It was she again who warned us when we had better enter the town.  This first journey, and several subsequent ones, turned out well.  I found the smuggler’s life pleasanter than a soldier’s:  I could give presents to Carmen, I had money, and I had a mistress.  I felt little or no remorse, for, as the gipsies say, ‘The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.’  We were made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me a certain respect.  The reason of this was that I had killed my man, and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their conscience.  But what I valued most in my new life was that I often saw Carmen.  She showed me more affection than ever; nevertheless, she would never admit, before my comrades, that she was my mistress, and she had even made me swear all sorts of oaths that I would not say anything about her to them.  I was so weak in that creature’s hands, that I obeyed all her whims.  And besides, this was the first time she had revealed herself as possessing any of the reserve of a well-conducted woman, and I was simple enough to believe she had really cast off her former habits.

“Our gang, which consisted of eight or ten men, was hardly ever together except at decisive moments, and we were usually scattered by twos and threes about the towns and villages.  Each one of us pretended to have some trade.  One was a tinker, another was a groom; I was supposed to peddle haberdashery, but I hardly ever showed myself in large places, on account of my unlucky business at Seville.  One day, or rather one night, we were to meet below Veger. El Dancaire and I got there before the others.

“‘We shall soon have a new comrade,’ said he.  ’Carmen has just managed one of her best tricks.  She has contrived the escape of her rom, who was in the presidio at Tarifa.’

“I was already beginning to understand the gipsy language, which nearly all my comrades spoke, and this word rom startled me.

“What! her husband?  Is she married, then?’ said I to the captain.

“‘Yes!’ he replied, ’married to Garcia el Tuerto*—­as cunning a gipsy as she is herself.  The poor fellow has been at the galleys.  Carmen has wheedled the surgeon of the presidio to such good purpose that she has managed to get her rom out of prison.  Faith! that girl’s worth her weight in gold.  For two years she has been trying to contrive his escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into their heads to change the surgeon.  She soon managed to come to an understanding with this new one.’

     * One-eyed man.

“You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me.  I soon saw Garcia el Tuerto.  He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed in gipsydom.  His skin was black, his soul was blacker, and he was altogether the most thorough-paced ruffian I ever came across in my life.  Carmen arrived with him, and when she called him her rom in my presence, you should have seen the eyes she made at me, and the faces she pulled whenever Garcia turned his head away.