Carmencita

“ He came to himself and laughed again as he thought of Carmencita, the first girl he had ever known—and the last. With a boy's impetuosity he had wooed her in a manner far different from that of the peons who sang beneath her window and talked to her mother. He had boldly scaled the wall and did his courting in her house, trusting to luck and to his own ability to avoid being seen. ”

“ Then he may walk up and down as much as he pleases in the midst of the swarm of girls, pretending to be looking for his sweetheart. I watched Carmencita’s elderly lover at this performance one Sunday night, and every time he got well into the focus of one of the arc lamps he stopped short with the light full on him, glancing this way and that with assumed anxiety as to the whereabouts of the lady, although he knew, and she knew, and all their friends and acquaintances knew, that his charmer would not appear till the band began to play at ten o’clock. ”

“ Diana cried. "Miss Carmena is perfectly certain that she knows where the missing deed is to be found. She says that it is in the house."
"I am exceedingly glad to hear it," Ereburt said. "Is second sight amongst your many extraordinary gifts. Miss Carmena?"
"It is not that at all," Carmena said. "Did not I tell you how my people always cling together? You must have imagined that, because the woman called Dame Carmencita married outside her station, she ceased to take all interest in the clan. You may be surprised to know that she wrote regularly to her relations. ”

“ In "Arcaia" she first established herself; in "Monte Cristo, Jr.," she attracted attention and won the title of "Queen of the Stage," in the great New York "Morning Journal " voting contest, over the heads ol such artists as Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, Marion Manola and others of equal note. Another and late success was in the character of Carmencita, the Spanish dancing beauty, in an elaborate burlesque production of "Carmen." ”

“ Carmen, my Carmen, let me save you, and save myself with you.'
"'José,' she answered, 'what you ask is impossible. I don't love you any more. You love me still, and that is why you want to kill me. If I liked, I might tell you some other lie, but I don't choose to give myself the trouble. Everything is over between us two. You are my rom, and you have the right to kill your romi, but Carmen will always be free. A calli she was born, and a calli she'll die.'
"'Then, you love Lucas?' I asked. ”

“ Carmencitto lay almost senseless upon the grass. Her modest garments torn to shreds, exposed her fair young bosom, slowly heaving, as if with the latest sobs of expiring life. Her cheeks were colorless. Her lips white as chalk, except where they were dabbled with the crimson blood, that was slowly oozing at every respiration of her heaving breast! In one of her little pale hands she clutched a small gold crucifix, which the villains had overlooked in their lust or haste. ”

“ Carmen is one of those fictions which are truer to life than life is. Such fiction-things are all around, touching everybody: the spoken truths which grow false at being spoken: the thought lies which turn to truths the moment they touch words.
I have heard Carmen sung and seen her filmed by the lustrous Farrar, and I have seen her play-acted by some lesser lights. But Bizet's opera, a sparkling music-storm, creates a sonant objective Carmen, a beautiful bloody lyric, remote from Mérimée who made a Carmen intensely peculiar to his own subjective art. ”

“ But, Carmen, under this calm exterior you will find an ardent lover, who desires to win you, that he may make for you a heaven on earth, and fill your life with such unutterable bliss as you have never dreamed of. Oh, Carmen, do not say me nay; but lay your lovely head upon my breast, and believe that my heart throbs wildly and deeply for you only. Look in my eyes, and let the love you read there serve to kindle a like feeling in you. Have you forgotten that we must love one another, we Brothers and Sisters? Give me your love, then, my darling, and say you will be mine! ”

“ I suppose there's no other character like Carmen for flaming roundness in all fiction: filled with her treacheries yet purely true to herself, without fear, utterly game: fierce, coarse, ruthless and reckless yet wrapped in a maddening unwitting pathos: strong and bold and cruelly poised yet capable of sudden complete surrender: ignorant and abandoned and criminal in every instinct yet beyond every littleness, every pettiness: sensual yet contemptuous and indifferent in it, a woman of essential chastity. ”

“ I said to El Dancaire:
“‘I’ll look after the Englishman, you frighten the others—they’re not armed!’
“The Englishman was a plucky fellow. He’d have killed me if Carmen hadn’t jogged his elbow.
“To put it shortly, I won Carmen back that day, and my first words were to tell her she was a widow.
“When she knew how it had all happened—
“‘You’ll always be a lillipendi,’ she said. ‘Garcia ought to have killed you. Your Navarrese guard is a pack of nonsense, and he has sent far more skilful men than you into the darkness. ”

“ When Alexander again looked toward Carmen, her eyes were moist with unshed tears.
"How beautiful that girl is!" thought he. "What an independent, frank spirit speaks from her eyes; what a lovely expression hovers around her mouth! She is like a dazzling star among these quiet people,—as if she had strayed away from her own orbit and found herself here,—so little does she seem fitted to her surroundings in the little circle in which she moves. I wonder if she is happy here. A large-hearted, generous nature cannot be content to submit to all these restrictions. ”

“ That hath drawn its crimson from hearts in hell.
The haughtiest beauty must yield her fame,
When this strange vision shall dusk her sky.
For Carmen rules, and her glance’s flame
Shall set the torch to satiety.
Wild, graceless Carmen! — Though yet this be,
Savour she hath of a world undreamt,
Of a world of wonder, whose salt young sea
Provoked a Venus to rise and tempt. ”

“ She instantly swore she would keep her word faithfully the very next day, and ran off to summon her friends, who were close by. There were five of them, of whom Pastia was one, all well loaded with English goods. Carmen kept watch for them. She was to warn them with her castanets the instant she caught sight of the patrol. But there was no necessity for that. The smugglers finished their job in a moment.
“The next day I went to the Calle del Candilejo. Carmen kept me waiting, and when she came, she was in rather a bad temper.
“‘I don’t like people who have to be pressed,’ she said. ”

“ While I was hiding at Granada there were bull-fights there, to which Carmen went. When she came back she talked a great deal about a skilful picador of the name of Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how much his embroidered jacket had cost him. I paid no attention to this; but a few days later, Juanito, the only one of my comrades who was left, told me he had seen Carmen with Lucas in a shop in the Zacatin. Then I began to feel alarmed. I asked Carmen how and why she had made the picador’s acquaintance.
“‘He’s a man out of whom we may be able to get something,’ said she. ”

“ Only once—it was at Malaga—she caused me some uneasiness. I heard she had fixed her fancy upon a very rich merchant, with whom she probably proposed to play her Gibraltar trick over again. In spite of everything El Dancaire said to stop me, I started off, walked into Malaga in broad daylight, sought for Carmen and carried her off instantly. We had a sharp altercation.
“‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘now that you’re my rom for good and all, I don’t care for you so much as when you were my minchorro! I won’t be worried, and above all, I won’t be ordered about. I choose to be free to do as I like. ”

“ Perhaps you know the Calle del Candilejo, where there is a head of Don Pedro the Avenger.*** That head ought to have given me pause. We stopped at an old house in that street. She passed into the entry, and knocked at a door on the ground floor. It was opened by a gipsy, a thorough-paced servant of the devil. Carmen said a few words to her in Romany. At first the old hag grumbled. To smooth her down Carmen gave her a couple of oranges and a handful of sugar-plums, and let her have a taste of wine. ”

“ The youths clamor about her and inquire collectively when she will love them. Carmen bestows regardlessly some of her dangerous laughing glances, and then sings her great song, the "Habenera," so called because of its rhythm, which is like a Spanish dance. But no mazy, undulating dance could be so fascinating as this song about "Love, the child of Bohemia." The compass of its ravishing melody is within a single octave. The notes cling lovingly together, for the intervals are mostly half-tones; and, indeed, as Carmen sings them each one seems like a kiss or a caress. ”

“ The priest smiled. “Everything is a miracle, friend; for a miracle is simply a sign of God’s presence. And finding Carmen in this musty, forgotten place is one of the greatest. For where she is, He is.”
“Yes, Padre, that is true,” assented Rosendo gravely.
“I was led here,” continued Josè; “I see it now. Rosendo, all my life I have regarded evil as just as real and powerful as good. And my life has been one of bitterness and woe. Carmen sees only the good God everywhere. And she dwells in heaven. ”

“ A duel would ensue did not Carmen quickly call her friends. They seize Zuniga, and to avoid being denounced must keep him prisoner until they have made sure their escape. Carmen turns to José and asks once more if he will be one of them. As there is now no alternative, he consents, whereupon Carmen with light steps and light heart rushes to his arms like a sunbeam, dispelling for the moment all clouds of memory and doubt. The free, fearless measures of her mountain song are heard again as all sing about the gypsies' life of liberty. They all go off as the curtain falls. ”

“ Carmen, your mother was one of the most innocent, the purest beings on earth; in her heart was no impure thought, in her life was no action which could not bear the light of day. But there, under the glowing, tropical skies, blood flies quicker through the veins than here in our cool Germany; and from childhood to womanhood is but one, sudden leap. When I felt her kisses on my lips, I was taken aback ”

“ Take this man with you!’
“‘I want neither his money nor himself,’ I replied, ‘and I forbid you to speak to him.’
“‘Beware!’ she retorted. ‘If any one defies me to do a thing, it’s very quickly done.’
“Luckily the picador departed to Malaga, and I set about passing in the Jew’s cotton stuffs. This expedition gave me a great deal to do, and Carmen as well. I forgot Lucas, and perhaps she forgot him too—for the moment, at all events. It was just about that time, sir, that I met you, first at Montilla, and then afterward at Cordova. I won’t talk about that last interview. ”

“ Carmen is the one criminal conception in whom there is no vulgar evil, no personal maculateness though wrecking all the wildness of her temper in her tempestuous days'-journeys. She is a romantic murderous appeal to human superjudgment. It was this isolate quality of her which Theda Bara gave out with mystic masterful art. She gauged the personal odors and blood-pressures of Carmen. She slipped into Carmen's skin and first sucked in and then breathed out the irresistible menacingness and arresting ingruination of her beautiful diabolic spirit. ”

“ Carmen’s days were filled to the brim with a measure of joy that constantly overflowed upon all among whom she moved. Her slight dependence upon her impoverished material environment, her contempt of its ennui, were constant reminders to Josè that heaven is but a state of mind. Even in desolate Simití, life to her was an endless series of delightful experiences, of wonderful surprises in the discovery of God’s presence everywhere. Her enthusiasms were always ardent and inexhaustible. Sparkling animation and abounding vitality characterized her every movement. ”

“ We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we proceeded to Ronda. Carmen had gone there before us. It was she again who warned us when we had better enter the town. This first journey, and several subsequent ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler’s life pleasanter than a soldier’s: I could give presents to Carmen, I had money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the gipsies say, ‘The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.’ We were made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me a certain respect. ”

“ The girl raised her impassioned tear-stained face to Carmelita's.
"Will nothing persuade you, little fool?" she cried, "that that Italian beast no more loves you than--than Jean Boule loves me--that he is playing with you, that he is battening on you, and that, the moment the fat Canteen woman accepts him, he will marry her and you will see him no more? Why should Jean Boule lie to you? Why should the American? Why should I?--Ask any Legionary in Sidi."
Carmelita clenched her little fist and appeared to be about to strike the Russian girl. ”

“ A flood of life and color goes into the staging of a Carmen film: a throng of attractive faces and bodies of people, women and men and lovely children, move through it in a pulsating gay pageant: flowers and Spanish prettinesses of costume and country-side and street and café are all over it, bright as life: and sweet winds blow in it and leaves and grasses wave and flutter, and the sunshine melts and mellows the air—all as if one saw it thrice-enlarged through windows. ”