"What do you want?" I demanded, taking a step backward.
"Your fortune," they all cried.
"Tell my fortune, then," I replied, holding out my hand.
The old woman took my poor hand between her ten—I cannot say fingers, but shapeless bones—placed her sharp nose on it, raised her head, looked hard at me, pointed her finger toward me, and, swaying and pausing at every sentence as if she were reciting poetry, said to me in inspired accents, "Thou wert born upon a famous day.
"Upon a famous day also shalt thou die.
"Thou art the possessor of amazing riches."
Here she muttered I know not what about sweethearts and marriage and felicity, from which I understood that she supposed I was married, and then she continued: "On the day of thy marriage there was great feasting in thy house; there were many to give and take.
"And another woman wept.
"And when thou seest her the wings of thy heart open."
And so on in this strain, saying that I had sweethearts and friends and treasures and jewels in store for me every day of the year, in every country of the world. While the old woman was speaking they were all silent, as if they believed she had prophesied truly. She finally closed her prophecy with a formula of dismissal, and ended the formula by extending her arms and making a skip in a dancing attitude. I gave her the peseta, and the crowd broke into shouting, applause, and singing, making a thousand uncanny hops and gestures around me, saluting me with nudges and slaps of the hand on my back, as if I were an old friend, until finally, by dint of wriggling and striking now one and then another, I succeeded in opening a passage and rejoined my friends. But a new danger threatened us. The news of the arrival of a foreigner had spread, the tribes were in motion, the city of the gypsies was all in an uproar; from the neighboring houses and from the distant huts, from the top of the hill and the bottom of the valley, ran boys, women with babies about their necks, old men with canes, cripples, and professional imposters, septuagenarian prophetesses who wished to tell my fortune—an army of beggars coming upon us from every direction. It was night; there was no time for hesitation; we broke into a run toward the city like school-boys. Then a devilish cry broke out behind us, and the nimblest began to chase us. Thanks to Heaven! after a short race we found ourselves in safety—tired and breathless, and covered with dust, but safe.