CHAPTER II
One of the Many Disagreeable Ways of Dying in Madrid—The
Orphan—El Cojo and His Cave—Night in the Observatory.
One day Manuel was not a little surprised to learn that his mother had not been able to get up and that she was ill. For some time she had been coughing up blood, but had considered this of no importance.
Manuel presented himself humbly at the house and the landlady, instead of greeting him with recriminations, asked him in to see his mother. The only thing Petra complained of was a terrible bruised feeling all over the body and a pain in her back.
For days and days she had gone on thus, now better, now worse, until she began to run a high fever and was compelled to call in the doctor. The landlady said that they'd have to take the sick woman to the hospital; but as she was a kind-hearted soul she did not insist.
Petra had already confessed several times to the priest of the house. Manuel's sisters came from time to time, but neither brought the money necessary to the purchase of the medicines and the food that were prescribed by the doctor.
One Sunday, toward night, Petra took a turn for the worse; during the afternoon she had been conversing spiritedly with her daughters; but this animation had subsided until she was overwhelmed by a mortal collapse.
That Sunday night Doña Casiana's lodgers had an unusually succulent supper, and after the supper several ronquillas for dessert, watered by the purest concoction of the Prussian distilleries.
The spree was still in progress at ten o'clock. Petra said to Manuel:
"Call Don Jacinto and tell him that I'm worse."