The vicinity of El Rastro was thronged with Sunday crowds.
Along the wall of Las Grandiosas Americas, in the space between the
Slaughter-house and the Veterninary School, a long row of itinerant
hawkers had set up their stands.
Some, garbed like beggars, stood dozing motionless against the wall,
indifferently contemplating their wares: old pictures, new
chromographs, books; useless, damaged, filthy articles which they felt
sure none of the public would purchase. Others were gesticulating and
arguing with their customers; several repulsive, grimy old women with
huge straw hats on their heads, dirty hands, arms akimbo and
indecencies quivering upon their lips, were chattering away like
magpies.
The gipsy women in their motley garments were combing their little
brunettes and their black-skinned, large-eyed _churumbeles_ in
the sun; a knot of vagrants was carrying on a serious discussion;
mendicants wrapped in rags, maimed, crippled, were shouting, singing,
wailing, and the Sunday throng, in search of bargains, scurried back
and forth, stopping now and then to question, to pry, while folks
passed by with faces congested by the heat of the sun,--a spring sun
that blinded one with the chalky reflection of the dusty soil,
glittering and sparkling with a thousand glints in the broken mirrors
and the metal utensils displayed in heaps upon the ground.
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