* Pintar un javeque, “paint a xebec,” a particular type of
     ship.  Most Spanish vessels of this description have a
     checkered red and white stripe painted around them.

“The case was quite clear.  I took hold of Carmen’s arm.  ‘Sister mine,’ I said civilly, ‘you must come with me.’  She shot a glance of recognition at me, but she said, with a resigned look:  ’Let’s be off.  Where is my mantilla?’ She put it over her head so that only one of her great eyes was to be seen, and followed my two men, as quiet as a lamb.  When we got to the guardroom the sergeant said it was a serious job, and he must send her to prison.  I was told off again to take her there.  I put her between two dragoons, as a corporal does on such occasions.  We started off for the town.  The gipsy had begun by holding her tongue.  But when we got to the Calle de la Serpiente—­you know it, and that it earns its name by its many windings—­she began by dropping her mantilla on to her shoulders, so as to show me her coaxing little face, and turning round to me as well as she could, she said: 

“‘Oficial mio, where are you taking me to?’

“‘To prison, my poor child,’ I replied, as gently as I could, just as any kind-hearted soldier is bound to speak to a prisoner, and especially to a woman.

“’Alack!  What will become of me!  Senor Oficial, have pity on me!  You are so young, so good-looking.’  Then, in a lower tone, she said, ’Let me get away, and I’ll give you a bit of the bar lachi, that will make every woman fall in love with you!’

“The bar lachi, sir, is the loadstone, with which the gipsies declare one who knows how to use it can cast any number of spells.  If you can make a woman drink a little scrap of it, powdered, in a glass of white wine, she’ll never be able to resist you.  I answered, as gravely as I could: 

“’We are not here to talk nonsense.  You’ll have to go to prison.  Those are my orders, and there’s no help for it!’

“We men from the Basque country have an accent which all Spaniards easily recognise; on the other hand, not one of them can ever learn to say Bai, jaona!*

     * Yes, sir.

“So Carmen easily guessed I was from the Provinces.  You know, sir, that the gipsies, who belong to no particular country, and are always moving about, speak every language, and most of them are quite at home in Portugal, in France, in our Provinces, in Catalonia, or anywhere else.  They can even make themselves understood by Moors and English people.  Carmen knew Basque tolerably well.

“‘Laguna ene bihotsarena, comrade of my heart,’ said she suddenly.  ’Do you belong to our country?’

“Our language is so beautiful, sir, that when we hear it in a foreign country it makes us quiver.  I wish,” added the bandit in a lower tone, “I could have a confessor from my own country.”

After a silence, he began again.