Then he generalized his hatred and considered that society itself was against him, intent only upon plaguing him and denying him everything.
Very well, then; he would go against society, he would join El Bizco and assassinate right and left, and when, wearied of committing so many crimes, he would be led to the scaffold, he would look scornfully down from the platform upon the people below and die with a supreme gesture of hatred and disdain.
While all these thoughts of wholesale extermination thronged in his brain, night was falling. Manuel walked up to the Plaza de Oriente and followed thence along Arenal Street.
A strip of the Puerta del Sol was being asphalted; ten or twelve furnaces ranged in a row were belching thick acrid smoke through their chimneys. The white illumination of the arc-lights had not yet been turned on; the silhouettes of a number of men who were stirring with long shovels the mass of asphalt in the caldrons danced diabolically up and down before the flaming mouths of the furnaces.
Manuel approached one of the caldrons when suddenly he heard his name called. It was El Bizco; he was seated upon some paving blocks.
"What are you doing here?" Manuel asked him.
"We've been thrown out of the caves," answered El Bizco, "and it's cold. What about you? Have you left the house?"
"Yes."
"Have a seat."
Manuel sat down and rested his back against a keg of asphalt.