Pacorrito Migajas was a great character. He stood a trifle over two
feet from the ground, and had just turned his seventh year. His skin
was tanned by the sun and the wind, and his wizened face suggested
a dwarf rather than a child. His eyes, adorned with long eyelashes
that looked like black wires, were full of vitality and resplendent
with mischief. His mouth was amazing in its ugliness; and his ears,
strangely like those of a faun, seemed to have been attached to his
face, rather than to have grown there. He was dressed in a shirt
of every possible shade of grime, and a pair of patchwork trousers
upheld by a single suspender. In the winter he wore a coat which he
had inherited from his grandfather. The sleeves had been cut off at
the elbow, and Pacorrito considered it a handsome fit, as overcoats
go. A rag which aspired to be a muffler was wound like a snake round
and round his neck, and on his head he wore a cap which he had picked
up at the Rastro. He had little use for shoes, which he considered
in the light of a hindrance, neither did he wear stockings, having a
great aversion to the roughness of the threads.
Pacorrito's ancestors could not have been more illustrious. His
father, accused of having attempted to make his way into a house
through the drain, went to Ceuta for a change of climate, and
died there. His mother, a great lady who for many years kept a
chestnut-stand in the Cava de San Miguel, had also fallen somehow
into the hands of the authorities, and after much ado with judges and
notaries, had repaired to the Alcalá jail. Pacorrito had one sister,
but this last relative had deserted her post at the tobacco factory
and flown to Sevilla in amorous pursuit of an artillery officer. Up
to the present she has not returned.
Migajas was therefore alone in the world, with no protection but that
of God, and no guide but his own will.