In the space belonging to the cobbler's family, at the tip of a very
long pole attached to one of the pillars, waved a pair of
patch-covered trousers comically balancing itself.
Off from the large courtyard of El Corralon branched a causeway heaped
with ordure, leading to a smaller courtyard that in winter was
converted into a fetid swamp.
A lantern, surrounded with a wire netting to prevent the children from
breaking it with stones, hung from one of the black walls.
In the inner courtyard the rooms were much cheaper than those of the
large patio; most of them brought twenty-three reales, but there were
some for two or three pesetas per month: dismal dens with no
ventilation at all, built in the spaces under stairways and under the
roof.
In some moister climate La Corrala would have been a nest of
contagion: the wind and sun of Madrid, however,--that sun which brings
blisters to the skin,--saw to the disinfection of that pesthole.
As if to make sure that terror and tragedy should haunt the edifice,
one saw, on entering,--either at the main door or in the corridor,--a
drunken, delirious hag who begged alms and spat insults at everybody.
They called her Death. She must have been very old, or at least
appeared so. Her gaze was wandering, her look diffident, her face
purulent with scabs; one of her lower eyelids, drawn in as the result
of some ailment, exposed the bloody, turbid inside of her eyeball.
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