The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street.
I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a
charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon,
and then I began to mumble a few words in _Romany_. 'You're a fool,' I
said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near
the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping
your stove from smoking is not to light any fire in it!' and then I took
to my heels."
The history of the gipsies is still a problem. We know, indeed, that
their first bands, which were few and far between, appeared in Eastern
Europe towards the beginning of the fifteenth century. But nobody can
tell whence they started, or why they came to Europe, and, what is still
more extraordinary, no one knows how they multiplied, within a short
time, and in so prodigious a fashion, and in several countries, all
very remote from each other. The gipsies themselves have preserved no
tradition whatsoever as to their origin, and though most of them do
speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, that is only because they
have adopted a very ancient fable respecting their race.
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