PART TWO




CHAPTER I

The Regeneration of Footwear and The Lion of The Shoemaker's
Art--The First Sunday--An Escapade--El Bizco and his Gang.


The inhabitant of Madrid who at times finds himself by accident in the
poor quarters near the Manzanares river, is surprised at the spectacle
of poverty and sordidness, of sadness and neglect presented by the
environs of Madrid with their wretched Rondas, laden with dust in the
summer and in winter wallowing in mire. The capital is a city of
contrasts; it presents brilliant light in close proximity to deep
gloom; refined life, almost European, in the centre; in the suburbs,
African existence, like that of an Arab village. Some years ago, not
many, in the vicinity of the Ronda de Sevilla and of el Campillo de
Gil Imon, there stood a house of suspicious aspect and of not very
favourable repute, to judge by popular rumour. The observer ...

In this and other paragraphs of the same style I had placed some hope,
for they imparted to my novel a certain phantasmagoric and mysterious
atmosphere; but my friends have convinced me I ought to suppress these