'
MYSELF. - 'You seem wretchedly poor. Are you married?'
FIRST GYPSY. - 'I am, and to the best-looking and cleverest callee
in Badajoz; nevertheless we have never thriven since the day of our
marriage, and a curse seems to rest upon us both. Perhaps I have
only to thank myself; I was once rich, and had never less than six
borricos to sell or exchange, but the day before my marriage I sold
all I possessed, in order to have a grand fiesta. For three days
we were merry enough; I entertained every one who chose to come in,
and flung away my money by handfuls, so that when the affair was
over I had not a cuarto in the world; and the very people who had
feasted at my expense refused me a dollar to begin again, so we
were soon reduced to the greatest misery. True it is, that I now
and then shear a mule, and my wife tells the bahi (fortune) to the
servant-girls, but these things stand us in little stead: the
people are now very much on the alert, and my wife, with all her
knowledge, has been unable to perform any grand trick which would
set us up at once. She wished to come to see you, brother, this
night, but was ashamed, as she has no more clothes than myself.
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