all of them had their ears bored, and wore two silver rings in each,
which they said were esteemed ornaments in their country. The men were black,
their hair curled; the women remarkably black, their only clothes a large old
duffle garment tied over the shoulders with a cloth or cord, and under it a
miserable rocket. In short, they were the most poor miserable creatures that had
ever been seen in France; and, notwithstanding their poverty, there were among
them women, who, by looking into people's hands, told their fortunes, and, what
was worse, they picked people's pockets of their money, and got it into their
own, by telling these things through airy magic, et cætera.«
Notwithstanding the ingenious account of themselves rendered by these gipsies,
the Bishop of Paris ordered a friar, called Le Petit Jacobin, to preach a
sermon, excommunicating all the men and women who had had recourse to these
Bohemians on the subject of the future, and shown their hands for that purpose.
They departed from Paris for Pontoise in the month of September.
Pasquier remarks upon this singular journal, that however the story of a penance
savours of a trick, these people wandered up and down France, under the eye, and
with the knowledge, of the magistrates, for more than a hundred years; and it
was not till 1561, that a sentence of banishment was passed against them in that
kingdom.
The arrival of the Egyptians (as these singular people were called) in various
parts of Europe, corresponds with the period in which Timur or Tamerlane invaded
Hindostan, affording its natives the choice between the Koran and death. There
can be little doubt that these wanderers consisted originally of the Hindostanee
tribes, who, displaced, and flying from the sabres of the Mahommedans, undertook
this species of wandering life, without well knowing whither they were going. It
is natural to suppose the band, as it now exists, is much mingled with
Europeans; but most of these have been brought up from childhood among them, and
learned all their practices.
It is strong evidence of this, that when they are in closest contact with the
ordinary peasants around them, they still keep their language a mystery. There
is little doubt, however, that it is a dialect of the Hindostanee, from the
specimens produced by Grellman, Hoyland, and others, who have written on the
subject. But the Author has, besides their authority, personal occasion to know
that an individual, out of mere curiosity, and availing himself with patience
and assiduity of such opportunites as