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The Quest by Pío Baroja
page 53 of 296 (17%)
passages, arguing that they would be quite in place in a Parisian
novel, but not in one dealing with Madrid,--not at all. They add,
moreover, that here nobody goes astray, not even if one wishes to.
Neither are there here any observers, nor houses of suspicious aspect,
nor anything else. In resignation, then, I have excised these
paragraphs, through which I hoped some day to be elected to the
Spanish Academy; and so I continue my tale in more pedestrian
language.

It came about, then, that on the day following the row in the
dining-room of the lodging-house, Petra, very early in the morning,
woke Manuel and told him to dress.

The boy recalled the scene of the previous day; he verified it by
raising his hand to his forehead, for the bruises still pained him,
and from his mother's tone he understood that she persisted in her
resolve to take him to the cobbler's.

After Manuel had dressed, mother and son left the house and went into
the bun-shop for a cup of coffee and milk. Then they walked down to
Arenal Street, crossed the Plaza del Oriente, and the Viaduct, thence
through Rosario Street. Continuing along the walls of a barracks they
reached the heights at whose base runs the Ronda de Segovia. From this
eminence there was a view of the yellowish countryside that reached as
far as Jetafe and Villaverde, and the San Isidro cemeteries with their
grey mudwalls and their black cypresses.

From the Ronda de Segovia, which they covered in a short time, they
climbed up Aguila Street, and paused before a house at the corner of
the Campillo de Gil Imon.
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