Part 55 (1/2)
Lorand became very meditative some days later.
Once after dinner Czipra grasped his hand and said playfully:
”You are thinking very deeply about something. You are pale. Come, I will tell you your fortune.”
”My fortune?”
”Of course: I shall read the cards for you: you know
”'A gypsy woman was my mother, Taught me to read the cards of fortune, In that surpa.s.sing many wishes.'”
”Very well, my dear Czipra: then tell me my fortune.”
Czipra was delighted to be able to see Lorand once more alone in her strange room. She made him sit down on the velvet camp-stool, took her place on the tiger-skin and drew her cards from her pocket. For two years she had always had them by her. They were her sole counsellors, friends, science, faith, wors.h.i.+p--the sooth-saying cards.
A person, especially a woman, must believe something!
At first she shuffled the cards, then, placing them on her hand offered them to Lorand.
”Here they are, cut them: the one, whose future is being told, must cut.
Not with the left hand, that is not good. With the right hand, towards you.”
Lorand did so, to please her.
Czipra piled the cards in packs before her.
Then, resting her elbows on her knees and laying her beautiful sun-goldened face upon her hand she very carefully examined the well-known picture-cards.
The knave of hearts came just in the middle.
”Some journey is before you,” the gypsy girl began to explain, with a serious face. ”You will meet the mourning woman. Great delight. The queen of hearts is in the same row:--well met. But the queen of jealousy[68] and the murderer[68] stand between them and separate them.
The dog[68] means faithfulness, the cat[68] slyness. The queen of melancholy stands beside the dog.--Take care of yourself, for some woman, who is angered, wishes to kill you.”
[Footnote 68: These prophecies are made with Magyar cards and the gypsy girl pointing at certain cards, gives an interpretation of her own to them.]
Lorand looked with such a pitying glance at Czipra that she could not help reading the young man's thoughts.
She too replied tacitly. She pressed three fingers to her bosom, and silently intimated that she was not ”that” girl. The yellow-robed woman, the queen of jealousy in the cards, was some one else. She placed her pointing fingers to the green-robed--that queen of melancholy. And Lorand remarked that Czipra had long been wearing a green robe, like the green-robed lady in the fortune-telling cards.
Czipra suddenly mixed the cards together:
”Let us try once more. Cut three times in succession. That is right.”
She placed the cards out again in packs.
Lorand noticed that as the cards came side by side, Czipra's face suddenly flushed; her eyes began to blaze with unwonted fire.