to leave the house alone; this day they dressed up in their best and went on a visit to their daughter, who worked as a modiste in a relative's shop.

Manuel was glad to be left by himself with Reverte, contemplating the house, the yard, the ditch; he turned the carrousel round and it creaked ill-humouredly; he climbed up the swing frame, looked down at the hens, teased the pig a little and then ran up and down with the dog chasing after him barking merrily in feigned fury.

This dark depression attracted Manuel somehow or other, with its rubbish heaps, its gloomy hovels, its comical, dismantled merry-go-round, its swings, and its ground that held so many surprises, for a rough, ordinary pot burgeoned from its depths as easily as a lady's elegant perfume phial; the rubber bulb of a prosaic syringe grew side by side with the satin, scented sheet of a love letter.

This rough, humble life, sustained by the detritus of a refined, vicious existence; this almost savage career in the suburbs of a metropolis, filled Manuel with enthusiasm. It seemed to him that all the stuff cast aside in scorn by the capital,—the ordure and broken tubs, the old flower-pots and toothless combs, buttons and sardine tins,—all the rubbish thrown aside and spurned by the city, was dignified and purified by contact with the soil.

Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little house like Senor Custodio's, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the almost happy men in this world.



CHAPTER VII

Senor Custodio's Ideas—La Justa, El Carnicerin, and El Conejo.

Senor Custodio was an intelligent fellow of natural gifts, very observant and quick to take advantage of a situation. He could neither read nor write, yet made notes and kept accounts; with crosses and scratches of his own invention he devised a substitute for writing, at least for the purposes of his own business.

Senor Custodio was exceedingly eager for knowledge, and if it weren't that the notion struck him as ridiculous, he would have set about learning how to read and write. In the afternoon, work done, he would ask Manuel to read the newspapers and the illustrated reviews that he picked up on the streets, and the ragdealer and his wife listened with the utmost attention.

Senor Custodio had, too, several volumes of novels in serial form that had been left behind by his daughter, and Manuel began to read them aloud.

The comment of the ragdealer, who took this fiction for historic truth, was always perspicacious and just, revelatory of an instinct for reasoning and common sense. The man's realistic criticism was not always to Manuel's taste, and at times the boy would make bold to defend a romantic, immoral thesis. Senor Custodio, however, would at once cut him short, refusing to let him continue.

For professional reasons the ragdealer was much preoccupied with thought of the manure that went to waste in Madrid. He would say to Manuel:

"Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from Madrid is worth?"

"No."

"Then figure it out. At seventy centimos per arroba, the millions of arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and orchards everywhere."

Another of the fellow's fixed ideas was that of reclaiming used material. It seemed to him that lime and sand could be extracted from mortar refuse, live plaster from old, dead plaster, and he imagined that this reclamation would yield a huge sum of money.

Senor Custodio, who had been born near the very depression in which his house was situated, felt for his particular district, and for Madrid in general, a deep enthusiasm; the Manzanares, to him, was as considerable a river as the Amazon.

Senor Custodio had two children, of whom Manuel knew only Juan, a tall, swarthy sport who was married to the daughter of a laundry proprietress in La Bombilla. The ragdealer's daughter, Justa by name, was a modiste in a shop.

During the first few weeks neither of the children came to their parents' home. Juan lived in the laundry and Justa with a relative of hers who owned a workshop.

Manuel, who spent many hours in conversation with Senor Custodio, noted very soon that the rag-dealer, though fully aware of his very humble condition, was a man of extraordinary pride and that as regarded honour and virtue he had the ideas of a mediaeval nobleman.

One Sunday, after he had been living there a month Manuel had finished his meal and was standing at the door when he saw a girl with her skirts gathered come running down the slope of the dumping-ground. As she approached and he got a close look at her, Manuel went red and then blanched. It was the lass that had come two or three times to the lodging-house to fit the Baroness's dresses; but she had since then grown to womanhood.

She drew near, raising her skirt and her starched petticoats, careful not to soil her patent-leather slippers.

"What can she be coming here for?" Manuel asked himself.

"Is father in?" she inquired.

Senor Custodio came out and embraced her. She was the ragdealer's daughter of whom Manuel was forever hearing and whom, without knowing just why, he had imagined as a very thin, emaciated, disagreeable creature.

Justa walked into the kitchen and after looking over the chairs, to see whether there was anything on them that might soil her clothes, she sat down upon one of them. She began to pour forth a flood of unceasing chatter and roared at her own jokes.

Manuel listened without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of brand-new, polished slippers.

As Justa gabbled on, to the ecstasy of her parents, there came into the kitchen a hump-backed fellow from one of the neighbouring hovels; he was called El Conejo (the rabbit) and his face really showed a great resemblance to the amiable rodent whose name he bore.

El Conejo was a member of Senor Custodio's fraternity and knew Justa since she had been a child; Manuel used to see him every day, but never paid any attention to him.

The Rabbit walked into Senor Custodio's and began to talk nonsense, laughing in violent outbursts, but in so mechanical a manner that it provoked his hearers, for it seemed that behind this continuous laughter lay a very deep bitterness. Justa touched his hump, for, as is known, this brings good luck, whereupon El Conejo exploded with merriment.

"Have you been lugged up again before the chief?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Often ... hee-hee ..."

"What for?"

"Because the other day I started to shout in the street: 'Bargains! Who'll buy Sagasta's umbrella, Kruger's hat, the Pope's urinal, a syringe lost by a nun while she was talking with the sacristan! ..."

El Conejo trumpeted this at the top of his lungs and Justa held her sides with laughter.

"And don't you sing mass any more the way you used to?"

"Oh, sure."

"Let's hear it, then."

The humpback had taken for his scandalous parody, the Preface of the Mass, and for the sacred words he substituted others with which he announced his business. He began to bellow:

"Who will sell me any ... slippers ... pants ... hempen sandals ... old shoes ... secondhand clothes ... syringes ... urinals and even chemises."

The hunchback's cries made Justa laugh nervously. El Conejo, after repeating the Preface several times took up the melody of the rogations and sang some strains in a high soprano, others in a basso profundo:

"The high silk-hat" ... and instead of saying Liberanos domine, he went on: "I'll buy for spot cash.... Your old vest ... will fetch a five-peseta piece...."

Then he had to stop to let Justa laugh.

She was not slow in perceiving that she had attracted Manuel, and despite the fact that he seemed no great conquest to her, she became serious, egged him on and glanced at him furtively with looks that sent the boy's blood pounding faster.

After the ragdealer's daughter had left, Manuel felt as if he had been abandoned to darkness. He thought that he could live for two or three weeks on her incendiary glances alone.

The next day, when Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the topic of Senor Custodio and his family.

"Justa's a pretty girl, isn't she?"

"Psch ... yes," and El Conejo looked at Manuel with the reserved mien of a person concealing a mystery.

"You've known her since she was a kid, haven't you?"

"Yes. But I've known plenty of other girls, too."

"Has she a sweetheart?"

"She must have. Every woman has a sweetheart unless she's mighty ugly."

"And who is Justa's fellow?"

"Anyone; I shouldn't be surprised if it were the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala."

El Conejo was a very intelligent looking person; he had a long face, a curved nose, a broad forehead, tiny, sparkling eyes and a reddish beard that tapered to a point, like a goat's.

A peculiar tic, a convulsive twitch of the nose, would agitate his face from time to time, and it was this that completed his resemblance to a rabbit. His merriment was just as likely to find issue in a nervous, metallic, sonorous outburst as in a muffled, clownish guffaw. He would stare at people from top to bottom and from bottom to top in a manner all the more insolent for its jesting character, and to add to the mockery he would detain his gaze upon his interlocutor's buttons, and his eyes would dance from the cravat to the trousers and from the boots to the hat. He took special care to dress in the most ridiculous fashion and he liked to adorn his cap with bright cock feathers, strut about in riding boots and commit similar follies.

He was fond, too, of confusing folks with his lies, and so firmly did he state the tales of his own invention that it was hard to tell whether he was fooling or speaking in all seriousness.

"Haven't you heard what happened this afternoon to the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala over at Las Cambroneras?" he would say to some acquaintance.

"Why, no."

"Sure. He was on a visit bringing alms to Garibaldi and Garibaldi gave the Bishop a cup of chocolate. The Bishop sat down, took a sip, when zip! ... Nobody knows just what happened; he dropped dead."

"Why, man! ..."

"It's the Republicans that are behind it all," affirmed El Conejo in his most serious manner, and he would be off to another place to spread the news or perpetrate another hoax. He would join a group.

"Have you heard what happened to Weyler?"

"No. What was it?"

"Oh, nothing. On his return from camp some flies attacked his face and ate up a whole ear. He went across Segovia bridge bleeding terribly."

This was how the buffoon managed to enjoy himself.

Mornings he would sling his sack over his shoulder and proceed to the centre of Madrid where he shouted his business through the thoroughfares, mingling his cries with the names of political leaders and famous men,—a habit that had won him more than once the honour of appearing before the police-chief's desk.

El Conejo was as perverse and malevolent as a demon; any maiden in the vicinity that was going around with a secret bundle might well tremble lest he surprise her. He knew everything, he scented it out; apparently, however, he took no mean advantage of his discoveries. He was content to scare folks out of their wits.

"El Conejo must know," was the regular response when anything was suspected.

"I don't know a thing; I've seen nothing," he would answer, laughing. "I don't know anything." And that was all anybody could get out of him.

As Manuel got to know El Conejo better he felt for him, if not esteem, at least a certain respect because of his intelligence.

This ragman jester was so cunning that often he deceived his colleagues of El Rastro, who were far from being a set of fools.

Almost every morning the ragdealers would forgather at the head of El Rastro, to exchange impressions and used articles. El Conejo would learn beforehand just what was needed by the stand merchants, and he would buy the articles of the rag men, selling them in turn to the merchants; between this bartering and selling he always came out the gainer....

During the Sundays that followed, Justa amused herself by working upon Manuel's feelings. The girl was absolutely free in her talk and had a thorough, finished knowledge of all the Madrilenian phrases and wiles.

At first Manuel acted very respectfully; but seeing that she took no offence he grew gradually more daring and ventured so far as to steal embraces. Justa easily freed herself and would laugh at sight of the fellow's serious countenance and his glance ablaze with desire.

With the licentious manner that characterized her, Justa would carry on scabrous conversations, telling Manuel what men said to her on the street and the proposals that they whispered into her ears; she spoke with especial delight of shopmates who had lost their virginal bloom in La Bombilla or Las Ventas with some Don Juan of the counter who spent his days twirling his mustache before the mirror of a perfumery or silk shop.

Justa's words were always freighted with a double meaning and were, at times, burning allusions. Her mischievous manner, her flaunting, unbridled coquetry, scattered about her an atmosphere of lust.

Manuel felt a painful eagerness to possess her, mingled with a great sadness and even hatred, when he saw that Justa was making sport of him. Many a time when he saw her come Manuel vowed to himself not to speak a word to her, not to look at her or say anything; then she would hunt him out and tease him by beckoning to him and touching his foot.

Justa's temper was disconcertingly uneven. Sometimes when Manuel clasped her about the waist and sat her down on his knees, she would let him squeeze her and kiss her all he pleased; at others, however, simply because he had drawn near and taken her by the hand, she would give him such a hard slap that his senses whirled.

"And come back for more," she would add, seemingly indignant.

Manuel would feel like crying with anger and rage, and would have to contain himself lest he blurt out, with childish logic: "Why did you let me kiss you the other afternoon?" But at once he saw how ridiculous such a question would seem.

Justa got to feel a certain liking for Manuel, but it was a sisterly, a friendly affection; he never appealed to her seriously as a sweetheart or a suitor.

This flirtation, which to Justa was a mere sham of love, constituted for Manuel a painful awakening from puberty. He had dizzy attacks of passionate desire which left him mortally weak and crushed. Then he would stride along hurriedly with the irregular gait of one suffering from locomotor ataxia; many a time, crossing the pine grove of the Canal, he was seized with an impulse to jump into the river and drown himself. The filthy black water, however, hardly invited to immersion.

It was during these libidinous spells that dark, sinister thoughts assailed him,—the notion of how useless his life was, the certainty of an adverse fate,—and as he considered the vagabond, abandoned existence that awaited him, his soul walked with bitterness and sobs rose in his throat....

One winter Sunday Justa, who had got into the habit of visiting her parents on every holiday, did not appear. Manuel wondered whether the inclement weather might be the cause and he spent the whole week restless and nervous, counting the days that would intervene before their next meeting.

On the following Sunday Manuel went to the corner of the Paseo de los Pontones to wait for the girl to come along; as he espied her at a distance his heart gave a jump. She was accompanied by a young dandy, half bull-fighter and half gentleman, wearing a Cordovan hat and a blue cloak covered with embroidery. At the end of the avenue Justa took leave of her escort.

The next Sunday Justa carne to her parents' home with a girl friend and the young man of the embroidered cloak; she introduced the young man to Senor Custodio. Afterward she said that he was the son of a butcher from La Corredera Alta, and to her mother Justa confessed bashfully that the gentleman had asked permission to pay her attentions. This phrase pay attentions, which is spoken by the haughtiest princess and the humblest janitress with equally lingering pleasure, enchanted the ragdealer's wife, particularly as the gentleman in question came of a wealthy family.

In Senor Custodio's home the butcher's son was considered as the paragon of all perfections and beauties; Manuel alone protested and El Carnicerin (the little butcher),—as he had named him derisively from the very first moment,—was the object of his murderous glances.

When Manuel understood that Justa considered the butcher's son as an ideal suitor, his sufferings were cruel. It was no longer melancholy that moved his soul, which was now agitated by the most raging despair.

The fellow had too many advantages over him: he was tall, graceful, slender, flaunted a fair, budding moustache, was well-dressed, his fingers covered with rings, an expert dancer and skilful player on the guitar; he almost had a right to be as, content with himself as he was.

"How can that woman fail to see," thought Manuel, "that the fellow loves only himself? While I...."

On Sundays there used to be dancing on a lawn near the Ronda de Segovia, and Senor Custodio, with his wife, Justa and her sweetheart, would go there. They would leave Manuel behind to watch the house, but at times he would run off to see the dance.

When he caught sight of Justa dancing with El Carnicerin he was overwhelmed with a desire to drown them both.

The suitor, moreover, was a terrible show-off; he would affect a feminine grace as he danced, and it seemed as if he were applauding and complimenting himself. He kept so finically true to the rhythm of the dance that a spontaneous motion might ruin everything. He wouldn't have officiated at mass with greater ceremony.

As was natural, such a complete knowledge of the science of dancing, united to his consciousness of superiority, endowed El Carnicerin with admirable self-possession. It was he who was permitting himself indolently to be won by Justa, who was frantically fond of him. As they danced she threw herself upon him, her eyes sparkled and her nostrils dilated; it seemed as if she wished to dominate him, swallow him, devour him. She did not take her eyes off him, and if she saw him with another woman her face at once turned colour.

One afternoon El Carnicerin was speaking to a friend. Manuel drew near so as to overhear the conversation.

"Is that the girl?" his friend inquired.

"She's the one."

"Boy, maybe she isn't daffy over you."

And El Carnicerin, with a conceited smile, added:

"I've turned her head, all right."

Manuel could have torn out the fop's heart at that moment.

His disappointment in love made him think of leaving Senor Custodio's house.

One day he met, near the Segovia bridge, El Bizco and another ragamuffin that was with him.

They were both in tatters; El Bizco looked grimmer and more brutish than ever. He wore an old jacket through the rents of which peered his dark skin; according to what they said, they were both on their way to the intersection of Aravaca road and the Extremadura cart-road, to a spot they called the Confessionary. They expected to meet El Cura and El Hospiciano there and rob a house.

"What do you say? Will you join us?" asked El Bizco sarcastically.

"No, I won't."

"Where are you now?"

"In a house ... working."

"There's a brave fool for you! Come on, join us."

"No. I can't.... Listen, how about Vidal? Didn't you ever see him again?"

El Bizco's face turned grimmer than ever.

"I'll get even with that scoundrel. He won't escape before I carve a nice scar on his face.... But are you coming along with us or not?"

"No."

Senor Custodio's ideas had worked a strong influence upon Manuel; but since, despite this, his adventurous instincts persisted, he thought of going off to America, or becoming a sailor, or something of that sort.



CHAPTER VIII

The Square—A Wedding in La Bombilla—The Asphalt Caldrons.

The betrothal of El Carnicerin and Justa was formally arranged, Senor Custodio and his wife bathed in rose water, and only Manuel believed that in the end the wedding would never take place.

El Carnicerin was all together too haughty and too much of a fine fellow to marry the daughter of a ragdealer; Manuel imagined that now the butcher's son would try to take advantage of his opportunity. But for the present nothing authorized such malevolent suppositions.

El Carnicerin was generosity itself and showed delicate attentions to his sweetheart's parents.

One summer day he invited the whole family and Manuel to a bull fight. Justa dressed up very fetchingly in her best to make a worthy companion to her lover. Senor Custodio took out his finest apparel: the new fedora, new although it was more than thirty years old; his coat of doubled cloth, excellent for the boreal regions, and a cane with a horn handle, bought in El Rastro; the ragdealer's wife wore a flowered kerchief, while Manuel made a most ridiculous appearance in a hat that was taken from the shop and protruded about a palm's length before his eyes, a winter suit that suffocated him and a pair of tight shoes.

Behind Justa and El Carnicerin, Senor Custodio, his wife and Manuel attracted everybody's attention and left a wake of laughter.

Justa turned back to look at them and could not help smiling. Manuel walked along in a rage, stifling, his hat pressing tightly against his forehead and his feet aching.

They got into a street car at Toledo Street and rode to the Puerta del Sol; there they boarded art omnibus, which took them to the bull ring.

They entered and, guided by El Carnicerin, sat themselves down in their respective places. The spectacle had begun and the amphitheatre was packed. Tier upon tier was crammed with a black mass of humanity.

Manuel glared into the arena; they were about to kill the bull near the stone wall that bounded the ring, at a short distance from where they were. The poor beast, half dead already, was dragging himself slowly along, followed by three or four toreros and the matador, who, curved forward, with his red flag in one hand and his sword in the other, came behind. The matador was scared out of his wits; he stood before the bull, considered carefully just where he was to strike him, and at the beast's slightest movement he prepared to escape. Then, if the bull remained quiet a while, he struck him once, again, and the animal lowered his head; with his tongue hanging out, dripping blood, he gazed out of the sad eyes of a dying creature. After much effort the matador gave him the final stroke and killed him.

The crowd applauded and the band blared forth. The whole business struck Manuel as pretty disagreeable, but he waited eagerly. The mules came out and dragged off the dead bull.

Soon the music ceased and another bull appeared. The picadores remained close to the walls while the toreros ventured a bit nearer to the beast and waved their red flags, at once rushing back.

This was hardly anything like the picture Manuel had conjured up for himself, or like what he had seen in the coloured illustrations of La Lidia. He had always imagined that the toreros, in the sheer skill of their art, would play around with the bull, and there wasn't any of this; they entrusted their salvation to their legs, just like the rest of the world.

After the inciting tactics of the toreros, two monosabios began to beat a picador's horse with several sticks, until they got him to advance as far as the middle of the arena. Manuel had a close view of the horse; he was a large, white, bony creature with the saddest look on his face. The >monosabios goaded him on toward the bull. Soon the beast drew near, the picador pricked him with the point of his lance, the bull lowered his head for the attack and threw the horse into the air. The rider fell to the ground and was picked up in a trice; the horse tried to raise himself, with his intestines sprawling on the sand in a pool of blood; he trampled on them with his hoofs, his legs wavered and he fell convulsively to the ground.

Manuel arose deathly pale.

A monosabio approached the horse, who was still quivering; the animal raised his head as if to ask help, whereupon the man stabbed him to death with a poniard.

"I'm going. This is too nasty for anything," said Manuel to Senor Custodio. But it was no easy matter to leave the ring at that moment.

"The boy," said the ragdealer to his wife, "doesn't like it."

Justa, who had learned what was the matter, burst into laughter.

Manuel waited for the bull to be put to death; he kept his eyes fixed downward; the mules came out again, and as they dragged off the horse's body the intestines were left on the ground until a monosabio came along and dragged them off with a rake.

"Look at that tripe!" cried Justa, laughing.

Manuel, without a word, and unmindful of the eyes that were turned his way, left the tier. He went down to a series of long galleries, ranged with vile-smelling urinals, and tried unsuccessfully to locate the exit.

He was filled with rage against the whole world, against the others and against himself. The spectacle seemed to him a most repugnant, cowardly atrocity.

He had imagined bull-fighting to be something utterly distinct from what he had just witnessed; he had thought that always it would display the mastery of man over beast, and that the sword-thrusts would flash like lightning; that every moment of the struggle would bring forth something interesting and suggestive; and instead of a spectacle such as he had visioned, instead of a gory apotheosis of valour and strength, he beheld a petty, filthy thing, a medley of cowardice and intestines, a celebration in which one saw nothing but the torero's fear and the cowardly cruelty of the public taking pleasure in the throb of that fear.

"'This," thought Manuel, "could please only folks like El Carnicerin, effeminate loafers and indecent women."

Reaching home Manuel ragingly threw down his hat, pulled off his shoes and got out of the suit in which he had so ridiculously gone to the bull fight....

Manuel's indignation elicited plenty of comment from Senor Custodio and his wife, and he himself was somewhat intimidated by it; he understood that the spectacle hadn't been to his taste; what struck him as strange was that it should rouse so much anger, such rage in him.

Summer went by; Justa began to make preparations for her wedding, and in the meantime Manuel thought of leaving Senor Custodio's house and getting out of Madrid altogether. Whither? He didn't know; the farther away, the better, he thought.

In November one of Justa's shopmates got married, in La Bombilla, Senor Custodio and his wife found it impossible to attend, so that Manuel accompanied Justa.

The bride lived in the Ronda de Toledo, and her house was the meeting-place for all the guests.

At the door a large omnibus was waiting; it could hold any number of persons.

All the guests piled in; Justa and Manuel found a place on the top and waited a while. The bride and bridegroom appeared amidst a throng of gamins who were shouting at the top of their lungs; the groom looked like a dry goods clerk; she, emaciated and ugly, looked like a monkey; the best man and the bridesmaids followed after, and in this group a fat old lady, flat-nosed, cross-eyed, white-haired, with a red rose in her hair and a guitar in her hand, advanced with a flamenco air.

"Hurrah for the bride and groom! Hurrah for the best man and the maid-of-honour!" shouted the cross-eyed fright; there was a chorus of unenthusiastic responses and the coach departed amidst a hubbub and a shouting. On the way everybody shrieked and sang.

Manuel did not dare to rejoice at his failure to see El Carnicerin in the crowd; he felt positive that the fellow would show up at Los Viveros.

It was a beautiful, humid morning; the trees, copper-hued, were losing their yellow leaves in the gentle gusts; white clouds furrowed the pale sky, the road glittered with the moisture; afar in the fields burned heaps of dead leaves and thick curls of smoke rolled along close to the soil.

The coach halted before one of the inns of Los Viveros; everybody rolled out of the omnibus and the shouts and clamouring were heard anew. El Carnicerin was not there, but he soon appeared and sat down at table right beside Justa.

The day seemed hateful to Manuel; there were moments in which he felt like crying. He spent the whole afternoon despairing in a corner, watching Justa dance with her sweetheart in time to the tunes of a barrel-organ.

At night Manuel went over to Justa and with comic gravity, said to her abruptly:

"Come along, you—" and seeing that she paid no attention to him, he added, "Listen, Justa, let's be going home."

"Get away. Leave me in peace!" she retorted rudely.

"Your father told you to be back home by night. Come along, now."

"See here, my child," interposed El Carnicerin with calm deliberation. "Who gave you a taper to bear at this funeral?"

"I was entrusted to...."

"All right. Shut up. Understand?"

"I don't feel like it."

"Well, I'll make you with a good ear-warming."

"You make me? ... Why, you're nothing but a low-down lout, a thief—" and Manuel was advancing against El Carnicerin, when one of the fellow's friends gave him a punch in the head that stunned him. The boy made another attempt to rush upon the butcher's son; two or three guests pushed him out of the way and shoved him out on to the road at the door of the inn.

"Starveling! ... Loafer!" shouted Manuel.

"You're one yourself," cried one of Justa's friends tauntingly after him. "Rabble! Guttersnipe!"

Manuel, filled with shame and thirsting for vengeance, still half dazed by the blow, thrust his cap down over his face and stamped along the road weeping with rage. Soon after he left he heard somebody running toward him from behind.

"Manuel, Manolillo," said Justa to him in an affectionate, jesting voice. "What's the matter?"

Manuel breathed heavily and a long sigh of grief escaped him.

"What's the matter? Come, let's return. We'll go together."

"No, no; go away from me."

He was at a loss; without another word he set off on a run toward Madrid.

The wild flight dried his tears and rekindled his fury. He meant not to return to Senor Custodio's even if he died of hunger.

His rage rose in waves up his throat; he felt a blind madness, hazy notions of attacking, of destroying everything, of razing the world to the ground and disemboweling every living creature.

Mentally he promised El Carnicerin that if ever he met him alone, he would sink his claws into his neck and strangle him; he would split the fellow's head in two as they do to hogs, and would hang him up head downwards with a stick between his ribs and another in his intestines, and moreover, he'd place a tin box at his mouth into which his cursed pig's blood could drip.

Then he generalized his hatred and considered that society itself was against him, intent only upon plaguing him and denying him everything.

Very well, then; he would go against society, he would join El Bizco and assassinate right and left, and when, wearied of committing so many crimes, he would be led to the scaffold, he would look scornfully down from the platform upon the people below and die with a supreme gesture of hatred and disdain.

While all these thoughts of wholesale extermination thronged in his brain, night was falling. Manuel walked up to the Plaza de Oriente and followed thence along Arenal Street.

A strip of the Puerta del Sol was being asphalted; ten or twelve furnaces ranged in a row were belching thick acrid smoke through their chimneys. The white illumination of the arc-lights had not yet been turned on; the silhouettes of a number of men who were stirring with long shovels the mass of asphalt in the caldrons danced diabolically up and down before the flaming mouths of the furnaces.

Manuel approached one of the caldrons when suddenly he heard his name called. It was El Bizco; he was seated upon some paving blocks.

"What are you doing here?" Manuel asked him.

"We've been thrown out of the caves," answered El Bizco, "and it's cold. What about you? Have you left the house?"

"Yes."

"Have a seat."

Manuel sat down and rested his back against a keg of asphalt.

Lights began to sparkle in the balconies of the residences and in the shop windows; the street cars arrived gently, as if they were vessels floating in, with their yellow, green and red lanterns; their bells rang and they traced graceful circles around the Puerta del Sol. Carriages, horses, carts came rattling by; the itinerant hawkers cried their wares from their sidewalk stands; there was a deafening din.... At the end of one street, against the coppery splendour of the dusk stood out the tapering outlines of a belfry.

"And don't you ever see Vidal?" asked Manuel.

"No. See here, Have you got any money?" blurted El Bizco.

"Twenty or thirty centimos at most."

"Fine."