"See, Carl, see!" she exclaimed: "that horrible woman must be ominous of evil at such a time. Why has she been permitted to approach?"
Balgonie saw, at a little distance, only a Russian gipsy girl, possessed evidently of considerable personal attractions. She stood timidly, and irresolute whether to advance or retire; and bowed her head with great humility, while crossing her fine but dusky hands and arms upon her breast. In old age the Russian female gipsies are as remarkable for their extreme hideousness, as in youth they are famous for personal beauty; so this young girl was full of picturesque loveliness, and instead of being clothed in rags, as the wanderers of her race are elsewhere, her costume was brilliant in colours and rich in material. She had large glittering ear-rings; a gaudy kerchief bound her black tresses; and her rounded cheeks being freely rouged, added to the wonderful lustre of her dark and dusky eyes, and to the generally theatrical character of her singular beauty and bearing.
"Oh!" resumed Natalie, with something of a shudder, "'tis Olga Paulowna: don't let her speak to us in our parting hour, Carl, lest we be compelled to hear her sing, and that may perhaps bode evil. The dvornick, I understand, has thrice by dog and whip driven away this gipsy girl, who has come to the house again and again, ostensibly to seek alms, but doubtless only to steal or work mischief by her cunning; for though our Russian gipsies are not allowed to pitch their tents on any land without the express consent of the owner, this girl's brother, Nicholas Paulovitch (as he calls himself), a half-blood, has permanently settled on our estate, somewhere in the forests, though he is despised and loathed by the peasantry, whom, doubtless, he loathes and hates most cordially in turn. I do wish she would go away without being ordered to do so."
Little did Natalie know that those ill-requited visits of the poor gipsy girl had direct reference to the life and safety of him whose hand clasped hers so tenderly and confidingly.
"Faugh!" said Natalie, with increasing annoyance; "she is about to sing,—something naughty no doubt,—but her voice will soon summon the dvornick."
Many of those female wanderers in Russia can sing divinely; and it is on record that even the great Catalani was so enchanted by the melodious voice of a gipsy girl at Moscow, that she took from her own shoulders a superb shawl, which had been given to her by the Empress, and placed it on those of the nomadic singer, "as a tribute from art to nature."
And Olga now began to sing with great sweetness one of those Russian songs, by which the gipsies, to flatter the people, sought to foretell the downfall of the Crescent; and many such prophetic strains were current even during the war in the Crimea, as foreshadowing the fate of the "sick man" at Constantinople.
"Years after years shall roll,
Ages o'er ages glide.
Before the world's control
Shall check the Crescent's pride.
Banished from place to place,
Where'er the ocean's roar,
The mighty gipsy race,
Shall visit every shore.
"But when the hundredth year
Shall three times doubled be,
Then shall the end appear
Of all their slavery.
Then shall the warlike powers
From distant climes return,
Egypt again be ours,
While the Turkish domes shall burn!
"Again the Christian's cross
Shall over Stamboul wave,
And ruin, weeds, and moss,
Mark the last Sooltan's grave!
Again shall Christian bells
Ring where the Muezzins cry,
When across the Dardanelles
The Moslem hordes shall fly!