Thanks to this hygienic regimen, none of the boarders fell ill with obesity, gout or any of those other ailments due to excess of food and so frequent in the rich.
After preparing the meal and serving it, Petra postponed the dish-washing, and left the house to meet her son.
Night had not yet fallen. The sky was vaguely red, the air stifling, heavy with a dense mist of dust and steam. Petra went up Carretas Street, continued through Atocha, entered the Estación del Mediodía and sat down on a bench to wait for Manuel….
Meanwhile, the boy was approaching the city half asleep, half asphyxiated, in a third-class compartment.
He had taken the train the night before at the railway station where his uncle was superintendent. On reaching Almazán, he had to wait more than an hour for a mixed train, so he sauntered through the deserted streets to kill time.
To Manuel, Almazán seemed vast, infinitely sad; the town, glimpsed through the gloom of a dimly starlit night, loomed like a great, fanastic, dead city. The pale electric lights shone upon its narrow streets and low houses; the spacious plaza with its arc lights was deserted; the belfry of a church rose into the heavens.
Manuel strolled down towards the river. From the bridge the town seemed more fantastic and mysterious than ever; upon a wall might be made out the galleries of a palace, and several lofty, sombre towers shot up from amidst the jumbled dwellings of the town; a strip of moon gleamed close to the horizon, and the river, divided by a few islets into arms, glittered as if it were mercury.
Manuel left Almazánhad to wait a few hours in Alcuneza for the next train. He was weary, and as there were no benches in the station, he stretched himself out upon the floor amidst bundles and skins of oil.
At dawn he boarded the other train, and despite the hardness of the seat, managed to fall asleep.
Manuel had been two years with his relatives; he departed from their home with more satisfaction than regret.