“While they were at the chapel there was never so great a crowd at benediction, for the people flocked to see them from St. Denis, Paris, and the suburbs. Their children, both boys and girls, were the cleverest tricksters. Nearly all had their ears pierced and in each ear were one or two silver rings, which they said were a sign of good birth in their own country; they were exceedingly dark and with woolly hair. The women were the ugliest and blackest ever seen; their faces were covered with sores, their hair was black as the tail of a horse, their clothes consisted of an old _flaussoie_ or _schiavina_ tied over the shoulder by a cord or morsel of cloth, and beneath it a poor shirt. In a word, they were the most wretched creatures who had ever been seen in France, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Their poverty notwithstanding, they had sorceresses among them who inspected the hand, telling what had happened to the person consulting them in their past life and what awaited them in the future. They disturbed the peace of households, for they denounced husband to wife and wife to husband. And what was still worse, while talking to people about their magic art, they managed to fill their purses by emptying those of their hearers. One citizen of Paris who gives account of these facts adds that he himself talked to them three or four times without losing a halfpenny; but this is the report of the people everywhere, and the news reached the bishop of Paris, who went thither taking a Minorite friar called the little Jacobin, and he, by the bishop’s command, preached a great sermon and excommunicated all, male and female who had told fortunes and all who had shewn their hands. The horde was ordered away and departed accordingly on September 8, proceeding towards Pontoise.” It is not known whether they continued their journey North of the capital, but their memory has survived in a corner of the Department du Nord. “As a fact, in a wood near the village of Hamel, five hundred feet from a druidic monument consisting of six stones, there is a fountain which is called the Sorcerer’s Kitchen, and it is there, according to tradition, that the _Cara Maras_ rested and quenched their thirst. Now these were assuredly the _Caras’mar_, namely, the Bohemians, or wandering sorcerers and diviners, to whom ancient Flemish charters granted the right to be fed by the inhabitants.”