Carmen Read Online Free Page A

predictions; and, as for her method of operation, it was evident that she was not a sorceress by halves.
    Unfortunately we were soon disturbed. The door was suddenly thrown open with violence, and a man wrapped to the eyes in a brown cloak entered the room, addressing the gypsy in a far from amiable fashion. I did not understandwhat he said, but his tone indicated that he was in a very bad temper. At sight of him the
gitana
exhibited neither surprise nor anger, but she ran to meet him, and, with extraordinary volubility, said several sentences in the mysterious tongue which she had already used in my presence. The word
payllo
, repeated several times, was the only word that I understood. I knew that the gypsies designated thus every man of another race than their own. Assuming that I was the subject of discussion, I looked forward to a delicate explanation; I already had my hand on one of the stools and was deliberating as to the precise moment when it would be well for me to hurl it at the intruder’s head. But he roughly pushed the gypsy aside and strode toward me; then recoiled a step, exclaiming:
    “What! is it you, señor?”
    I looked closely at him and recognised my friend Don José. At that moment I was inclined to regret that I had not let him be hanged.
    “Ah! is it you, my fine fellow?” I cried, laughing as heartily as I could manage to do. “You interrupted the señorita just as she was telling me some very interesting things.”
    “Always the same! This must come to an end,” he said between his teeth, glaring savagely at the girl.
    She meanwhile continued to talk to him in her own language. She became excited by degrees. Her eye became bloodshot and terrible to look at, her features contracted, and she stamped upon the floor. It seemed to me that she was earnestly urging him to do something which he evidently hesitated to do. What that something was, I fancied thatI understood only too well, when I saw her draw her little hand swiftly back and forth under her chin. I was tempted to believe that it was a matter of cutting a throat, and I had some suspicion that the throat in question was my own.
    To all this torrent of eloquence Don José replied only by two or three words uttered in a sharp tone. Thereupon the gypsy bestowed on him a glance of supreme contempt; then seated herself Turkish fashion in a corner of the room, selected an orange, peeled it, and began to eat it.
    Don José seized my arm, opened the door, and led me into the street. We walked about two hundred yards in absolute silence. Then he said, extending his hand:
    “Go straight ahead and you will come to the bridge.”
    With that he turned his back on me and walked rapidly away. I returned to my inn rather sheepishly and in a very bad temper. The worst feature of the affair was that when I undressed I found that my watch was missing.
    Various considerations deterred me from going the next day to demand it back, or from applying to the corregidor to recover it for me. I completed my work on the manuscript at the Dominican convent and departed for Seville. After wandering about Andalusia for several months, I determined to return to Madrid, and it was necessary for me to pass through Cordova once more. I did not propose to make a long stay there, for I had taken a violent dislike to that fair city and the bathers in the Guadalquivir. However, a few errands to do and some friends to call upon would detain me three or four days at least in the ancient capital of the Mussulman princes.
    When I appeared at the Dominican convent, one of the fathers, who had taken a lively interest in my investigations concerning the location of Munda, welcomed me with open arms.
    “Blessed be the name of God!” he cried. “Welcome, my dear friend! We all believed you to be dead, and I who speak to you, I have recited many
paters
and
aves
, which I do not regret, for the welfare of your soul. So you were not murdered?—for robbed we know that you