Manuel became the confidant of Roberto and Kate. The girl was of immaculate candor and innocence, and extraordinarily ignorant in matters of guile. Manuel felt a genuine submissiveness before that aristocratic, elegant nature; he was filled with a feeling of inferiority that in no wise troubled him.
La Nena recounted to Manuel all the things she had seen in Paris, Brussels, Ghent; she told him about the parks of London, much to his amazement. In return, Manuel enlightened Kate as to life in the underworld of Madrid, filling her in turn with the utmost astonishment: the cellars, the taverns, the tramps; he described to her the urchins who ran away from home and slept in the nooks and crannies of the churches; he spoke to her of the ragamuffins who pilfer in the laundries; he told her what the shelters were like....
Manuel possessed a certain gift for imparting his impressions; he would exaggerate and fill in with figments of his imagination the gaps left by reality. La Nena would listen to him in a rapture of interest.
“Oh, how frightful!” she would say. And the mere thought that this wretched rabble of which Manuel spoke might rub elbows with her made her tremble.
The maiden felt a deep repugnance for the common people; she would not go out on Sundays, so as to avoid mingling with soldiers and men in labourers’ smocks. It seemed to her that common folk must be inherently wicked. As soon as the street lamps were lighted she preferred to be indoors.
They used to hold their conversations at nightfall in a room that looked out on to the street, whence could be seen the Plaza de Oriente, like a wood, and the Royal Palace, to whose cornices hundreds of pigeons repaired after winging about all day in flocks. As a background there was the Casa del Campo and the horizon which reddened with the approach of dusk....
After Epiphany, Kate returned to school, whereupon the old habits were re-established in the household and the customary disorder reigned.
The first nocturnal sally that the baroness made was to her Cuban friend, in the company of Manuel. The baroness and Manuel left after supper. The Cuban lady lived in the Calle Ancha. They knocked; a diminutive lackey in blue livery and gold braid opened the door, and they passed through a corridor into a lavishly lighted drawing-room, decorated in cheap, loud taste. In the centre stood an electric lamp with a cluster of seven or eight globes; there was a huge sofa upholstered in a very flowery stuff; two gilt chairs shone beside a fire-place, upon the marble mantelpiece of which sat a clock in the form of a ball, a barometer fashioned like a hammer, a thermometer that represented a dagger, and sundry other things in the most absurd shapes. Photographs hung on every wall.
Only a few disreputable looking women were present; they humbly rose. The baroness took a seat, and shortly after, the Cuban entered,—a very common, brutal woman, dressed in an exceedingly loud costume, and wearing thick diamonds in her ears and on her fingers. She took the baroness’s hand and sat down on a sofa beside her. It could easily be seen that she desired to flatter her visitor. The Colonel’s wife was more than a common woman; she was bestial. She had a prominent jaw, tiny black eyes and a mouth that bespoke cruelty. Her features betrayed a certain disturbing, menacing lubricity; one imagined that such a woman must be the prey to strange vices,—that she was capable of crime.
Manuel, from his place in a corner, busied himself with the examination of a photograph album that he discovered upon a night table.