From time to time Jesús would pause and deliver a diatribe; a man would laugh as they passed by, or a youngster, from some doorway, would call after them and send a snowball in their direction.
“I wonder whom they’re laughing at?” thought Manuel.
The Ronda was silent, white, cut by a dark stream of water left by the carts. The large flakes came falling down, interweaving in their descent; they danced in the gusts of wind like white butterflies. During the intervals of calm they would glide slowly, softly through the greyish atmosphere, like the gentle down from the neck of a swan.
Afar, in the mist, lay the white landscape of the suburbs, the gently curving slopes, the houses and the cemeteries of the Campo de San Isidro. Against this background everything stood out more distinct than ordinarily: the roofs, the mudwalls, the trees, the lanterns thickly hooded in snow.
In this whitish ambient the black smoke belched forth by the chimneys spread through the air like a threat.
“The weaker sex. Hey, Manuel?” continued Jesús, harping upon his fixed idea. “And yet they can show a fellow to the door.... It’s as if they said the weak snow.... Because you tread upon it.... Isn’t that so?... But the snow makes you cold.... And then who’s the weaker, you or the snow?... You, because you catch cold. That’s all a fellow does in this world,—catch cold.... Everything is cold, understand?... Everything.... Like the snow.... Do you see how white it is, eh? It looks so good, so affectionate ... the weaker sex.... Well, touch it, and you freeze.”
They squandered their last céntimos on another glass of whisky, and from that moment they were no longer conscious of their doings.
The following morning they awoke frozen through and through, in a shed of the Cattle Market situated near the Paseo de los Pontones.
Jesús was coughing horribly.
“You stay here,” said Manuel to him. “I’m going to see whether I can pick up something to eat.”