But we determined to be just, and after we
left the house of Cervantes we drove out to the promenades along the
banks of the Pisuerga, in hopes of a better mind, for we had read that
they were the favorite resort of the citizens in summer, and we did not
know but even in autumn we might have some glimpses of their recreation.
Our way took us sorrowfully past hospitals and prisons and barracks; and
when we came out on the promenade we found ourselves in the gloom of
close set mulberry trees, with the dust thick on the paths under them.
The leaves hung leaden gray on the boughs and there could never have
been a spear of grass along those disconsolate ways. The river was
shrunken in its bed, and where its current crept from pool to pool,
women were washing some of the rags which already hung so thick on the
bushes that it was wonderful there should be any left to wash. Squalid
children abounded, and at one point a crowd of people had gathered and
stood looking silently and motionlessly over the bank. We looked too
and on a sand-bar near the shore we saw three gendarmes standing with a
group of civilians. Between their fixed and absolutely motionless
figures lay the body of a drowned man on the sand, poorly clothed in a
workman's dress, and with his poor, dead clay-white hands stretched out
from him on the sand, and his gray face showing to the sky.
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