It was not a dance voluptuous or obscene. It was a solemn dance of statuesque attitudes, and flowing flexures, and ceremonious pauses. Very like was it to some ritualistic dance of the sacerdotal dancing boys of the Cathedral of Toledo. And yet there was in it a taint of sorcery and demonolatry.
She stooped at the water's edge to dip therein her hands. Dancing on, she shook a few drops of water from her finger tips down upon the flames. Smoke arose, a gust of smoke for each trinity of drops. The while her eyes remained fixed and vacant and she danced slowly, she chanted a sort of weird incantation in the gerigonza of the Zincali.
Her voice was very low and came as with great effort. This was the rigmarole she chanted, translated from the Romany, which is descended from the Sanskrit and which it much resembles:
"To the Mountain of Olives one morning I hied,
Three little black goats before me I spied,
Those three little goats on three cars I laid,
Black cheeses three from their milk I made;
The one I bestow on the lodestone of power,
That save me it may from all ills that lower;
The second to Mary Padilla[1] I give,
And to all the witch hags about her that live;
The third I reserve for Asmodeus[2] lame,
That fetch me he may whatever I name."
The rhythm of that solemn dance grew ever more sprightly. Her languor dropped from her like a discarded shift. Faster and faster her brown bare feet beat the sands. She leaped ecstatically in air. Suddenly the dance ended in a whirl of exaltation. Then, for a long minute, she stood like one petrified, like a statue sculptured in onyx, her brown arms upflung, her face uplifted and sublimated. And in the voice of a demoniac, she screamed:
"Oh, el buen Baron! O Asmodeus the Lame! Send an evil upon the arrogant head of the stripling Quesada, he who tore the heart from my virgin breast and then ground it beneath his heel as though it were a ball of dung! Accursed was the salt placed in his mouth in the church when he was baptized, the vile Busno! He is too disdainful of me, too contemptuous! Send a black evil upon him and his, O Asmodeus! O Apollyon! By the three black little goats and the three black little cheeses, I invoke you!
"Humble him, break his heart of arrogant cold granite by making those he loves most fondly fall into fevers and die like flies in a frost! Send an evil of hideous disease upon those about him! Make those about him fall ill of horrid discharges and cramps of the stomach; then weaken them by causing them to vomit a gray pasty whey; then turn their bodies to blue and purple, and then let them die within twelve or twenty-four hours!
"Break his spirit as my father breaks the spirit of a proud black stallion, O Asmodeus the Lame! Do this for thy handmaid and votaress, do this for Caste Sonacai, known to the Busne as Paquita, the child of Flammenco Chorolengro, hetman of the clan of Barolengro and count of the people of Zend!"
You must know that the Gypsies of Spain practice a magic of two kinds. Their magic of the first kind is compounded of pure bunkum and fraud. Always in public do they practice this charlatanry and upon gullible Gentiles whom they hope to hocus-pocus and swindle out of a few pesetas. When they tell a buena ventura, or fortune, by crossing the dupe's palm with a piece of the dupe's gold, this is the sort of arrant nonsense they practice. The Hokkano Baro, the Great Trick, is another of their thieves' devices. The Ustilar Pastesas and the Chiving Drao are still others. In not one of the swindling tricks mentioned do they use any true clairvoyancy or authentic warlockry; it is all sleight-of-hand and humbuggery. At this kind of magic the Gypsies laugh loudest themselves.
Those who in public practice magic in order to hoodwink others, always practice in secret another sort of magic which they consider the true magic, and in which they devoutly believe. This is dogma. Did not the priests of ancient Egypt make magic in public to the cat-headed god Bast, the bull Ptah, and the lioness Sakhmi whom they despised as images of stone and machinery, but to whom they salaamed that the ignorant rabble might continue to be hoodwinked? And did not those same priests make magic in secret to the one true God? Thus with the Gypsies. In secret they practice another and second kind of sorcery which they believe in with a fanatic faith!