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.