"
Manuel listened in astonishment to this counsel; his mind reverted to
that seamstress who came to the landlady's house, and then to Salome,
and it occurred to him that he would not care to have made them love
him by inflicting pain. He fell asleep with these notions whirling in
his head.
When he awoke he felt the cold penetrating to his very marrow. Day was
breaking and the rain had ceased; the sky, still dim, was strewn with
greyish clouds. Above a hedge of shrubs shone a star in the middle of
the horizon's pale band, and against this opaline glow stood out the
intertwined branches of the trees, which were still without leaves.
The whistles of the locomotives could be heard from the nearby
station; toward Carabanchel the lantern lights were paling in the dark
fields, which could be glimpsed by the vague luminosity of nascent
day.
Madrid, level, whitish, bathed in mist, rose out of the night with its
many roofs, which cut the sky in a straight line; its turrets, its
lofty factory chimneys; and amidst the silence of the dawn, the city
and the landscape suggested the unreality and the motionlessness of a
painting.
The sky became clearer, growing gradually blue. Now the new white
houses stood out more sharply; the high partition-walls, pierced
symmetrically by tiny windows; the roofs, the corners, the
balustrades, the red towers of recent construction, the army of
chimneys, all enveloped in the cold, sad, damp, atmosphere of morning,
beneath a low zinc-hued sky.
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