“Not so, senor gallant,” said Preciosa:  “wherever I go I must be free and unfettered; my liberty must not be restrained or encumbered by jealousy.  Be assured, however, that I will not use it to such excess, but that any one may see from a mile off that my honesty is equal to my freedom.  The first charge, therefore, I have to impose upon you is, that you put implicit confidence in me; for lovers who begin by being jealous, are either silly or deficient in confidence.”

“You must have Satan himself within you, little one,” said the old gipsy; “why you talk like a bachelor of Salamanca.  You know all about love and jealousy and confidence.  How is this?  You make me look like a fool, and I stand listening to you as to a person possessed, who talks Latin without knowing it.”

“Hold your peace, grandmother,” replied Preciosa; “and know that all the things you have heard me say are mere trifles to the many greater truths that remain in my breast.”

All that Preciosa said, and the sound sense she displayed, added fuel to the flame that burned in the breast of the enamoured cavalier.  Finally, it was arranged that they should meet in the same place on that day sennight, when he would report how matters stood with him, and they would have had time to inquire into the truth of what he had told them.  The young gentleman then took out a brocaded purse in which he said there were a hundred gold crowns, and gave it to the old woman; but Preciosa would by no means consent that she should take them.

“Hold your tongue, nina,” said her grandmother; “the best proof this senor has given of his submission, is in thus having yielded up his arms to us in token of surrender.  To give, upon whatever occasion it may be, is always the sign of a generous heart.  Moreover, I do not choose that the gitanas should lose, through my fault, the reputation they have had for long ages of being greedy of lucre.  Would you have me lose a hundred crowns, Preciosa?  A hundred crowns in gold that one may stitch up in the hem of a petticoat not worth two reals, and keep them there as one holds a rent-charge on the pastures of Estramadura!  Suppose that any of our children, grandchildren, or relations should fall by any mischance into the hands of justice, is there any eloquence so sure to touch the ears of the judge as the music of these crowns when they fall into his purse?  Three times, for three different offences, I have seen myself all but mounted on the ass to be whipped; but once I got myself off by means of a silver mug, another time by a pearl necklace, and the third time with the help of forty pieces of eight, which I exchanged for quartos, throwing twenty reals into the bargain.  Look you, nina, ours is a very perilous occupation, full of risks and accidents; and there is no defence that affords us more ready shelter and succour than the invincible arms of the great Philip:  nothing beats the plus ultra.[71] For the two faces of a doubloon, a smile comes over the grim visage of the procurator and of all the other ministers of mischief, who are downright harpies to us poor gitanas, and have more mercy for highway robbers than for our poor hides.  Let us be ever so ragged and wretched in appearance, they will not believe that we are poor, but say that we are like the doublets of the gavachos of Belmont, ragged and greasy and full of doubloons.”