During her childhood, Preciosa lived in different parts of Castile; but in her sixteenth year her grandmother brought her to Madrid, to the usual camping-ground of the gipsies, in the fields of Santa Barbara.  Madrid seemed to her the most likely place to find customers; for there everything is bought and sold.  Preciosa made her first appearance in the capital on the festival of Santa Anna, the patroness of the city, when she took part in a dance performed by eight gitanas, with one gitano, an excellent dancer, to lead them.  The others were all very well, but such was the elegance of Preciosa, that she fascinated the eyes of all the spectators.  Amidst the sound of the tambourine and castanets, in the heat of the dance, a murmur of admiration arose for the beauty and grace of Preciosa; but when they heard her sing—­for the dance was accompanied with song—­the fame of the gitana reached its highest point; and by common consent the jewel offered as the prize of the best dancer in that festival was adjudged to her.  After the usual dance in the church of Santa Maria, before the image of the glorious Santa Anna, Preciosa caught up a tambourine, well furnished with bells, and having cleared a wide circle around her with pirouettes of exceeding lightness, she sang a hymn to the patroness of the day.  It was the admiration of all who heard her.  Some said, “God bless the girl!” Others, “’Tis a pity that this maiden is a gitana:  truly she deserves to be the daughter of some great lord!” Others more coarsely observed, “Let the wench grow up, and she will show you pretty tricks; she is closing the meshes of a very nice net to fish for hearts.”  Another more good-natured but ill-bred and stupid, seeing her foot it so lightly, “Keep it up! keep it up!  Courage, darling!  Grind the dust to atoms!” “Never fear,” she answered, without losing a step; “I’ll grind it to atoms.”

At the vespers and feast of Santa Anna Preciosa was somewhat fatigued; but so celebrated had she become for beauty, wit, and discretion, as well as for her dancing, that nothing else was talked of throughout the capital.  A fortnight afterwards, she returned to Madrid, with three other girls, provided with their tambourines and a new dance, besides a new stock of romances and songs, but all of a moral character; for Preciosa would never permit those in her company to sing immodest songs, nor would she ever sing them herself.  The old gitana came with her, for she now watched her as closely as Argus, and never left her side, lest some one should carry her off.  She called her granddaughter, and the girl believed herself to be her grandchild.