Tallemant relates another good trick.  Near Roye, in Picardy, a gipsy who had stolen a sheep offered it to a butcher for one hundred sous (about sixty francs of our money), but the butcher declined to give more than four livres for it.  The butcher then went away; whereupon the gipsy pulled the sheep from a sack into which he had put it, and substituted for it a child belonging to his tribe.  He then ran after the butcher, and said, “Give me five livres, and you shall have the sack into the bargain.”  The butcher paid him the money, and went away.  When he got home he opened the sack, and was much astonished when he saw a little boy jump out of it, who, in an instant, caught up the sack and ran off.  “Never was a poor man so thoroughly hoaxed as this butcher,” says Tallemant des Reaux.

The gipsies had thousands of other tricks in stock as good as the ones we have just related, in proof of which we have but to refer to the testimony of one of their own tribe, who, under the name of Pechon de Ruby, published, towards the close of the sixteenth century, “La Vie Genereuse des Mattois, Guex, Bohemiens, et Cagoux.”  “When they want to leave a place where they have been stopping, they set out in an opposite direction to that in which they are going, and after travelling about half a league they take their right course.  They possess the best and most accurate maps, in which are laid down not only all the towns, villages, and rivers, but also the houses of the gentry and others; and they fix upon places of rendezvous every ten days, at twenty leagues from the point from whence they set out....  The captain hands over to each of the chiefs three or four families to take charge of, and these small bands take different cross-roads towards the place of rendezvous.  Those who are well armed and mounted he sends off with a good almanac, on which are marked all the fairs, and they continually change their dress and their horses.  When they take up their quarters in any village they steal very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the neighbouring parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner.  If they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and make a rapid flight from the place.  They coin counterfeit money, and put it into circulation.  They play at all sorts of games; they buy all sorts of horses; whether sound or unsound, provided they can manage to pay for them in their own base coin.  When they buy food they pay for it in good money the first time, as they are held in such distrust; but, when they are about to leave a neighbourhood, they again buy something, for which they tender false coin, receiving the change in good money.  In harvest time all doors are shut against them; nevertheless they contrive, by means of picklocks and other instruments, to effect an entrance into houses, when they steal linen, cloaks, silver, and any other movable article which they can lay their hands on.  They give a strict account of everything to their captain, who