“I could hardly restrain my tears. I told him I would come back, and hurried away. I went and lay down on the grass until I heard the bell. Then I went back to the chapel, but I stayed outside it. When he had said the mass, I went back to the _venta_. I was hoping Carmen would have fled. She could have taken my horse and ridden away. But I found her there still. She did not choose that any one should say I had frightened her. While I had been away she had unfastened the hem of her gown and taken out the lead that weighted it; and now she was sitting before a table, looking into a bowl of water into which she had just thrown the lead she had melted. She was so busy with her spells that at first she didn’t notice my return. Sometimes she would take out a bit of lead and turn it round every way with a melancholy look. Sometimes she would sing one of those magic songs, which invoke the help of Maria Padella, Don Pedro’s mistress, who is said to have been the _Bari Crallisa_--the great gipsy queen.* * Maria Padella was accused of having bewitched Don Pedro. According to one popular tradition she presented Queen Blanche of Bourbon with a golden girdle which, in the eyes of the bewitched king, took on the appearance of a living snake. Hence the repugnance he always showed toward the unhappy princess. “‘Carmen,’ I said to her, ‘will you come with me?’ She rose, threw away her wooden bowl, and put her mantilla over her head ready to start. My horse was led up, she mounted behind me, and we rode away. “After we had gone a little distance I said to her, ‘So, my Carmen, you are quite ready to follow me, isn’t that so?’ “She answered, ‘Yes, I’ll follow you, even to death--but I won’t live with you any more.’ “We had reached a lonely gorge. I stopped my horse. “‘Is this the place?’ she said. “And with a spring she reached the ground. She took off her mantilla and threw it at her feet, and stood motionless, with one hand on her hip, looking at me steadily. “‘You mean to kill me, I see that well,’ said she. ‘It is fate. But you’ll never make me give in.’ “I said to her: ‘Be rational, I implore you; listen to me. All the past is forgotten. Yet you know it is you who have been my ruin--it is because of you that I am a robber and a murderer. Carmen, my Carmen, let me save you, and save myself with you.’ “‘Jose,’ she answered, ‘what you ask is impossible. I don’t love you any more. You love me still, and that is why you want to kill me. If I liked, I might tell you some other lie, but I don’t choose to give myself the trouble. Everything is over between us two. You are my _rom_, and you have the right to kill your _romi_, but Carmen will always be free. A _calli_ she was born, and a _calli_ she’ll die.’ “‘Then, you love Lucas?’ I asked. “‘Yes, I have loved him--as I loved you--for an instant--less than I loved you, perhaps. But now I don’t love anything, and I hate myself for ever having loved you.’