“Nonsense! you see well enough that I am a gypsy; would you like me to
tell your _baji_?[5] Have you ever heard of La Carmencita? I am she.”
I was such a ne’er-do-well in those days--fifteen years ago--that I did
not recoil in horror when I found myself seated beside a sorceress.
“Pshaw!” I said to myself, “last week I supped with a highway robber,
to-day I will eat ices with a handmaid of the devil. When one is
travelling, one must see everything.”
I had still another motive for cultivating her acquaintance. When I
left school, I confess to my shame, I had wasted some time studying the
occult sciences, and several times indeed I had been tempted to conjure
up the spirits of darkness. Long since cured of my fondness for such
investigations, I still retained, nevertheless, a certain amount of
curiosity concerning all kinds of superstition, and I rejoiced at the
prospect of learning how far the art of magic had been carried among
the gypsies.
While talking together we had entered the _neveria_ and had taken
our seats at a small table lighted by a candle confined in a glass
globe. I had abundant opportunity to examine my _gitana_, while
divers respectable folk who were eating ices there lost themselves in
amazement at seeing me in such goodly company.
I seriously doubt whether Señorita Carmen was of the pure breed; at
all events, she was infinitely prettier than any of the women of her
nation whom I had ever met. No woman is beautiful, say the Spaniards,
unless she combines thirty _so’s_; or, if you prefer, unless she may
be described by ten adjectives, each of which is applicable to three
parts of her person. For instance, she must have three black things:
eyes, lashes, and eyebrows, etc. (See Brantôme for the rest.) My gypsy
could make no pretension to so many perfections. Her skin, albeit
perfectly smooth, closely resembled the hue of copper. Her eyes were
oblique, but of a beautiful shape; her lips a little heavy but well
formed, and disclosed two rows of teeth whiter than almonds without
their skins. Her hair, which was possibly a bit coarse, was black with
a blue reflection, like a crow’s wing, and long and glossy. To avoid
fatiguing you with a too verbose description, I will say that for each
defect she had some good point, which stood out the more boldly perhaps
by the very contrast. It was a strange, wild type of beauty, a face
which took one by surprise at first, but which one could not forget.
Her eyes, especially, had an expression at once voluptuous and fierce,
which I have never seen since in any mortal eye. “A gypsy’s eye is a
wolf’s eye” is a Spanish saying which denotes keen observation. If you
have not the time to go to the Jardin des Plantes to study the glance
of a wolf, observe your cat when it is watching a sparrow.
Of course it would have been absurd to have my fortune told in a café.
So I requested the pretty sorceress to allow me to accompany her to her
home. She readily consented, but she desired once more to know how the
time was passing and asked me to make my watch strike again.
“Is it real gold?” she inquired, scrutinising it with extraordinary
attention.
When we left the café, it was quite dark; most of the shops were
closed, and the streets almost deserted. We crossed the Guadalquivir
by the bridge, and at the very extremity of the suburb, we stopped
in front of a house which bore no resemblance to a palace. A child
admitted us. The gypsy said some words to him in a language entirely
unknown to me, which I afterwards found was the _rommani_ or _chipe
calli_, the language of the _gitanos_. The child at once disappeared,
leaving us in a room of considerable size, 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 alone, the gypsy took from her chest a pack of cards
which seemed to have seen much service, a magnet, a dried chameleon,
and a number of other articles essential to her art. Then she bade me
make a cross in my left hand with a coin, and the magic ceremonies
began. It is unnecessary to repeat her predictions; and, as for her
method of operation, it was evident that she was not a sorceress by
halves.
Unfortunately we were soon disturbed. The door was suddenly thrown
open with violence, and a man wrapped to the eyes in a brown cloak
entered the room, addressing the gypsy in a far from amiable fashion.
I did not understand what he said, but his tone indicated that he was
in a very bad temper. At sight of him the _gitana_ exhibited neither
surprise nor anger, but she ran to meet him, and, with extraordinary
volubility, said several sentences in the mysterious tongue which she
had already used in my presence. The word _payllo_, repeated several
times, was the only word that I understood. I knew that the gypsies
designated thus every man of another race than their own. Assuming
that I was the subject of discussion, I looked forward to a delicate
explanation; I already had my hand on one of the stools and was
deliberating as to the precise moment when it would be well for me to
hurl it at the intruder’s head. But he roughly pushed the gypsy aside
and strode toward me; then recoiled a step, exclaiming:
“What! is it you, señor?”
I looked closely at him and recognised my friend Don José. At that
moment I was inclined to regret that I had not let him be hanged.
“Ah! is it you, my fine fellow?” I cried, laughing as heartily as I
could manage to do; “you interrupted the señorita just as she was
telling me some very interesting things.”
“Always the same! This must come to an end,” he said between his teeth,
glaring savagely at the girl.
She meanwhile continued to talk to him in her own language. She became
excited by degrees. Her eye became bloodshot and terrible to look at,
her features contracted, and she stamped upon the floor. It seemed to
me that she was earnestly urging him to do something which he evidently
hesitated to do. What that something was, I fancied that I understood
only too well, when I saw her draw her little hand swiftly back and
forth under her chin. I was tempted to believe that it was a matter of
cutting a throat, and I had some suspicion that the throat in question
was my own.
To all this torrent of eloquence Don José replied only by two or three
words uttered in a sharp tone. Thereupon the gypsy bestowed on him a
glance of supreme contempt; then seated herself Turkish fashion in a
corner of the room, selected an orange, peeled it, and began to eat it.
Don José seized my arm, opened the door and led me into the street.
We walked about two hundred yards in absolute silence. Then he said,
extending his hand:
“Go straight ahead and you will come to the bridge.”
With that he turned his back on me and walked rapidly away. I returned
to my inn rather sheepishly and in a very bad temper. The worst feature
of the affair was that when I undressed I found that my watch was
missing.
Various considerations deterred me from going the next day to demand
it back, or from applying to the corregidor to recover it for me.
I completed my work on the manuscript at the Dominican convent and
departed for Seville. After wandering about Andalusia for several
months, I determined to return to Madrid, and it was necessary for me
to pass through Cordova once more. I did not propose to make a long
stay there, for I had taken a violent dislike to that fair city and
the bathers in the Guadalquivir. However, a few errands to do and some
friends to call upon would detain me three or four days at least in the
ancient capital of the Mussulman princes.
When I appeared at the Dominican convent, one of the fathers, who had
taken a lively interest in my investigations concerning the location of
Munda, welcomed me with open arms.
“Blessed be the name of God!” he cried. “Welcome, my dear friend! We
all believed you to be dead, and I who speak to you, I have recited
many _paters_ and _aves_, which I do not regret, for the welfare of
your soul. So you were not murdered?--for robbed we know that you
were.”
“How so?” I asked, not a little astonished.
“Why, yes--you know, that beautiful repeating watch that you used to
make strike in the library when we told you that it was time to go to
the choir. Well! it has been recovered; it will be restored to you.”
“That is to say,” I interrupted, somewhat disconcerted, “I lost it----”
“The villain is behind the bars, and as he was known to be a man who
would fire a gun at a Christian to obtain a penny, we were terribly
afraid that he had killed you. I will go to the corregidor’s with you,
and we will obtain your fine watch. And then, do not let me hear you
whisper that justice does not know its business in Spain!”
“I confess,” said I, “that I would rather lose my watch than give
testimony in court which might send a poor devil to the gallows,
especially because--because----”
“Oh! do not be alarmed on that score; he is well recommended, and he
cannot be hanged twice. When I say hanged, I am wrong. He is a hidalgo,
is your robber; so that he will be garroted[6] day after to-morrow,
without fail. So, you see, one theft more or less will have no effect
on his fate. Would to God that he had done nothing but steal! but he
has committed several murders, each more shocking than the last.”
“What is his name?”
“He is known throughout the province by the name of José Navarro,
but he has another Basque name, which neither you nor I could ever
pronounce. But he is a man worth looking at, and you, interested as you
are in seeing all the curiosities of the province, should not neglect
the opportunity to learn how villains leave this world in Spain. It
will be in the chapel, and Father Martinez will take you thither.”
My Dominican insisted so earnestly that I should view the preparations
for the “pretty little hanging” that I could not refuse. I went to see
the prisoner, having first supplied myself with a bunch of cigars,
which, I hoped, would induce him to pardon my indiscretion.
I was ushered into the presence of Don José while he was eating. He
nodded coldly to me, and thanked me courteously for the present I
brought him. Having counted the cigars in the bunch which I placed in
his hands, he took out a certain number and returned the rest to me,
remarking that he should not need any more.
I asked him if I could make his lot any easier by the expenditure of a
little money or by the influence of my friends. At first he shrugged
his shoulders and smiled sadly; but in a moment, on further reflection,
he requested me to have a mass said for the salvation of his soul.
“Would you,” he added timidly,--“would you be willing to have one said
also for a person who injured you?”
“Certainly, my dear fellow,” I said; “but there is no one in this part
of the country who has injured me, so far as I know.”
He took my hand and pressed it, with a solemn expression. After a
moment’s silence, he continued:
“May I venture to ask another favour at your hands? When you return to
your own country, perhaps you will pass through Navarre; at all events,
you will go by way of Vittoria, which is not very far away.”
“Yes,” I said, “I certainly shall go by way of Vittoria, but it is not
impossible that I may turn aside to go to Pampelune, and, to oblige
you, I think that I would willingly make that détour.”
“Very well! if you go to Pampelune, you will see more than one thing
that will interest you. It is a fine city. I will give you this
locket (he showed me a little silver locket which he wore about his
neck); you will wrap it in paper”--he paused a moment to control his
emotion--“and deliver it, or have it delivered, to a good woman whose
address I will give you. You will tell her that I am dead, but that you
do not know how I died.”
I promised to perform his commission. I saw him again the next day, and
passed a large part of the day with him. It was from his own lips that
I learned the melancholy adventures which follow.