Amongst those in the crowd gathered round the pile was the Zingara's own daughter, a beautiful young gipsy named Azucena, who had followed in the crush with her babe in her arms, trying vainly to get a last word with her doomed mother. But the clamouring crowd, mad with eagerness to see the witch burn, roughly pressed her back; and when the poor girl at length came upon the dreadful scene, the flames were already raging fiercely around the stake, and the wretched victim was almost dead.
The old Zingara, however, cast a dying glance upon her grief-stricken child, and with her last breath cried out: "Avenge me, my daughter! Avenge me!"
Full of rage and despair, Azucena rushed away from the terrible scene, and, determined to take a speedy revenge, she entered the Count's deserted castle, and snatching up the sick child—who was already recovering—she ran back with him to the place of execution, intending to burn him in the same fire that had consumed her mother.
The mad crowd had departed by this time; and stirring up the dying embers into a blaze once more, the young gipsy was just about to fling a second victim into their midst, when the Count's child uttered a plaintive cry.
The child's wailing softened the heart of Azucena for a moment, and putting him down on the grass beside her own babe, she sank to the ground in a semi-conscious state.
Suddenly, however, a vision of her poor mother writhing in the flames and calling out for vengeance arose before her troubled imagination, and starting up in a delirium of rage, she seized the wailing infant, and flung him into the midst of the flames, with a triumphant cry.
But her triumph was quickly changed to horror, for, on turning to pick up her own sweet babe, she found that the Count's son was still alive! In that moment of blind frenzy, she had snatched up her own child in mistake, and cast him into the devouring flames.
Stunned by this terrible blow, Azucena was now filled with remorse and woe, and tenderly lifting the helpless babe who had been the innocent cause of two such dreadful deeds, she bore him away to the mountains of Biscaglia, to be brought up as her own son in the gipsy tribe to which she belonged. But, though Azucena soon grew to love her adopted son with all her heart, she could not forget the past, and she still nursed a deep desire for vengeance against the murderers of her mother.
When, after the burning of the supposed witch, it was discovered that the Count's sick child had been stolen, a great outcry of grief arose; and as the young Zingara, Azucena (who had been observed to rush away during the burning of her mother), had now disappeared from the neighbourhood, it was plain to all that she had taken the missing babe with her, out of revenge. The Count, in despair, sent out search-parties in every direction; but all their efforts were in vain, for no traces could be found of the lost child.
Now it happened that during the evening after the old Zingara's terrible death one of the Count's followers, Ferrando, came past the place of execution, and noticed upon the heap of ashes the charred bones of a little child amongst those of the gipsy-woman; and he at once came to the conclusion that Azucena, in revenge, had stolen away his lord's babe in order to burn him upon the same pile with her mother. He was filled with horror as the certainty of this grew upon him, but he decided to say nothing about it to the Count, thinking it more merciful to let the distracted father imagine that his stolen child was still living. However, he stored up in his memory the picture of the young Zingara's features, that he might know her again; and he determined that if ever he should discover her whereabouts, she should also suffer death by burning for her dreadful deed.