CARMEN



by Prosper Merimee





Translated by Lady Mary Loyd









CHAPTER I



I had always suspected the geographical authorities did not know what

they were talking about when they located the battlefield of Munda in

the county of the Bastuli-Poeni, close to the modern Monda, some two

leagues north of Marbella.



According to my own surmise, founded on the text of the anonymous author

of the _Bellum Hispaniense_, and on certain information culled from the

excellent library owned by the Duke of Ossuna, I believed the site of

the memorable struggle in which Caesar played double or quits, once and

for all, with the champions of the Republic, should be sought in the

neighbourhood of Montilla.



Happening to be in Andalusia during the autumn of 1830, I made a

somewhat lengthy excursion, with the object of clearing up certain

doubts which still oppressed me. A paper which I shall shortly publish

will, I trust, remove any hesitation that may still exist in the minds

of all honest archaeologists. But before that dissertation of mine

finally settles the geographical problem on the solution of which the

whole of learned Europe hangs, I desire to relate a little tale. It will

do no prejudice to the interesting question of the correct locality of

Monda.



I had hired a guide and a couple of horses at Cordova, and had

started on my way with no luggage save a few shirts, and Caesar’s

_Commentaries_. As I wandered, one day, across the higher lands of the

Cachena plain, worn with fatigue, parched with thirst, scorched by a

burning sun, cursing Caesar and Pompey’s sons alike, most heartily, my

eye lighted, at some distance from the path I was following, on a little

stretch of green sward dotted with reeds and rushes. That betokened the

neighbourhood of some spring, and, indeed, as I drew nearer I perceived

that what had looked like sward was a marsh, into which a stream, which

seemed to issue from a narrow gorge between two high spurs of the Sierra

di Cabra, ran and disappeared.



If I rode up that stream, I argued, I was likely to find cooler water,

fewer leeches and frogs, and mayhap a little shade among the rocks.



At the mouth of the gorge, my horse neighed, and another horse,

invisible to me, neighed back. Before I had advanced a hundred paces,

the gorge suddenly widened, and I beheld a sort of natural amphitheatre,

thoroughly shaded by the steep cliffs that lay all around it. It was

impossible to imagine any more delightful halting place for a traveller.

At the foot of the precipitous rocks, the stream bubbled upward and fell

into a little basin, lined with sand that was as white as snow. Five or

six splendid evergreen oaks, sheltered from the wind, and cooled by the

spring, grew beside the pool, and shaded it with their thick foliage.

And round about it a close and glossy turf offered the wanderer a better

bed than he could have found in any hostelry for ten leagues round.



The honour of discovering this fair spot did not belong to me. A man was

resting there already--sleeping, no doubt--before I reached it. Roused

by the neighing of the horses, he had risen to his feet and had moved

over to his mount, which had been taking advantage of its master’s

slumbers to make a hearty feed on the grass that grew around. He was an

active young fellow, of middle height, but powerful in build, and proud

and sullen-looking in expression. His complexion, which may once have

been fine, had been tanned by the sun till it was darker than his hair.

One of his hands grasped his horse’s halter. In the other he held a

brass blunderbuss.



At the first blush, I confess, the blunderbuss, and the savage looks

of the man who bore it, somewhat took me aback. But I had heard so much

about robbers, that, never seeing any, I had ceased to believe in their

existence. And further, I had seen so many honest farmers arm themselves

to the teeth before they went out to market, that the sight of firearms

gave me no warrant for doubting the character of any stranger. “And

then,” quoth I to myself, “what could he do with my shirts and my

Elzevir edition of Caesar’s _Commentaries_?” So I bestowed a friendly

nod on the man with the blunderbuss, and inquired, with a smile, whether

I had disturbed his nap. Without any answer, he looked me over from

head to foot. Then, as if the scrutiny had satisfied him, he looked as

closely at my guide, who was just coming up. I saw the guide turn pale,

and pull up with an air of evident alarm. “An unlucky meeting!” thought

I to myself. But prudence instantly counselled me not to let any symptom

of anxiety escape me. So I dismounted. I told the guide to take off the

horses’ bridles, and kneeling down beside the spring, I laved my head

and hands and then drank a long draught, lying flat on my belly, like

Gideon’s soldiers.



Meanwhile, I watched the stranger, and my own guide. This last seemed to

come forward unwillingly. But the other did not appear to have any evil

designs upon us. For he had turned his horse loose, and the blunderbuss,

which he had been holding horizontally, was now dropped earthward.



Not thinking it necessary to take offence at the scant attention paid

me, I stretched myself full length upon the grass, and calmly asked the

owner of the blunderbuss whether he had a light about him. At the same

time I pulled out my cigar-case. The stranger, still without opening his

lips, took out his flint, and lost no time in getting me a light. He was

evidently growing tamer, for he sat down opposite to me, though he still

grasped his weapon. When I had lighted my cigar, I chose out the best I

had left, and asked him whether he smoked.



“Yes, senor,” he replied. These were the first words I had heard him

speak, and I noticed that he did not pronounce the letter _s_* in the

Andalusian fashion, whence I concluded he was a traveller, like myself,

though, maybe, somewhat less of an archaeologist.



     * The Andalusians aspirate the _s_, and pronounce it like

     the soft _c_ and the _z_, which Spaniards pronounce like the

     English _th_. An Andalusian may always be recognised by the

     way in which he says _senor_.



“You’ll find this a fairly good one,” said I, holding out a real Havana

regalia.



He bowed his head slightly, lighted his cigar at mine, thanked me

with another nod, and began to smoke with a most lively appearance of

enjoyment.



“Ah!” he exclaimed, as he blew his first puff of smoke slowly out of his

mouth and nostrils. “What a time it is since I’ve had a smoke!”



In Spain the giving and accepting of a cigar establishes bonds of

hospitality similar to those founded in Eastern countries on the

partaking of bread and salt. My friend turned out more talkative than

I had hoped. However, though he claimed to belong to the _partido_ of

Montilla, he seemed very ill-informed about the country. He did not know

the name of the delightful valley in which we were sitting, he could

not tell me the names of any of the neighbouring villages, and when I

inquired whether he had not noticed any broken-down walls, broad-rimmed

tiles, or carved stones in the vicinity, he confessed he had never paid

any heed to such matters. On the other hand, he showed himself an expert

in horseflesh, found fault with my mount--not a difficult affair--and

gave me a pedigree of his own, which had come from the famous stud at

Cordova. It was a splendid creature, indeed, so tough, according to

its owner’s claim, that it had once covered thirty leagues in one day,

either at the gallop or at full trot the whole time. In the midst of his

story the stranger pulled up short, as if startled and sorry he had said

so much. “The fact is I was in a great hurry to get to Cordova,” he

went on, somewhat embarrassed. “I had to petition the judges about a

lawsuit.” As he spoke, he looked at my guide Antonio, who had dropped

his eyes.



The spring and the cool shade were so delightful that I bethought me

of certain slices of an excellent ham, which my friends at Montilla had

packed into my guide’s wallet. I bade him produce them, and invited the

stranger to share our impromptu lunch. If he had not smoked for a long

time, he certainly struck me as having fasted for eight-and-forty hours

at the very least. He ate like a starving wolf, and I thought to myself

that my appearance must really have been quite providential for the poor

fellow. Meanwhile my guide ate but little, drank still less, and spoke

never a word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved

himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the

presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which

I could not exactly fathom, seemed to be between them.



The last crumbs of bread and scraps of ham had disappeared. We had each

smoked our second cigar; I told the guide to bridle the horses, and was

just about to take leave of my new friend, when he inquired where I was

going to spend the night.



Before I had time to notice a sign my guide was making to me I had

replied that I was going to the Venta del Cuervo.



“That’s a bad lodging for a gentleman like you, sir! I’m bound there

myself, and if you’ll allow me to ride with you, we’ll go together.”



“With pleasure!” I replied, mounting my horse. The guide, who was

holding my stirrup, looked at me meaningly again. I answered by

shrugging my shoulders, as though to assure him I was perfectly easy in

my mind, and we started on our way.



Antonio’s mysterious signals, his evident anxiety, a few words dropped

by the stranger, above all, his ride of thirty leagues, and the far from

plausible explanation he had given us of it, had already enabled me

to form an opinion as to the identity of my fellow-traveller. I had

no doubt at all I was in the company of a smuggler, and possibly of a

brigand. What cared I? I knew enough of the Spanish character to be very

certain I had nothing to fear from a man who had eaten and smoked

with me. His very presence would protect me in case of any undesirable

meeting. And besides, I was very glad to know what a brigand was really

like. One doesn’t come across such gentry every day. And there is a

certain charm about finding one’s self in close proximity to a dangerous

being, especially when one feels the being in question to be gentle and

tame.



I was hoping the stranger might gradually fall into a confidential

mood, and in spite of my guide’s winks, I turned the conversation to

the subject of highwaymen. I need scarcely say that I spoke of them with

great respect. At that time there was a famous brigand in Andalusia, of

the name of Jose-Maria, whose exploits were on every lip. “Supposing I

should be riding along with Jose-Maria!” said I to myself. I told all

the stories I knew about the hero--they were all to his credit, indeed,

and loudly expressed my admiration of his generosity and his valour.



“Jose-Maria is nothing but a blackguard,” said the stranger gravely.



“Is he just to himself, or is this an excess of modesty?” I queried,

mentally, for by dint of scrutinizing my companion, I had ended by

reconciling his appearance with the description of Jose-Maria which I

read posted up on the gates of various Andalusian towns. “Yes, this must

be he--fair hair, blue eyes, large mouth, good teeth, small hands, fine

shirt, a velvet jacket with silver buttons on it, white leather gaiters,

and a bay horse. Not a doubt about it. But his _incognito_ shall be

respected!” We reached the _venta_. It was just what he had described

to me. In other words, the most wretched hole of its kind I had as yet

beheld. One large apartment served as kitchen, dining-room, and sleeping

chamber. A fire was burning on a flat stone in the middle of the room,

and the smoke escaped through a hole in the roof, or rather hung in a

cloud some feet above the soil. Along the walls five or six mule rugs

were spread on the floor. These were the travellers’ beds. Twenty paces

from the house, or rather from the solitary apartment which I have just

described, stood a sort of shed, that served for a stable.



The only inhabitants of this delightful dwelling visible at the moment,

at all events, were an old woman, and a little girl of ten or twelve

years old, both of them as black as soot, and dressed in loathsome rags.

“Here’s the sole remnant of the ancient populations of Munda Boetica,”

 said I to myself. “O Caesar! O Sextus Pompeius, if you were to revisit

this earth how astounded you would be!”



When the old woman saw my travelling companion an exclamation of

surprise escaped her. “Ah! Senor Don Jose!” she cried.



Don Jose frowned and lifted his hand with a gesture of authority that

forthwith silenced the old dame.



I turned to my guide and gave him to understand, by a sign that no one

else perceived, that I knew all about the man in whose company I was

about to spend the night. Our supper was better than I expected. On

a little table, only a foot high, we were served with an old rooster,

fricasseed with rice and numerous peppers, then more peppers in oil,

and finally a _gaspacho_--a sort of salad made of peppers. These three

highly spiced dishes involved our frequent recourse to a goatskin filled

with Montella wine, which struck us as being delicious.



After our meal was over, I caught sight of a mandolin hanging up against

the wall--in Spain you see mandolins in every corner--and I asked the

little girl, who had been waiting on us, if she knew how to play it.



“No,” she replied. “But Don Jose does play well!”



“Do me the kindness to sing me something,” I said to him, “I’m

passionately fond of your national music.”



“I can’t refuse to do anything for such a charming gentleman, who gives

me such excellent cigars,” responded Don Jose gaily, and having made

the child give him the mandolin, he sang to his own accompaniment. His

voice, though rough, was pleasing, the air he sang was strange and sad.

As to the words, I could not understand a single one of them.



“If I am not mistaken,” said I, “that’s not a Spanish air you have just

been singing. It’s like the _zorzicos_ I’ve heard in the Provinces,* and

the words must be in the Basque language.”



* The _privileged Provinces_, Alava, Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and a part of

Navarre, which all enjoy special _fueros_. The Basque language is spoken

in these countries.



“Yes,” said Don Jose, with a gloomy look. He laid the mandolin down on

the ground, and began staring with a peculiarly sad expression at the

dying fire. His face, at once fierce and noble-looking, reminded me,

as the firelight fell on it, of Milton’s Satan. Like him, perchance,

my comrade was musing over the home he had forfeited, the exile he had

earned, by some misdeed. I tried to revive the conversation, but so

absorbed was he in melancholy thought, that he gave me no answer.



The old woman had already gone to rest in a corner of the room, behind

a ragged rug hung on a rope. The little girl had followed her into this

retreat, sacred to the fair sex. Then my guide rose, and suggested that

I should go with him to the stable. But at the word Don Jose, waking, as

it were, with a start, inquired sharply whither he was going.



“To the stable,” answered the guide.



“What for? The horses have been fed! You can sleep here. The senor will

give you leave.”



“I’m afraid the senor’s horse is sick. I’d like the senor to see it.

Perhaps he’d know what should be done for it.”



It was quite clear to me that Antonio wanted to speak to me apart.



But I did not care to rouse Don Jose’s suspicions, and being as we

were, I thought far the wisest course for me was to appear absolutely

confident.



I therefore told Antonio that I knew nothing on earth about horses, and

that I was desperately sleepy. Don Jose followed him to the stable, and

soon returned alone. He told me there was nothing the matter with the

horse, but that my guide considered the animal such a treasure that he

was scrubbing it with his jacket to make it sweat, and expected to spend

the night in that pleasing occupation. Meanwhile I had stretched myself

out on the mule rugs, having carefully wrapped myself up in my own

cloak, so as to avoid touching them. Don Jose, having begged me to

excuse the liberty he took in placing himself so near me, lay down

across the door, but not until he had primed his blunderbuss afresh and

carefully laid it under the wallet, which served him as a pillow.



I had thought I was so tired that I should be able to sleep even in such

a lodging. But within an hour a most unpleasant itching sensation roused

me from my first nap. As soon as I realized its nature, I rose to my

feet, feeling convinced I should do far better to spend the rest of

the night in the open air than beneath that inhospitable roof. Walking

tiptoe I reached the door, stepped over Don Jose, who was sleeping the

sleep of the just, and managed so well that I got outside the building

without waking him. Just beside the door there was a wide wooden

bench. I lay down upon it, and settled myself, as best I could, for the

remainder of the night. I was just closing my eyes for a second time

when I fancied I saw the shadow of a man and then the shadow of a horse

moving absolutely noiselessly, one behind the other. I sat upright, and

then I thought I recognised Antonio. Surprised to see him outside the

stable at such an hour, I got up and went toward him. He had seen me

first, and had stopped to wait for me.



“Where is he?” Antonio inquired in a low tone.



“In the _venta_. He’s asleep. The bugs don’t trouble him. But what are

you going to do with that horse?” I then noticed that, to stifle all

noise as he moved out of the shed, Antonio had carefully muffled the

horse’s feet in the rags of an old blanket.



“Speak lower, for God’s sake,” said Antonio. “You don’t know who that

man is. He’s Jose Navarro, the most noted bandit in Andalusia. I’ve been

making signs to you all day long, and you wouldn’t understand.”



“What do I care whether he’s a brigand or not,” I replied. “He hasn’t

robbed us, and I’ll wager he doesn’t want to.”



“That may be. But there are two hundred ducats on his head. Some lancers

are stationed in a place I know, a league and a half from here, and

before daybreak I’ll bring a few brawny fellows back with me. I’d have

taken his horse away, but the brute’s so savage that nobody but Navarro

can go near it.”



“Devil take you!” I cried. “What harm has the poor fellow done you that

you should want to inform against him? And besides, are you certain he

is the brigand you take him for?”



“Perfectly certain! He came after me into the stable just now, and said,

‘You seem to know me. If you tell that good gentleman who I am, I’ll

blow your brains out!’ You stay here, sir, keep close to him. You’ve

nothing to fear. As long as he knows you are there, he won’t suspect

anything.”



As we talked, we had moved so far from the _venta_ that the noise of the

horse’s hoofs could not be heard there. In a twinkling Antonio snatched

off the rags he had wrapped around the creature’s feet, and was just

about to climb on its back. In vain did I attempt with prayers and

threats to restrain him.



“I’m only a poor man, senor,” quoth he, “I can’t afford to lose two

hundred ducats--especially when I shall earn them by ridding the country

of such vermin. But mind what you’re about! If Navarro wakes up, he’ll

snatch at his blunderbuss, and then look out for yourself! I’ve gone too

far now to turn back. Do the best you can for yourself!”



The villain was in his saddle already, he spurred his horse smartly, and

I soon lost sight of them both in the darkness.



I was very angry with my guide, and terribly alarmed as well. After a

moment’s reflection, I made up my mind, and went back to the _venta_.

Don Jose was still sound asleep, making up, no doubt, for the fatigue

and sleeplessness of several days of adventure. I had to shake him

roughly before I could wake him up. Never shall I forget his fierce

look, and the spring he made to get hold of his blunderbuss, which, as a

precautionary measure, I had removed to some distance from his couch.



“Senor,” I said, “I beg your pardon for disturbing you. But I have a

silly question to ask you. Would you be glad to see half a dozen lancers

walk in here?”



He bounded to his feet, and in an awful voice he demanded:



“Who told you?”



“It’s little matter whence the warning comes, so long as it be good.”



“Your guide has betrayed me--but he shall pay for it! Where is he?”



“I don’t know. In the stable, I fancy. But somebody told me--”



“Who told you? It can’t be the old hag--”



“Some one I don’t know. Without more parleying, tell me, yes or no, have

you any reason for not waiting till the soldiers come? If you have

any, lose no time! If not, good-night to you, and forgive me for having

disturbed your slumbers!”



“Ah, your guide! Your guide! I had my doubts of him at first--but--I’ll

settle with him! Farewell, senor. May God reward you for the service

I owe you! I am not quite so wicked as you think me. Yes, I still have

something in me that an honest man may pity. Farewell, senor! I have

only one regret--that I can not pay my debt to you!”



“As a reward for the service I have done you, Don Jose, promise me

you’ll suspect nobody--nor seek for vengeance. Here are some cigars for

your journey. Good luck to you.” And I held out my hand to him.



He squeezed it, without a word, took up his wallet and blunderbuss, and

after saying a few words to the old woman in a lingo that I could not

understand, he ran out to the shed. A few minutes later, I heard him

galloping out into the country.



As for me, I lay down again on my bench, but I did not go to sleep

again. I queried in my own mind whether I had done right to save a

robber, and possibly a murderer, from the gallows, simply and solely

because I had eaten ham and rice in his company. Had I not betrayed my

guide, who was supporting the cause of law and order? Had I not

exposed him to a ruffian’s vengeance? But then, what about the laws of

hospitality?



“A mere savage prejudice,” said I to myself. “I shall have to answer for

all the crimes this brigand may commit in future.” Yet is that instinct

of the conscience which resists every argument really a prejudice? It

may be I could not have escaped from the delicate position in which I

found myself without remorse of some kind. I was still tossed to and

fro, in the greatest uncertainty as to the morality of my behaviour,

when I saw half a dozen horsemen ride up, with Antonio prudently lagging

behind them. I went to meet them, and told them the brigand had fled

over two hours previously. The old woman, when she was questioned by the

sergeant, admitted that she knew Navarro, but said that living alone,

as she did, she would never have dared to risk her life by informing

against him. She added that when he came to her house, he habitually

went away in the middle of the night. I, for my part, was made to ride

to a place some leagues away, where I showed my passport, and signed a

declaration before the _Alcalde_. This done, I was allowed to recommence

my archaeological investigations. Antonio was sulky with me; suspecting

it was I who had prevented his earning those two hundred ducats.

Nevertheless, we parted good friends at Cordova, where I gave him as

large a gratuity as the state of my finances would permit.







CHAPTER II



I spent several days at Cordova. I had been told of a certain manuscript

in the library of the Dominican convent which was likely to furnish me

with very interesting details about the ancient Munda. The good fathers

gave me the most kindly welcome. I spent the daylight hours within their

convent, and at night I walked about the town. At Cordova a great many

idlers collect, toward sunset, in the quay that runs along the right

bank of the Guadalquivir. Promenaders on the spot have to breathe the

odour of a tan yard which still keeps up the ancient fame of the country

in connection with the curing of leather. But to atone for this, they

enjoy a sight which has a charm of its own. A few minutes before the

Angelus bell rings, a great company of women gathers beside the river,

just below the quay, which is rather a high one. Not a man would dare

to join its ranks. The moment the Angelus rings, darkness is supposed to

have fallen. As the last stroke sounds, all the women disrobe and step

into the water. Then there is laughing and screaming and a wonderful

clatter. The men on the upper quay watch the bathers, straining

their eyes, and seeing very little. Yet the white uncertain outlines

perceptible against the dark-blue waters of the stream stir the poetic

mind, and the possessor of a little fancy finds it not difficult to

imagine that Diana and her nymphs are bathing below, while he himself

runs no risk of ending like Acteon.



I have been told that one day a party of good-for-nothing fellows banded

themselves together, and bribed the bell-ringer at the cathedral to ring

the Angelus some twenty minutes before the proper hour. Though it was

still broad daylight, the nymphs of the Guadalquivir never hesitated,

and putting far more trust in the Angelus bell than in the sun, they

proceeded to their bathing toilette--always of the simplest--with an

easy conscience. I was not present on that occasion. In my day, the

bell-ringer was incorruptible, the twilight was very dim, and nobody but

a cat could have distinguished the difference between the oldest orange

woman, and the prettiest shop-girl, in Cordova.



One evening, after it had grown quite dusk, I was leaning over the

parapet of the quay, smoking, when a woman came up the steps leading

from the river, and sat down near me. In her hair she wore a great

bunch of jasmine--a flower which, at night, exhales a most intoxicating

perfume. She was dressed simply, almost poorly, in black, as most

work-girls are dressed in the evening. Women of the richer class only

wear black in the daytime, at night they dress _a la francesa_. When she

drew near me, the woman let the mantilla which had covered her head

drop on her shoulders, and “by the dim light falling from the stars” I

perceived her to be young, short in stature, well-proportioned, and with

very large eyes. I threw my cigar away at once. She appreciated this

mark of courtesy, essentially French, and hastened to inform me that she

was very fond of the smell of tobacco, and that she even smoked herself,

when she could get very mild _papelitos_. I fortunately happened to have

some such in my case, and at once offered them to her. She condescended

to take one, and lighted it at a burning string which a child brought

us, receiving a copper for its pains. We mingled our smoke, and talked

so long, the fair lady and I, that we ended by being almost alone on

the quay. I thought I might venture, without impropriety, to suggest our

going to eat an ice at the _neveria_.* After a moment of modest demur,

she agreed. But before finally accepting, she desired to know what

o’clock it was. I struck my repeater, and this seemed to astound her

greatly.



     * A _café_ to which a depot of ice, or rather of snow, is

     attached. There is hardly a village in Spain without its

     _neveria_.



“What clever inventions you foreigners do have! What country do you

belong to, sir? You’re an Englishman, no doubt!”*



     * Every traveller in Spain who does not carry about samples

     of calicoes and silks is taken for an Englishman

     (_inglesito_). It is the same thing in the East.



“I’m a Frenchman, and your devoted servant. And you, senora, or

senorita, you probably belong to Cordova?”



“No.”



“At all events, you are an Andalusian? Your soft way of speaking makes

me think so.”



“If you notice people’s accent so closely, you must be able to guess

what I am.”



“I think you are from the country of Jesus, two paces out of Paradise.”



I had learned the metaphor, which stands for Andalusia, from my friend

Francisco Sevilla, a well-known _picador_.



“Pshaw! The people here say there is no place in Paradise for us!”



“Then perhaps you are of Moorish blood--or----” I stopped, not venturing

to add “a Jewess.”



“Oh come! You must see I’m a gipsy! Wouldn’t you like me to tell you _la

baji_?* Did you never hear tell of Carmencita? That’s who I am!”



* Your fortune.



I was such a miscreant in those days--now fifteen years ago--that the

close proximity of a sorceress did not make me recoil in horror. “So be

it!” I thought. “Last week I ate my supper with a highway robber. To-day

I’ll go and eat ices with a servant of the devil. A traveller should see

everything.” I had yet another motive for prosecuting her acquaintance.

When I left college--I acknowledge it with shame--I had wasted a certain

amount of time in studying occult science, and had even attempted, more

than once, to exorcise the powers of darkness. Though I had been cured,

long since, of my passion for such investigations, I still felt a

certain attraction and curiosity with regard to all superstitions, and I

was delighted to have this opportunity of discovering how far the magic

art had developed among the gipsies.



Talking as we went, we had reached the _neveria_, and seated ourselves

at a little table, lighted by a taper protected by a glass globe. I then

had time to take a leisurely view of my _gitana_, while several

worthy individuals, who were eating their ices, stared open-mouthed at

beholding me in such gay company.



I very much doubt whether Senorita Carmen was a pure-blooded gipsy. At

all events, she was infinitely prettier than any other woman of her race

I have ever seen. For a women to be beautiful, they say in Spain, she

must fulfil thirty _ifs_, or, if it please you better, you must be able

to define her appearance by ten adjectives, applicable to three portions

of her person.



For instance, three things about her must be black, her eyes, her

eyelashes, and her eyebrows. Three must be dainty, her fingers, her

lips, her hair, and so forth. For the rest of this inventory, see

Brantome. My gipsy girl could lay no claim to so many perfections. Her

skin, though perfectly smooth, was almost of a copper hue. Her eyes

were set obliquely in her head, but they were magnificent and large. Her

lips, a little full, but beautifully shaped, revealed a set of teeth as

white as newly skinned almonds. Her hair--a trifle coarse, perhaps--was

black, with blue lights on it like a raven’s wing, long and glossy. Not

to weary my readers with too prolix a description, I will merely add,

that to every blemish she united some advantage, which was perhaps all

the more evident by contrast. There was something strange and wild about

her beauty. Her face astonished you, at first sight, but nobody could

forget it. Her eyes, especially, had an expression of mingled sensuality

and fierceness which I had never seen in any other human glance.

“Gipsy’s eye, wolf’s eye!” is a Spanish saying which denotes close

observation. If my readers have no time to go to the “Jardin des

Plantes” to study the wolf’s expression, they will do well to watch the

ordinary cat when it is lying in wait for a sparrow.



It will be understood that I should have looked ridiculous if I had

proposed to have my fortune told in a _café_. I therefore begged the

pretty witch’s leave to go home with her. She made no difficulties

about consenting, but she wanted to know what o’clock it was again, and

requested me to make my repeater strike once more.



“Is it really gold?” she said, gazing at it with rapt attention.



When we started off again, it was quite dark. Most of the shops were

shut, and the streets were almost empty. We crossed the bridge over the

Guadalquivir, and at the far end of the suburb we stopped in front of

a house of anything but palatial appearance. The door was opened by a

child, to whom the gipsy spoke a few words in a language unknown to me,

which I afterward understood to be _Romany_, or _chipe calli_--the gipsy

idiom. The child instantly disappeared, leaving us in sole possession of

a tolerably spacious room, furnished with a small table, two stools, and

a chest. I must not forget to mention a jar of water, a pile of oranges,

and a bunch of onions.



As soon as we were left alone, the gipsy produced, out of her chest,

a pack of cards, bearing signs of constant usage, a magnet, a dried

chameleon, and a few other indispensable adjuncts of her art. Then she

bade me cross my left hand with a silver coin, and the magic ceremonies

duly began. It is unnecessary to chronicle her predictions, and as for

the style of her performance, it proved her to be no mean sorceress.



Unluckily we were soon disturbed. The door was suddenly burst open,

and a man, shrouded to the eyes in a brown cloak, entered the room,

apostrophizing the gipsy in anything but gentle terms. What he said I

could not catch, but the tone of his voice revealed the fact that he was

in a very evil temper. The gipsy betrayed neither surprise nor anger

at his advent, but she ran to meet him, and with a most striking

volubility, she poured out several sentences in the mysterious language

she had already used in my presence. The word _payllo_, frequently

reiterated, was the only one I understood. I knew that the gipsies use

it to describe all men not of their own race. Concluding myself to be

the subject of this discourse, I was prepared for a somewhat delicate

explanation. I had already laid my hand on the leg of one of the stools,

and was studying within myself to discover the exact moment at which I

had better throw it at his head, when, roughly pushing the gipsy to one

side, the man advanced toward me. Then with a step backward he cried:



“What, sir! Is it you?”



I looked at him in my turn and recognised my friend Don Jose. At that

moment I did feel rather sorry I had saved him from the gallows.



“What, is it you, my good fellow?” I exclaimed, with as easy a smile as

I could muster. “You have interrupted this young lady just when she was

foretelling me most interesting things!”



“The same as ever. There shall be an end to it!” he hissed between his

teeth, with a savage glance at her.



Meanwhile the _gitana_ was still talking to him in her own tongue. She

became more and more excited. Her eyes grew fierce and bloodshot,

her features contracted, she stamped her foot. She seemed to me to be

earnestly pressing him to do something he was unwilling to do. What this

was I fancied I understood only too well, by the fashion in which she

kept drawing her little hand backward and forward under her chin. I was

inclined to think she wanted to have somebody’s throat cut, and I had a

fair suspicion the throat in question was my own. To all her torrent of

eloquence Don Jose’s only reply was two or three shortly spoken words.

At this the gipsy cast a glance of the most utter scorn at him, then,

seating herself Turkish-fashion in a corner of the room, she picked out

an orange, tore off the skin, and began to eat it.



Don Jose took hold of my arm, opened the door, and led me into the

street. We walked some two hundred paces in the deepest silence. Then he

stretched out his hand.



“Go straight on,” he said, “and you’ll come to the bridge.”



That instant he turned his back on me and departed at a great pace. I

took my way back to my inn, rather crestfallen, and considerably out

of temper. The worst of all was that, when I undressed, I discovered my

watch was missing.



Various considerations prevented me from going to claim it next day, or

requesting the _Corregidor_ to be good enough to have a search made

for it. I finished my work on the Dominican manuscript, and went on

to Seville. After several months spent wandering hither and thither in

Andalusia, I wanted to get back to Madrid, and with that object I had to

pass through Cordova. I had no intention of making any stay there, for

I had taken a dislike to that fair city, and to the ladies who bathed

in the Guadalquivir. Nevertheless, I had some visits to pay, and certain

errands to do, which must detain me several days in the old capital of

the Mussulman princes.



The moment I made my appearance in the Dominican convent, one of the

monks, who had always shown the most lively interest in my inquiries

as to the site of the battlefield of Munda, welcomed me with open arms,

exclaiming:



“Praised be God! You are welcome! My dear friend. We all thought you

were dead, and I myself have said many a _pater_ and _ave_ (not that I

regret them!) for your soul. Then you weren’t murdered, after all? That

you were robbed, we know!”



“What do you mean?” I asked, rather astonished.



“Oh, you know! That splendid repeater you used to strike in the library

whenever we said it was time for us to go into church. Well, it has been

found, and you’ll get it back.”



“Why,” I broke in, rather put out of countenance, “I lost it--”



“The rascal’s under lock and key, and as he was known to be a man who

would shoot any Christian for the sake of a _peseta_, we were

most dreadfully afraid he had killed you. I’ll go with you to the

_Corregidor_, and he’ll give you back your fine watch. And after that,

you won’t dare to say the law doesn’t do its work properly in Spain.”



“I assure you,” said I, “I’d far rather lose my watch than have to

give evidence in court to hang a poor unlucky devil, and especially

because--because----”



“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed! He’s thoroughly done for; they might hang

him twice over. But when I say hang, I say wrong. Your thief is an

_Hidalgo_. So he’s to be garrotted the day after to-morrow, without

fail.* So you see one theft more or less won’t affect his position.

Would to God he had done nothing but steal! But he has committed several

murders, one more hideous than the other.”



     * In 1830, the noble class still enjoyed this privilege.

     Nowadays, under the constitutional _regime_, commoners have

     attained the same dignity.



“What’s his name?”



“In this country he is only known as Jose Navarro, but he has another

Basque name, which neither your nor I will ever be able to pronounce.

By the way, the man is worth seeing, and you, who like to study the

peculiar features of each country, shouldn’t lose this chance of noting

how a rascal bids farewell to this world in Spain. He is in jail, and

Father Martinez will take you to him.”



So bent was my Dominican friend on my seeing the preparations for this

“neat little hanging job” that I was fain to agree. I went to see the

prisoner, having provided myself with a bundle of cigars, which I hoped

might induce him to forgive my intrusion.



I was ushered into Don Jose’s presence just as he was sitting at table.

He greeted me with a rather distant nod, and thanked me civilly for the

present I had brought him. Having counted the cigars in the bundle I

had placed in his hand, he took out a certain number and returned me the

rest, remarking that he would not need any more of them.



I inquired whether by laying out a little money, or by applying to

my friends, I might not be able to do something to soften his lot. He

shrugged his shoulders, to begin with, smiling sadly. Soon, as by an

after-thought, he asked me to have a mass said for the repose of his

soul.



Then he added nervously: “Would you--would you have another said for a

person who did you a wrong?”



“Assuredly I will, my dear fellow,” I answered. “But no one in this

country has wronged me so far as I know.”



He took my hand and squeezed it, looking very grave. After a moment’s

silence, he spoke again.



“Might I dare to ask another service of you? When you go back to your

own country perhaps you will pass through Navarre. At all events you’ll

go by Vittoria, which isn’t very far off.”



“Yes,” said I, “I shall certainly pass through Vittoria. But I may very

possibly go round by Pampeluna, and for your sake, I believe I should be

very glad to do it.”



“Well, if you do go to Pampeluna, you’ll see more than one thing that

will interest you. It’s a fine town. I’ll give you this medal,” he

showed me a little silver medal that he wore hung around his neck.

“You’ll wrap it up in paper”--he paused a moment to master his

emotion--“and you’ll take it, or send it, to an old lady whose address

I’ll give you. Tell her I am dead--but don’t tell her how I died.”



I promised to perform his commission. I saw him the next day, and spent

part of it in his company. From his lips I learned the sad incidents

that follow.







CHAPTER III



“I was born,” he said, “at Elizondo, in the valley of Baztan. My name is

Don Jose Lizzarrabengoa, and you know enough of Spain, sir, to know at

once, by my name, that I come of an old Christian and Basque stock. I

call myself Don, because I have a right to it, and if I were at Elizondo

I could show you my parchment genealogy. My family wanted me to go into

the church, and made me study for it, but I did not like work. I was too

fond of playing tennis, and that was my ruin. When we Navarrese begin

to play tennis, we forget everything else. One day, when I had won the

game, a young fellow from Alava picked a quarrel with me. We took to our

_maquilas_,* and I won again. But I had to leave the neighbourhood.

I fell in with some dragoons, and enlisted in the Almanza Cavalry

Regiment. Mountain folks like us soon learn to be soldiers. Before long

I was a corporal, and I had been told I should soon be made a sergeant,

when, to my misfortune, I was put on guard at the Seville Tobacco

Factory. If you have been to Seville you have seen the great building,

just outside the ramparts, close to the Guadalquivir; I can fancy I see

the entrance, and the guard room just beside it, even now. When Spanish

soldiers are on duty, they either play cards or go to sleep. I, like an

honest Navarrese, always tried to keep myself busy. I was making a chain

to hold my priming-pin, out of a bit of wire: all at once, my comrades

said, ‘there’s the bell ringing, the girls are coming back to work.’ You

must know, sir, that there are quite four or five hundred women employed

in the factory. They roll the cigars in a great room into which no man

can go without a permit from the _Veintiquatro_,** because when the

weather is hot they make themselves at home, especially the young ones.

When the work-girls come back after their dinner, numbers of young men

go down to see them pass by, and talk all sorts of nonsense to them.

Very few of those young ladies will refuse a silk mantilla, and men who

care for that sort of sport have nothing to do but bend down and pick

their fish up. While the others watched the girls go by, I stayed on my

bench near the door. I was a young fellow then--my heart was still in

my own country, and I didn’t believe in any pretty girls who hadn’t

blue skirts and long plaits of hair falling on their shoulders.*** And

besides, I was rather afraid of the Andalusian women. I had not got used

to their ways yet; they were always jeering one--never spoke a single

word of sense. So I was sitting with my nose down upon my chain, when I

heard some bystanders say, ‘Here comes the _gitanella_!’ Then I lifted

up my eyes, and I saw her! It was that very Carmen you know, and in

whose rooms I met you a few months ago.



     * Iron-shod sticks used by the Basques.



     ** Magistrate in charge of the municipal police

     arrangements, and local government regulations.



     *** The costume usually worn by peasant women in Navarre and

     the Basque Provinces.



“She was wearing a very short skirt, below which her white silk

stockings--with more than one hole in them--and her dainty red morocco

shoes, fastened with flame-coloured ribbons, were clearly seen. She had

thrown her mantilla back, to show her shoulders, and a great bunch of

acacia that was thrust into her chemise. She had another acacia blossom

in the corner of her mouth, and she walked along, swaying her hips, like

a filly from the Cordova stud farm. In my country anybody who had seen

a woman dressed in that fashion would have crossed himself. At Seville

every man paid her some bold compliment on her appearance. She had

an answer for each and all, with her hand on her hip, as bold as the

thorough gipsy she was. At first I didn’t like her looks, and I fell to

my work again. But she, like all women and cats, who won’t come if you

call them, and do come if you don’t call them, stopped short in front of

me, and spoke to me.



“‘_Compadre_,’ said she, in the Andalusian fashion, ‘won’t you give me

your chain for the keys of my strong box?’



“‘It’s for my priming-pin,’ said I.



“‘Your priming-pin!’ she cried, with a laugh. ‘Oho! I suppose the

gentleman makes lace, as he wants pins!’



“Everybody began to laugh, and I felt myself getting red in the face,

and couldn’t hit on anything in answer.



“‘Come, my love!’ she began again, ‘make me seven ells of lace for my

mantilla, my pet pin-maker!’



“And taking the acacia blossom out of her mouth she flipped it at me

with her thumb so that it hit me just between the eyes. I tell you, sir,

I felt as if a bullet had struck me. I didn’t know which way to look.

I sat stock-still, like a wooden board. When she had gone into the

factory, I saw the acacia blossom, which had fallen on the ground

between my feet. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked it up,

unseen by any of my comrades, and put it carefully inside my jacket.

That was my first folly.



“Two or three hours later I was still thinking about her, when a

panting, terrified-looking porter rushed into the guard-room. He told

us a woman had been stabbed in the great cigar-room, and that the guard

must be sent in at once. The sergeant told me to take two men, and go

and see to it. I took my two men and went upstairs. Imagine, sir, that

when I got into the room, I found, to begin with, some three hundred

women, stripped to their shifts, or very near it, all of them screaming

and yelling and gesticulating, and making such a row that you couldn’t

have heard God’s own thunder. On one side of the room one of the women

was lying on the broad of her back, streaming with blood, with an X

newly cut on her face by two strokes of a knife. Opposite the wounded

woman, whom the best-natured of the band were attending, I saw Carmen,

held by five or six of her comrades. The wounded woman was crying out,

‘A confessor, a confessor! I’m killed!’ Carmen said nothing at all. She

clinched her teeth and rolled her eyes like a chameleon. ‘What’s this?’

I asked. I had hard work to find out what had happened, for all the

work-girls talked at once. It appeared that the injured girl had boasted

she had money enough in her pocket to buy a donkey at the Triana Market.

‘Why,’ said Carmen, who had a tongue of her own, ‘can’t you do with a

broom?’ Stung by this taunt, it may be because she felt herself rather

unsound in that particular, the other girl replied that she knew nothing

about brooms, seeing she had not the honour of being either a gipsy

or one of the devil’s godchildren, but that the Senorita Carmen would

shortly make acquaintance with her donkey, when the _Corregidor_ took

her out riding with two lackeys behind her to keep the flies off.

‘Well,’ retorted Carmen, ‘I’ll make troughs for the flies to drink

out of on your cheeks, and I’ll paint a draught-board on them!’ * And

thereupon, slap, bank! She began making St. Andrew’s crosses on the

girl’s face with a knife she had been using for cutting off the ends of

the cigars.



     * _Pintar un javeque_, “paint a xebec,” a particular type of

     ship. Most Spanish vessels of this description have a

     checkered red and white stripe painted around them.



“The case was quite clear. I took hold of Carmen’s arm. ‘Sister mine,’ I

said civilly, ‘you must come with me.’ She shot a glance of recognition

at me, but she said, with a resigned look: ‘Let’s be off. Where is my

mantilla?’ She put it over her head so that only one of her great eyes

was to be seen, and followed my two men, as quiet as a lamb. When we

got to the guardroom the sergeant said it was a serious job, and he must

send her to prison. I was told off again to take her there. I put her

between two dragoons, as a corporal does on such occasions. We started

off for the town. The gipsy had begun by holding her tongue. But when we

got to the _Calle de la Serpiente_--you know it, and that it earns its

name by its many windings--she began by dropping her mantilla on to her

shoulders, so as to show me her coaxing little face, and turning round

to me as well as she could, she said:



“‘_Oficial mio_, where are you taking me to?’



“‘To prison, my poor child,’ I replied, as gently as I could, just as

any kind-hearted soldier is bound to speak to a prisoner, and especially

to a woman.



“‘Alack! What will become of me! Senor Oficial, have pity on me! You are

so young, so good-looking.’ Then, in a lower tone, she said, ‘Let me get

away, and I’ll give you a bit of the _bar lachi_, that will make every

woman fall in love with you!’



“The _bar lachi_, sir, is the loadstone, with which the gipsies declare

one who knows how to use it can cast any number of spells. If you can

make a woman drink a little scrap of it, powdered, in a glass of white

wine, she’ll never be able to resist you. I answered, as gravely as I

could:



“‘We are not here to talk nonsense. You’ll have to go to prison. Those

are my orders, and there’s no help for it!’



“We men from the Basque country have an accent which all Spaniards

easily recognise; on the other hand, not one of them can ever learn to

say _Bai, jaona_!*



     * Yes, sir.



“So Carmen easily guessed I was from the Provinces. You know, sir, that

the gipsies, who belong to no particular country, and are always moving

about, speak every language, and most of them are quite at home in

Portugal, in France, in our Provinces, in Catalonia, or anywhere else.

They can even make themselves understood by Moors and English people.

Carmen knew Basque tolerably well.



“‘_Laguna ene bihotsarena_, comrade of my heart,’ said she suddenly. ‘Do

you belong to our country?’



“Our language is so beautiful, sir, that when we hear it in a foreign

country it makes us quiver. I wish,” added the bandit in a lower tone,

“I could have a confessor from my own country.”



After a silence, he began again.



“‘I belong to Elizondo,’ I answered in Basque, very much affected by the

sound of my own language.



“‘I come from Etchalar,’ said she (that’s a district about four hours’

journey from my home). ‘I was carried off to Seville by the gipsies.

I was working in the factory to earn enough money to take me back to

Navarre, to my poor old mother, who has no support in the world but me,

besides her little _barratcea_* with twenty cider-apple trees in it.

Ah! if I were only back in my own country, looking up at the white

mountains! I have been insulted here, because I don’t belong to this

land of rogues and sellers of rotten oranges; and those hussies are

all banded together against me, because I told them that not all their

Seville _jacques_,** and all their knives, would frighten an honest lad

from our country, with his blue cap and his _maquila_! Good comrade,

won’t you do anything to help your own countrywoman?’



     * Field, garden.



     ** Bravos, boasters.



“She was lying then, sir, as she has always lied. I don’t know that that

girl ever spoke a word of truth in her life, but when she did speak, I

believed her--I couldn’t help myself. She mangled her Basque words, and

I believed she came from Navarre. But her eyes and her mouth and her

skin were enough to prove she was a gipsy. I was mad, I paid no more

attention to anything, I thought to myself that if the Spaniards had

dared to speak evil of my country, I would have slashed their faces just

as she had slashed her comrade’s. In short, I was like a drunken man, I

was beginning to say foolish things, and I was very near doing them.



“‘If I were to give you a push and you tumbled down, good

fellow-countryman,’ she began again in Basque, ‘those two Castilian

recruits wouldn’t be able to keep me back.’



“Faith, I forgot my orders, I forgot everything, and I said to her,

‘Well, then, my friend, girl of my country, try it, and may our Lady of

the Mountain help you through.’



“Just at that moment we were passing one of the many narrow lanes one

sees in Seville. All at once Carmen turned and struck me in the chest

with her fist. I tumbled backward, purposely. With a bound she sprang

over me, and ran off, showing us a pair of legs! People talk about a

pair of Basque legs! but hers were far better--as fleet as they were

well-turned. As for me, I picked myself up at once, but I stuck out my

lance* crossways and barred the street, so that my comrades were checked

at the very first moment of pursuit. Then I started to run myself, and

they after me--but how were we to catch her? There was no fear of that,

what with our spurs, our swords, and our lances.



     * All Spanish cavalry soldiers carry lances.



“In less time than I have taken to tell you the story the prisoner

had disappeared. And besides, every gossip in the quarter covered her

flight, poked scorn at us, and pointed us in the wrong direction. After

a good deal of marching and countermarching, we had to go back to the

guard-room without a receipt from the governor of the jail.



“To avoid punishment, my men made known that Carmen had spoken to me in

Basque; and to tell the truth, it did not seem very natural that a blow

from such a little creature should have so easily overthrown a strong

fellow like me. The whole thing looked suspicious, or, at all events,

not over-clear. When I came off guard I lost my corporal’s stripes, and

was condemned to a month’s imprisonment. It was the first time I had

been punished since I had been in the service. Farewell, now, to the

sergeant’s stripes, on which I had reckoned so surely!



“The first days in prison were very dreary. When I enlisted I had

fancied I was sure to become an officer, at all events. Two of

my compatriots, Longa and Mina, are captains-general, after all.

Chapalangarra was a colonel, and I have played tennis a score of times

with his brother, who was just a needy fellow like myself. ‘Now,’ I kept

crying to myself, ‘all the time you served without being punished

has been lost. Now you have a bad mark against your name, and to get

yourself back into the officers’ good graces you’ll have to work ten

times as hard as when you joined as a recruit.’ And why have I got

myself punished? For the sake of a gipsy hussy, who made game of me, and

who at this moment is busy thieving in some corner of the town. Yet I

couldn’t help thinking about her. Will you believe it, sir, those silk

stockings of hers with the holes in them, of which she had given me such

a full view as she took to her heels, were always before my eyes? I

used to look through the barred windows of the jail into the street,

and among all the women who passed I never could see one to compare with

that minx of a girl--and then, in spite of myself, I used to smell the

acacia blossom she had thrown at me, and which, dry as it was, still

kept its sweet scent. If there are such things as witches, that girl

certainly was one.



“One day the jailer came in, and gave me an Alcala roll.*



     * _Alcala de los Panaderos_, a village two leagues from

     Seville, where the most delicious rolls are made. They are

     said to owe their quality to the water of the place, and

     great quantities of them are brought to Seville every day.



“‘Look here,’ said he, ‘this is what your cousin has sent you.’



“I took the loaf, very much astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville.

It may be a mistake, thought I, as I looked at the roll, but it was so

appetizing and smelt so good, that I made up my mind to eat it, without

troubling my head as to whence it came, or for whom it was really

intended.



“When I tried to cut it, my knife struck on something hard. I looked,

and found a little English file, which had been slipped into the dough

before the roll had been baked. The roll also contained a gold piece of

two piastres. Then I had no further doubt--it was a present from Carmen.

To people of her blood, liberty is everything, and they would set a

town on fire to save themselves one day in prison. The girl was artful,

indeed, and armed with that roll, I might have snapped my fingers at the

jailers. In one hour, with that little file, I could have sawn through

the thickest bar, and with the gold coin I could have exchanged my

soldier’s cloak for civilian garb at the nearest shop. You may fancy

that a man who has often taken the eaglets out of their nests in our

cliff would have found no difficulty in getting down to the street

out of a window less than thirty feet above it. But I didn’t choose to

escape. I still had a soldier’s code of honour, and desertion appeared

to me in the light of a heinous crime. Yet this proof of remembrance

touched me. When a man is in prison he likes to think he has a friend

outside who takes an interest in him. The gold coin did rather offend

me; I should have very much liked to return it; but where was I to find

my creditor? That did not seem a very easy task.



“After the ceremony of my degradation I had fancied my sufferings were

over, but I had another humiliation before me. That came when I left

prison, and was told off for duty, and put on sentry, as a private

soldier. You can not conceive what a proud man endures at such a moment.

I believe I would have just as soon been shot dead--then I should have

marched alone at the head of my platoon, at all events; I should have

felt I was somebody, with the eyes of others fixed upon me.



“I was posted as sentry on the door of the colonel’s house. The colonel

was a young man, rich, good-natured, fond of amusing himself. All

the young officers were there, and many civilians as well, besides

ladies--actresses, as it was said. For my part, it seemed to me as if

the whole town had agreed to meet at that door, in order to stare at me.

Then up drove the colonel’s carriage, with his valet on the box. And who

should I see get out of it, but the gipsy girl! She was dressed up, this

time, to the eyes, togged out in golden ribbons--a spangled gown, blue

shoes, all spangled too, flowers and gold lace all over her. In her hand

she carried a tambourine. With her there were two other gipsy women, one

young and one old. They always have one old woman who goes with them,

and then an old man with a guitar, a gipsy too, to play alone, and also

for their dances. You must know these gipsy girls are often sent for to

private houses, to dance their special dance, the _Romalis_, and often,

too, for quite other purposes.



“Carmen recognised me, and we exchanged glances. I don’t know why, but

at that moment I should have liked to have been a hundred feet beneath

the ground.



“‘_Agur laguna_,’ * said she. ‘Oficial mio! You keep guard like a

recruit,’ and before I could find a word in answer, she was inside the

house.



     * Good-day, comrade!



“The whole party was assembled in the _patio_, and in spite of the crowd

I could see nearly everything that went on through the lattice.* I

could hear the castanets and the tambourine, the laughter and applause.

Sometimes I caught a glimpse of her head as she bounded upward with her

tambourine. Then I could hear the officers saying many things to her

which brought the blood to my face. As to her answers, I knew nothing

of them. It was on that day, I think, that I began to love her in

earnest--for three or four times I was tempted to rush into the _patio_,

and drive my sword into the bodies of all the coxcombs who were making

love to her. My torture lasted a full hour; then the gipsies came out,

and the carriage took them away. As she passed me by, Carmen looked at

me with those eyes you know, and said to me very low, ‘Comrade, people

who are fond of good _fritata_ come to eat it at Lillas Pastia’s at

Triana!’



     * In most of the houses in Seville there is an inner court

     surrounded by an arched portico. This is used as a sitting-

     room in summer. Over the court is stretched a piece of tent

     cloth, which is watered during the day and removed at night.

     The street door is almost always left open, and the passage

     leading to the court (_zaguan_) is closed by an iron lattice

     of very elegant workmanship.



“Then, light as a kid, she stepped into the carriage, the coachman

whipped up his mules, and the whole merry party departed, whither I know

not.



“You may fancy that the moment I was off guard I went to Triana; but

first of all I got myself shaved and brushed myself up as if I had been

going on parade. She was living with Lillas Pastia, an old fried-fish

seller, a gipsy, as black as a Moor, to whose house a great many

civilians resorted to eat _fritata_, especially, I think, because Carmen

had taken up her quarters there.



“‘Lillas,’ she said, as soon as she saw me. ‘I’m not going to work any

more to-day. To-morrow will be a day, too.* Come, fellow-countryman, let

us go for a walk!’



     * _Manana sera otro dia._--A Spanish proverb.



“She pulled her mantilla across her nose, and there we were in the

street, without my knowing in the least whither I was bound.



“‘Senorita,’ said I, ‘I think I have to thank you for a present I

had while I was in prison. I’ve eaten the bread; the file will do for

sharpening my lance, and I keep it in remembrance of you. But as for the

money, here it is.’



“‘Why, he’s kept the money!’ she exclaimed, bursting out laughing.

‘But, after all, that’s all the better--for I’m decidedly hard up! What

matter! The dog that runs never starves!* Come, let’s spend it all! You

shall treat.’



     * _Chuquel sos pirela, cocal terela_. “The dog that runs

     finds a bone.”--Gipsy proverb.



“We had turned back toward Seville. At the entrance of the _Calle de

la Serpiente_ she bought a dozen oranges, which she made me put into my

handkerchief. A little farther on she bought a roll, a sausage, and

a bottle of manzanilla. Then, last of all, she turned into a

confectioner’s shop. There she threw the gold coin I had returned to

her on the counter, with another she had in her pocket, and some small

silver, and then she asked me for all the money I had. All I possessed

was one peseta and a few cuartos, which I handed over to her, very much

ashamed of not having more. I thought she would have carried away the

whole shop. She took everything that was best and dearest, _yemas_,*

_turon_,** preserved fruits--as long as the money lasted. And all these,

too, I had to carry in paper bags. Perhaps you know the _Calle del

Candilejo_, where there is a head of Don Pedro the Avenger.*** That head

ought to have given me pause. We stopped at an old house in that street.

She passed into the entry, and knocked at a door on the ground floor.

It was opened by a gipsy, a thorough-paced servant of the devil. Carmen

said a few words to her in Romany. At first the old hag grumbled. To

smooth her down Carmen gave her a couple of oranges and a handful of

sugar-plums, and let her have a taste of wine. Then she hung her cloak

on her back, and led her to the door, which she fastened with a wooden

bar. As soon as we were alone she began to laugh and caper like a

lunatic, singing out, ‘You are my _rom_, I’m your _romi_.’****



     * Sugared yolks of eggs.



     ** A sort of nougat.



     *** This king, Don Pedro, whom we call “the Cruel,” and whom

     Queen Isabella, the Catholic, never called anything but “the

     Avenger,” was fond of walking about the streets of Seville

     at night in search of adventures, like the Caliph Haroun al

     Raschid. One night, in a lonely street, he quarrelled with a

     man who was singing a serenade. There was a fight, and the

     king killed the amorous _caballero_. At the clashing of

     their swords, an old woman put her head out of the window

     and lighted up the scene with a tiny lamp (candilejo) which

     she held in her hand. My readers must be informed that King

     Don Pedro, though nimble and muscular, suffered from one

     strange fault in his physical conformation. Whenever he

     walked his knees cracked loudly. By this cracking the old

     woman easily recognised him. The next day the _veintiquatro_

     in charge came to make his report to the king. “Sir, a duel

     was fought last night in such a street--one of the

     combatants is dead.” “Have you found the murderer?” “Yes,

     sir.” “Why has he not been punished already?” “Sir, I await

     your orders!” “Carry out the law.” Now the king had just

     published a decree that every duellist was to have his head

     cut off, and that head was to be set up on the scene of the

     fight. The _veintiquatro_ got out of the difficulty like a

     clever man. He had the head sawed off a statue of the king,

     and set that up in a niche in the middle of the street in

     which the murder had taken place. The king and all the

     Sevillians thought this a very good joke. The street took

     its name from the lamp held by the old woman, the only

     witness of the incident. The above is the popular tradition.

     Zuniga tells the story somewhat differently. However that

     may be, a street called _Calle del Candilejo_ still exists

     in Seville, and in that street there is a bust which is said

     to be a portrait of Don Pedro. This bust, unfortunately, is

     a modern production. During the seventeenth century the old

     one had become very much defaced, and the municipality had

     it replaced by that now to be seen.



     **** _Rom_, husband. _Romi_, wife.



“There I stood in the middle of the room, laden with all her purchases,

and not knowing where I was to put them down. She tumbled them all onto

the floor, and threw her arms round my neck, saying:



“‘I pay my debts, I pay my debts! That’s the law of the _Cales_.’*



     * _Calo_, feminine _calli_, plural _cales_. Literally

     “black,” the name the gipsies apply to themselves in their

     own language.



“Ah, sir, that day! that day! When I think of it I forget what to-morrow

must bring me!”



For a moment the bandit held his peace, then, when he had relighted his

cigar, he began afresh.



“We spent the whole day together, eating, drinking, and so forth. When

she had stuffed herself with sugar-plums, like any child of six years

old, she thrust them by handfuls into the old woman’s water-jar.

‘That’ll make sherbet for her,’ she said. She smashed the _yemas_ by

throwing them against the walls. ‘They’ll keep the flies from bothering

us.’ There was no prank or wild frolic she didn’t indulge in. I told her

I should have liked to see her dance, only there were no castanets to

be had. Instantly she seized the old woman’s only earthenware plate,

smashed it up, and there she was dancing the _Romalis_, and making the

bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and

ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening

fell, and I heard the drums beating tattoo.



“‘I must get back to quarters for roll-call,’ I said.



“‘To quarters!’ she answered, with a look of scorn. ‘Are you a negro

slave, to let yourself be driven with a ramrod like that! You are as

silly as a canary bird. Your dress suits your nature.* Pshaw! you’ve no

more heart than a chicken.’



* Spanish dragoons wear a yellow uniform.



“I stayed on, making up my mind to the inevitable guard-room. The next

morning the first suggestion of parting came from her.



“‘Hark ye, Joseito,’ she said. ‘Have I paid you? By our law, I owed you

nothing, because you’re a _payllo_. But you’re a good-looking fellow,

and I took a fancy to you. Now we’re quits. Good-day!’



“I asked her when I should see her again.



“‘When you’re less of a simpleton,’ she retorted, with a laugh. Then, in

a more serious tone, ‘Do you know, my son, I really believe I love you a

little; but that can’t last! The dog and the wolf can’t agree for long.

Perhaps if you turned gipsy, I might care to be your _romi_. But that’s

all nonsense, such things aren’t possible. Pshaw! my boy. Believe me,

you’re well out of it. You’ve come across the devil--he isn’t always

black--and you’ve not had your neck wrung. I wear a woollen suit, but

I’m no sheep.* Go and burn a candle to your _majari_,** she deserves

it well. Come, good-by once more. Don’t think any more about _La

Carmencita_, or she’ll end by making you marry a widow with wooden

legs.’***



     * _Me dicas vriarda de jorpoy, bus ne sino braco_.--A gipsy

     proverb.



     ** The Saint, the Holy Virgin.



     *** The gallows, which is the widow of the last man hanged

     upon it.



“As she spoke, she drew back the bar that closed the door, and once we

were out in the street she wrapped her mantilla about her, and turned on

her heel.



“She spoke the truth. I should have done far better never to think of

her again. But after that day in the _Calle del Candilejo_ I couldn’t

think of anything else. All day long I used to walk about, hoping I

might meet her. I sought news of her from the old hag, and from the

fried-fish seller. They both told me she had gone away to _Laloro_,

which is their name for Portugal. They probably said it by Carmen’s

orders, but I soon found out they were lying. Some weeks after my day

in the _Calle del Candilejo_ I was on duty at one of the town gates. A

little way from the gate there was a breach in the wall. The masons were

working at it in the daytime, and at night a sentinel was posted on it,

to prevent smugglers from getting in. All through one day I saw Lillas

Pastia going backward and forward near the guard-room, and talking to

some of my comrades. They all knew him well, and his fried-fish and

fritters even better. He came up to me, and asked if I had any news of

Carmen.



“‘No,’ said I.



“‘Well,’ said he, ‘you’ll soon hear of her, old fellow.’



“He was not mistaken. That night I was posted to guard the breach in

the wall. As soon as the sergeant had disappeared I saw a woman coming

toward me. My heart told me it was Carmen. Still I shouted:



“‘Keep off! Nobody can pass here!’



“‘Now, don’t be spiteful,’ she said, making herself known to me.



“‘What! you here, Carmen?’



“‘Yes, _mi payllo_. Let us say few words, but wise ones. Would you

like to earn a douro? Some people will be coming with bundles. Let them

alone.’



“‘No,’ said I, ‘I must not allow them through. These are my orders.’



“‘Orders! orders! You didn’t think about orders in the _Calle del

Candilejo_!’



“‘Ah!’ I cried, quite maddened by the very thought of that night. ‘It

was well worth while to forget my orders for that! But I won’t have any

smuggler’s money!’



“‘Well, if you won’t have money, shall we go and dine together at old

Dorotea’s?’



“‘No,’ said I, half choked by the effort it cost me. ‘No, I can’t.’



“‘Very good! If you make so many difficulties, I know to whom I can

go. I’ll ask your officer if he’ll come with me to Dorotea’s. He looks

good-natured, and he’ll post a sentry who’ll only see what he had better

see. Good-bye, canary-bird! I shall have a good laugh the day the order

comes out to hang you!’



“I was weak enough to call her back, and I promised to let the whole

of gipsydom pass in, if that were necessary, so that I secured the

only reward I longed for. She instantly swore she would keep her word

faithfully the very next day, and ran off to summon her friends, who

were close by. There were five of them, of whom Pastia was one, all well

loaded with English goods. Carmen kept watch for them. She was to warn

them with her castanets the instant she caught sight of the patrol. But

there was no necessity for that. The smugglers finished their job in a

moment.



“The next day I went to the _Calle del Candilejo_. Carmen kept me

waiting, and when she came, she was in rather a bad temper.



“‘I don’t like people who have to be pressed,’ she said. ‘You did me a

much greater service the first time, without knowing you’d gain anything

by it. Yesterday you bargained with me. I don’t know why I’ve come, for

I don’t care for you any more. Here, be off with you. Here’s a douro for

your trouble.’



“I very nearly threw the coin at her head, and I had to make a violent

effort to prevent myself from actually beating her. After we had

wrangled for an hour I went off in a fury. For some time I wandered

about the town, walking hither and thither like a madman. At last I went

into a church, and getting into the darkest corner I could find, I cried

hot tears. All at once I heard a voice.



“‘A dragoon in tears. I’ll make a philter of them!’



“I looked up. There was Carmen in front of me.



“‘Well, _mi payllo_, are you still angry with me?’ she said. ‘I must

care for you in spite of myself, for since you left me I don’t know what

has been the matter with me. Look you, it is I who ask you to come to

the _Calle del Candilejo_, now!’



“So we made it up: but Carmen’s temper was like the weather in our

country. The storm is never so close, in our mountains, as when the sun

is at its brightest. She had promised to meet me again at Dorotea’s, but

she didn’t come.



“And Dorotea began telling me again that she had gone off to Portugal

about some gipsy business.



“As experience had already taught me how much of that I was to believe,

I went about looking for Carmen wherever I thought she might be, and

twenty times in every day I walked through the _Calle del Candilejo_.

One evening I was with Dorotea, whom I had almost tamed by giving her

a glass of anisette now and then, when Carmen walked in, followed by a

young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.



“‘Get away at once,’ she said to me in Basque. I stood there,

dumfounded, my heart full of rage.



“‘What are you doing here?’ said the lieutenant to me. ‘Take yourself

off--get out of this.’



“I couldn’t move a step. I felt paralyzed. The officer grew angry, and

seeing I did not go out, and had not even taken off my forage cap, he

caught me by the collar and shook me roughly. I don’t know what I said

to him. He drew his sword, and I unsheathed mine. The old woman caught

hold of my arm, and the lieutenant gave me a wound on the forehead, of

which I still bear the scar. I made a step backward, and with one jerk

of my elbow I threw old Dorotea down. Then, as the lieutenant still

pressed me, I turned the point of my sword against his body and he

ran upon it. Then Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorotea, in her own

language, to take to flight. I fled into the street myself, and began

running along, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was

following me. When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never

left me.



“‘Great stupid of a canary-bird!’ she said, ‘you never make anything but

blunders. And, indeed, you know I told you I should bring you bad luck.

But come, there’s a cure for everything when you have a Fleming from

Rome* for your love. Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head,

and throw me over that belt of yours. Wait for me in this alley--I’ll be

back in two minutes.



     * _Flamenco de Roma_, a slang term for the gipsies. Roma

     does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of

     the _romi_, or the married folk--a name applied by the

     gipsies to themselves. The first gipsies seen in Spain

     probably came from the Low Countries, hence their name of

     _Flemings_.



“She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which

she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence. She made me take off my

uniform, and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus dressed, and with the

wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like

a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they

make out of ‘_chufas_.’* Then she took me to a house very much like

Dorotea’s, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy

woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could

have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally

made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.



     * A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is

     manufactured.



“Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they

know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the

next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some

time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part

on the previous night came back to me. After having dressed my wound,

Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress,

exchanged a few words of ‘_chipe calli_,’ which appeared to me to be

something in the nature of a medical consultation. Then they both of

them assured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out

of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught

there, I should most undoubtedly be shot.



“‘My boy,’ said Carmen to me, ‘you’ll have to do something. Now that

the king won’t give you either rice or haddock* you’ll have to think of

earning your livelihood. You’re too stupid for stealing _a pastesas_.**

But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off

to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven’t I promised to get you hanged?

That’s better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it

properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the _minons_*** and the

coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’



     * The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.



     ** _Ustilar a pastesas_, to steal cleverly, to purloin

     without violence.



     *** A sort of volunteer corps.



“In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new

career she was suggesting to me,--the only one, indeed, remaining, now

I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She

persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it

seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I

thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.



“I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about

Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and

his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down

the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me. When I mentioned that notion

to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was

nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open

air, when each _rom_ retired with his _romi_ beneath their little tent,

made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.



“‘If I take to the mountains,’ said I to her, ‘I shall be sure of you.

There’ll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.’



“‘Ha! ha! you’re jealous!’ she retorted, ‘so much the worse for you. How

can you be such a fool as that? Don’t you see I must love you, because I

have never asked you for money?’



“When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.



“To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes,

disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised. I went

to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house

was the smugglers’ meeting-place. I was introduced to them, and their

leader, surnamed _El Dancaire_, enrolled me in his gang. We started for

Gaucin, where I found Carmen, who had told me she would meet me there.

In all these expeditions she acted as spy for our gang, and she was the

best that ever was seen. She had now just returned from Gibraltar, and

had already arranged with the captain of a ship for a cargo of English

goods which we were to receive on the coast. We went to meet it near

Estepona. We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we

proceeded to Ronda. Carmen had gone there before us. It was she again

who warned us when we had better enter the town. This first journey, and

several subsequent ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler’s life

pleasanter than a soldier’s: I could give presents to Carmen, I had

money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the

gipsies say, ‘The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.’ We were

made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me

a certain respect. The reason of this was that I had killed my man,

and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their

conscience. But what I valued most in my new life was that I often saw

Carmen. She showed me more affection than ever; nevertheless, she would

never admit, before my comrades, that she was my mistress, and she had

even made me swear all sorts of oaths that I would not say anything

about her to them. I was so weak in that creature’s hands, that I obeyed

all her whims. And besides, this was the first time she had revealed

herself as possessing any of the reserve of a well-conducted woman,

and I was simple enough to believe she had really cast off her former

habits.



“Our gang, which consisted of eight or ten men, was hardly ever together

except at decisive moments, and we were usually scattered by twos and

threes about the towns and villages. Each one of us pretended to have

some trade. One was a tinker, another was a groom; I was supposed to

peddle haberdashery, but I hardly ever showed myself in large places, on

account of my unlucky business at Seville. One day, or rather one night,

we were to meet below Veger. _El Dancaire_ and I got there before the

others.



“‘We shall soon have a new comrade,’ said he. ‘Carmen has just managed

one of her best tricks. She has contrived the escape of her _rom_, who

was in the _presidio_ at Tarifa.’



“I was already beginning to understand the gipsy language, which nearly

all my comrades spoke, and this word _rom_ startled me.



“What! her husband? Is she married, then?’ said I to the captain.



“‘Yes!’ he replied, ‘married to Garcia _el Tuerto_*--as cunning a gipsy

as she is herself. The poor fellow has been at the galleys. Carmen has

wheedled the surgeon of the _presidio_ to such good purpose that she

has managed to get her _rom_ out of prison. Faith! that girl’s worth

her weight in gold. For two years she has been trying to contrive his

escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into

their heads to change the surgeon. She soon managed to come to an

understanding with this new one.’



     * One-eyed man.



“You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me. I soon saw Garcia

_el Tuerto_. He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed

in gipsydom. His skin was black, his soul was blacker, and he was

altogether the most thorough-paced ruffian I ever came across in my

life. Carmen arrived with him, and when she called him her _rom_ in my

presence, you should have seen the eyes she made at me, and the faces

she pulled whenever Garcia turned his head away.



“I was disgusted, and never spoke a word to her all night. The next

morning we had made up our packs, and had already started, when we

became aware that we had a dozen horsemen on our heels. The braggart

Andalusians, who had been boasting they would murder every one who came

near them, cut a pitiful figure at once. There was a general rout. _El

Dancaire_, Garcia, a good-looking fellow from Ecija, who was called _El

Remendado_, and Carmen herself, kept their wits about them. The rest

forsook the mules and took to the gorges, where the horses could not

follow them. There was no hope of saving the mules, so we hastily

unstrapped the best part of our booty, and taking it on our shoulders,

we tried to escape through the rocks down the steepest of the slopes. We

threw our packs down in front of us and followed them as best we could,

slipping along on our heels. Meanwhile the enemy fired at us. It was

the first time I had ever heard bullets whistling around me and I

didn’t mind it very much. When there’s a woman looking on, there’s no

particular merit in snapping one’s fingers at death. We all escaped

except the poor _Remendado_, who received a bullet wound in the loins. I

threw away my pack and tried to lift him up.



“‘Idiot!’ shouted Garcia, ‘what do we want with offal! Finish him off,

and don’t lose the cotton stockings!’



“‘Drop him!’ cried Carmen.



“I was so exhausted that I was obliged to lay him down for a moment

under a rock. Garcia came up, and fired his blunderbuss full into his

face. ‘He’d be a clever fellow who recognised him now!’ said he, as he

looked at the face, cut to pieces by a dozen slugs.



“There, sir; that’s the delightful sort of life I’ve led! That night

we found ourselves in a thicket, worn out with fatigue, with nothing to

eat, and ruined by the loss of our mules. What do you think that devil

Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began

playing games with _El Dancaire_ by the light of a fire they kindled.

Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of _El

Remendado_, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place.

Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would

rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if

she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times

over almost against my will.



“‘You are a devil,’ said I to her.



“‘Yes,’ she replied.



“After a few hours’ rest, she departed to Gaucin, and the next morning a

little goatherd brought us some food. We stayed there all that day, and

in the evening we moved close to Gaucin. We were expecting news from

Carmen, but none came. After daylight broke we saw a muleteer attending

a well-dressed woman with a parasol, and a little girl who seemed to

be her servant. Said Garcia, ‘There go two mules and two women whom St.

Nicholas has sent us. I would rather have had four mules, but no matter.

I’ll do the best I can with these.’



“He took his blunderbuss, and went down the pathway, hiding himself

among the brushwood.



“We followed him, _El Dancaire_ and I keeping a little way behind. As

soon as the woman saw us, instead of being frightened--and our dress

would have been enough to frighten any one--she burst into a fit of loud

laughter. ‘Ah! the _lillipendi_! They take me for an _erani_!’ *



     * “The idiots, they take me for a smart lady!”



“It was Carmen, but so well disguised that if she had spoken any other

language I should never have recognised her. She sprang off her mule,

and talked some time in an undertone with _El Dancaire_ and Garcia. Then

she said to me:



“‘Canary-bird, we shall meet again before you’re hanged. I’m off to

Gibraltar on gipsy business--you’ll soon have news of me.’



“We parted, after she had told us of a place where we should find

shelter for some days. That girl was the providence of our gang. We soon

received some money sent by her, and a piece of news which was still

more useful to us--to the effect that on a certain day two English lords

would travel from Gibraltar to Granada by a road she mentioned. This was

a word to the wise. They had plenty of good guineas. Garcia would have

killed them, but _El Dancaire_ and I objected. All we took from them,

besides their shirts, which we greatly needed, was their money and their

watches.



“Sir, a man may turn rogue in sheer thoughtlessness. You lose your

head over a pretty girl, you fight another man about her, there is a

catastrophe, you have to take to the mountains, and you turn from a

smuggler into a robber before you have time to think about it. After

this matter of the English lords, we concluded that the neighbourhood of

Gibraltar would not be healthy for us, and we plunged into the _Sierra

de Ronda_. You once mentioned Jose-Maria to me. Well, it was there I

made acquaintance with him. He always took his mistress with him on his

expeditions. She was a pretty girl, quiet, modest, well-mannered, you

never heard a vulgar word from her, and she was quite devoted to him.

He, on his side, led her a very unhappy life. He was always running

after other women, he ill-treated her, and then sometimes he would take

it into his head to be jealous. One day he slashed her with a knife.

Well, she only doted on him the more! That’s the way with women, and

especially with Andalusians. This girl was proud of the scar on her arm,

and would display it as though it were the most beautiful thing in the

world. And then Jose-Maria was the worst of comrades in the bargain.

In one expedition we made with him, he managed so that he kept all the

profits, and we had all the trouble and the blows. But I must go back to

my story. We had no sign at all from Carmen. _El Dancaire_ said: ‘One

of us will have to go to Gibraltar to get news of her. She must have

planned some business. I’d go at once, only I’m too well known at

Gibraltar.’ _El Tuerto_ said:



“‘I’m well known there too. I’ve played so many tricks on the

crayfish*--and as I’ve only one eye, it is not overeasy for me to

disguise myself.’



     * Name applied by the Spanish populace to the British

     soldiers, on account of the colour of their uniform.



“‘Then I suppose I must go,’ said I, delighted at the very idea of

seeing Carmen again. ‘Well, how am I to set about it?’



“The others answered:



“‘You must either go by sea, or you must get through by San Rocco,

whichever you like the best; once you are in Gibraltar, inquire in the

port where a chocolate-seller called _La Rollona_ lives. When you’ve

found her, she’ll tell you everything that’s happening.’



“It was settled that we were all to start for the Sierra, that I was

to leave my two companions there, and take my way to Gibraltar, in

the character of a fruit-seller. At Ronda one of our men procured me

a passport; at Gaucin I was provided with a donkey. I loaded it with

oranges and melons, and started forth. When I reached Gibraltar I found

that many people knew _La Rollona_, but that she was either dead or had

gone _ad finibus terroe_,* and, to my mind, her disappearance explained

the failure of our correspondence with Carmen. I stabled my donkey,

and began to move about the town, carrying my oranges as though to sell

them, but in reality looking to see whether I could not come across any

face I knew. The place is full of ragamuffins from every country in the

world, and it really is like the Tower of Babel, for you can’t go ten

paces along a street without hearing as many languages. I did see some

gipsies, but I hardly dared confide in them. I was taking stock of them,

and they were taking stock of me. We had mutually guessed each other

to be rogues, but the important thing for us was to know whether we

belonged to the same gang. After having spent two days in fruitless

wanderings, and having found out nothing either as to _La Rollona_ or

as to Carmen, I was thinking I would go back to my comrades as soon as I

had made a few purchases, when, toward sunset, as I was walking along a

street, I heard a woman’s voice from a window say, ‘Orange-seller!’



     * To the galleys, or else to all the devils in hell.



“I looked up, and on a balcony I saw Carmen looking out, beside a

scarlet-coated officer with gold epaulettes, curly hair, and all

the appearance of a rich _milord_. As for her, she was magnificently

dressed, a shawl hung on her shoulders, she’d a gold comb in her hair,

everything she wore was of silk; and the cunning little wretch, not a

bit altered, was laughing till she held her sides.



“The Englishman shouted to me in mangled Spanish to come upstairs, as

the lady wanted some oranges, and Carmen said to me in Basque:



“‘Come up, and don’t look astonished at anything!’



“Indeed, nothing that she did ought ever to have astonished me. I don’t

know whether I was most happy or wretched at seeing her again. At the

door of the house there was a tall English servant with a powdered head,

who ushered me into a splendid drawing-room. Instantly Carmen said to me

in Basque, ‘You don’t know one word of Spanish, and you don’t know me.’

Then turning to the Englishman, she added:



“‘I told you so. I saw at once he was a Basque. Now you’ll hear what a

queer language he speaks. Doesn’t he look silly? He’s like a cat that’s

been caught in the larder!’



“‘And you,’ said I to her in my own language, ‘you look like an impudent

jade--and I’ve a good mind to scar your face here and now, before your

spark.’



“‘My spark!’ said she. ‘Why, you’ve guessed that all alone! Are you

jealous of this idiot? You’re even sillier than you were before our

evening in the _Calle del Candilejo_! Don’t you see, fool, that at this

moment I’m doing gipsy business, and doing it in the most brilliant

manner? This house belongs to me--the guineas of that crayfish will

belong to me! I lead him by the nose, and I’ll lead him to a place that

he’ll never get out of!’



“‘And if I catch you doing any gipsy business in this style again, I’ll

see to it that you never do any again!’ said I.



“‘Ah! upon my word! Are you my _rom_, pray that you give me orders? If

_El Tuerto_ is pleased, what have you to do with it? Oughtn’t you to

be very happy that you are the only man who can call himself my

_minchorro_?’ *



     * My “lover,” or rather my “fancy.”



“‘What does he say?’ inquired the Englishman.



“‘He says he’s thirsty, and would like a drink,’ answered Carmen, and

she threw herself back upon a sofa, screaming with laughter at her own

translation.



“When that girl begins to laugh, sir, it was hopeless for anybody to try

and talk sense. Everybody laughed with her. The big Englishman began to

laugh too, like the idiot he was, and ordered the servant to bring me

something to drink.



“While I was drinking she said to me:



“‘Do you see that ring he has on his finger? If you like I’ll give it to

you.’



“And I answered:



“‘I would give one of my fingers to have your _milord_ out on the

mountains, and each of us with a _maquila_ in his fist.’



“‘_Maquila_, what does that mean?’ asked the Englishman.



“‘Maquila,’ said Carmen, still laughing, ‘means an orange. Isn’t it a

queer word for an orange? He says he’d like you to eat _maquila_.’



“‘Does he?’ said the Englishman. ‘Very well, bring more _maquila_

to-morrow.’



“While we were talking a servant came in and said dinner was ready.

Then the Englishman stood up, gave me a piastre, and offered his arm

to Carmen, as if she couldn’t have walked alone. Carmen, who was still

laughing, said to me:



“‘My boy, I can’t ask you to dinner. But to-morrow, as soon as you hear

the drums beat for parade, come here with your oranges. You’ll find a

better furnished room than the one in the _Calle del Candilejo_, and

you’ll see whether I am still your _Carmencita_. Then afterwards we’ll

talk about gipsy business.’



“I gave her no answer--even when I was in the street I could hear the

Englishman shouting, ‘Bring more _maquila_ to-morrow,’ and Carmen’s

peals of laughter.



“I went out, not knowing what I should do; I hardly slept, and next

morning I was so enraged with the treacherous creature that I made up

my mind to leave Gibraltar without seeing her again. But the moment

the drums began to roll, my courage failed me. I took up my net full of

oranges, and hurried off to Carmen’s house. Her window-shutters had been

pulled apart a little, and I saw her great dark eyes watching for me.

The powdered servant showed me in at once. Carmen sent him out with a

message, and as soon as we were alone she burst into one of her fits of

crocodile laughter and threw her arms around my neck. Never had I seen

her look so beautiful. She was dressed out like a queen, and scented;

she had silken furniture, embroidered curtains--and I togged out like

the thief I was!



“‘_Minchorro_,’ said Carmen, ‘I’ve a good mind to smash up everything

here, set fire to the house, and take myself off to the mountains.’ And

then she would fondle me, and then she would laugh, and she danced about

and tore up her fripperies. Never did monkey gambol nor make such faces,

nor play such wild tricks, as she did that day. When she had recovered

her gravity--



“‘Hark!’ she said, ‘this is gipsy business. I mean him to take me to

Ronda, where I have a sister who is a nun’ (here she shrieked with

laughter again). ‘We shall pass by a particular spot which I shall make

known to you. Then you must fall upon him and strip him to the skin.

Your best plan would be to do for him, but,’ she added, with a certain

fiendish smile of hers, which no one who saw it ever had any desire to

imitate, ‘do you know what you had better do? Let _El Tuerto_ come up

in front of you. You keep a little behind. The crayfish is brave, and

skilful too, and he has good pistols. Do you understand?’



“And she broke off with another fit of laughter that made me shiver.



“‘No,’ said I, ‘I hate Garcia, but he’s my comrade. Some day, maybe,

I’ll rid you of him, but we’ll settle our account after the fashion of

my country. It’s only chance that has made me a gipsy, and in certain

things I shall always be a thorough Navarrese,* as the proverb says.



     * _Navarro fino_.



“‘You’re a fool,’ she rejoined, ‘a simpleton, a regular _payllo_. You’re

just like the dwarf who thinks himself tall because he can spit a long

way.* You don’t love me! Be off with you!’



     * _Or esorjle de or marsichisle, sin chisnar lachinguel_.

     “The promise of a dwarf is that he will spit a long way.”--A

     gipsy proverb.



“Whenever she said to me ‘Be off with you,” I couldn’t go away. I

promised I would start back to my comrades and wait the arrival of the

Englishman. She, on her side, promised she would be ill until she left

Gibraltar for Ronda.



“I remained at Gibraltar two days longer. She had the boldness to

disguise herself and come and see me at the inn. I departed, I had a

plan of my own. I went back to our meeting-place with the information as

to the spot and the hour at which the Englishman and Carmen were to pass

by. I found _El Dancaire_ and Garcia waiting for me. We spent the night

in a wood, beside a fire made of pine-cones that blazed splendidly. I

suggested to Garcia that we should play cards, and he agreed. In the

second game I told him he was cheating; he began to laugh; I threw the

cards in his face. He tried to get at his blunderbuss. I set my foot on

it, and said, ‘They say you can use a knife as well as the best ruffian

in Malaga; will you try it with me?’ _El Dancaire_ tried to part us. I

had given Garcia one or two cuffs, his rage had given him courage, he

drew his knife, and I drew mine. We both of us told _El Dancaire_ he

must leave us alone, and let us fight it out. He saw there was no means

of stopping us, so he stood on one side. Garcia was already bent double,

like a cat ready to spring upon a mouse. He held his hat in his

left hand to parry with, and his knife in front of him--that’s their

Andalusian guard. I stood up in the Navarrese fashion, with my left arm

raised, my left leg forward, and my knife held straight along my right

thigh. I felt I was stronger than any giant. He flew at me like an

arrow. I turned round on my left foot, so that he found nothing in front

of him. But I thrust him in the throat, and the knife went in so far

that my hand was under his chin. I gave the blade such a twist that it

broke. That was the end. The blade was carried out of the wound by a

gush of blood as thick as my arm, and he fell full length on his face.



“‘What have you done?’ said _El Dancaire_ to me.



“‘Hark ye,’ said I, ‘we couldn’t live on together. I love Carmen and I

mean to be the only one. And besides, Garcia was a villain. I remember

what he did to that poor _Remendado_. There are only two of us left now,

but we are both good fellows. Come, will you have me for your friend,

for life or death?’



“_El Dancaire_ stretched out his hand. He was a man of fifty.



“‘Devil take these love stories!’ he cried. ‘If you’d asked him for

Carmen he’d have sold her to you for a piastre! There are only two of us

now--how shall we manage for to-morrow?’



“‘I’ll manage it all alone,’ I answered. ‘I can snap my fingers at the

whole world now.’



“We buried Garcia, and we moved our camp two hundred paces farther on.

The next morning Carmen and her Englishman came along with two muleteers

and a servant. I said to _El Dancaire_:



“‘I’ll look after the Englishman, you frighten the others--they’re not

armed!’



“The Englishman was a plucky fellow. He’d have killed me if Carmen

hadn’t jogged his elbow.



“To put it shortly, I won Carmen back that day, and my first words were

to tell her she was a widow.



“When she knew how it had all happened--



“‘You’ll always be a _lillipendi_,’ she said. ‘Garcia ought to have

killed you. Your Navarrese guard is a pack of nonsense, and he has sent

far more skilful men than you into the darkness. It was just that his

time had come--and yours will come too.’



“‘Ay, and yours too!--if you’re not a faithful _romi_ to me.’



“‘So be it,’ said she. ‘I’ve read in the coffee grounds, more than once,

that you and I were to end our lives together. Pshaw! what must be, will

be!’ and she rattled her castanets, as was her way when she wanted to

drive away some worrying thought.



“One runs on when one is talking about one’s self. I dare say all these

details bore you, but I shall soon be at the end of my story. Our new

life lasted for some considerable time. _El Dancaire_ and I gathered a

few comrades about us, who were more trustworthy than our earlier ones,

and we turned our attention to smuggling. Occasionally, indeed, I must

confess we stopped travellers on the highways, but never unless we were

at the last extremity, and could not avoid doing so; and besides, we

never ill-treated the travellers, and confined ourselves to taking their

money from them.



“For some months I was very well satisfied with Carmen. She still served

us in our smuggling operations, by giving us notice of any opportunity

of making a good haul. She remained either at Malaga, at Cordova, or at

Granada, but at a word from me she would leave everything, and come to

meet me at some _venta_ or even in our lonely camp. Only once--it was at

Malaga--she caused me some uneasiness. I heard she had fixed her fancy

upon a very rich merchant, with whom she probably proposed to play her

Gibraltar trick over again. In spite of everything _El Dancaire_ said to

stop me, I started off, walked into Malaga in broad daylight, sought for

Carmen and carried her off instantly. We had a sharp altercation.



“‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘now that you’re my _rom_ for good and all, I

don’t care for you so much as when you were my _minchorro_! I won’t be

worried, and above all, I won’t be ordered about. I choose to be free to

do as I like. Take care you don’t drive me too far; if you tire me

out, I’ll find some good fellow who’ll serve you just as you served _El

Tuerto_.’



“_El Dancaire_ patched it up between us; but we had said things to each

other that rankled in our hearts, and we were not as we had been before.

Shortly after that we had a misfortune: the soldiers caught us, _El

Dancaire_ and two of my comrades were killed; two others were taken.

I was sorely wounded, and, but for my good horse, I should have fallen

into the soldiers’ hands. Half dead with fatigue, and with a bullet in

my body, I sought shelter in a wood, with my only remaining comrade.

When I got off my horse I fainted away, and I thought I was going to

die there in the brushwood, like a shot hare. My comrade carried me to a

cave he knew of, and then he sent to fetch Carmen.



“She was at Granada, and she hurried to me at once. For a whole

fortnight she never left me for a single instant. She never closed her

eyes; she nursed me with a skill and care such as no woman ever showed

to the man she loved most tenderly. As soon as I could stand on my feet,

she conveyed me with the utmost secrecy to Granada. These gipsy women

find safe shelter everywhere, and I spent more than six weeks in a house

only two doors from that of the _Corregidor_ who was trying to arrest

me. More than once I saw him pass by, from behind the shutter. At last I

recovered, but I had thought a great deal, on my bed of pain, and I had

planned to change my way of life. I suggested to Carmen that we should

leave Spain, and seek an honest livelihood in the New World. She laughed

in my face.



“‘We were not born to plant cabbages,’ she cried. ‘Our fate is to live

_payllos_! Listen: I’ve arranged a business with Nathan Ben-Joseph at

Gibraltar. He has cotton stuffs that he can not get through till you

come to fetch them. He knows you’re alive, and reckons upon you. What

would our Gibraltar correspondents say if you failed them?’



“I let myself by persuaded, and took up my vile trade once more.



“While I was hiding at Granada there were bull-fights there, to which

Carmen went. When she came back she talked a great deal about a skilful

_picador_ of the name of Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how

much his embroidered jacket had cost him. I paid no attention to this;

but a few days later, Juanito, the only one of my comrades who was left,

told me he had seen Carmen with Lucas in a shop in the Zacatin. Then

I began to feel alarmed. I asked Carmen how and why she had made the

_picador’s_ acquaintance.



“‘He’s a man out of whom we may be able to get something,’ said she.

‘A noisy stream has either water in it or pebbles. He has earned twelve

hundred reals at the bull-fights. It must be one of two things: we

must either have his money, or else, as he is a good rider and a plucky

fellow, we can enroll him in our gang. We have lost such an one an such

an one; you’ll have to replace them. Take this man with you!’



“‘I want neither his money nor himself,’ I replied, ‘and I forbid you to

speak to him.’



“‘Beware!’ she retorted. ‘If any one defies me to do a thing, it’s very

quickly done.’



“Luckily the _picador_ departed to Malaga, and I set about passing in

the Jew’s cotton stuffs. This expedition gave me a great deal to do, and

Carmen as well. I forgot Lucas, and perhaps she forgot him too--for the

moment, at all events. It was just about that time, sir, that I met you,

first at Montilla, and then afterward at Cordova. I won’t talk about

that last interview. You know more about it, perhaps, than I do. Carmen

stole your watch from you, she wanted to have your money besides, and

especially that ring I see on your finger, and which she declared to be

a magic ring, the possession of which was very important to her. We had

a violent quarrel, and I struck her. She turned pale and began to cry.

It was the first time I had ever seen her cry, and it affected me in the

most painful manner. I begged her to forgive me, but she sulked with me

for a whole day, and when I started back to Montilla she wouldn’t kiss

me. My heart was still very sore, when, three days later, she joined me

with a smiling face and as merry as a lark. Everything was forgotten,

and we were like a pair of honeymoon lovers. Just as we were parting she

said, ‘There’s a _fete_ at Cordova; I shall go and see it, and then I

shall know what people will be coming away with money, and I can warn

you.’



“I let her go. When I was alone I thought about the _fete_, and about

the change in Carmen’s temper. ‘She must have avenged herself already,’

said I to myself, ‘since she was the first to make our quarrel up.’ A

peasant told me there was to be bull-fighting at Cordova. Then my blood

began to boil, and I went off like a madman straight to the bull-ring. I

had Lucas pointed out to me, and on the bench, just beside the barrier,

I recognised Carmen. One glance at her was enough to turn my suspicion

into certainty. When the first bull appeared Lucas began, as I had

expected to play the agreeable; he snatched the cockade off the bull and

presented it to Carmen, who put it in her hair at once.*



     * _La divisa_. A knot of ribbon, the colour of which

     indicates the pasturage from which each bull comes. This

     knot of ribbon is fastened into the bull’s hide with a sort

     of hook, and it is considered the very height of gallantry

     to snatch it off the living beast and present it to a woman.



“The bull avenged me. Lucas was knocked down, with his horse on his

chest, and the bull on top of both of them. I looked for Carmen, she had

disappeared from her place already. I couldn’t get out of mine, and I

was obliged to wait until the bull-fight was over. Then I went off to

that house you already know, and waited there quietly all that evening

and part of the night. Toward two o’clock in the morning Carmen came

back, and was rather surprised to see me.



“‘Come with me,’ said I.



“‘Very well,’ said she, ‘let’s be off.’



“I went and got my horse, and took her up behind me, and we travelled

all the rest of the night without saying a word to each other. When

daylight came we stopped at a lonely inn, not far from a hermitage.

There I said to Carmen:



“‘Listen--I forget everything, I won’t mention anything to you. But

swear one thing to me--that you’ll come with me to America, and live

there quietly!’



“‘No,’ said she, in a sulky voice, ‘I won’t go to America--I am very

well here.’



“‘That’s because you’re near Lucas. But be very sure that even if

he gets well now, he won’t make old bones. And, indeed, why should I

quarrel with him? I’m tired of killing all your lovers; I’ll kill you

this time.’



“She looked at me steadily with her wild eyes, and then she said:



“‘I’ve always thought you would kill me. The very first time I saw you I

had just met a priest at the door of my house. And to-night, as we were

going out of Cordova, didn’t you see anything? A hare ran across the

road between your horse’s feet. It is fate.’



“‘Carmencita,’ I asked, ‘don’t you love me any more?’



“She gave me no answer, she was sitting cross-legged on a mat, making

marks on the ground with her finger.



“‘Let us change our life, Carmen,’ said I imploringly. ‘Let us go away

and live somewhere we shall never be parted. You know we have a hundred

and twenty gold ounces buried under an oak not far from here, and then

we have more money with Ben-Joseph the Jew.’



“She began to smile, and then she said, ‘Me first, and then you. I know

it will happen like that.’



“‘Think about it,’ said I. ‘I’ve come to the end of my patience and my

courage. Make up your mind--or else I must make up mine.’



“I left her alone and walked toward the hermitage. I found the hermit

praying. I waited till his prayer was finished. I longed to pray myself,

but I couldn’t. When he rose up from his knees I went to him.



“‘Father,’ I said, ‘will you pray for some one who is in great danger?’



“‘I pray for every one who is afflicted,’ he replied.



“‘Can you say a mass for a soul which is perhaps about to go into the

presence of its Maker?’



“‘Yes,’ he answered, looking hard at me.



“And as there was something strange about me, he tried to make me talk.



“‘It seems to me that I have seen you somewhere,’ said he.



“I laid a piastre on his bench.



“‘When shall you say the mass?’ said I.



“‘In half an hour. The son of the innkeeper yonder is coming to serve

it. Tell me, young man, haven’t you something on your conscience that is

tormenting you? Will you listen to a Christian’s counsel?’



“I could hardly restrain my tears. I told him I would come back, and

hurried away. I went and lay down on the grass until I heard the bell.

Then I went back to the chapel, but I stayed outside it. When he had

said the mass, I went back to the _venta_. I was hoping Carmen would

have fled. She could have taken my horse and ridden away. But I found

her there still. She did not choose that any one should say I had

frightened her. While I had been away she had unfastened the hem of her

gown and taken out the lead that weighted it; and now she was sitting

before a table, looking into a bowl of water into which she had just

thrown the lead she had melted. She was so busy with her spells that at

first she didn’t notice my return. Sometimes she would take out a bit of

lead and turn it round every way with a melancholy look. Sometimes she

would sing one of those magic songs, which invoke the help of Maria

Padella, Don Pedro’s mistress, who is said to have been the _Bari

Crallisa_--the great gipsy queen.*



     * Maria Padella was accused of having bewitched Don Pedro.

     According to one popular tradition she presented Queen

     Blanche of Bourbon with a golden girdle which, in the eyes

     of the bewitched king, took on the appearance of a living

     snake. Hence the repugnance he always showed toward the

     unhappy princess.



“‘Carmen,’ I said to her, ‘will you come with me?’ She rose, threw away

her wooden bowl, and put her mantilla over her head ready to start. My

horse was led up, she mounted behind me, and we rode away.



“After we had gone a little distance I said to her, ‘So, my Carmen, you

are quite ready to follow me, isn’t that so?’



“She answered, ‘Yes, I’ll follow you, even to death--but I won’t live

with you any more.’



“We had reached a lonely gorge. I stopped my horse.



“‘Is this the place?’ she said.



“And with a spring she reached the ground. She took off her mantilla and

threw it at her feet, and stood motionless, with one hand on her hip,

looking at me steadily.



“‘You mean to kill me, I see that well,’ said she. ‘It is fate. But

you’ll never make me give in.’



“I said to her: ‘Be rational, I implore you; listen to me. All the

past is forgotten. Yet you know it is you who have been my ruin--it is

because of you that I am a robber and a murderer. Carmen, my Carmen, let

me save you, and save myself with you.’



“‘Jose,’ she answered, ‘what you ask is impossible. I don’t love you

any more. You love me still, and that is why you want to kill me. If

I liked, I might tell you some other lie, but I don’t choose to give

myself the trouble. Everything is over between us two. You are my _rom_,

and you have the right to kill your _romi_, but Carmen will always be

free. A _calli_ she was born, and a _calli_ she’ll die.’



“‘Then, you love Lucas?’ I asked.



“‘Yes, I have loved him--as I loved you--for an instant--less than I

loved you, perhaps. But now I don’t love anything, and I hate myself for

ever having loved you.’



“I cast myself at her feet, I seized her hands, I watered them with my

tears, I reminded her of all the happy moments we had spent together,

I offered to continue my brigand’s life, if that would please her.

Everything, sir, everything--I offered her everything if she would only

love me again.



“She said:



“‘Love you again? That’s not possible! Live with you? I will not do it!’



“I was wild with fury. I drew my knife, I would have had her look

frightened, and sue for mercy--but that woman was a demon.



“I cried, ‘For the last time I ask you. Will you stay with me?’



“‘No! no! no!’ she said, and she stamped her foot.



“Then she pulled a ring I had given her off her finger, and cast it into

the brushwood.



“I struck her twice over--I had taken Garcia’s knife, because I had

broken my own. At the second thrust she fell without a sound. It seems

to me that I can still see her great black eyes staring at me. Then they

grew dim and the lids closed.



“For a good hour I lay there prostrate beside her corpse. Then I

recollected that Carmen had often told me that she would like to lie

buried in a wood. I dug a grave for her with my knife and laid her in

it. I hunted about a long time for her ring, and I found it at last.

I put it into the grave beside her, with a little cross--perhaps I did

wrong. Then I got upon my horse, galloped to Cordova, and gave myself up

at the nearest guard-room. I told them I had killed Carmen, but I would

not tell them where her body was. That hermit was a holy man! He prayed

for her--he said a mass for her soul. Poor child! It’s the _calle_ who

are to blame for having brought her up as they did.”







CHAPTER IV



Spain is one of the countries in which those nomads, scattered all over

Europe, and known as Bohemians, Gitanas, Gipsies, Ziegeuner, and so

forth, are now to be found in the greatest numbers. Most of these people

live, or rather wander hither and thither, in the southern and eastern

provinces of Spain, in Andalusia, and Estramadura, in the kingdom

of Murcia. There are a great many of them in Catalonia. These last

frequently cross over into France and are to be seen at all our

southern fairs. The men generally call themselves grooms, horse doctors,

mule-clippers; to these trades they add the mending of saucepans and

brass utensils, not to mention smuggling and other illicit practices.

The women tell fortunes, beg, and sell all sorts of drugs, some of which

are innocent, while some are not. The physical characteristics of the

gipsies are more easily distinguished then described, and when you have

known one, you should be able to recognise a member of the race among

a thousand other men. It is by their physiognomy and expression,

especially, that they differ from the other inhabitants of the same

country. Their complexion is exceedingly swarthy, always darker than

that of the race among whom they live. Hence the name of _cale_ (blacks)

which they frequently apply to themselves.* Their eyes, set with a

decided slant, are large, very black, and shaded by long and heavy

lashes. Their glance can only be compared to that of a wild creature. It

is full at once of boldness and shyness, and in this respect their eyes

are a fair indication of their national character, which is cunning,

bold, but with “the natural fear of blows,” like Panurge. Most of the

men are strapping fellows, slight and active. I don’t think I ever saw

a gipsy who had grown fat. In Germany the gipsy women are often very

pretty; but beauty is very uncommon among the Spanish gitanas. When very

young, they may pass as being attractive in their ugliness, but once

they have reached motherhood, they become absolutely repulsive. The

filthiness of both sexes is incredible, and no one who has not seen a

gipsy matron’s hair can form any conception of what it is, not even

if he conjures up the roughest, the greasiest, and the dustiest heads

imaginable. In some of the large Andalusian towns certain of the gipsy

girls, somewhat better looking than their fellows, will take more care

of their personal appearance. These go out and earn money by performing

dances strongly resembling those forbidden at our public balls in

carnival time. An English missionary, Mr. Borrow, the author of two very

interesting works on the Spanish gipsies, whom he undertook to convert

on behalf of the Bible Society, declares there is no instance of any

gitana showing the smallest weakness for a man not belonging to her

own race. The praise he bestows upon their chastity strikes me as being

exceedingly exaggerated. In the first place, the great majority are

in the position of the ugly woman described by Ovid, “_Casta quam nemo

rogavit_.” As for the pretty ones, they are, like all Spanish women,

very fastidious in choosing their lovers. Their fancy must be taken,

and their favour must be earned. Mr. Borrow quotes, in proof of their

virtue, one trait which does honour to his own, and especially to his

simplicity: he declares that an immoral man of his acquaintance offered

several gold ounces to a pretty gitana, and offered them in vain. An

Andalusian, to whom I retailed this anecdote, asserted that the immoral

man in question would have been far more successful if he had shown the

girl two or three piastres, and that to offer gold ounces to a gipsy was

as poor a method of persuasion as to promise a couple of millions to a

tavern wench. However that may be, it is certain that the gitana shows

the most extraordinary devotion to her husband. There is no danger and

no suffering she will not brave, to help him in his need. One of the

names which the gipsies apply to themselves, _Rome_, or “the married

couple,” seems to me a proof of their racial respect for the married

state. Speaking generally, it may be asserted that their chief virtue is

their patriotism--if we may thus describe the fidelity they observe in

all their relations with persons of the same origin as their own, their

readiness to help one another, and the inviolable secrecy which they

keep for each other’s benefit, in all compromising matters. And indeed

something of the same sort may be noticed in all mysterious associations

which are beyond the pale of the law.



     * It has struck me that the German gipsies, though they

     thoroughly understand the word _cale_, do not care to be

     called by that name. Among themselves they always use the

     designation _Romane tchave_.



Some months ago, I paid a visit to a gipsy tribe in the Vosges country.

In the hut of an old woman, the oldest member of the tribe, I found

a gipsy, in no way related to the family, who was sick of a mortal

disease. The man had left a hospital, where he was well cared for, so

that he might die among his own people. For thirteen weeks he had been

lying in bed in their encampment, and receiving far better treatment

than any of the sons and sons-in-law who shared his shelter. He had a

good bed made of straw and moss, and sheets that were tolerably white,

whereas all the rest of the family, which numbered eleven persons, slept

on planks three feet long. So much for their hospitality. This very same

woman, humane as was her treatment of her guest said to me constantly

before the sick man: “_Singo, singo, homte hi mulo_.” “Soon, soon he

must die!” After all, these people live such miserable lives, that a

reference to the approach of death can have no terrors for them.



One remarkable feature in the gipsy character is their indifference

about religion. Not that they are strong-minded or sceptical. They

have never made any profession of atheism. Far from that, indeed, the

religion of the country which they inhabit is always theirs; but they

change their religion when they change the country of their residence.

They are equally free from the superstitions which replace religious

feeling in the minds of the vulgar. How, indeed, can superstition exist

among a race which, as a rule, makes its livelihood out of the credulity

of others? Nevertheless, I have remarked a particular horror of touching

a corpse among the Spanish gipsies. Very few of these could be induced

to carry a dead man to his grave, even if they were paid for it.



I have said that most gipsy women undertake to tell fortunes. They do

this very successfully. But they find a much greater source of profit

in the sale of charms and love-philters. Not only do they supply toads’

claws to hold fickle hearts, and powdered loadstone to kindle love in

cold ones, but if necessity arises, they can use mighty incantations,

which force the devil to lend them his aid. Last year the following

story was related to me by a Spanish lady. She was walking one day along

the _Calle d’Alcala_, feeling very sad and anxious. A gipsy woman who

was squatting on the pavement called out to her, “My pretty lady, your

lover has played you false!” (It was quite true.) “Shall I get him

back for you?” My readers will imagine with what joy the proposal was

accepted, and how complete was the confidence inspired by a person who

could thus guess the inmost secrets of the heart. As it would have been

impossible to proceed to perform the operations of magic in the most

crowded street in Madrid, a meeting was arranged for the next day.

“Nothing will be easier than to bring back the faithless one to your

feet!” said the gitana. “Do you happen to have a handkerchief, a scarf,

or a mantilla, that he gave you?” A silken scarf was handed her. “Now

sew a piastre into one corner of the scarf with crimson silk--sew half

a piastre into another corner--sew a peseta here--and a two-real piece

there; then, in the middle you must sew a gold coin--a doubloon would be

best.” The doubloon and all the other coins were duly sewn in. “Now give

me the scarf, and I’ll take it to the Campo Santo when midnight strikes.

You come along with me, if you want to see a fine piece of witchcraft.

I promise you shall see the man you love to-morrow!” The gipsy departed

alone for the Campo Santo, since my Spanish friend was too much afraid

of witchcraft to go there with her. I leave my readers to guess whether

my poor forsaken lady ever saw her lover, or her scarf, again.



In spite of their poverty and the sort of aversion they inspire, the

gipsies are treated with a certain amount of consideration by the more

ignorant folk, and they are very proud of it. They feel themselves to be

a superior race as regards intelligence, and they heartily despise the

people whose hospitality they enjoy. “These Gentiles are so stupid,”

 said one of the Vosges gipsies to me, “that there is no credit in taking

them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street.

I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a

charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon,

and then I began to mumble a few words in _Romany_. ‘You’re a fool,’ I

said, ‘you were born a fool, and you’ll die a fool!’ When I had got near

the door I said to her, in good German, ‘The most certain way of keeping

your stove from smoking is not to light any fire in it!’ and then I took

to my heels.”



The history of the gipsies is still a problem. We know, indeed, that

their first bands, which were few and far between, appeared in Eastern

Europe towards the beginning of the fifteenth century. But nobody can

tell whence they started, or why they came to Europe, and, what is still

more extraordinary, no one knows how they multiplied, within a short

time, and in so prodigious a fashion, and in several countries, all

very remote from each other. The gipsies themselves have preserved no

tradition whatsoever as to their origin, and though most of them do

speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, that is only because they

have adopted a very ancient fable respecting their race.



Most of the Orientalists who have studied the gipsy language believe

that the cradle of the race was in India. It appears, in fact, that

many of the roots and grammatical forms of the _Romany_ tongue are to

be found in idioms derived from the Sanskrit. As may be imagined, the

gipsies, during their long wanderings, have adopted many foreign words.

In every _Romany_ dialect a number of Greek words appear.



At the present day the gipsies have almost as many dialects as there are

separate hordes of their race. Everywhere, they speak the language of

the country they inhabit more easily than their own idiom, which

they seldom use, except with the object of conversing freely before

strangers. A comparison of the dialect of the German gipsies with that

used by the Spanish gipsies, who have held no communication with each

other for several centuries, reveals the existence of a great number of

words common to both. But everywhere the original language is notably

affected, though in different degrees, by its contact with the more

cultivated languages into the use of which the nomads have been forced.

German in one case and Spanish in the other have so modified the

_Romany_ groundwork that it would not be possible for a gipsy from the

Black Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brothers, although a

few sentences on each side would suffice to convince them that each was

speaking a dialect of the same language. Certain words in very frequent

use are, I believe, common to every dialect. Thus, in every vocabulary

which I have been able to consult, _pani_ means water, _manro_ means

bread, _mas_ stands for meat, and _lon_ for salt.



The nouns of number are almost the same in every case. The German

dialect seems to me much purer than the Spanish, for it has preserved

numbers of the primitive grammatical forms, whereas the Gitanos have

adopted those of the Castilian tongue. Nevertheless, some words are an

exception, as though to prove that the language was originally common

to all. The preterite of the German dialect is formed by adding _ium_

to the imperative, which is always the root of the verb. In the

Spanish _Romany_ the verbs are all conjugated on the model of the first

conjugation of the Castilian verbs. From _jamar_, the infinitive of “to

eat,” the regular conjugation should be _jame_, “I have eaten.” From

_lillar_, “to take,” _lille_, “I have taken.” Yet, some old gipsies

say, as an exception, _jayon_ and _lillon_. I am not acquainted with any

other verbs which have preserved this ancient form.



While I am thus showing off my small acquaintance with the _Romany_

language, I must notice a few words of French slang which our thieves

have borrowed from the gipsies. From _Les Mysteres de Paris_ honest

folk have learned that the word _chourin_ means “a knife.” This is

pure _Romany_--_tchouri_ is one of the words which is common to every

dialect. Monsieur Vidocq calls a horse _gres_--this again is a gipsy

word--_gras_, _gre_, _graste_, and _gris_. Add to this the word

_romanichel_, by which the gipsies are described in Parisian slang.

This is a corruption of _romane tchave_--“gipsy lads.” But a piece of

etymology of which I am really proud is that of the word _frimousse_,

“face,” “countenance”--a word which every schoolboy uses, or did use, in

my time. Note, in the first place, the Oudin, in his curious dictionary,

published in 1640, wrote the word _firlimouse_. Now in _Romany_,

_firla_, or _fila_, stands for “face,” and has the same meaning--it

is exactly the _os_ of the Latins. The combination of _firlamui_ was

instantly understood by a genuine gipsy, and I believe it to be true to

the spirit of the gipsy language.



I have surely said enough to give the readers of Carmen a favourable

idea of my _Romany_ studies. I will conclude with the following proverb,

which comes in very appropriately: _En retudi panda nasti abela macha_.

“Between closed lips no fly can pass.”