The Quest Part 29

He spent the whole night thus; from time to time the landlady would enter in her underclothes and ask Manuel something or offer some bit of advice which, for the most part, he did not understand.

That night Manuel thought and suffered as perhaps he never thought and suffered at any other time; he meditated upon the usefulness of life and upon death with a perspicacity that he had never possessed.

However hard he might try, he could not stem the flood of thoughts that merged one with the other.

At four in the morning the whole house was in silence, when there was heard the rattle of a latchkey in the stairway door, followed by footsteps in the corridor and then the querulous tinkling of the music-box upon the vestibule-table, playing the Mandolinata.

Manuel awoke with a start, as from a dream; he could not make out where the music was coming from; he even imagined that he had lost his head. The little organ, after several hitches and asthmatic sobs, abandoned the Mandolinata and began to roll off in double time the duet between Bettina and Pippo from _La Mascotte_:

_Will you forget me, gentle swain, Dressed in this lordly finery?_

Manuel left the bedroom and asked, through the darkness:

"Who is it?"

At the same moment voices were heard from every room. The music-box cut short the duet from _La Mascotte_ and launched spiritedly into the strains of Garibaldi's hymn. Suddenly the music stopped and a hoa.r.s.e voice shouted:

"Paco! Paco!"

The landlady got up and asked who was making all that racket; one of the men who had just entered the house explained in a whisky-soaked voice that they were students who boarded on the third floor, and had just come from the ball in search of Paco, one of the salesmen. The landlady told them that some one had died in the house and one of the drunkards, who was a student of medicine, said he would like to view the corpse. He was persuaded to change his mind and everybody went back to his place. The next day Manuel's sisters were notified and Petra was buried....

On the day after the interment Manuel left the boarding-house and said farewell to Dona Casiana.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'll see."

"I can't keep you here, but I don't want you to starve. Come here from time to time."

After walking about town all the morning, Manuel found himself at noon on the Ronda de Toledo, leaning against the wall of Las Americas, at a loss to know what to do with himself. To one side, likewise seated upon the turf, was a loathsome, terribly ugly, flat-nosed gamin, with a clouded eye, bare feet, and a tattered jacket through whose rents could be glimpsed his dark skin, which had been tanned by the sun and wind. Hanging from his neck was a canister into which he threw the cigarette ends that he gathered.

"Where do you live?" Manuel asked him.

"I haven't any father or mother," answered the urchin, evasively.

"What's your name?"

"The Orphan."

"And why do they call you that?"

"Why! Because I'm a foundling."

"And didn't you ever have a home?"

"No."

"And where do you sleep?"

"Well, in the summer I sleep in the caves, or in yards, and in winter, in the asphalt caldrons."

"And when they're not doing any asphalting?"

"In some shelter or other."

"All right, then. But what do you eat?"

"Whatever I'm given."

"And do you manage to do well?"

Either the foundling did not understand the question or it appeared quite silly to him, for he merely shrugged his shoulders. Manuel continued his curious interrogatory.

"Aren't your feet cold?"

"No."

"And don't you do anything?"

"Psch! ... whatever turns up. I pick up stubs, I sell sand, and when I can't earn anything I go to the Maria Cristina barracks."

"What for?"

"What for? For a meal, of course."

"And where's this barracks?"

"Near the Atocha station. Why? Would you like to go there, too?"

"Yes, I would."

"Well, let's come along then, or we'll miss mess time."

The two got up and started on their journey. The Orphan begged at the stores on the road and was given two slices of bread and a small coin.

"Will you have some, _ninchi?_" he asked, offering Manuel one of the slices.

"Hand it over."

By the Ronda de Atocha they reached the Estacion de Mediodia.

"Do you know the time?" asked the Orphan.

"Yes. It's eleven."

"Well then, it's too early to go to the barracks."

Opposite the station a lady, from the seat of a coach, was making a speech proclaiming the wonders of a salve for wounds and a specific for curing the toothache.