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240 DAYS IN THE SUN
insignificant gypsy girls, whose lives are limited to the
most rudimentary forms of animal existence, were
transformed under the idealizing touch of poetry into
cold, soulless but entrancing beauties who served as
tools for government intrigues and whose embraces
lured the secrets of diplomats from their breasts and
made princes forget their duties. Amulets and the evil
eye, love-potions—what things have gypsy women not
been made capable of in the riotous Western imagina-
tion! Only the men—who are sometimes fairly de-
cent—have played a subordinate part, either as the
tools of their intriguing women, or concerned in sordid
thievery.
This remarkable race, which without reason has so
fed our imaginations, repels one at the very outset
by its ugliness, which, particularly in the case of the
women, is of rare proportions. Even on knowing
them intimately, it is difficult to overcome a feeling of
aversion. Ugliness may be accompanied by powers of
introspection, of personality, which enable a north-
erner at least to regard it without disgust. We live on
this “ennobled ugliness” in the north and it imparts a
more soul-like quality to our ideals of beauty—we
make a virtue of necessity. But the ugliness of the
gypsy has too much of the animal element and much is
the result of personal neglect. Thin hair, running eyes,
purulent noses, skin diseases, are universal among
them, and the aggregate impression of a gypsy face is
a voracity hardly found in the beasts. In addition,
most of the faces are pierced like sieves by the small-
pox, which visits the caves every few years.
The gypsy woman in reality is very different from
the literary image. When she isa little girl, it is quite
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