At the end of the bridge, on the esplanade between the two gardens in front of the octagonal towers whose Gothic arcades, projecting barbicans and noble crown of battlements rose above the grove, Batiste stopped and passed his hands over his face.
He had to visit the masters, the sons of Don Salvador, and ask them to loan him a small sum to make up the necessary amount to buy a horse to take poor Morrut's place. And as cleanliness is the poor man's luxury, he sat down on a stone-bench, waiting his turn to have his beard shaved,—a two weeks' growth, stiff and bristly like porcupine-quills, which blackened his whole face.
In the shade of the high plane-trees, the barber-shops of the district, the open-air barbers as they were called, plied their trade. A couple of arm-chairs with rush-seats and arms made shiny by use, a portable furnace on which boiled the pot of water, towels of doubtful colour, and nicked razors which scraped the hard skin of the customers with raspings that made you shiver, constituted all the stock-in-trade of those open-air establishments.
Clumsy boys who aspired to be apprentices in the barber-shops of the town were there learning how to use their arms; and while they learned by inflicting cuts or by covering the victims' heads with clips and bald-spots, the master conversed with the customers on the promenade-bench or read the newspaper aloud to the group who listened impassively.
As for those who sat on the chair of torment, a piece of hard soap was nibbed over their jaws, until the lather came. Then the cruel razor, and cuts endured stoically by the customer, whose face was tinged with blood. A little further on resounded the enormous scissors in continuous movement passing back and forth over the round head of some vain youth, who was left shaved like a poodle; the height of elegance, with a long lock falling over the brow, and half the head behind carefully cropped.
Batiste, swallowed up in the rush-chair, listened with closed eyes to the head-barber as he read in a nasal and monotonous voice, and commented and glossed like a man well versed in public affairs. His shave resulted quite fortunately: all he got was three scrapes and a cut on his ear. Other times there had been more. He paid his half-real and departed; and entered the city through the Serranos gate.
Two hours later he came out again and sat down on the stone-bench among the group of customers to listen to the head-barber until the time of the market arrived.
The masters had just loaned him the small amount he needed to buy the horse. The important thing now was to have a good eye in making his choice; to keep his temper and not let himself be cheated by the cunning gipsies who passed before him with their animals and went down the slope to the river-bed.
Eleven o'clock. The horse-market had evidently reached its moment of greatest animation. There came to Batiste's ears the confused sound of something like an invisible ebullition; the neighs of horses and voices of men rose from the river-bed. He hesitated, hung back, like a man who wants to put off an important resolution, and at last decided to go down to the market.
The river-bed as usual was dry. Some pools of water which had escaped from the water-wheels and dams which irrigated the plain wound in and out like serpents, forming curves and islands in a soil which was dusty, hot and uneven, more like an African desert than a river-bed.