“I believe that you are from the land of Jesus, within two steps of paradise.”
(I had learned this metaphor, which designates Andalusia, from my friend Francisco Sevilla, a well-known picador.)
“Bah! paradise—the people about here say that it wasn’t made for us.”
“In that case you must be a Moor, or——”
I checked myself, not daring to say “Jewess.”
“Nonsense! you see well enough that I am a gypsy; would you like me to tell your baji?[5] Have you ever heard of La Carmencita? I am she.”
I was such a ne’er-do-well in those days—fifteen years ago—that I did not recoil in horror when I found myself seated beside a sorceress.
“Pshaw!” I said to myself, “last week I supped with a highway robber, to-day I will eat ices with a handmaid of the devil. When one is travelling, one must see everything.”
I had still another motive for cultivating her acquaintance. When I left school, I confess to my shame, I had wasted some time studying the occult sciences, and several times indeed I had been tempted to conjure up the spirits of darkness. Long since cured of my fondness for such investigations, I still retained, nevertheless, a certain amount of curiosity concerning all kinds of superstition, and I rejoiced at the prospect of learning how far the art of magic had been carried among the gypsies.
While talking together we had entered the neveria and had taken our seats at a small table lighted by a candle confined in a glass globe. I had abundant opportunity to examine my gitana, while divers respectable folk who were eating ices there lost themselves in amazement at seeing me in such goodly company.