Scip. With great pleasure.  I will listen to you, that you in your turn may listen to me, when I relate, if heaven pleases, the events of my life.

Berg. My occupation among the gipsies was to contemplate their numberless tricks and frauds, and the thefts they all commit from the time they are out of leading-strings and can walk alone.  You know what a multitude there is of them dispersed all over Spain.  They all know each other, keep up a constant intelligence among themselves, and reciprocally pass off and carry away the articles they have purloined.  They render less obedience to their king than to one of their own people whom they style count, and who bears the surname of Maldonado, as do all his descendants.  This is not because they come of that noble line, but because a page belonging to a cavalier of that name fell in love with a beautiful gipsy, who would not yield to his wishes unless he became a gipsy and made her his wife.  The page did so, and was so much liked by the other gipsies, that they chose him for their lord, yielded him obedience, and in token of vassalage rendered to him a portion of everything they stole, whatever it might be.

To give a colour to their idleness the gipsies employ themselves in working in iron, and you may always see them hawking pincers, tongs, hammers, fire-shovels, and so forth, the sale of which facilitates their thefts.  The women are all midwives, and in this they have the advantage over others, for they bring forth without cost or attendants.  They wash their new-born infants in cold water, and accustom them from birth to death to endure every inclemency of weather.  Hence they are all strong, robust, nimble leapers, runners, and dancers.  They always marry among themselves, in order that their bad practices may not come to be known, except by their own people.  The women are well behaved to their husbands, and few of them intrigue except with persons of their own race.  When they seek for alms, it is rather by tricks and juggling than by appeals to charity; and as no one puts faith in them, they keep none, but own themselves downright vagabonds; nor do I remember to have ever seen a gipsy-woman taking the sacrament, though I have often been in the churches.  The only thoughts of their minds are how to cheat and steal.  They are fond of talking about their thefts and how they effected them.  A gipsy, for instance, related one day in my presence how he had swindled a countryman as you shall hear: 

The gipsy had an ass with a docked tail, and he fitted a false tail to the stump so well that it seemed quite natural.  Then he took the ass to market and sold it to a countryman for ten ducats.  Having pocketed the money, he told the countryman that if he wanted another ass, own brother to the one he had bought, and every bit as good, he might have it a bargain.  The countryman told him to go and fetch it, and meanwhile he would drive that one home.  Away went the purchaser;