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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 2465 ***
+
+
+
+
+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.”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 2465 ***