“‘Where are you taking me, my officer?’ “‘To prison, my poor child,’ I replied, as gently as possible, as a good soldier should speak to a prisoner, especially to a woman. “‘Alas! what will become of me? Señor officer, take pity on me. You are so young, so good looking!’ Then she added, in a lower tone: ‘Let me escape, and I’ll give you a piece of the _bar lachi_, which will make all women love you.’ “The _bar lachi_, señor, is the lodestone, with which the gypsies claim that all sorts of spells may be cast when one knows how to use it. Give a woman a pinch of ground lodestone in a glass of white wine, and she ceases to resist.--I replied with as much gravity as I could command: “‘We are not here to talk nonsense; you must go to prison--that is the order, and there is no way to avoid it.’ “We natives of the Basque country have an accent which makes it easy for the Spaniards to identify us; on the other hand, there is not one of them who can learn to say even _baï, jaona_.[10] So that Carmen had no difficulty in guessing that I came from the provinces. You must know, señor, that the gypsies, being of no country, are always travelling, and speak all languages, and that most of them are perfectly at home in Portugal, in France, in the Basque provinces, in Catalonia, everywhere; they even make themselves understood by the Moors and the English. Carmen knew Basque very well. “‘_Laguna ene bihotsarena_, comrade of my heart,’ she said to me abruptly, ‘are you from the provinces?’ “Our language, señor, is so beautiful, that, when we hear it in a foreign land, it makes us tremble.--I would like to have a confessor from the provinces,” added the bandit in a lower tone. He continued after a pause: “‘I am from Elizondo,’ I replied in Basque, deeply moved to hear my native tongue spoken. “‘And I am from Etchalar,’ said she. That is a place about four hours’ journey from us. ‘I was brought to Seville by gypsies. I have been working in the factory to earn money enough to return to Navarre, to my poor mother, who has no one but me to support her, and a little _barratcea_[11] with twenty cider-apple trees! Ah! if I was at home, by the white mountain! They insulted me because I don’t belong in this land of thieves and dealers in rotten oranges; and those hussies all leagued against me, because I told them that all their Seville _jacques_[12] with their knives, wouldn’t frighten one of our boys with his blue cap and his _maquila_. Comrade, my friend, won’t you do anything for a countrywoman?’