“And then what would they have done with me?” asked the gentleman of refinement.
“Expel you from Madrid.”
“But aren’t there places here where a person can spend the night?” asked Jesús.
“A raft of them,” replied the old man. “Everywhere you go. Especially now, when it’s so cold in the winter.”
“I’ve lived,” chimed in the young beggar, “for more than half a year in Vaciamadrid,—an almost depopulated town. A comrade of mine and myself found a house that was closed, and we installed ourselves in it. For a few weeks we lived swimmingly. At night we’d go to the Arganda station; we’d bore a hole with an auger in a cask of wine, fill up our wine-bag and then stuff the hole with pitch.”
“And why did you leave the place?” queried Manuel.
“The civil guard laid siege to us and we were forced to escape through the windows. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t already tired of the joint. I like to roam along the road, one day here, another there. That’s the way a fellow meets people who know a thing or two, and picks up an education....”
“Have you done much tramping hereabouts?”
“All my life. I can’t use up more than one pair of sandals per town. If I stay very long in the same place I grow so uneasy that I just have to get a move on. Ah! The country! There’s nothing like it. You eat where you can. In winter it’s tough. But summer time! You make your thyme bed underneath a tree and have a magnificent sleep, better than the king himself. When the cold comes around, then, like the swallows, off you fly to wherever it’s nice and warm.”
The old man with the black spectacles, scornful of what the young vagabond had said, informed Jesús as to the nooks to be found in the outlying districts.