The women squatted by the edges of the pools, with baskets of clothes for the wash at their sides; dark-grey rabbits came hopping along the paths with their deceiving smile, showing, in their flight, their reddish quarters, parted by the stub of a tail; with an eye red and flaming with anger, the cock mounted the heap of reddish manure with his peaceful odalisks about him and sent forth the cry of an irritated sultan.
Pepeta, oblivious to this awakening of dawn which she witnessed every day, hurried on her way, her stomach empty, her limbs aching, her poor clothing drenched with the perspiration characteristic of her pale, thin blood, which flowed for weeks at a time contrary to the laws of Nature.
The crowds of labouring people who were entering Valencia filled all the bridges. Pepeta passed the labourers from the suburbs who had come with their little breakfast-sacks over their shoulders, and stopped at the octroi to get her receipt,—a few coins which grieved her soul anew each day,—then went on through the deserted streets, whose silence was broken by the cowbells of La Rocha, a monotonous pastoral melody, which caused the drowsy townsman to dream of green pastures and idyllic scenery.
Pepeta had customers in all parts of the city. She went her intricate way through the streets, stopping before the closed doors; it was a blow on a knocker here, three or more repeated raps there, and ever the continuation of the strident, high-pitched cry, which it seemed could not possibly come from a chest so poor and flat:
La lleeet!
And the dishevelled, sunken-eyed servant came down in slippers, jug in hand, to receive the milk; or the aged concierge appeared, still wearing the mantilla which she had put on to go to mass.
By eight all the customers had been served. Pepeta was now near the Fishermen's quarter.
Here she had business also, and the poor farmer's wife bravely penetrated the dirty alleys which, at this hour, seemed to be dead. She always felt at first a certain uneasiness,—the instinctive repugnance of a delicate stomach: but her spirit, that of a woman who, though ill, was respectable, succeeded in rising above it, and she went on with a certain proud satisfaction—the pride of a chaste woman who consoles herself by remembering that though bent and weakened by her poverty, she is still superior to others.
From the closed and silent houses came forth the breath of the cheap, noisy, shameless rabble mingled with an odour of heated, rotting flesh; and through the cracks of the doors, there seemed to escape the gasping and brutal breathing of heavy sleep, after a night of wild-beast caresses and amorous, drunken desires.
Pepeta heard some one calling her. At the entrance to a narrow stairway stood a sturdy girl, making signs to her. She was ugly, without any other charm than that of youth disappearing already; her eyes were humid, her hair twisted in a topknot, and her cheeks, still stained by the rouge of the preceding night, seemed like a caricature of the red daubs on the face of a clown,—a clown of vice.