One important discovery I made among them: it was, that no
individual, however wicked and hardened, is utterly GODLESS. Call
it superstition, if you will, still a certain fear and reverence of
something sacred and supreme would hang about them. I have heard
Gitanos stiffly deny the existence of a Deity, and express the
utmost contempt for everything holy; yet they subsequently never
failed to contradict themselves, by permitting some expression to
escape which belied their assertions, and of this I shall presently
give a remarkable instance.
I found the women much more disposed to listen to anything I had to
say than the men, who were in general so taken up with their
traffic that they could think and talk of nothing else; the women,
too, had more curiosity and more intelligence; the conversational
powers of some of them I found to be very great, and yet they were
destitute of the slightest rudiments of education, and were thieves
by profession. At Madrid I had regular conversaziones, or, as they
are called in Spanish, tertulias, with these women, who generally
visited me twice a week; they were perfectly unreserved towards me
with respect to their actions and practices, though their
behaviour, when present, was invariably strictly proper.
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