El Zurro went about forever
concealed behind a pair of blue spectacles, wearing a fur cap and
ample cassock.
"His name is Zurro (fox)," the proof-reader would say, "but he's a fox
in his actions as well; one of those country foxes that are masters of
malice and trickery."
According to popular rumour, El Zurro knew what he was about; he had a
place at the lower end of the Rastro, a dark, pestilent hovel
cluttered with odds and ends, second-hand coats, remnants of old
cloth, tapestries, parts of chasubles, and in addition, empty bottles,
flasks full of brandy and cognac, seltzer water siphons, shattered
clocks, rusty muskets, keys, pistols, buttons, medals and other
frippery.
Despite the fact that surely no more than a couple of persons entered
Senor Zurro's shop throughout the livelong day and spent no more than
a couple of reales, the second-hand dealer thrived.
He lived with his daughter Encarna, a coarse specimen of some
twenty-five years, exceedingly vulgar and the personification of
insolence, who went walking with her father on Sundays, bedecked with
jewelry. Encarna's bosom was consumed with the fires of passion for
Leandro; but that ingrate, enamoured of Milagros, was unscathed by the
soul-flames of the second-hand dealer's daughter.
Wherefore Encarna mortally hated Milagros and the members of her
family; every hour of the day she branded them as vulgarians,
starvelings, and insulted them with such scoffing sobriquets as
Mendrugo, "Beggar's Crumb," which was applied by her to the
proof-reader, and "The Madwoman of the Vatican," which meant his
daughter.
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