For instance, three things about her must be black, her eyes, her eyelashes, and her eyebrows.  Three must be dainty, her fingers, her lips, her hair, and so forth.  For the rest of this inventory, see Brantome.  My gipsy girl could lay no claim to so many perfections.  Her skin, though perfectly smooth, was almost of a copper hue.  Her eyes were set obliquely in her head, but they were magnificent and large.  Her lips, a little full, but beautifully shaped, revealed a set of teeth as white as newly skinned almonds.  Her hair—­a trifle coarse, perhaps—­was black, with blue lights on 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 cafe.  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.