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 Comprachicosdetermined, not only the Comprachicos, but vagabonds of all sorts, on ageneral flight.
It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater number of theComprachicos returned to Spain--many of them, as we have said, beingBasques.
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 ofchildren, found or rather lost. Nothing is easier to understand. Everywandering gang containing a child was liable to suspicion. The mere factof the child's presence was in itself a denunciation.
"They are very likely Comprachicos." Such was the first idea of thesheriff, of the bailiff, of the constable. Hence arrest and inquiry.People simply unfortunate, reduced to wander and to beg, were seizedwith a terror of being taken for Comprachicos although they were nothingof the kind. But the weak have grave misgivings of possible errors injustice. Besides, these vagabond families are very easily scared. Theaccusation against the Comprachicos was that they traded in otherpeople's children. But the promiscuousness caused by poverty andindigence is such that at times it might have been difficult for afather and mother to prove a child their own.
How came you by this child? how were they to prove that they held itfrom God? The child became a peril--they got rid of it. To flyunencumbered 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 hunteddown the Comprachicos. The impulse of pursuit was given. There isnothing like belling the cat. From this time forward the desire to seizethem made rivalry and emulation among the police of all countries, andthe alguazil was not less keenly watchful than the constable.
One could still read, twenty-three years ago, on a stone of the gate ofOtero, an untranslatable inscription--the words of the code outragingpropriety. In it, however, the shade of difference which existed betweenthe buyers and the stealers of children is very strongly marked. Here ispart of the inscription in somewhat rough Castillan, _Aqui quedan lasorejas de los Comprachicos, y las bolsas de los robaninos, mientras quese van ellos al trabajo de mar_. You see the confiscation of ears, etc.,did not prevent the owners going to the galleys. Whence followed ageneral rout among all vagabonds. They started frightened; they arrivedtrembling. On every shore in Europe their furtive advent was watched.Impossible for such a band to embark with a child, since to disembarkwith 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 thesolitudes of Portland, by whom had he been cast away?