qui je suis, what I am

27. du pays de Jésus. Cf. the expression God’s country; the Spanish sometimes call Andalusia la tierra de Dios, * God’s country.’

29. Francisco Sevilla. Mérimée was acquainted with this famous bullfighter, who died in 1841.

Page 18. — 1. vous seriez . . . Mauresque, you may be Moorish. The conditional mood is here used, as frequently, to express possibility, conjecture, or probability.

2. n’osant dire. Why is pas omitted ? — juive. In an effort to Christianize the entire country, Jews were banished from Spain in 1492 and have returned in very small numbers only since 1858. Before 1858 the word ‘ Jew ’ survived in Spanish only as a term of contumely.

3. bohémienne, Gipsy. The Gipsies left India at an unknown date, certainly after the 5th century, a.d., and appeared in western Europe in the 15th century. The name bohémien indicates that they spent some time in Bohemia, while gitana (page 18, line 23), like Gipsy, means Egyptian, because they said they came from ‘ Egypt.’ The language, Rommany, is derived from a Hindu dialect, but is much mixed with various European elements, according to the residence of the various tribes.

4. baji, like most of the Gipsy expressions in Carmen, was known to Mérimée from the works of George Borrow, The Bible in Spain and The Zincali.

NOTES

5. Carmencita, diminutive of Carmen, a form of Carmel, given as a name in honor of “ Our Lady of Mount Carmel.” Carmencita was the name of “ une très jolie fille, point trop basanée,” considered a witch, who served Mérimée gazpacho in an inn near Murviedro (now Sagunto) in 1830, and whose portrait he drew (see Les Sorcières espagnoles, in Mérimée’s Dernières nouvelles).

6. il y a de cela quinze ans, I should say fifteen years ago.

12. Sortant du collège. A collège is a combination of an elementary and a secondary school. Pupils may enter it at the age of five, or may attend elementary schools (écoles primaires) and enter the secondary part of the collège at the age of twelve. A collège differs from a lycée in that the latter is maintained by the central government, while a collège is either a municipal or a private foundation (frequently religious). The secondary course takes seven years, after which the pupil receives the degree of bachelier and may enter the University or a higher professional school. The bachelier has thus about completed the work of an American junior college.

14. sciences occultes. About 1820, when he was 17, Mérimée read a number of works on magic, and he was always interested in such subjects.