"In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new
career she was suggesting to me,--the only one, indeed, remaining, now
I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She
persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it
seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I
thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.

"I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about
Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and
his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down
the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me. When I mentioned that notion
to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was
nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open
air, when each _rom_ retired with his _romi_ beneath their little tent,
made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.

"'If I take to the mountains,' said I to her, 'I shall be sure of you.
There'll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.'

"'Ha! ha! you're jealous!' she retorted, 'so much the worse for you. How
can you be such a fool as that? Don't you see I must love you, because I
have never asked you for money?'

"When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.

"To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes,
disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised. I went
to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house
was the smugglers' meeting-place. I was introduced to them, and their
leader, surnamed _El Dancaire_, enrolled me in his gang. We started for