It has been said that there is a secret monitor, or conscience, within every heart, which immediately upbraids the individual on the commission of a crime; this may be true, but certainly the monitor within the Gitáno breast is a very feeble one, for little attention is ever paid to its reproofs. With regard to conscience, be it permitted to observe, that it varies much according to climate, country, and religion; perhaps nowhere is it so terrible and strong as in England; I need not say why. Amongst the English, I have seen many individuals stricken low, and broken-hearted, by the force of conscience; but never amongst the Spaniards or Italians; and I never yet could observe that the crimes which the Gitános were daily and hourly committing occasioned them the slightest uneasiness.
One important discovery I made among them: it was, that no individual, however wicked and hardened, is utterly godless. Call it superstition, if you will, still a certain fear and reverence of something sacred and supreme would hang about them. I have heard Gitános stiffly deny the existence of a Deity, and express the utmost contempt for everything holy; yet they subsequently never failed to contradict themselves, by permitting some expression to escape which belied their assertions, and of this I shall presently give a remarkable instance.
I found the women much more disposed to listen to anything I had to say than the men, who were in general so taken up with their traffic that they could think and talk of nothing else; the women, too, had more curiosity and more intelligence; the conversational powers of some of them I found to be very great, and yet they were destitute of the slightest rudiments of education, and were thieves by profession. At Madrid I had regular conversaziones, or, as they are called in Spanish, tertúlias, with these women, who generally visited me twice a week; they were perfectly unreserved towards me with respect to their actions and practices, though their behaviour, when present, was invariably strictly proper. I have already had cause to mention Pépa the sibyl, and her daughter-in-law, Chicharona; the manners of the first were sometimes almost elegant, though, next to Aurora, she was the most notorious she-thug in Madrid; Chicharona was good-humoured, like most fat personages. Pépa had likewise two daughters, one of whom, a very remarkable female, was called La Tuérta, from the circumstance of her having but one eye, and the other, who was a girl of about thirteen, La Casdamí, or the scorpion, from the malice which she occasionally displayed.
Pépa and Chicharona were invariably my most constant visitors. One day in winter they arrived as usual; the One-eyed and the Scorpion following behind.
Myself.—‘I am glad to see you, Pépa: what have you been doing this morning?’
Pépa.—‘I have been telling baji, and Chicharona has been stealing á pastésas; we have had but little success, and have come to warm ourselves at the braséro. As for the One-eyed, she is a very sluggard (holgazána), she will neither tell fortunes nor steal.’
The One-eyed.—‘Hold your peace, mother of the Bengues; I will steal, when I see occasion, but it shall not be á pastésas, and I will hokkawar (deceive), but it shall not be by telling fortunes. If I deceive, it shall be by horses, by jockeying. [276] If I steal, it shall be on the road—I’ll rob. You know already what I am capable of, yet knowing that, you would have me tell fortunes like yourself, or steal like Chicharona. Me diñela cónche (it fills me with fury) to be asked to tell fortunes, and the next Busnee that talks to me of bajis, I will knock all her teeth out.’
The Scorpion.—‘My sister is right; I, too, would sooner be a salteadóra (highwaywoman), or a chalána (she-jockey), than steal with the hands, or tell bájis.’
Myself.—‘You do not mean to say, O Tuérta, that you are a jockey, and that you rob on the highway.’
The One-eyed.—‘I am a chalána, brother, and many a time I have robbed upon the road, as all our people know. I dress myself as a man, and go forth with some of them. I have robbed alone, in the pass of the Guadarama, with my horse and escopéta. I alone once robbed a cuadrilla of twenty Gallégos, who were returning to their own country, after cutting the harvests of Castile; I stripped them of their earnings, and could have stripped them of their very clothes had I wished, for they were down on their knees like cowards. I love a brave man, be he Busné or Gypsy. When I was not much older than the Scorpion, I went with several others to rob the cortíjo of an old man; it was more than twenty leagues from here. We broke in at midnight, and bound the old man: we knew he had money; but he said no, and would not tell us where it was; so we tortured him, pricking him with our knives and burning his hands over the lamp; all, however, would not do. At last I said, “Let us try the pimientos”; so we took the green pepper husks, pulled open his eyelids, and rubbed the pupils with the green pepper fruit. That was the worst pinch of all. Would you believe it? the old man bore it. Then our people said, “Let us kill him,” but I said, no, it were a pity: so we spared him, though we got nothing. I have loved that old man ever since for his firm heart, and should have wished him for a husband.’