t they be the
descendants of the old Roman matrons? Might not they be of the same
blood as Lucretia? And were not many of their strange names--Lucretia
amongst the rest--handed down to them from old Rome? It is true their
language was not that of old Rome; it was not, however, altogether
different from it. After all, the ancient Romans might be a tribe of
these people, who settled down and founded a village with the tilts of
carts, which, by degrees, and the influx of other people, became the
grand city of the world. I liked the idea of the grand city of the world
owing its origin to a people who had been in the habit of carrying their
houses in their carts. Why, after all, should not the Romans of history
be a branch of these Romans? There were several points of similarity
between them; if Roman matrons were chaste, both men and women were
thieves. Old Rome was the thief of the world; yet still there were
difficulties to be removed before I could persuade myself that the old
Romans and my Romans were identical; and in trying to remove these
difficulties, I felt my brain once more beginning to turn, and in haste
took up another subject of meditation, and that was the patteran, and
what Ursula had told me about it.

I had always entertained a strange interest for that sign by which in
their wanderings the Romanese gave to those of their people who came
behind intimation as to the direction which they took; but it now
inspired me with greater interest than ever,--now that I had learnt that
the proper meaning of it was the leaves of trees. I had, as I had said
in my dialogue with Ursula, been very eager to learn the word for leaf in
the Romanian language, but had never learnt it till this day; so patteran
signified leaf of a tree; and no one at present knew that but myself and
Ursula, who had learnt it from Mrs. Herne, the last, it was said, of the
old stock; and then I thought what strange people the gypsies must have
been in the old time. They were sufficiently strange at present, but
they must have been far stranger of old; they must have been a more
peculiar people--their language must have been more perfect--and they
must have had a greater stock of strange secrets. I almost wished that I
had lived some two or three hundred years ago, that I might have observed
these people when they were yet stranger than at present. I wondered
whether I could have introduced myself to their company at that period,
whethe