"No. What are you doing?"
"Hiding here," answered La Mellá.
"Why, what's the trouble?"
"There's a round-up, and that skunk of an inspector wants to take us to the station, even if we do pay him. Keep us company!"
Manuel accompanied them for a while; but they both picked up a couple of men on the way and he was left alone. He returned to the Puerta del Sol.
The night seemed to him endless; he walked around and walked yet again; the electric lights were extinguished, the street-cars stopped running, the square was left in darkness.
Between Montera and Alcalá Streets there was a café before whose illuminated windows women passed up and down dressed in bright clothes and wearing crape kerchiefs, singing, accosting benighted passers-by; several loafers, lurking behind the lanterns, watched them and chatted with them, giving them orders….
Then came a procession of street-women, touts and procurers. All of parasitical, indolent, gay Madrid issued forth at these hours from the taverns, the dens, the gambling-houses, the dives and vice resorts, and amidst the poverty and misery that throbbed in the thoroughfares these night-owls strutted by with their lighted cigars, conversing, laughing, joking with the prostitutes, indifferent to the agony of all these ragged, hungry, shelterless wretches who, shivering with the cold, sought refuge in the doorways.
A few old strumpets remained at the street-corners, wrapped in their cloaks, smoking….
It was long before the heavens grew bright; it was still night when the coffee stands were opened, and the coachmen and ragamuffins went up for their cup or glass. The gas lamps were extinguished.