Carmen
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