"Why? Are Rubia and Chata inside?"
"What do you care if they are?"
"Shall we give those hayseeds a scare?" asked one of the ragamuffins, whose ears were covered by long black locks.
"Just try it and see," growled Cojo, seizing a rock.
"Come on to the Observatory," said another. "We won't get wet there."
The gang turned back, hurdled a wall that stood in their path and took refuge in the portico of the Observatory on the Atocha side. The wind was blowing from the Guadarrama range so that they were in the lee.
For the afternoon and part of the evening the rain came pouring down; they passed the time chatting about women, thefts and crimes. Two or three of these youngsters had a home to go to, but they didn't care to go. One, who was called El Mariané, related a number of notable tricks and swindles; others, who displayed prodigious skill and ingenuity, roused the gathering to enthusiasm. After this theme had been exhausted, a few suggested a game of cané, and the idler with the long black locks, whom they called El Canco, sang in a low feminine voice several flamenco songs.
At night, as it grew cold, they lay down quite close to each other upon the ground and continued their conversations. Manuel was repelled by the malevolent spirit of the gang; one of them told a story about an aged fellow of eighty, "old Rainbow," who used to sleep furtively in the Manzanares laundry in a hole formed by four mats; one night when an icy cold wind was blowing they opened two of his mats and the next day he was found frozen to death; El Mariané recounted how he had been with a cousin of his, a cavalry sergeant, in a public house and how the sergeant mounted upon a naked woman's back and gashed her thighs with his spurs.
"The fact is," concluded El Mariané, "there's nothing like making women suffer if you want to keep 'em satisfied."
Manuel listened in astonishment to this counsel; his mind reverted to that seamstress who came to the landlady's house, and then to Salomé, and it occurred to him that he would not care to have made them love him by inflicting pain. He fell asleep with these notions whirling in his head.