"I'll help you as far as I am able," replied Manuel, with feigned earnestness.

Several ragam.u.f.fins sprawled themselves out on the clearing near Manuel and Roberto, and the student did not care to go on with his tale.

"They've already begun to split up into divisions," said one of the loafers who wore a coachman's hat, pointing with a stick to the women inside the courtyard of La Doctrina.

And so it was; groups were cl.u.s.tering about the trees of the patio, on each of which was hung a poster with a picture and a number in the middle.

"There go the marchionesses," added he of the coachman's hat, indicating several women garbed in black who had just appeared in the courtyard.

The white faces stood out amidst the mourning clothes.

"They're all marchionesses," said one.

"Well, they're not all beauties," retorted Manuel, joining the conversation. "What have they come here for?"

"They're the ones who teach religion," answered the fellow with the hat. "From time to time they hand out sheets and underwear to the women and the men. Now they're going to call the roll."

A bell began to clang; the gate closed; groups were formed, and a lady entered the midst of each.

"Do you see that one there?" asked Roberto. "She's Don Telmo's niece."

"That blonde?"

"Yes. Wait for me here."

Roberto walked down the road toward the gate.

The reading of the religious lesson began; from the patio came the slow, monotonous drone of prayer.

Manuel lay back on the ground. Yonder, flat beneath the grey horizon, loomed Madrid out of the mist of the dust-laden atmosphere. The wide bed of the Manzanares river, ochre-hued, seemed furrowed here and there by a thread of dark water. The ridges of the Guadarrama range rose hazily into the murky air.

Roberto pa.s.sed by the patio. The humming of the praying mendicants continued. An old lady, her head swathed in a red kerchief and her shoulders covered with a black cloak that was fading to green, sat down in the clearing.

"What's the matter, old lady? Wouldn't they open the gate for you?"

shouted the fellow with the coachman's hat.

"No.... The foul old witches!"

"Don't you care. They're not giving away anything today. The distribution takes place this coming Friday. They'll give you at least a sheet," added he of the hat mischievously.

"If they don't give me anything more than a sheet," shrilled the hag, twisting her blobber-lip, "I'll tell them to keep it for themselves.

The foxy creatures! ..."

"Oh, they've found you out, granny!" exclaimed one of the loafers lying on the ground. "You're a greedy one, you are."

The bystanders applauded these words, which came from a _zarzuela_, and the chap in the coachman's hat continued explaining to Manuel the workings of La Doctrina.

"There are some men and women who enrol in two and even three divisions so as to get all the charity they can," he went on. "Why, we--my father and I--once enrolled in four divisions under four different names.... And what a rumpus was raised! What a row we had with the marchionesses!"

"And what did you want with all those sheets," Manuel asked him.

"Why! Sell 'em, of course. They re sold here at the very gate at two _chules_ apiece."

"I'm going to buy one," said a coachman from a nearby hackstand, approaching the group. "I'll give it a coating of linseed oil, then varnish it and make me a cowled waterproof."

"But the marchionesses,--don't they see that these people sell their gifts right away?"

"Much they see!"

To these idlers the whole business was nothing more than a pious recreation of the religious ladies, of whom they spoke with patronizing irony.

The reading of the religious lesson did not last quite an hour.

A bell rang; the gate was swung open; the various groups dissolved and merged; everybody arose and the women began to walk off, balancing their chairs upon their heads, shouting, shoving one another violently; two or three huckstresses peddled their wares as the tattered crowd issued through the gate in a jam, shrieking as if in escape from some imminent danger. A few old women ran clumsily down the road; others huddled into a corner to urinate, and all of them were howling at the top of their lungs, overcome by the necessity of insulting the women of La Doctrina, as if instinctively they divined the uselessness of a sham charity that remedied nothing. One heard only protests and manifestation of scorn.

"d.a.m.n it all! These women of G.o.d...."

"And they want a body to have faith in 'em."

"The old drunkards."

"Let them have faith, and the mother that bore 'em."

"Let 'em give blood-pudding to everybody."

After the women came the men,--blind, maimed, crippled,--in leisurely fashion, and conversing solemnly.

"Huh! They don't want me to marry!" grumbled a blind fellow, sarcastically, turning to a cripple.

"And what do you say," asked the latter.

"I? What the deuce! Let them get married if they have any one to marry 'em. They came here and bore us stiff with their prayers and sermons.

What we need isn't sermons, but hard cash and plenty of it."

"That's what, man ... the dough,--that's what we want."

"And all the rest is nothing but ... chatter and chin music....

Anybody can give advice. When it comes to bread, though, not a sign of it."

"So say I!"

The ladies came out, prayer-books in hand; the old beggar-women set off in pursuit and hara.s.sed them with entreaties.

Manuel looked everywhere for the student; at last he caught sight of him with Don Telmo's niece. The blonde turned around to look at him, and then stepped into a coach. Roberto saluted her and the coach rolled off.

Manuel and Roberto returned by the San Isidro highway.

The sky was still overcast; the air dry; the procession of beggars was advancing in the direction of Madrid. Before they reached the Toledo Bridge, at the intersection of the San Isidro highway and the Extremadura cartroad, Roberto and Manuel entered a very large tavern.