Carmen | Page 8

it like a raven's wing, long and glossy. Not to weary
my readers with too prolix a description, I will merely add, that to
every blemish she united some advantage, which was perhaps all the
more evident by contrast. There was something strange and wild about
her beauty. Her face astonished you, at first sight, but nobody could
forget it. Her eyes, especially, had an expression of mingled sensuality
and fierceness which I had never seen in any other human glance.
"Gipsy's eye, wolf's eye!" is a Spanish saying which denotes close
observation. If my readers have no time to go to the "Jardin des
Plantes" to study the wolf's expression, they will do well to watch the
ordinary cat when it is lying in wait for a sparrow.
It will be understood that I should have looked ridiculous if I had
proposed to have my fortune told in a café. I therefore begged the

pretty witch's leave to go home with her. She made no difficulties about
consenting, but she wanted to know what o'clock it was again, and
requested me to make my repeater strike once more.
"Is it really gold?" she said, gazing at it with rapt attention.
When we started off again, it was quite dark. Most of the shops were
shut, and the streets were almost empty. We crossed the bridge over the
Guadalquivir, and at the far end of the suburb we stopped in front of a
house of anything but palatial appearance. The door was opened by a
child, to whom the gipsy spoke a few words in a language unknown to
me, which I afterward understood to be Romany, or chipe calli--the
gipsy idiom. The child instantly disappeared, leaving us in sole
possession of a tolerably spacious room, furnished with a small table,
two stools, and a chest. I must not forget to mention a jar of water, a
pile of oranges, and a bunch of onions.
As soon as we were left alone, the gipsy produced, out of her chest, a
pack of cards, bearing signs of constant usage, a magnet, a dried
chameleon, and a few other indispensable adjuncts of her art. Then she
bade me cross my left hand with a silver coin, and the magic
ceremonies duly began. It is unnecessary to chronicle her predictions,
and as for the style of her performance, it proved her to be no mean
sorceress.
Unluckily we were soon disturbed. The door was suddenly burst open,
and a man, shrouded to the eyes in a brown cloak, entered the room,
apostrophizing the gipsy in anything but gentle terms. What he said I
could not catch, but the tone of his voice revealed the fact that he was
in a very evil temper. The gipsy betrayed neither surprise nor anger at
his advent, but she ran to meet him, and with a most striking volubility,
she poured out several sentences in the mysterious language she had
already used in my presence. The word payllo, frequently reiterated,
was the only one I understood. I knew that the gipsies use it to describe
all men not of their own race. Concluding myself to be the subject of
this discourse, I was prepared for a somewhat delicate explanation. I
had already laid my hand on the leg of one of the stools, and was
studying within myself to discover the exact moment at which I had

better throw it at his head, when, roughly pushing the gipsy to one side,
the man advanced toward me. Then with a step backward he cried:
"What, sir! Is it you?"
I looked at him in my turn and recognised my friend Don Jose. At that
moment I did feel rather sorry I had saved him from the gallows.
"What, is it you, my good fellow?" I exclaimed, with as easy a smile as
I could muster. "You have interrupted this young lady just when she
was foretelling me most interesting things!"
"The same as ever. There shall be an end to it!" he hissed between his
teeth, with a savage glance at her.
Meanwhile the gitana was still talking to him in her own tongue. She
became more and more excited. Her eyes grew fierce and bloodshot,
her features contracted, she stamped her foot. She seemed to me to be
earnestly pressing him to do something he was unwilling to do. What
this was I fancied I understood only too well, by the fashion in which
she kept drawing her little hand backward and forward under her chin. I
was inclined to think she wanted to have somebody's throat cut, and I
had a fair suspicion the throat in question was my own. To all her
torrent of eloquence Don Jose's only reply was two or three shortly
spoken words. At