“Gipsies are worthy people,” he said, taking a potato; “they think not of gathering together empty riches, but, living from day to day like the birds of the air, prefer their independence to all the false gains of the world. Have you not remarked, my good fellow, with what philosophical gaiety they eat their carrot-soup? Truly their way of living is not so disagreeable as it might be supposed to be.” “You are right, Maître Frantz,” said Coucou Peter. “No longer ago than last year I travelled for three months with this very band; we went about playing dance-music at all the fairs in Alsace; we slept sometimes in a barn, sometimes under a rock in the open air, and I promise you we didn’t live on beech-mast and pine-cones, like squirrels; we had every day eggs, sausages, and bacon in abundance!” “And who gave you all those good things?” “Oh!” cried Coucou Peter, laughing, “while we were playing our music at one end of the village, and all the women of the place were away at the dance, Nightingale, Black Magpie, and two or three more, slipped behind the gardens and into the houses: if they found anybody at home, they told their fortunes; but if there was nobody in sight, they nimbly whipped off the flax from over the fireplace, the bacon from the chimney; they laid hands on the butter, eggs, bread, and generally emptied all the cupboards, with the contents of which they stuffed their big pockets—for they always have pockets in their petticoats—and then made off to the woods. Ha! ha! ha! Maître Frantz,” cried the worthy apostle gaily, “you should have seen the peasants’ looks when they returned home! Ha! ha! ha! what faces they pulled! what faces they pulled! and what bastings they gave their wives! Ha! ha! ha!” “How can you laugh?” cried Maître Frantz; “do you not know that you have led a very criminal life?” “Oh! I had nothing to do with all that, doctor. I did nothing but play the fiddle. If the gipsies had been captured, who could have said anything against me?” “But you partook of the fruits of their robberies: can you not distinguish between just and unjust?” “Certainly I can—and the reason I parted from the band was because my conscience reproached me; every time I eat any of those good things, a voice within me cried, ‘Mind what you are about, Coucou Peter, mind what you are about, or you may be seized for a thief, and thrown into prison!’ The repeated warning of this interior voice made me feel low-spirited, and every moment I fancied the police were close at my heels. Fair-time was over, winter was coming on. One day the snow was beginning to fall, I put my violin under my arm, and in spite of the entreaties of Nightingale, Pfifer-Karl, and the whole band, who wished me to remain with them, I went back to Saverne.” Mathéus said no more, but he withdrew his good opinion of the gipsies, and even repented having eaten any of their potatoes.