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THE GYPSIES 239
tory to men. Europe’s lower classes, weakly intimi-
dated and ever fearful of spirits throughout, set the
gypsies in their curious mythical cosmos peopled by
devils, witches and evil wights. And with the instinc-
tive hatred of the domesticated animal for his wild
kindred they sought to wipe out the gypsies. De-
crepit old gypsy women, hardly able to obtain a scant
livelihood for themselves, were transformed into
wonder-working fortune-tellers, and more frequently
into bringers of evil, mixers of poisonous potions, vile
witches, consorts of the devil who substituted wrong
children for right ones and thus dictated the fortunes
of empires. They were outlawed in the popular
imagination and the ever-zealous Inquisition assigned
them to the stake.
The tribe was thus spared the unpleasant task of
eliminating the old wretches who were no longer ca-
pable of accompanying it in its endless wanderings; and
it thus obtained one more advantage over ordinary
mortals.
Hundreds of gypsy women graced the pyres of the
Inquisition because these wretched creatures were be-
lieved to possess a diabolical power which the tribe as
a whole considered to be to its advantage. The hoarse
croaks of desperation emitted by these unhappy women
when the flames licked their dirty wrinkled skin, re-
sounded in the ears of the assembled populace like
devilish curses and strange conjurings, which enhanced
its fear of this marvelous race whose conceptions of
good and evil were so completely upside down.
What the persecution of witches failed to do—and
this persecution was not particularly fastidious—was
later accomplished zealously by, romanticism. The
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