She laughed and explained that she was come to fetch her friend, a young woman, who had been released that morning. The doctor nodded to her, asking how long she had been in gaol.
'Two years and nine months,' she said.
And she began to laugh hysterically with tears streaming down her cheeks.
'I don't know what I'm doing,' she cried. 'I can't understand it.'
She looked into the street with wild, yearning eyes; everything seemed to her strange and new.
'I haven't seen a tree for nearly three years,' she sobbed.
But the hag was pressing the doctor to drink with her; he accepted without much hesitation, and gallantly proposed her health.
'What are you going to do?' he said to the younger woman, she was hardly more than a girl. 'You'd better not hang about in Seville or you'll get into trouble again.'
'Oh no,' she said, 'I'm going to my village—mi pueblo—this afternoon. I want to see my husband and my child.'
Don Felipe turned to me and asked what I thought of the Seville prison. I made some complimentary reply.