The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

by Jan Potocki

  When I reached the cave everyone had assembled for breakfast. A place had been kept for me. Another was laid for the stranger and no one asked who he was. Such are the laws of hospitality which are rarely broken in Spain. The stranger took the chocolate beverage like a man in need of refreshment. The gypsy chief asked me whether my companion had been wounded by thieves.

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I found this gentleman unconscious under the gallows of Los Hermanos. As soon as he came round, he ran off into the countryside. Fearing that he might lose his way in the heath land, I ran after him. The more I tried to catch up with him, the faster he ran to escape me. Which is why he did himself such an injury.’

  At this, the stranger set down his spoon and, turning to me, said gravely, ‘Señor, you express yourself badly. I suspect that you have not been inculcated with the right principles.’

  You can well imagine what sort of effect these words had on me. But I kept my temper and replied, ‘Señor caballero, whom I don’t know, I venture to assure you that I have been brought up in the best possible way and that my education has been all the more essential to me in that I have the honour to be a captain in the Walloon Guards.’

  ‘Señor,’ replied the stranger, ‘I spoke of the principles, about which you may have been taught, which govern the acceleration of heavy bodies when this occurs on an inclined plane. Actually, since you wanted to talk about my fall and give an account of its cause, you might have observed that, as the gallows was placed on top of a hill, I was running down an inclined plane, and from that you should have considered my path to be the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle with its base parallel to the horizon, and its right angle formed by that same base and the perpendicular which met the point of the right angle, that is to say, the foot of the gallows. You might then have said that my acceleration along the inclined plane was to the acceleration I would have had by falling down the perpendicular as that same perpendicular was to the hypotenuse. It was an acceleration calculated in this way which led me to fall over so hard, not the fact that my speed increased because I was trying to escape from you. But all that doesn’t prevent you being a captain in the Walloon Guards.’

  With these words, the stranger took up his spoon and set about consuming the chocolate beverage again, leaving me uncertain how I ought to react to his reasoning and whether he had been serious or making fun of me.

  Seeing that I was on the point of taking offence, the gypsy chief decided to change the subject and said, ‘This gentleman, who seems very well instructed in geometry, must be in need of rest. It would be indiscreet to ask him to tell us anything today and that is why, if the company consents, I shall continue with the story I began yesterday.’

  Rebecca said that nothing would please her more. And so the gypsy chief spoke as follows:

  THE GYPSY CHIEF’S STORY CONTINUED

  At the moment we were interrupted yesterday, I was just relating to you how my Aunt Dalanosa had come to tell us that Lonzeto had run off with Elvira, who was dressed as a boy, and how we were plunged into consternation by this news. Aunt Torres, who had lost both a niece and a son, was in an unimaginable state of distress. As for me, I thought that all that remained now that Elvira had abandoned me would either be to become the virreina in her place or to receive a beating that I feared more than death itself. I was contemplating these unpleasant alternatives when the major-domo came to tell me that it was time to go and offered me his arm to escort me downstairs. I was so persuaded in my mind of the necessity of becoming the virreina that I instinctively adopted a haughty air and took the major-domo’s arm with such dignity and modesty that my aunts laughed in spite of their distress.

  That day the viceroy did not prance alongside my litter. We met him again at the door of the inn at Torquemada. The favour I had bestowed on him the day before had emboldened him. He showed me the glove hidden in his bosom, he offered me his hand to help me down from the litter and gently squeezed and kissed mine. I could not prevent myself feeling a certain pleasure at being so treated by a viceroy, but the idea of the whipping which would probably follow all these signs of respect still troubled me.

  We spent a short time in the apartment set aside for the ladies. Then dinner was announced. We were seated more or less as on the previous evening. The first course was eaten in complete silence. As the second was brought the viceroy turned to Señora Dalanosa and said:

  ‘I have learnt, Señora, of the trick played upon you by your nephew and that impudent little muleteer. If we were now in Mexico they would soon be in my hands. Anyway, I have given orders for them to be pursued. If they are found, your nephew will be solemnly whipped in the courtyard of the Theatines and the muleteer will have a tour of duty in the galleys.’

  The mention of the galleys and the thought of her son made Maria de Torres faint on the spot, and the idea of being whipped in the Theatines’ courtyard made me fall off my chair.

  In coming to my assistance, the viceroy was most assiduous and gallant. I recovered somewhat and put on a brave enough face for the rest of the meal. When we had risen from table the viceroy, instead of escorting me to my apartment, led me, together with my two aunts, under the trees opposite the inn, sat us down and said:

  ‘Señoras, I notice that today you took exception to an apparent hardness which I seemed to possess and which I might be thought to have acquired in the course of the various offices of state I have occupied. It occurred to me also that all you could know about me relates to a very few aspects of my life whose course and guiding-force are unknown to you. It seems to me, therefore, that you will want to know the story of my life and that it would be fitting for me to relate it to you. I hope at least that by knowing me better you will no longer have the same fear of me as I witnessed today.’

  Having said this, the viceroy fell silent and awaited our reply. We expressed our great desire to know him better. He thanked us for this token of interest in him and began as follows:

  THE CONDE DE PEÑA VÉLEZ’S STORY

  I was born in the beautiful countryside around Granada, in a country house my father possessed on the banks of the romantic Genil river. As you know, Spanish poets set all their pastoral scenes against the background of our province, and they have so convinced us that our climate is bound to inspire love that hardly a single inhabitant fails to pass his youth, and sometimes his whole life, in amorous pursuits.

  When one of our young men enters society his first concern is to seek out a lady to serve. If she accepts his homage he then declares himself her embebecido, or slave of her charms. In receiving him as such, the lady enters into a tacit agreement not to entrust her gloves and hand to any other than he. She also gives him precedence over others when a glass of water is to be fetched for her. The embebecido then kneels before her to give it to her. He also has the right to parade on horseback by the doors of her carriage and to offer her holy water in church and some other privileges of equal importance. Husbands are not jealous of these relationships and indeed they would be quite wrong to be so; primarily, because their wives do not receive visitors in their houses, where, in any case, they are surrounded by duennas and ladies-in-waiting, but also, to be completely frank, because those of our women who decide to be unfaithful to their husbands do not choose their embebecidos. They look rather to some young relative who has access to the house, and those who are most infamous take lovers from among the lower classes.

  This was the style of gallantry in Granada when I first joined polite society, but I was not taken by this style. It wasn’t that I had no feelings for the opposite sex: far from it. My heart had felt the sweet influence of our climate more strongly than any other, and my first youthful feelings were a need for love.

  I was soon convinced that love was something quite different from the insipid exchanges in which ladies in our society engaged with their embebecidos. These exchanges were indeed in no way guilty, but their effect was to interest the female heart in a man who was destined never to possess he
r, and to weaken feelings for the man to whom her person and heart belonged. This division revolted me. Love and marriage seemed to me to be necessarily but one, and Hymen with Venus’s features became the most secret and dearest of my thoughts and the idol of my imagination. In short, I must confess to you that by cherishing this favourite notion, all my mental faculties became absorbed to the point where my reason itself was affected and that sometimes I could have been taken for a genuine embebecido.

  Whenever I went into a house, far from taking an interest in the conversation going on there, I indulged myself in the fancy that the house was mine and my wife lived there. I would furnish her drawing-room with the finest tapestries from the Indies, as well as Chinese mats and Persian carpets on which I imagined that I could already see her footprints. I saw also the favourite tiled seat on which she would sit. Whenever she went out to take the air she would find a balcony, decorated with the most beautiful flowers, on which there would be a birdcage filled with the most exotic birds. As for her bedroom, I did not dare think of it except as a temple which my imagination feared to profane. While I was occupied with these thoughts the conversation followed its course. I took part only when I was spoken to, when I would reply at cross-purposes and always with a somewhat ill grace because I disliked being disturbed while making these arrangements.

  Such was the strange manner in which I behaved during such visits. The same aberrant behaviour occurred on walks. If I had to cross a stream, I would wade into the water up to my knees and my wife would walk across the stepping-stones, leaning on my arm, rewarding my attentions with a heavenly smile. Children delighted me. There was not one I met whom I did not cover with caresses. A woman giving the breast to her infant seemed to me to be nature’s crowning glory.

  At this the viceroy turned towards me and said, tenderly and respectfully, ‘I have not changed my mind on this matter and I am sure that adorable Elvira will not allow the blood of her children to be sullied by the milk of a paid wet-nurse.’

  This proposition disconcerted me more than you could imagine. I clasped my hands together and said, ‘Your Excellency, in heaven’s name, do not speak to me of such matters for they are beyond my understanding.’

  The viceroy replied, ‘Señora, I am most sorry to have thus shocked your innocence. I shall continue with my story without making a similar mistake.’

  And indeed he did continue as follows:

  My frequent bouts of absent-mindedness led Granada society to believe that I had lost my sanity. There was indeed something in this. Or rather I seemed mad because my own madness was not of the same sort as that of my fellow-citizens. I would have been called wise if I could have brought myself to be the mad embebecido of some lady of Granada. However, a reputation for madness is not flattering and I decided to leave my native province. I was resolved to do this for yet another reason. I wanted to be happy with my wife and happy on her account. If I had married a lady from Granada she would have thought herself free to accept the homage of an embebecido on the authority of local custom. You have heard that that did not suit me at all.

  So I decided to leave, and I went to court. There I found the same fatuous practices under different names. That of embebecido, which has today passed from Granada to Madrid, was not then used. The court ladies called their favoured but unrewarded lover their cortejo. They called galanes those who were even less well treated, rewarded at most with a smile and then only once or twice a month. But all their lovers without exception sported the colours of their lady and paraded alongside her carriage daily, raising a dust on the Prado that made the streets adjoining this beautiful promenade impossible to live in.

  I had neither enough wealth nor high enough birth to be singled out at court. But I made my name there by my skill in fighting bulls. The king himself spoke to me on several occasions and grandees did me the honour of seeking my friendship. I was very well known to the Conde de Rovellas among others, but when I killed his bull he was unconscious and hence unable to recognize me. Two of his picadors certainly knew me well, but I must suppose they were busy elsewhere, otherwise they would not have failed to claim the thousand pieces of eight1 promised by the count to the person who could give him information about his rescuer.

  One day, when I was dining at the house of the Minister of Haciendas (or finance) I found myself sitting next to Don Enrique de Torres, your worthy husband, Señora. He had come to Madrid on business. It was the first time I had had the honour of speaking to him, but his manner inspired confidence and I soon turned the conversation to my favourite topic: that of marriage and affairs of the heart. I asked Don Enrique if the ladies of Segovia had embebecidos, cortejos or galanes, too.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Such figures have as yet not been accepted in our customs. When ladies go walking on the promenade known as Zocodover they are half-veiled, and it is not the custom to accost them whether they be on foot or in their carriages. Nor do we receive in our houses, except for the first visit by a gentleman or a lady, but it is the custom to spend the evenings on balconies which are a little above the level of the street. The older gentlemen stop to speak to persons of their acquaintance, younger men wander from balcony to balcony and end their evening in front of a house where there is a marriageable girl.

  ‘But of all the balconies of Segovia,’ added Señor de Torres, ‘mine receives the most homage thanks to my sister-in-law, Elvira de Noruña, who, as well as all the excellent qualities of my wife, possesses a beauty which is not equalled in all of Spain.’

  Señor de Torres’s speech made a deep impression on me. A person who was so beautiful, so richly endowed with excellent qualities and living in a part of the country where there were no embebecidos seemed to me to be destined to be the person who would make my happiness. Some Segovians whom I induced to speak on the same topic confirmed that Elvira’s beauty was incomparable. So I decided to judge with my own eyes.

  Even before I left Madrid my passion for Elvira had already grown. But so had my shyness. So that when I reached Segovia I could not bring myself to visit Señor de Torres or others whose acquaintance I had made in Madrid. I would have liked someone to predispose Elvira in my favour as I had been predisposed in hers. I envied those whose great name or brilliant qualities herald their arrival and I thought that if I failed to make a favourable impression on Elvira at our first meeting it would be impossible for me to be preferred in her eyes to the others.

  I spent several days at my inn, seeing no one. At last I had myself shown the street in which Señor de Torres lived. I saw a board on the house opposite and asked there whether there was a room to let. I was shown one under the roof. I was lodged there for two reals a month. I took the name of Alonzo and said that business had brought me to Segovia.

  But in fact all the business I did was confined to peeping through a blind. Towards evening I saw you emerge with the incomparable Elvira. Dare I say it – I thought at first that she was no more than an average beauty. But after a short glance I clearly saw that the perfect harmony of her features did make her seem less strikingly beautiful, though as soon as she was compared to another woman her superiority was clear. I would even go so far as to say to you, Señora de Torres, who were very beautiful, that you could not stand comparison with her.

  From my attic room I was pleased to note that Elvira was perfectly indifferent to all the homage paid to her and that she seemed even bored by it. But this observation took away all desire to swell the numbers of her admirers – that is to say, those gentlemen who bored her. So I decided to observe from my window until some favourable opportunity arose to make myself known. If I am perfectly honest, I was placing my hopes on bullfights.

  As you will remember, Señora, I had then quite a good voice and could not resist the desire to make it heard. When all the suitors had returned to their homes I went down into the street and, accompanied by my guitar, sang a seguidilla as well as I could. I did this several evenings in a row and observed in due course that you did not retire fr
om the balcony until you had heard my song. This filled my heart with ineffably sweet feelings, which were, however, still far from being feelings of hope.

  I then learnt that Rovellas had been banished to Segovia. This made me despair. I did not for a moment doubt that he would fall in love with Elvira, nor was I wrong. Thinking himself still in Madrid, he declared himself openly to be the cortejo of your sister, took her colours, or what he imagined her colours to be, and embroidered them on his livery. From high up in my attic I was for long a witness of his fatuousness and impertinence and it gave me great pleasure to see that Elvira judged him on his personal attributes rather than the splendour with which he surrounded himself. But he was rich and on the point of becoming a grandee. What could I offer which could compete with such advantages? Perhaps nothing. Indeed I was so convinced of this and loved Elvira so selflessly that I ended up by wishing sincerely that she would marry Rovellas. I gave up all thought of introducing myself and stopped singing my tender tiranas. 2

  Meanwhile Rovellas expressed his passion only by his gallant behaviour. He made no formal approach to obtain Elvira’s hand. I even learned that Señor de Torres intended to retire to Villaca. I had become used to the agreeableness of living opposite his house in town and decided to enjoy the same advantage in the country. I went to Villaca and assumed the name of a labrador from Murcia. I bought the house opposite yours and furnished it in my own taste. But since lovers in disguise are always easy to recognize, I had the idea of fetching my sister from Granada and passing her off as my wife, which, it seemed to me, would dispel any suspicions. When I had made all these arrangements I went back to Segovia, where I learnt that Rovellas was preparing to stage a magnificent bullfight. But, Señora de Torres, you then had a two-year-old son. Might I not have news of him?