its of a cordial friendship.

Caesar told the Alzugaray family how he lived and caused them to laugh
and wonder.

He had rented a fairly large upper story in a street in Valle Hermoso,
for five dollars. The days he had nothing to do he went there. He put
on an old, worn-out fur coat, which was still a protection, a soft hat,
took a stick, and went walking in the environs.

His favourite walk was the neighbourhood of the Canalillo and of the
Dehesa de Amaniel.

Generally he went out of his house on the side opposite the Model
Prison, then he walked toward Moncloa, and taking the right, passed near
the Rubio Institute, and entered the Cerro del Pimiento by an open lot
which he got into through a broken wall.

From there one could see, far away, the Guadarrama range, like a curtain
of blue mountains and snowy crests; on clear days, the Escorial;
Aravaca, the Casa de Campo, and the Sierra de Gredos, which ran out on
the left hand like a promontory. Nearby one saw a pine grove, close to
the Rubio Institute, and a valley containing market-gardens, and the
ranges of the Moncloa shooting school.

Caesar would walk on by the winding road, and stop to look at the
Cemetery of San Martin on the right, with its black cypresses and its
yellowish walls.

Then he would follow the twists of the Canalillo, and pass in front of
the third Reservoir, to the Amaniel road.

That was where Caesar would have built himself a house, had he had the
idea of living retired.

The dry, hard landscape was the kind he liked. The mornings were
wonderful, the blue sky radiant, the air limpid and thin.

The twilight had an extraordinary enchantment. All that vast extent of
land, the mountains, the hills of the Casa de Campo, the cypresses of
the cemetery, were bathed in a violet light.

In winter there were hunters of yellow-hammers and goldfinches in these
regions, who set their nets and their decoys on the ground, and spent
hours and hours watching for their game.

On Sunday, in particular, the number of hunters was very large. They
went in squads of three; one carried a big bundle on his shoulder, which
was the net all rolled up; another the decoy cages, fastened with a
strap; and the third a frying-pan, a skin of wine, and some kindling for
a fire.

Caesar used to talk with the guards at Amaniel, with the
octroi-officers, and he got to be great friends with a little hunchback,
a bird hunter.

It was curious to hear this hunchback tal