I promise you shall see the man you love to-morrow!" The gipsy departed
alone for the Campo Santo, since my Spanish friend was too much afraid
of witchcraft to go there with her. I leave my readers to guess whether
my poor forsaken lady ever saw her lover, or her scarf, again.

In spite of their poverty and the sort of aversion they inspire, the
gipsies are treated with a certain amount of consideration by the more
ignorant folk, and they are very proud of it. They feel themselves to be
a superior race as regards intelligence, and they heartily despise the
people whose hospitality they enjoy. "These Gentiles are so stupid,"
said one of the Vosges gipsies to me, "that there is no credit in taking
them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street.
I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a
charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon,
and then I began to mumble a few words in _Romany_. 'You're a fool,' I
said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near
the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping
your stove from smoking is not to light any fire in it!' and then I took
to my heels."

The history of the gipsies is still a problem. We know, indeed, that
their first bands, which were few and far between, appeared in Eastern
Europe towards the beginning of the fifteenth century. But nobody can
tell whence they started, or why they came to Europe, and, what is still
more extraordinary, no one knows how they multiplied, within a short
time, and in so prodigious a fashion, and in several countries, all
very remote from each other. The gipsies themselves have preserved no
tradition whatsoever as to their origin, and though most of them do
speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, that is only because they
have adopted a very ancient fable respecting their race.