I passed some days at Cordova searching for a certain manuscript in the
Dominican’s library.

One evening I was leaning on the parapet of the quay, smoking, when a woman came up the flight of stairs leading to the river and sat down beside me.  She was simply dressed, all in black, and we fell into conversation.

On my taking out my repeater watch she was greatly astonished.

“What inventions they have among you foreigners!”

Then she told me she was a gipsy, and proposed to tell my fortune.

“Have you heard people speak of La Carmencita?” she added.  “That is me!”

“Good!” I said to myself.  “Last week I supped with a highway robber; now to-day I will eat ices with a gipsy.  When travelling one must see everything.”

With that I escorted the Senorita Carmen to a cafe, and we had ices.

My gipsy had a strange and wild beauty, a face which astonished at first, but which one could not forget.  Her eyes, in particular, had an expression, at once loving and fierce, that I have found in no human face since.

It would have been ridiculous to have had my fortune told in a public cafe and I begged the fair sorceress to allow me to accompany her to her domicile.  She at once consented, but insisted on seeing my watch again.

“Is it really of gold?” she said, examining it with great attention.

Night had set in, and most of the shops were closed and the streets almost deserted as we crossed the Guadalquiver bridge, and went on to the outskirts of the town.

The house we entered was by no means a palace.  A child opened the door, and disappeared when the gipsy said some words to it in the Romany tongue.

Then the gipsy produced some cards, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and other things necessary for her art.  She told me to cross my left hand with a piece of money, and the magic ceremonies began.  It was evident to me that she was no half-sorceress.

Unfortunately, we were soon disturbed.  Of a sudden the door opened violently, and a man entered, who denounced the gipsy in a manner far from polite.

I at once recognised my friend Don Jose, and greeted him cheerfully.

“The same as ever!  This will have an end,” he said turning fiercely to the gipsy, who now started talking to him in her own language.  She grew animated as she spoke, and her eyes became terrible.  It appeared to me she was urging him warmly to do something at which he hesitated.  I think I understood what it was only too well from seeing her quickly pass and repass her little hand under her chin.  There was some question of a throat to cut, and I had a suspicion that the throat was mine.

Don Jose only answered with two or three words in a sharp tone, and the gipsy, casting a look of deep contempt at him, retired to a corner of the room, and taking an orange, peeled it and began to eat it.

Don Jose took my arm, opened the door, and led me into the street.  We walked some way together in the profoundest silence.  Then, stretching out his hand, “Keep straight on,” he Said, “and you will find the bridge.”