Carmen Read Online Free PDF Page B

escort her there. I placed her between two dragoons, and marched behind, as a corporal should do under such circumstances. We started for the town. At first the gypsy kept silent; but on Rue de Serpent—you know that street; it well deserves its name because of the détours it makes—she began operations by letting her mantilla fall over her shoulders, in order to show me her bewitching face, and turning toward me as far as she could, she said:
    “ ‘Where are you taking me, my officer?’
    “ ‘To prison, my poor child,’ I replied, as gently as possible, as a good soldier should speak to a prisoner, especially to a woman.
    “ ‘Alas! what will become of me? Señor officer, take pity on me. You are so young, so good looking!’ Then she added, in a lower tone: ‘Let me escape, and I’ll give you a piece of the
bar lachi
, which will make all women love you.’
    “The
bar lachi
, señor, is the lodestone, with which the gypsies claim that all sorts of spells may be cast when one knows how to use it. Give a woman a pinch of ground lodestone in a glass of white wine, and she ceases to resist.—I replied with as much gravity as I could command:
    “ ‘We are not here to talk nonsense; you must go to prison—that is the order and there is no way to avoid it.’
    “We natives of the Basque country have an accent which makes it easy for the Spaniards to identify us; on the other hand, there is not one of them who can learn to say even
bai, jaona
. § So that Carmen had no difficulty in guessing that I came from the provinces. You must know, señor, that the gypsies, being of no country, are always travelling, and speak all languages, and that most of them are perfectly at home in Portugal, in France, in the Basque provinces, in Catalonia,everywhere; they even make themselves understood by the Moors and the English. Carmen knew Basque very well.
    “ ‘
Laguna ene bihotsarena
, comrade of my heart,’ she said to me abruptly, ‘are you from the provinces?’
    “Our language, señor, is so beautiful, that, when we hear it in a foreign land, it makes us tremble.—I would like to have a confessor from the provinces,” added the bandit in a lower tone.
    He continued after a pause:
    “ ‘I am from Elizondo,’ I replied in Basque, deeply moved to hear my native tongue spoken.
    “ ‘And I am from Etchalar,’ said she. That is a place about four hours journey from us. ‘I was brought to Seville by gypsies. I have been working in the factory to earn money enough to return to Navarre, to my poor mother, who has no one but me to support her, and a little
barratcea
‖ with twenty cider-apple trees! Ah! if I were at home, by the white mountain! They insulted me because I don’t belong in this land of thieves and dealers in rotten oranges; and those hussies all leagued against me, because I told them that all their Seville
jacques
a with their knives wouldn’t frighten one of our boys with his blue cap and his
maquila
. Comrade, my friend, won’t you do anything for a countrywoman?’
    “She lied, señor, she always lied. I doubt whether that girl ever said a true word in her life; but when she spoke, I believed her: it was too much for me. She murdered theBasque language, yet I believed that she was a Navarrese. Her eyes alone, to say nothing of her mouth and her colour, proclaimed her a gypsy. I was mad, I paid no heed to anything. I thought that if Spaniards had dared to speak slightingly to me of the provinces, I would have slashed their faces as she had slashed her comrade’s. In short, I was like a drunken man; I began to say foolish things, I was on the verge of doing them.
    “ ‘If I should push you and you should fall, my countryman,’ she continued, in Basque, ‘it would take more than these two Castilian recruits to hold me.’
    “Faith, I forgot orders and everything, and said to her:
    “ ‘Well, my dear, my countrywoman, try it, and may Our Lady of the Mountain be with you!’
    “At