"And the high-priests cursed him and his sons. Manou spoke against them thus: _They shall dwell outside of cities; they shall possess none but broken vessels; they shall have nothing of their own, except it be an ass or a dog. They shall wear the clothes they steal from the dead; their plates shall be broken; their jewels shall be of iron. They shall journey, without rest, from place to place. Every man who is faithful to his duty shall hold himself aloof from them. They shall have no dealings except with one another. And they shall marry only in their own race._ "And the _Tchandalas_ were able to flee the country, but not the sentence. "And that is our present case. "The crown of Çoudra is a broken ring--with sharp points, like a dog's collar, and his sceptre is an iron staff, broken but formidable. For why does want exist, and pain and death? God is wicked!" With this tale, set to music, the gipsy queen sometimes lulled her son to sleep. And when, at the entrance to some château, she cast a long, malevolent glance upon a young mother, who, upon catching sight of her, quickly carried her little child within, such thoughts as these would run through Zinzara's head: "The secrets that are known to our prophets, our dukes and princes and kings, will cause all your cities, your churches, and your thrones to tremble on their foundations, for why does want exist, and pain and death? The hour will come--we await it--when your nations will be scattered to the winds of wrath, unless the wise men who invoked a curse on us become their masters--but you are too far from their wisdom for that! You will be ours. "Meanwhile, woe to those of you whom we find alone! We look fixedly at them, and the spirit of evil does the rest." And this is what little Livette saw when she approached the gipsy camp. The whole tribe was there. Their numerous wagons were of different sizes, most of them being made in the shape of small oblong houses, with little windows, very like the Noah's arks made for children in Germany. The gipsies had arranged their wagons side by side, in a line, each one opposite a house in the village. Thus the line of wheeled houses formed with the houses of the village a winding street, which, if prolonged, would have surrounded Saintes-Maries like a girdle. Thus, while their sojourn lasted, the gipsies could cherish the illusion that they were settled there, that they were inhabitants of the village, one dwelling opposite the baker, another opposite the wine-shop; but no one forgot that the gipsy houses were built upon wheels that turn and can make the tour of the world. "I pity the tree," says the gipsy, "it looks enviously at me as I pass. It is jealous of my ass's feet." Most of the wagons were patched with boards of many colors, picked up or stolen here and there.