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 _café_. 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