These Females Supplied
Their Cortejos With The Snowy Linen, Washed, Perhaps, By Their Own
Hands In The Waters Of The
Manzanares, for the display of the
Sunday, when they would themselves make their appearance dressed a
la maja, and from
The corridors would gaze with admiring eyes upon
the robbers vapouring about in the court below.
Amongst those of the snowy linen who most particularly attracted my
attention, were a father and son; the former was a tall athletic
figure of about thirty, by profession a housebreaker, and
celebrated throughout Madrid for the peculiar dexterity which he
exhibited in his calling. He was now in prison for a rather
atrocious murder committed in the dead of night, in a house at
Caramanchel, in which his only accomplice was his son, a child
under seven years of age. "The apple," as the Danes say, "had not
fallen far from the tree"; the imp was in every respect the
counterpart of the father, though in miniature. He, too, wore the
robber shirt sleeves, the robber waistcoat with the silver buttons,
the robber kerchief round his brow, and, ridiculous enough, a long
Manchegan knife in the crimson faja. He was evidently the pride of
the ruffian father, who took all imaginable care of this chick of
the gallows, would dandle him on his knee, and would occasionally
take the cigar from his own moustached lips and insert it in the
urchin's mouth. The boy was the pet of the court, for the father
was one of the valientes of the prison, and those who feared his
prowess, and wished to pay their court to him, were always fondling
the child.
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