"You're one yourself," cried one of Justa's friends tauntingly after him. "Rabble! Guttersnipe!"
Manuel, filled with shame and thirsting for vengeance, still half dazed by the blow, thrust his cap down over his face and stamped along the road weeping with rage. Soon after he left he heard somebody running toward him from behind.
"Manuel, Manolillo," said Justa to him in an affectionate, jesting voice. "What's the matter?"
Manuel breathed heavily and a long sigh of grief escaped him.
"What's the matter? Come, let's return. We'll go together."
"No, no; go away from me."
He was at a loss; without another word he set off on a run toward
Madrid.
The wild flight dried his tears and rekindled his fury. He meant not to return to Señor Custodio's even if he died of hunger.
His rage rose in waves up his throat; he felt a blind madness, hazy notions of attacking, of destroying everything, of razing the world to the ground and disemboweling every living creature.
Mentally he promised El Carnicerín that if ever he met him alone, he would sink his claws into his neck and strangle him; he would split the fellow's head in two as they do to hogs, and would hang him up head downwards with a stick between his ribs and another in his intestines, and moreover, he'd place a tin box at his mouth into which his cursed pig's blood could drip.