I have said that most gypsy women dabble in fortune-telling. They are very skillful at it. But another thing that is a source of very great profit to them is the sale of charms and love-philtres. Not only do they keep frogs’ feet to fix fickle hearts, or powdered lodestone to force the unfeeling to love; but at need they make potent conjurations which compel the devil to lend them his aid. Last year a Spanish woman told me the following story: She was passing one day along Rue d’Alcala, sad and distraught, when a gypsy sitting on the sidewalk called after her: “Your lover has been false to you, fair lady.”--It was the truth.--“Do you want me to bring him back?”--You will imagine how joyfully the offer was accepted, and what unbounded confidence was naturally inspired by a person who could thus divine at a glance the inmost secrets of the heart. As it would have been impossible to proceed to magic rites in the most frequented street in Madrid, they made an appointment for the morrow.--“Nothing easier than to bring the unfaithful one back to your feet,” said the _gitana_. “Have you a handkerchief, a scarf, or a mantilla that he has given you?”--The lady gave her a silk handkerchief.--“Now sew a piastre into a corner of it, with crimson silk; half a piastre into another; a _piecette_ here; a two real piece here. Then you must sew a gold piece in the centre; a doubloon would be best.”--The doubloon and the rest were duly sewn into the handkerchief.--“Now, give it to me; I will take it to the Campo-Santo when the clock strikes twelve. Come with me, if you want to see some fine deviltry. I promise you that you will see the man you love to-morrow.”--The gypsy started alone for the Campo-Santo, for the lady was too much afraid of the devils to accompany her. I leave you to guess whether the poor love-lorn creature saw her handkerchief or her faithless lover again. Despite their poverty and the sort of aversion which they inspire, the gypsies enjoy a certain consideration none the less among unenlightened peoples, and they are very proud of it. They feel a haughty contempt for intelligence, and cordially despise the people who give them hospitality. “The Gentiles are such fools,” said a gypsy of the Vosges to me one day, “that there’s no merit in tricking them. The other day a peasant woman called to me on the street, and I went into her house. Her stove was smoking, and she asked me for a spell, to make it burn. I told her to give me first of all a big piece of pork. Then I mumbled a few words in _rommani_. ‘You are a fool,’ I said, ‘you were born a fool, a fool you will die.’--When I was at the door, I said to her in good German: ‘The infallible way to keep your stove from smoking is not to make any fire in it.’--And I ran off at full speed.”