and has always
done us the honour to utilize, for her personal service, the
fleur-de-lis.

The Comprachicos, allowing for the shade which divides a trade from a
fanaticism, were analogous to the Stranglers of India. They lived among
themselves in gangs, and to facilitate their progress, affected somewhat
of the merry-andrew. They encamped here and there, but they were grave
and religious, bearing no affinity to other nomads, and incapable of
theft. The people for a long time wrongly confounded them with the Moors
of Spain and the Moors of China. The Moors of Spain were coiners, the
Moors of China were thieves. There was nothing of the sort about the
Comprachicos; they were honest folk. Whatever you may think of them,
they were sometimes sincerely scrupulous. They pushed open a door,
entered, bargained for a child, paid, and departed. All was done with
propriety.

They were of all countries. Under the name of Comprachicos fraternized
English, French, Castilians, Germans, Italians. A unity of idea, a unity
of superstition, the pursuit of the same calling, make such fusions. In
this fraternity of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean seaboard
represented the East, those of the Atlantic seaboard the West. Many
Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque and the Irishman
understand each other--they speak the old Punic jargon; add to this the
intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic Spain--relations
such that they terminated by bringing to the gallows in London one
almost King of Ireland, the Celtic Lord de Brany; from which resulted
the conquest of the county of Leitrim.

The Comprachicos were rather a fellowship than a tribe; rather a
residuum than a fellowship. It was all the riffraff of the universe,
having for their trade a crime. It was a sort of harlequin people, all
composed of rags. To recruit a man was to sew on a tatter.

To wander was the Comprachicos' law of existence--to appear and
disappear. What is barely tolerated cannot take root. Even in the
kingdoms where their business supplied the courts, and, on occasions,
served as an auxiliary to the royal power, they were now and then
suddenly ill-treated. Kings made use of their art, and sent the artists
to the galleys. These inconsistencies belong to the ebb and flow of
royal caprice. "For such is our pleasure."

A rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss. The Comprachicos were
poor. They might have said what the lean and ragged witch