"That's what you ought to do," suggested Vidal. "Come with us. This is the life of a lord! Why, listen here. The other day Juan el Burra and El Arenero came upon a dead hog on the road to Las Yeserías. A swineherd was on his way with a herd of them to the slaughter-house, when they found out that the animal had died; the fellow left it there, and Juan el Burra and El Arenero dragged it to their house, quartered it, and we friends of his have been eating hog for more than a week. I tell you, it's a lord's life!"
According to what Vidal said, all the thieves knew each other, even to the most distant sections of the city. Their life was outside the pale of society and an admirable one, indeed; today they were to meet at the Four Roads, in three or four days at the Vallecas Bridge or at La Guindelara; they helped each other.
Their radius of activities was a zone bounded by the extreme of the Casa del Campo, where the inn of Agapito and the Alcorcón restaurants were, as far as Los Carabancheles; from here, the banks of the Abronigal, La Elipa, El Este, Las Ventas and La Conceptión as far as La Prosperidad; then Tetuán as far as the Puerta de Hierro. In summer they slept in yards and sheds of the suburbs.
The thieves of the city's centre were a better-dressed, more aristocratic lot; each of these had his woman, whose earnings he managed and who took good care of him. The outcasts of the heart of the city were a distinct class with other gradations.
There were times when Bizco and Vidal had gone through intense want, existing upon cats and rats and seeking shelter in the caves upon San Blas hill, of Madrid Moderno, and in the Eastern Cemetery. But by this time the pair knew their business.
"And work? Nothing?" asked Manuel.
"Work! … Let the cat work," scoffed Vidal.
They didn't work, stuttered Bizco; who was going to get fresh with him while he had his trusty steel in his hand?
Into the brain of this wild beast there had not penetrated, even vaguely, any idea of rights or duties. No duties, no rights or anything at all. To him, might was right; the world was a hunting wood. Only humble wretches could obey the law of labour. That's what he said: Let fools work, if they hadn't the nerve to live like men.
As the three thus conversed a man and a woman with a child in her arms passed by. They looked dejected, like famished, persecuted folk, their glance timid and awed.