“‘You great idiot of a canary!’ she exclaimed; ‘you can’t do anything but make a fool of yourself! I told you, you know, that I should bring you bad luck. Well! there’s a cure for everything when one has for one’s friend a Roman Fleming.[29] First of all, put this handkerchief on your head, and toss me that belt. Wait for me in this passage. I will return in two minutes.’ “She disappeared, and soon brought me a striped cloak, which she had obtained heaven knows where. She bade me take off my uniform and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus attired, with the handkerchief with which she had bound up the wound on my head, I looked not unlike a peasant from Valencia, so many of whom came to Seville to sell their _chufas_[30] orgeat. Then she took me into a house much like Dorothy’s, at the end of a narrow lane. She and another gypsy washed me and dressed my wound better than any surgeon could have done, and gave me something, I don’t know what, to drink; finally, they laid me on a mattress, and I went to sleep. “Probably those women had mingled with my drink one of those soporific drugs of which they know the secret, for I did not wake until very late the next day. I had a terrible headache and a little fever. It was some time before I remembered the terrible scene in which I had taken part the night before. After dressing my wound, Carmen and her friend, both squatting beside my mattress, exchanged a few words of _chipe calli_, which seemed to be a medical consultation. Then they united in assuring me that I should soon be cured, but that I must leave Seville at the earliest possible moment; for, if I should be caught, I would inevitably be shot. “‘My boy,’ said Carmen, ‘you must do something. Now that the king gives you neither rice nor dried fish,[31] you must think about earning your living. You are too stupid to steal _à pastesas_[32]; but you are strong and active; if you have any pluck, go to the coast and be a smuggler. Haven’t I promised to be the cause of your being hung? That’s better than being shot? However, if you go about it the right way you will live like a prince as long as the _miñons_[33] and the coast-guards don’t get their hands on your collar.’