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 Gitános 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, tertúlias, 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. I have already had cause to mention Pépa the sibyl, and her daughter-in-law, Chicharona; the manners of the first were sometimes almost elegant, though, next to Aurora, she was the most notorious she-thug in Madrid; Chicharona was good-humoured, like most fat personages. Pépa had likewise two daughters, one of whom, a very remarkable female, was called La Tuérta, from the circumstance of her having but one eye, and the other, who was a girl of about thirteen, La Casdamí, or the scorpion, from the malice which she occasionally displayed.
Pépa and Chicharona were invariably my most constant visitors. One day in winter they arrived as usual; the One-eyed and the Scorpion following behind.
_Myself_.—‘I am glad to see you, Pépa: what have you been doing this morning?’
_Pépa_.—‘I have been telling baji, and Chicharona has been stealing á pastésas; we have had but little success, and have come to warm ourselves at the braséro. As for the One-eyed, she is a very sluggard (holgazána), she will neither tell fortunes nor steal.’