Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/142

64 when you have a Fleming from Rome for your love. Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head, and throw me over that belt of yours. Wait for me in this alley—I'll be back in two minutes.'

"She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence. She made me take off my uniform, and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus dressed, and with the wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they make out of chufas Then she took me to a house very much like Dorotea's, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally made me he down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.

"Probably the women had mixed one of the