A week—more than one—went by, and the gipsy girl remained in this inactive, dreamy state. Then a sudden change came over her. She grew animated, the wild passions of her nature kindled up again. You could see that her heart slept no longer. The dove that had brooded there so sweetly had taken wing. She went to the Alhambra early. She left it sometimes after dark, often bringing a little money which she gave the old woman with trembling hands and downcast eyes, that were frequently full of tears.
At this season you could not have looked upon her face without admiration. The bloom upon the sunniest peach suffered in comparison with the rich hues of her cheek. Her eyes were starry in their brightness. You could not speak to her without bringing a smile to her mouth, that brightened it as the sunshine glows upon ripe strawberries. If tears sometimes started beneath these thick lashes, they only served to light up the eyes they could not dim, for every bright drop seemed to leap from a blissful source.
She was quiet though, and said little. You only knew how exquisite was her happiness by the glorious beauty of her face.
Then, all this exquisite joy went gradually out, as you see a lamp fade when the perfume oil burns low. She wept no more blissful tears. Her smile grew constrained, and took a marble paleness. It was singular that no one observed this; that the keen-eyed people of her tribe never suspected what was going on in that young heart—but so it was.
One person of the tribe would not have been thus blinded; for he loved the gipsy girl as only the wild, strong nature of the pure blood can love; but he had gone to attend the annual fair at Seville, and my mother was left to the tempter and her own heart. Much that passed during this time remains a mystery even to me, her child, for in the manuscript that she left, there is hesitation, embarrassment—many erasures and whole sentences blotted out, as if no language could satisfy her—or, as if there existed much that she could not force herself to write. Still, she seemed to linger about this period as if afraid to go on. It was her first love-dream; how could she describe it? Her first step in the crooked way which no human being can possibly make straight. How could she describe that to her own child? Still, much was written, much revealed, that I shall put into form. For my mother was a child of the Alhambra, and there her destiny commenced shaping itself into a fate.
CHAPTER II.
THE SIBYL’S CAVE.
I have spoken of the grandame who was my mother’s only relative. I have a sort of fierce pride in this old woman, and love to trace the Rommany blood that burns in my own heart, back to that weird source; for in her withered veins it grew, like old wine, strong with age and bitter with the hate which our people bore to the Gentiles.
Learned men still cavil about our origin. They gather up scraps of our language, they ferret out our habits, and torture our tradition to establish the various theories, which, after all, must remain theories; for ours is a poverty-stricken people. We have no possession, not even a history. They call us a nation of thieves, and say that even our traditions are stolen. Be it so! at least we are faithful to each other, a boast which the brotherhood of civilization cannot honestly make.
But though wise men have traced us back to Judea, and made us worshippers of idols, we who worship nothing in heaven or on earth, know by the secret sympathies that link us together—sympathies which no Gentile can comprehend—that the blood within our hearts is of another source than the idolaters of Judea.
They say that our traditions are stolen from your Bible; that from the solemn prophecies written there, we have gathered up a belief in our Egyptian origin. But my great grandmother never looked into your Bible. She would have trampled the falsehood under her feet and spit upon it, had any one hinted that in the Gentile language, lay the great secret of her race.