running along, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was
following me. When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never
left me.

"'Great stupid of a canary-bird!' she said, 'you never make anything but
blunders. And, indeed, you know I told you I should bring you bad luck.
But come, there's a cure for everything when you have a Fleming from
Rome* for your love. Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head,
and throw me over that belt of yours. Wait for me in this alley--I'll be
back in two minutes.

* _Flamenco de Roma_, a slang term for the gipsies. Roma
does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of
the _romi_, or the married folk--a name applied by the
gipsies to themselves. The first gipsies seen in Spain
probably came from the Low Countries, hence their name of
_Flemings_.

"She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which
she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence. She made me take off my
uniform, and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus dressed, and with the
wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like
a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they
make out of '_chufas_.'* Then she took me to a house very much like
Dorotea's, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy
woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could
have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally
made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.

* A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is