In the majority of the rooms and holes of La Corrala one was struck immediately by the resigned, indolent indigence combined with organic and moral impoverishment.
In the space belonging to the cobbler's family, at the tip of a very long pole attached to one of the pillars, waved a pair of patch-covered trousers comically balancing itself.
Off from the large courtyard of El Corralón branched a causeway heaped with ordure, leading to a smaller courtyard that in winter was converted into a fetid swamp.
A lantern, surrounded with a wire netting to prevent the children from breaking it with stones, hung from one of the black walls.
In the inner courtyard the rooms were much cheaper than those of the large patio; most of them brought twenty-three reales, but there were some for two or three pesetas per month: dismal dens with no ventilation at all, built in the spaces under stairways and under the roof.
In some moister climate La Corrala would have been a nest of contagion: the wind and sun of Madrid, however,—that sun which brings blisters to the skin,—saw to the disinfection of that pesthole.
As if to make sure that terror and tragedy should haunt the edifice, one saw, on entering,—either at the main door or in the corridor,—a drunken, delirious hag who begged alms and spat insults at everybody. They called her Death. She must have been very old, or at least appeared so. Her gaze was wandering, her look diffident, her face purulent with scabs; one of her lower eyelids, drawn in as the result of some ailment, exposed the bloody, turbid inside of her eyeball. Death would stalk about in her tatters, in house slippers, with a tin-box and an old basket into which she gathered her findings. Through certain superstitious considerations none dared to throw her into the street.
On his very first night in La Corrala Manuel verified, not without a certain astonishment, the truth of what Vidal had told him. That youngster, and almost all the gamins of his age, had sweethearts among the little girls of the tenement, and it was not a rare occurrence, as he passed by some nook, to come upon a couple that jumped up and ran away.
The little children amused themselves playing bull-fight, and among the most-applauded feats was that of Don Tancredo. One tot would get down on all fours, and another, not very heavy, would mount him and fold his arms, thrust back his chest and place a three-cornered hat of paper upon his erect, haughty head.
He who was playing the bull would approach, roar loudly, sniff Don Tancredo and pass by without throwing him over; a couple of times he would repeat this, and then dash off. Whereupon Don Tancredo would dismount from his living pedestal to receive the plaudits of the public. There were wily, waggish bulls who took it into their heads to pull both statue and pedestal to the ground, and this would be received amidst shouts and huzzahs of the spectators.