Intimate though his acquaintance with the gypsies of other countries
had been, Borrow was aghast at the depravity of those of Spain. The
men were drunkards, brigands, and murderers; the women unchaste, and
inveterate thieves. Their language was terrifying in its foulness.
They seemed to have no religion save a misty glimmering of
metempsychosis, which had come down to them through the centuries,
and having been very wicked in this world they asked, with some show
of reason, why they should live again. They were incorrigible
heathens, keenly interested in the demonstration that their language
was capable of being written and read, but untouched by the parables
of Lazarus or the Prodigal Son, which Borrow read and expounded to
them. "Brother," exclaimed one woman, "you tell us strange things,
though perhaps you do not lie; a month since I would sooner have
believed these tales, than that this day I should see one who could
read Romany." {165b}

Neither by exhortation nor by translating into Romany a portion of
the Gospel of St Luke could Borrow make any impression upon the minds
of the gypsies, therefore when one of them, Antonio by name,
announced that "the affairs of Egypt" called for his presence "on the
frontiers of Costumbra," and that he and Borrow might as well journey
thus far together, he decided to avail himself of the opportunity.
It was arranged that Borrow's luggage should be sent on ahead, for,
as Antonio said, "How the Busne [the Spaniards] on the road would
laugh if they saw two Cales [Gypsies] with luggage behind them."
{166a} Thus it came about that an agent of the British and Foreign
Bible Society, mounted upon a most uncouth horse "of a spectral
white, short in the body, but with remarkably long legs" and high in
the withers, set out from Badajos on 16th January 1836, escorted by a