Hear ye the troika-bell a-ringing,
And see the peasant driver there?
Hear ye the mournful song he’s singing,
Like distant tolling through the air?“O eyes, blue eyes, to me so lonely,
O eyes—alas!—ye give me pain;
O eyes, that once looked at me only,
I ne’er shall see your like again.“Farewell, my darling, now in heaven,
And still the heaven of my soul;
Farewell, thou father town, O Moscow,
Where I have left my life, my all!”And ever at the rein still straining,
One backward glance the driver gave;
Sees but once more a green low hillock,
Sees but once more his loved one’s grave.
“Stoi!”—Halt! We stopped at a stylish-looking building, entered a hall, left our skubas, and I heard the general ask, “Are the gypsies here?” An affirmative being given, we entered a large room, and there, sure enough, stood six or eight girls and two men, all very well dressed, and all unmistakably Romany, though smaller and of much slighter or more delicate frame than the powerful gypsy “travelers” of England. In an instant every pair of great, wild eyes was fixed on me. The general was in every way a more striking figure, but I was manifestly a fresh stranger, who knew nothing of the country, and certainly nothing of gypsies or gypsydom. Such a verdant visitor is always most interesting. It was not by any means my first reception of the kind, and, as I reviewed at a glance the whole party, I said within myself:—
“Wait an instant, you black snakes, and I will give you something to make you stare.”
This promise I kept, when a young man, who looked like a handsome light Hindoo, stepped up and addressed me in Russian. I looked long and steadily at him before I spoke, and then said:—
“Latcho divvus prala!” (Good day, brother.)
“What is that?” he exclaimed, startled.
“Tu jines latcho adosta.” (You know very well.) And then, with the expression in his face of a man who has been familiarly addressed by a brazen statue, or asked by a new-born babe, “What o’clock is it?” but with great joy, he cried:—
“Romanichal!”
In an instant they were all around me, marveling greatly, and earnestly expressing their marvel, at what new species of gypsy I might be; being in this quite unlike those of England, who, even when they are astonished “out of their senses” at being addressed in Romany by a gentleman, make the most red-Indian efforts to conceal their amazement. But I speedily found that these Russian gypsies were as unaffected and child-like as they were gentle in manner, and that they compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy-begging, always-suspecting Romany roughs and rufianas as a delicate greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bull-dog, trained by an unusually “fly” tramp.
That the girls were first to the fore in questioning me will be doubted by no one. But we had great trouble in effecting a mutual understanding. Their Romany was full of Russian; their pronunciation puzzled me; they “bit off their words,” and used many in a strange or false sense. Yet, notwithstanding this, I contrived to converse pretty readily with the men,—very readily with the captain, a man as dark as Ben Lee, to those who know Benjamin, or as mahogany, to those who know him not. But with the women it was very difficult to converse. There is a theory current that women have a specialty of tact and readiness in understanding a foreigner, or in making themselves understood; it may be so with