upon as human beings, for, during a
hunting party, consisting of members of a small German court, the huntsmen
had no scruple whatever in killing a gipsy woman who was suckling her
child, just as they would have done any wild beast which came in their
way."

M. Francisque Michel says, "Amongst the questions which arise from a
consideration of the existence of this remarkable people, is one which,
although neglected, is nevertheless of considerable interest, namely, how,
with a strange language, unlike any used in Europe, the gipsies could make
themselves understood by the people amongst whom they made their
appearance for the first time: newly arrived in the west, they could have
none of those interpreters who are only to be found amongst a
long-established people, and who have political and commercial intercourse
with other nations. Where, then, did the gipsies obtain interpreters? The
answer seems to us to be clear. Receiving into their ranks all those whom
crime, the fear of punishment, an uneasy conscience, or the charm of a
roaming life, continually threw in their path, they made use of them
either to find their way into countries of which they were ignorant, or to
commit robberies which would otherwise have been impracticable. Themselves
adepts in all sorts of bad practices, they were not slow to form an
alliance with profligate characters who sometimes worked in concert with
them, and sometimes alone, and who always framed the model for their own
organization from that of the gipsies."

[Illustration: Fig. 374.--Orphans, _Callots_, and the Family of the Grand
Coesre.--From painted Hangings and Tapestry from the Town of Rheims,
executed during the Fifteenth Century.]

This alliance--governed by statutes, the honour of compiling which has
been given to a certain Ragot, who styled himself captain--was composed of
_matois_, or sharpers; of _mercelots_, or hawkers, who were very little
better than the former; of _gueux_, or dishonest beggars, and of a host of
other swindlers, constituting the order or hierarchy of the _Argot_, or
Slang people. Their chief was called the _Grand Coesre_, "a vagabond
broken to all the tricks of his trade," says M. Francisque Michel, and who
frequently ended his days on the rack or the gibbet. History has furnished
us with the story of a "miserable cripple" who used to sit in a wooden
bowl, and who, after having been Grand Coesre for three years, was broken
alive on the wheel at Bordea