_ PART I: BOOK THE FIRST. NIGHT NOT SO BLACK AS MAN
CHAPTER IV. QUESTIONS
What kind of band was it which had left the child behind in its flight?
Were those fugitives Comprachicos?
We have already seen the account of the measures taken by William III. and passed by Parliament against the malefactors, male and female, called Comprachicos, otherwise Comprapequenos, otherwise Cheylas.
There are laws which disperse. The law acting against the Comprachicos determined, not only the Comprachicos, but vagabonds of all sorts, on a general flight.
It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater number of the Comprachicos returned to Spain--many of them, as we have said, being Basques.
The law for the protection of children had at first this strange result: it caused many children to be abandoned.
The immediate effect of the penal statute was to produce a crowd of children, found or rather lost. Nothing is easier to understand. Every wandering gang containing a child was liable to suspicion. The mere fact of the child's presence was in itself a denunciation.
"They are very likely Comprachicos." Such was the first idea of the sheriff, of the bailiff, of the constable. Hence arrest and inquiry. People simply unfortunate, reduced to wander and to beg, were seized with a terror of being taken for Comprachicos although they were nothing of the kind. But the weak have grave misgivings of possible errors in justice. Besides, these vagabond families are very easily scared. The accusation against the Comprachicos was that they traded in other people's children. But the promiscuousness caused by poverty and indigence is such that at times it might have been difficult for a father and mother to prove a child their own.
How came you by this child? how were they to prove that they held it from God? The child became a peril--they got rid of it. To fly unencumbered was easier; the parents resolved to lose it--now in a wood, now on a strand, now down a well.
Children were found drowned in cisterns.
Let us add that, in imitation of England, all Europe henceforth hunted down the Comprachicos. The impulse of pursuit was given. There is nothing like belling the cat. From this time forward the desire to seize them made rivalry and emulation among the police of all countries, and the alguazil was not less keenly watchful than the constable.
One could still read, twenty-three years ago, on a stone of the gate of Otero, an untranslatable inscription--the words of the code outraging propriety. In it, however, the shade of difference which existed between the buyers and the stealers of children is very strongly marked. Here is part of the inscription in somewhat rough Castillan, _Aqui quedan las orejas de los Comprachicos, y las bolsas de los robaninos, mientras que se van ellos al trabajo de mar_. You see the confiscation of ears, etc., did not prevent the owners going to the galleys. Whence followed a general rout among all vagabonds. They started frightened; they arrived trembling. On every shore in Europe their furtive advent was watched. Impossible for such a band to embark with a child, since to disembark with one was dangerous.
To lose the child was much simpler of accomplishment.
And this child, of whom we have caught a glimpse in the shadow of the solitudes of Portland, by whom had he been cast away?
To all appearance by Comprachicos. _