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242 DAYS IN THE SUN
hotels frequented by foreigners, pursue him with bou-
quets of flowers, seize him by the hand and offer to
tell his fortune, posture before him with swaying hips
and ask to be permitted to dance for him.
Gypsy dancing and gypsy fortune-telling—whose
heart does not beat romantically at these magic words?
And yet these famous. fortune-tellings have not even a
trace of delicacy. ‘Monsieur, Madame is longing for
you!” is their constant refrain, a refrain mumbled by
all of them, children as well as old women. Their
dance is a crude expression of a crude conception of the
erotic. Men and women sit around in a circle clasp-
ing their hands, striking their thighs and singing. In
the middle of the circle stands the “‘dancer,”’ raises her
legs a little and moves her hands indolently over her
head, while all her temperament seems domiciled in
her hips and pelvis, which move and writhe in
vehement measure, with contortions that venture into
greater and greater excesses under the heated calls of
the onlookers. This dance, which does not move to
a single line of beauty, but is rather to be counted with
the unconstrained free expression of beasts, is fre-
quently lauded by travelers and compared with the
charming and ingratiating Andalusian dances. Dis-
tinguished English and American ladies who leave all
sordid practical affairs to their husbands and dash
through southern Europe in a mad hunt for romantic
fertilizer with which to fructify the arid culture of
their native lands, wander up to these caves in great
numbers daily, escorted by their friends, in order to
behold and admire these marvelous gypsy dancers.
You do not meet the men very often downtown, un-
less you find them playing their mandolins in the street,
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