In the early autumn of 1830, an inquisitive scientist (Merime himself guesses in it) hires a guide in Cordoba and goes in search of the ancient Munda, where the last victorious Spanish battle of Julius Caesar took place. Midday heat makes him seek refuge in a shady gorge. But the place at the stream is already taken. Towards the narrator, a cunning and strong fellow with a gloomy proud look and blond hair rises warily. The traveler disarms him with a proposal to share a cigar and a meal with him, and then they continue along the road, despite the eloquent signs of the guide. They stay overnight in a remote vent. A companion lays a musketon nearby and sleeps with the righteous, but the scientist does not sleep. He leaves the house and sees a creeping guide who is about to warn the Lancer post that the robber José Navarro has stopped in the vent, for the capture of which two hundred ducats are promised. The traveler warns the satellite about the danger. Now they are bound by bonds of friendship.
The scientist continues his search in the library of the Dominican monastery in Cordoba. After sunset, he usually walks along the coast of Guadalquivir. One evening, on the embankment, a woman comes up to him, dressed like a grizzly, and with a bunch of jasmine in her hair. She is short, young, well-built, and she has huge slanting eyes. The scientist is struck by her strange, wild beauty and especially the look, both sensual and wild. He treats her with cigarettes, finds out that her name is Carmen, that she is a gypsy and knows how to guess. He asks permission to take her home and show him his art. But fortune-telling was interrupted at the very beginning - the door swings open and a man wrapped in a cloak bursts into the room with curses. The scientist recognizes in him his friend Jose. After a furious skirmish with Carmen in an unfamiliar language, Jose takes the guest out of the house and points the way to the hotel. The scientist discovers that in the meantime, he lost the golden watch with a fight that Carmen liked so much. A distressed and shamed scientist leaves the city. After a few months, he again finds himself in Cordoba and finds out that the robber José Navarro has been arrested and is awaiting execution in prison. The curiosity of the researcher of local customs prompts the scientist to visit the robber and listen to his confession.
Jose Lisarrabengoa tells him that he is a Basque, was born in Elisondo and belongs to an old noble family. After a bloody fight, he flees from his native land, enters the Dragoon regiment, serves diligently and becomes a brigadier. But one day, in his misfortune, he was assigned to guard at the Seville tobacco factory. That Friday, he first sees Carmen - his love, torment, and perdition. Together with other girls, she goes to work. She has an acacia flower in her mouth, and she walks with her hips, like a young Cordobian mare. Two hours later, an outfit is called to stop the bloody quarrel in the factory. Jose should take to prison the instigator of the quarrel Carmen, who mutilated the face of one of the workers with a knife. On the way, she tells José a moving story about the fact that she, too, is from the Basque country, she is completely alone in Seville, she is poisoned as a stranger, and therefore she took up the knife. She lies like she lied her whole life, but Jose believes her and helps her escape. For this he is demoted and sent to prison for a month. There he receives a gift from Carmen - a loaf of bread with a file, a gold coin and two piastres. But Jose does not want to run - military honor holds him back. Now he serves as a simple soldier. One day he stands on a watch near his colonel’s house. A crew arrives with gypsies invited to entertain the guests. Among them is Carmen. She sets up a meeting for Jose, they spend together recklessly happy day and night. At parting, Carmen says: “We are even. Goodbye ... You know, son, I think I fell in love with you a little. But <...> the wolf cannot get along with the dog, "Jose tries in vain to find Carmen. She appears only when it is necessary to lead smugglers through the gap in the city wall that protects Jose. So, for the promise of Carmen to give him the night, he violates the military oath. He then kills the lieutenant, whom Carmen brings to himself. He becomes a smuggler. For a while he was almost happy, since Carmen was sometimes affectionate with him - until the day when Garcia Krivoy, a disgusting freak, appeared in the detachment of smugglers. This is Carmen’s husband, whom she finally manages to rescue from prison. Jose and his "associates" smuggle, rob and sometimes kill travelers. Carmen serves as their liaison and gunner. Rare encounters bring short happiness and unbearable pain. Once Carmen hints to Jose that during the next “case” it would be possible to substitute a crooked husband under enemy bullets. Jose prefers to kill an opponent in a fair fight and becomes Carmen's rum (gypsy husband), but she is increasingly weighed down by his obsessive love. He offers her to change her life, to leave for the New World. She makes him laugh: "We are not created to plant cabbage." After some time, Jose learns that Carmen is passionate about matador Lucas. Jose is furiously jealous and again offers Carmen to go to America. She replies that she is well in Spain, but she will not live with him anyway. Jose takes Carmen to a secluded gorge and again and again asks if she will follow him. “I can’t love you. I don’t want to live with you, ”Carmen replies and rips off the ring he donated. Enraged, Jose stabs a knife into her twice. He buries her in the forest - she always wanted to find eternal peace in the forest - and puts a ring and a small cross in the grave.
In the fourth and last chapter of the short story, the narrator selflessly shares with his readers his observations on the customs and language of the Spanish gypsies. Towards the end, he cites a significant gypsy proverb: "A move has been ordered to the tightly closed mouth of a fly."
