“‘Get away at once,’ she said to me in Basque.  I stood there, dumfounded, my heart full of rage.

“‘What are you doing here?’ said the lieutenant to me.  ’Take yourself off—­get out of this.’

“I couldn’t move a step.  I felt paralyzed.  The officer grew angry, and seeing I did not go out, and had not even taken off my forage cap, he caught me by the collar and shook me roughly.  I don’t know what I said to him.  He drew his sword, and I unsheathed mine.  The old woman caught hold of my arm, and the lieutenant gave me a wound on the forehead, of which I still bear the scar.  I made a step backward, and with one jerk of my elbow I threw old Dorotea down.  Then, as the lieutenant still pressed me, I turned the point of my sword against his body and he ran upon it.  Then Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorotea, in her own language, to take to flight.  I fled into the street myself, and began running along, I knew not whither.  It seemed to me that some one was following me.  When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never left me.

“‘Great stupid of a canary-bird!’ she said, ’you never make anything but blunders.  And, indeed, you know I told you I should bring you bad luck.  But come, there’s a cure for everything when you have a Fleming from Rome* for your love.  Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head, and throw me over that belt of yours.  Wait for me in this alley—­I’ll be back in two minutes.

* Flamenco de Roma, a slang term for the gipsies.  Roma does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of the romi, or the married folk—­a name applied by the gipsies to themselves.  The first gipsies seen in Spain probably came from the Low Countries, hence their name of Flemings.

“She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence.  She made me take off my uniform, and put on the cloak over my shirt.  Thus dressed, and with the wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they make out of ’chufas.’* Then she took me to a house very much like Dorotea’s, at the bottom of a little lane.  Here she and another gipsy woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.

     * A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is
     manufactured.

“Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the next day.  I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache.  It was some time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part on the previous night came back to me.  After having dressed my wound, Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress, exchanged a few words of ‘chipe calli,’ which appeared to me to be something in the nature of a medical consultation.  Then they both of them assured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught there, I should most undoubtedly be shot.