Six duros are thirty francs; it did not seem much to me, and I put my hand in my pocket.
Gongora cast a withering glance at me which seemed to say, "You simpleton!" and, drawing me back by the arm, said, "One moment: six duros is an exorbitant price."
The old woman shot him another glance which seemed to say, "Brigand!" and replied, "I cannot take less."
Gongora gave her another glance, which seemed to say, "Liar!" and said, "Come, now; you can take four duros; you would not ask more from the country-people."
The old woman insisted, and for a while we continued to exchange with our eyes the titles of simpleton, swindler, marplot, liar, pinch-penny, spend-thrift, until the mantle was sold to me for five duros, and I paid and left my address, and we went out blessed and commended to God by the old woman and followed a good way by the black eyes of the embroiderers.
We went on from street to street, among houses increasingly wretched and growing blacker and blacker, and more revolting rags and faces. But we never came to the end, and I asked my companions, "Will you have the goodness to tell me if Granada has any limits, and if so where they are? May one ask where we are going and how we shall return home?" But they simply laughed and went forward.
"Is there anything stranger than this to be seen?" I asked at a certain point.
"Stranger?" they both replied. "This second part of the suburb which you have seen still belongs to civilization: if not the Parisian, it is at least the Madrid, quarter of the Albaicin, and there is something else; let us go on."
We passed through a very small street containing some scantily-clothed women, who looked like people fallen from the moon; crossed a little square full of babies and pigs in friendly confusion; passed through two or three other alleys, now climbing, now descending, now in the midst of houses, now among piles of rubbish, now between trees and now among rocks, until we finally arrived at the solitary place on a hillside from which we saw in front the Generalife, to the right the Alhambra, and below a deep valley filled with a dense wood.
It was growing dark; no one was in sight and not a voice was heard.