of us know anything about it. But we hear that you Romanichals over the Black Water understand it. Oh, rya,” she cried, eagerly, “you know so much,—you’re such a deep Romany,—can’t you tell fortunes?”
“I should indeed know very little about Romany ways,” I replied, gravely, “if I could not pen dorriki. But I tell you beforehand, terni pen, ‘dorrikipen hi hokanipen,’ little sister, fortune-telling is deceiving. Yet what the lines say I can read.”
In an instant six as pretty little gypsy hands as I ever beheld were thrust before me, and I heard as many cries of delight. “Tell my fortune, rya! tell mine! and mine!” exclaimed the damsels, and I complied. It was all very well to tell them there was nothing in it; they knew a trick worth two of that. I perceived at once that the faith which endures beyond its own knowledge was placed in all I said. In England the gypsy woman, who at home ridicules her own fortune-telling and her dupes, still puts faith in a gusveri mush, or some “wise man,” who with crystal or magical apparatus professes occult knowledge; for she thinks that her own false art is an imitation of a true one. It is really amusing to see the reverence with which an old gypsy will look at the awful hieroglyphics in Cornelius Agrippa’s “Occult Philosophy,” or, better still, “Trithemius,” and, as a gift, any ordinary fortune-telling book is esteemed by them beyond rubies. It is true that they cannot read it, but the precious volume is treasured like a fetich, and the owner is happy in the thought of at least possessing darksome and forbidden lore, though it be of no earthly use to her. After all the kindness they had shown me, I could not find
it in my heart to refuse to tell these gentle Zingari their little fortunes. It is not, I admit, exactly in the order of things that the chicken should dress the cook, or the Gorgio tell fortunes to gypsies; but he who wanders in strange lands meets with strange adventures. So, with a full knowledge of the legal penalties attached in England to palmistry and other conjuration, and with the then pending Slade case knocking heavily on my conscience, I proceeded to examine and predict. When I afterward narrated this incident to the late G. H. Lewes, he expressed himself to the effect that to tell fortunes to gypsies struck him as the very ne plus ultra of cheek,—which shows how extremes meet; for verily it was with great modesty and proper diffidence that I ventured to foretell the lives of these little ladies, having an antipathy to the practice of chiromancing as to other romancing.
I have observed that as among men of great and varied culture, and of extensive experience, there are more complex and delicate shades and half-shades of light in the face, so in the palm the lines are correspondingly varied and broken. Take a man of intellect and a peasant, of equal excellence of figure according to the literal rules of art or of anatomy, and this subtile multiplicity of variety shows itself in the whole body in favor of the “gentleman,” so that it would almost seem as if every book we read is republished in the person. The first thing that struck me in these gypsy hands was the fewness of the lines, their clearly defined sweep, and their simplicity. In every one the line of life was unbroken, and, in fine, one might think from a drawing of the hand, and without knowing who its owner might be, that he or
she was of a type of character unknown in most great European cities,—a being gifted with special culture, and in a certain simple sense refined, but not endowed with experience in a thousand confused phases of life. The hands of a true genius, who has passed through life earnestly devoted to a single art, however, are on the whole like these of the gypsies. Such, for example, are the hands of Fanny Janauschek, the lines of which agree to perfection with the laws of chiromancy. The art reminds one of Cervantes’s ape, who told the past and present, but not the future. And here “tell me what thou hast been, and I will tell what thou wilt be” gives a fine opportunity to the soothsayer.
To avoid mistakes I told the fortunes in French, which was translated into Russian. I need not say that every word was listened to with earnest attention, or that the group of dark but young and comely faces, as they gathered around and bent over, would have made a good subject for a picture. After the girls, the mother must needs hear her dorriki also, and last of all the young Russian gentleman, who seemed to take as earnest an interest in his future as even the gypsies. As he alone understood French, and as he appeared to be un peu gaillard, and, finally, as the lines of his hand said nothing to the contrary, I predicted for him in detail a fortune in which bonnes fortunes were not at all wanting. I think he was pleased, but when I asked him if he would translate what I had said of his future into Russian, he replied with a slight wink and a scarcely perceptible negative. I suppose he had his reasons for declining.
Then we had singing again, and Christopher, the brother, a wild and gay young gypsy, became so excited
that while playing the guitar he also danced and caroled, and the sweet voices of the girls rose in chorus, and I was again importuned for the Romany song, and we had altogether a very Bohemian frolic. I was sorry when the early twilight faded into night, and I was obliged, notwithstanding many entreaties to the contrary, to take my leave. These gypsies had been very friendly and kind to me in a strange city, where I had not an acquaintance, and where I had expected none. They had given me of their very best; for they gave me songs which I can never forget, and which were better to me than all the opera could bestow. The young Russian, polite to the last, went bareheaded with me into the street, and, hailing a sleigh-driver, began to bargain for me. In Moscow, as in other places, it makes a great difference in the fare whether one takes a public conveyance from before the first hotel or from a house in the gypsy quarter. I had paid seventy kopecks to come, and I at once found that my new friend and the driver were engaged in wild and fierce dispute whether I should pay twenty or thirty to return.
“Oh, give him thirty!” I exclaimed. “It’s little enough.”