d forbidden lore,
though it be of no earthly use to her. After all the kindness they had
shown me, I could not find it in my heart to refuse to tell these gentle
Zingari their little fortunes. It is not, I admit, exactly in the order
of things that the chicken should dress the cook, or the Gorgio tell
fortunes to gypsies; but he who wanders in strange lands meets with
strange adventures. So, with a full knowledge of the legal penalties
attached in England to palmistry and other conjuration, and with the then
pending Slade case knocking heavily on my conscience, I proceeded to
examine and predict. When I afterward narrated this incident to the late
G. H. Lewes, he expressed himself to the effect that to tell fortunes to
gypsies struck him as the very _ne plus ultra_ of cheek,--which shows how
extremes meet; for verily it was with great modesty and proper diffidence
that I ventured to foretell the lives of these little ladies, having an
antipathy to the practice of chiromancing as to other romancing.

I have observed that as among men of great and varied culture, and of
extensive experience, there are more complex and delicate shades and
half-shades of light in the face, so in the palm the lines are
correspondingly varied and broken. Take a man of intellect and a
peasant, of equal excellence of figure according to the literal rules of
art or of anatomy, and this subtile multiplicity of variety shows itself
in the whole body in favor of the "gentleman," so that it would almost
seem as if every book we read is republished in the person. The first
thing that struck me in these gypsy hands was the fewness of the lines,
their clearly defined sweep, and their simplicity. In every one the line
of life was unbroken, and, in fine, one might think from a drawing of the
hand, and without knowing who its owner might be, that he or she was of a
type of character unknown in most great European cities,--a being gifted
with special culture, and in a certain simple sense refined, but not
endowed with experience in a thousand confused phases of life. The hands
of a true genius, who has passed through life earnestly devoted to a
single art, however, are on the whole like these of the gypsies. Such,
for example, are the hands of Fanny Janauschek, the lines of which agree
to perfection with the laws of chiromancy. The art reminds one of
Cervantes's ape, who told the past and present, but not the future. And
here "tell me what thou h