“‘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 manufactured. “Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part on the previous night came back to me. After having dressed my wound, Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress, exchanged a few words of ‘_chipe calli_,’ which appeared to me to be something in the nature of a medical consultation. Then they both of them assured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught there, I should most undoubtedly be shot. “‘My boy,’ said Carmen to me, ‘you’ll have to do something. Now that the king won’t give you either rice or haddock* you’ll have to think of earning your livelihood. You’re too stupid for stealing _a pastesas_.** But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven’t I promised to get you hanged? That’s better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the _minons_*** and the coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’ * The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier. ** _Ustilar a pastesas_, to steal cleverly, to purloin without violence. *** A sort of volunteer corps.