difficulties to be removed before I could persuade myself that the
old Romans and my Romans were identical; and in trying to remove
these difficulties, I felt my brain once more beginning to turn,
and in haste took up another subject of meditation, and that was
the patteran, and what Ursula had told me about it.

I had always entertained a strange interest for that sign by which
in their wanderings the Romanese gave to those of their people who
came behind intimation as to the direction which they took; but it
now inspired me with greater interest than ever,--now that I had
learnt that the proper meaning of it was the leaves of trees. I
had, as I had said in my dialogue with Ursula, been very eager to
learn the word for leaf in the Romanian language, but had never
learnt it till this day; so patteran signified leaf of a tree; and
no one at present knew that but myself and Ursula, who had learnt
it from Mrs. Herne, the last, it was said, of the old stock; and
then I thought what strange people the gypsies must have been in
the old time. They were sufficiently strange at present, but they
must have been far stranger of old; they must have been a more
peculiar people--their language must have been more perfect--and
they must have had a greater stock of strange secrets. I almost
wished that I had lived some two or three hundred years ago, that I
might have observed these people when they were yet stranger than
at present. I wondered whether I could have introduced myself to
their company at that period, whether I should have been so
fortunate as to meet such a strange, half-malicious, half good-
humoured being as Jasper, who would have instructed me in the
language, then more deserving of note than at present. What might
I not have done with that language, had I known it in its purity?
Why, I might have written books in it; yet those who spoke it would