A family dislodged from a house in the present Rue de Chartres was found lying upon the straw surrounded by human skulls, serpents, and other instruments of their craft. Whilst being evicted they noisily threatened their molesters with all manner of devilry; but as usual they ended by submitting. The men apparently had no occupation; the women used to wander about the streets in small parties, generally a matron followed by four or five girls, crying, “Gezzáneh! who wants to know the future?”[143] The Durke,[144] or pythoness, carried a tambourine; and when divining she placed upon her drum-head a bit of alum and of charcoal, with pebbles, beans or grains, wheat and barley; these represented the “elements,” water, fire, and earth, thus showing that the process was a rude form of the Arab’s geomancy. Sometimes the “spae-wife” made passes over the consultee’s head, holding in her hand a lump of sugar; this reminds us of the magicians in Morocco and Egypt and their mesmerized “clear-seers.” Between 1837 and 1838 these Gypsies retired into the Sahará or Desert; and now they visit the city only in caravans. Their women, tattooed and painted like the Bedawiyyah, are generally robed in rags and tatters, and decorated with the usual tinsel, rings, and hangings. An interesting subject, but by no means easy of treatment, would be the order of Dervishes known as Aïssaoua, also “called _Adrá_, from the name of one of their festivals.”[145] They have been noticed by a multitude of writers each more ignorant than the other. These men are probably Gypsies, to judge by analogy with the Rifá'i Dervishes, who will be noticed under the head of Egypt. The same may be said of the Naïlette, the Almah (Álimeh) or dancing-girl of Algiers, who affiliates herself with the Aulád Ná'il[146], the large and wealthy Bedawin tribe occupying the inner regions. Similarly the Nawar Gypsies farther east derive themselves from the Beni Nawar. These Naïlettes are public when young, yet in after-life they become faithful wives; the same is said of the Egyptian Ghagar and the nach-girls of India. According to one authority, there are among the Mozabites two or three Gypsy tribes that live by prostituting their women to caravans. It is curious to compare the rigid chastity of the Gypsy girls in England and Spain, indeed in Europe generally, where a lapse would lead to certain death, with their looseness of life elsewhere. But the Romá is _une race curieuse entre toutes_, and both extremes may be expected from it.