its having interfered with them. The charge of restraining the
excesses of the Gitanos was abandoned entirely to the secular
authorities, and more particularly to the Santa Hermandad, a kind
of police instituted for the purpose of clearing the roads of
robbers. Whilst I resided at Cordova, I was acquainted with an
aged ecclesiastic, who was priest of a village called Puente, at
about two leagues' distance from the city. He was detained in
Cordova on account of his political opinions, though he was
otherwise at liberty. We lived together at the same house; and he
frequently visited me in my apartment.

This person, who was upwards of eighty years of age, had formerly
been inquisitor at Cordova. One night, whilst we were seated
together, three Gitanos entered to pay me a visit, and on observing
the old ecclesiastic, exhibited every mark of dissatisfaction, and
speaking in their own idiom, called him a BALICHOW, and abused
priests in general in most unmeasured terms. On their departing, I
inquired of the old man whether he, who having been an inquisitor,
was doubtless versed in the annals of the holy office, could inform
me whether the Inquisition had ever taken any active measures for
the suppression and punishment of the sect of the Gitanos:
whereupon he replied, 'that he was not aware of one case of a
Gitano having been tried or punished by the Inquisition'; adding
these remarkable words: 'The Inquisition always looked upon them
with too much contempt to give itself the slightest trouble
concerning them; for as no danger either to the state, or the
church of Rome, could proceed from the Gitanos, it was a matter of
perfect indifference to the holy office whether they lived without
religion or not. The holy office has always reserved its anger for
people very different; the Gitanos having at all times been GENTE