[Illustration: _The Alhambra and the Valley of the Darro_]
I turned and saw along the street that was lost in a distant grove
an interminable row of houses. Of houses? Rather of dens dug in the
earth, with a bit of wall in front, with holes for windows and
crevices for doors, and wild plants of every sort on top and along
the sides--veritable caves of beasts, in which by the glow of faint
lights, scarcely visible, swarmed the gypsies by hundreds; a people
multiplying in the bowels of the mountain, poorer, blacker, and more
savage than any seen before; another city, unknown to the greater part
of Granada, inaccessible to the police, closed to the census-officers,
ignorant of every law and of all government, living one knows not
how, how numerous no one knows, foreign to the city, to Spain, and to
modern civilization, with a language and statutes and manners of their
own--superstitious, false, thieving, beggarly, and fierce.
"Button up your coat and look out for your watch," said Gongora to me,
"and let us go forward."
We had not taken a hundred steps when a half-naked boy, black as the
walls of his hovel, ran out, gave a cry, and, making a sign to the
other boys who followed him, dashed toward us; behind the boys came the
women; behind the women the men, and then old men, old women, and more
children; and in less time than it takes to tell it we were surrounded
by a crowd. My two friends, recognized as Granadines, succeeded in
saving themselves; I was left in the lurch. I can still see those
horrid faces, still hear those voices, and still feel the pressure of
those hands: gesticulating, shouting, saying a thousand things which I
did not understand; dragging at my coat, my waistcoat, and my sleeves,
they pressed upon me like a pack of famished people, breathed in my
face, and cut off my very breath. They were, for the most part, half
naked and emaciated--their garments falling in tatters, with unkempt
hair, horrible to see; I seemed to be like Don Roderick in the midst of
a crowd of the infected in that famous dream of the August night.
"What do these people want?" I asked myself. "Where have I been
brought? How shall I get out of this?" I felt almost a sense of fear,
and looked around uneasily. Little by little I began to understand.
"I have a sore on my shoulder," said one; "I cannot work; give me a
penny."
"I have a broken leg," said another.
"I have a palsied arm."
"I have had a long sickness."
"_Un cuarto, Señorito!_"
"_Un real, caballero!_"
"_Una peseta para todos!_"
This last request was received with a general cry of approval: "_Una
peseta para todos!_" (a _peseta_ for us all).
With some little trepidation I drew out my purse; they all stood on
tiptoe; the nearest poked their chins into it; those behind put their
chins on the heads of those in front; the farthest stretched out their
arms.
"One moment," I cried. "Who has the most authority among you all?"
They all replied with one voice, stretching out their arms toward the
same person, "That one."
It was a terrible old hag, all nose and chin, with a great tuft of
white hair standing straight above her head like a bunch of feathers,
and a mouth which seemed like a letter-box, with little clothing save a
chemise--black, shrivelled, and mummified; she approached me bowing and
smiling, and held out her hands to take mine.
"What do you want?" I demanded, taking a step backward.
"Your fortune," they all cried.
"Tell my fortune, then," I replied, holding out my hand.
The old woman took my poor hand between her ten--I cannot say fingers,
but shapeless bones--placed her sharp nose on it, raised her head,
looked hard at me, pointed her finger toward me, and, swaying and
pausing at every sentence as if she were reciting poetry, said to me in
inspired accents, "Thou wert born upon a famous day.
"Upon a famous day also shalt thou die.
"Thou art the possessor of amazing riches."
Here she muttered I know not what about sweethearts and marriage and
felicity, from which I understood that she supposed I was married,
and then she continued: "On the day of thy marriage there was great
feasting in thy house; there were many to give and take.
"And another woman wept.
"And when thou seest her the wings of thy heart open."
And so on in this strain, saying that I had sweethearts and friends
and treasures and jewels in store for me every day of the year, in
every country of the world. While the old woman was speaking they
were all silent, as if they believed she had prophesied truly. She
finally closed her prophecy with a formula of dismissal, and ended the
formula by extending her arms and making a skip in a dancing attitude.
I gave her the peseta, and the crowd broke into shouting, applause,
and singing, making a thousand uncanny hops and gestures around me,
saluting me with nudges and slaps of the hand on my back, as if I were
an old friend, until finally, by dint of wriggling and striking now
one and then another, I succeeded in opening a passage and rejoined
my friends. But a new danger threatened us. The news of the arrival
of a foreigner had spread, the tribes were in motion, the city of the
gypsies was all in an uproar; from the neighboring houses and from the
distant huts, from the top of the hill and the bottom of the valley,
ran boys, women with babies about their necks, old men with canes,
cripples, and professional imposters, septuagenarian prophetesses who
wished to tell my fortune--an army of beggars coming upon us from every
direction. It was night; there was no time for hesitation; we broke
into a run toward the city like school-boys. Then a devilish cry broke
out behind us, and the nimblest began to chase us. Thanks to Heaven!
after a short race we found ourselves in safety--tired and breathless,
and covered with dust, but safe.
"It was necessary to escape at any cost," said Señor Melchiorre with a
laugh; "otherwise we should have gone home without our shirts."
"And take notice," added Gongora, "that we have seen only the door of
Gypsy-town, the civilized part, not the Paris nor the Madrid, but at
least the Granada, of the Albaicin. If we could only have gone on! if
you could have seen the rest!"
"But how many thousand are there of those people?" I demanded.
"No one knows."
"How do they live?"
"No one can imagine."
"What authority do they recognize?"
"One only--_los reyes_ (the kings), the heads of families or of houses,
those who have the most money and years. They never go out of their
city; they know nothing, they live in the dark as to all that happens
beyond the circle of their hovels. Dynasties fall, governments change,
armies clash, and it is a miracle if the news ever reaches their ears.
Ask them if Isabella is still on the throne; they do not know. Ask
them who Amadeus is; they have never heard his name. They are born
and perish like flies, and they live as they lived centuries ago,
multiplying without leaving their own boundaries, ignorant and unknown,
seeing nothing all their lives beyond the valleys lying below their
feet and the Alhambra towering above their heads."
We passed again through all the streets that we had traversed, now
dark and deserted, and endless as it seemed to me; and, climbing and
descending, turning and twisting, and turning again, we finally arrived
at the square of the Audiencia in the middle of the city of Granada--in
the civilized world. At the sight of the brightly-lighted cafés and
shops I experienced a feeling of pleasure, as if I had just returned to
city-life after a year's sojourn in an uninhabited wilderness.
On the evening of the next day I left for Valencia. I remember that a
few moments before starting, as I was paying my hotel-bill, I observed
to the proprietor that there was an overcharge for one candle, and
playfully asked him, "Will you deduct it for me?" The proprietor seized
his pen, and, deducting twenty centimes from the total charge, replied
in a voice which he wished to appear emotional, "The devil! among
Italians!"