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THE GYPSIES 243
serving as artists’ models, or as guides in the Alham-
bra. They are invariably less insignificant than the
women and not so repellent; quite a number are tall
and well-built with a bold look in their eyes—there is
Andalusian blood-in their veins. The most audacious
and efficient smugglers in Granada are among the
gypsies; and the two hundred or more octroi guards
who form a cordon about the city day and night could
tell many tales of the cunning tricks and dangerous
exploits performed by these gypsies in smuggling
goods, particularly liquor, into the city. The duty to
be paid at the town gate is one franc for each liter, so
that this smuggling is good business.
Each morning there is a long line of donkeys out-
side the gates of Granada waiting to discharge their
cargoes of fruit. One fine day a donkey stumbles
under his burden, and some of the beautiful green and
yellow giant melons turn out to be containers of gayly
painted tin, filled with alcohol. For some days to
come, the octroi guards will carefully stick their lances
into all large fruits, while an ox-cart daily moves un-
obtrusively into the city with its load of sawed planks;
until it transpires that some of the planks have not
really been sawed but are actually big boxes filled with
alcohol. Or, a dried-up old gypsy man will trot over
the bridge on a donkey that seems so gravid that the
octroi guards crack their jokes about it, but the ani-
mal’s hide is a double hide—and there is alcohol be-
tween the two layers.
The guards have now become so experienced and
the penalties, as well as the rewards for stool-pigeons,
are so large, that the business is about to die. But by
night the gypsy continues to be active; he crawls down
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