The next day everyone learned that a living angel of flesh and blood was being held captive in the Pelayo house. Ignoring the wisdom of the wise neighbor - to her, the angel was just a glimpse of some divine conspiracy - they could not bring themselves to beat him to death. Pelayo watched him from the kitchen all afternoon, armed with the short tail of their flock; and before going to sleep at night, he dragged him out of the mud and locked him in the chicken coop with a wire mesh. In the middle of the night, when the rain came, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs one by one. A little later, the child woke up with a big grin, and his fever was gone. Then they became a little impatient, deciding that they would put the angel on a raft with three days' worth of fresh water and food and release him to his destiny in the Bardaria. But as soon as the Prothom-alo of dawn broke, when they went to the yard, they saw the entire neighborhood standing in front of the chicken coop, making fun of the angel, making fun of him, no one had any sense of honor, throwing food at him through the wire, as if he were not a supernatural being at all but a circus animal.
