The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

by Jan Potocki

  to understand them,

  to understand a part of them,

  to show brilliance in combining ideas.

  But one can imagine a declining scale which goes from the peasant, represented by 100,000, to minds designated by sixteen, eleven, five, then down to intelligences which have four ideas and six combinations and three ideas and four combinations.

  The child having only four ideas and six combinations does not yet abstract, but between this number and 100,000, the ratio will be found between the number of ideas and their combinations, the product of which is abstraction.

  Now it is this compound ratio which animals and deaf and blind children never reach, the latter because of a lack of images, the former because of a lack of combinations.

  Perhaps the simplest abstraction is that of numbers. It consists in separating objects from their mathematical quantity. Until they can do so, children have not achieved abstraction; they reach abstraction by the analysis of qualities, which is also a sort of abstraction. They reach it gradually. When they get past this first abstraction, they then can abstract by combining and acquiring ideas.

  This series from the least to the highest intelligence therefore always consists of dimensions of the same genus, or values of the same species, in respect of the number of images, and according to the laws governing combination. These elements are always the same.

  So intelligences of different orders can really be regarded as belonging to a single species, just as the most complicated of calculations can be considered as a species of additions and subtractions and every mathematical treatise, when it is complete, is really a scale of abstractions from the simplest to the most transcendent.

  Velásquez then developed this comparison in other ways, the brilliance of which Rebecca seemed to appreciate, after which they went their own ways, reciprocally convinced of the other’s merits.

  The Fortieth Day

  I awoke early and left my tent to enjoy the coolness of the morning. Velásquez and the girl we knew as Laura de Uzeda, had gone out with the same purpose.

  We went in the direction of the high road to see whether any travellers might appear. But when we reached a point above a deep ravine set between the rocks we decided to sit down.

  Soon we saw a caravan coming into the pass, which went by about fifty feet below the rocks where we were sitting. The nearer the company came to us, the more surprised we were. At the front of the column were four Americans. All that they wore were single long garments fringed with lace. On their heads they had straw hats decorated with long multi-coloured feathers, and they were armed with long rifles. Then came a herd of vicuña, each with a monkey on its back. After this there was a mounted troop of well-armed negroes. Then came two old gentlemen mounted on fine Andalusian horses and wrapped up in their blue velvet cloaks, which were embroidered with Calatrava crosses. Then came a Chinese palanquin carried by eight Moluccan islanders. In the palanquin could be seen a young lady dressed in the Spanish manner and a young man on horseback was prancing gallantly at its doors.

  Then there was a young person lying unconscious on a litter, and a priest on the back of a mule was throwing holy water on the young person and seemed to be exorcizing her. Then came a long file of men of every hue from ebony-black to olive-brown, there being none of paler shade.

  While the company was processing by, we did not think to ask who these people could be. But when the last of them had gone by, Rebecca said, ‘We really ought to have asked who they were.’

  As Rebecca spoke, I saw a member of the column who had remained behind the rest. I risked climbing down the rocks and ran after the laggard.

  He threw himself on his knees, looked frightened and said to me, ‘Señor Bandit, may your grace have pity on a gentleman who was born amid gold-mines but who hasn’t a penny to his name.’

  I replied that I wasn’t a thief and wanted only to know the names of the illustrious gentlemen whom I had seen go by.

  ‘If that’s all you want,’ said the American, rising proudly to his feet, ‘I shall satisfy you. If you like, we may climb to this spur of rock, from which we will be able to see more easily the whole line of the caravan in the valley. First, Your Lordship can see those oddly-dressed men at the front. They are highlanders from Cuzco and Quito, whose job it is to look after the fine vicuña which my master expects to present to His Majesty the King of Spain and the Indies.

  ‘The negroes are slaves, or rather they were slaves, of my master, for on Spanish soil slavery is not tolerated any more than is heresy. From the moment their feet touched this sacred soil these blacks have been as free as you and I.

  ‘The old gentleman that you see on the right is the Conde de Peña Vélez, a nephew by blood of the famous viceroy of that name and a grandee of the first class.

  ‘The other old gentleman is Don Alonso, Marqués de Torres Rovellas, son of a Marqués de Torres, who became husband of the heiress of the Rovellas family. These two gentlemen have always had the most intimate of friendships, which will become even more so with the marriage of young Peña Vélez with the only daughter of Torres Rovellas – and there you see the charming couple. The young groom is mounted on a superb, spirited horse, and the young bride-to-be is in the gilded palanquin, which was a present that the King of Borneo once made to the late Viceroy de Peña Vélez.

  ‘Finally, the young girl carried in the litter, being exorcized by a priest, is as unknown to me as to you. Yesterday morning curiosity prompted me to go to the gallows which is just off the highway. There I found this young person lying between two hanged men. I called everyone over to show them this bizarre circumstance. The count, my master, perceiving that the young person was still alive, had her carried to the place where we spent the night. He even decided that we would spend the whole day there so that the patient could be cared for, and indeed she deserves it, for she is a striking beauty. Today we risked putting her in that litter, but she keeps fainting.

  ‘The gentleman following the litter is Don Alvar Massa Gordo, first cook, or rather, major-domo of the count. Next to him you see Lemado, the pastry cook, and Lacho, the confectioner.’

  ‘That, Señor, is already more than I wanted to know,’ I said.

  ‘Finally, the person bringing up the rear, who has the honour to address you, is Don Gonzalo de Hierro Sangre, a Peruvian nobleman born into the families of Pizarro and Almagro and heir to their valour.’

  I thanked the illustrious Peruvian and rejoined my own company, to whom I told what I had learnt. We all returned to the camp, and we told the gypsy chief that we had seen his little Lonzeto and the daughter of the young Elvira, whose place he had taken with the viceroy.

  The gypsy replied that they had long planned to leave America, that they had landed in Cadiz the previous month, that they had left there the week before and had spent two nights on the banks of the Guadalquivir, quite close to the gallows of the Zoto brothers, where they had come upon a young girl lying between two hanged men.

  Then he added, ‘I have reason to believe that the young person has nothing to do with the Gomelez. I don’t know her at all.’

  ‘What?’ I exclaimed with surprise. ‘This young girl is not an instrument of the Gomelez? And yet she was found under the gallows? Could the hauntings be true?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the gypsy.

  ‘We must detain these travellers for a few days,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘I have already thought of that,’ replied the gypsy. ‘Tonight I shall have half their herd of vicuña stolen.’

  The Forty-first Day

  This way of detaining the strangers seemed to me very odd. I was going to say so but the chief went on to give the order to strike camp. From the tone of his voice I could tell that my observations would have been fruitless. On this occasion we only moved camp a few times the range of a musket to a place where rocks seemed to have split after an earthquake. There we dined and everyone retired to his tent.

  Towards evening I went to the chief’s tent,
where I came upon a commotion. The descendant of the house of Pizarro was there with two foreign servants and was haughtily demanding that the vicuñas be returned to them. The gypsy chief listened to him very patiently, which emboldened Señor Hierro Sangre, who started to shout even louder and was not sparing in his use of such epithets as ‘scoundrel’, ‘bandit’ and the like. At this the chief began to whistle at a very shrill pitch. The tent filled up gradually with armed gypsies, whose successive appearance caused a gradual diminution in the Peruvian’s tone. Indeed he finished up trembling so much that one could hardly hear what he said.

  When the chief saw that he had calmed down he offered him his hand with a smile and said to him, ‘Forgive me, brave Peruvian, the appearances are against me and you have some cause to be angry; but go to the Marqués de Torres Rovellas. Ask him whether he recalls a Señora Dalanosa, whose nephew agreed out of pure kindness to become the wife of the Viceroy of Mexico in the place of Señora de Rovellas. If he remembers him, let him come here to meet me.’

  Don Gonzalo de Hierro Sangre seemed delighted that a drama, whose outcome he had feared, had ended so well and he promised to acquit himself of the mission.

  When he had left us the chief said to me, ‘The Marqués de Torres Rovellas used to have a prodigious appetite for novels and pastorals. We must receive him in surroundings which may please him.’

  We went down into the fissure in the rock, which was shaded by thick bushes. Suddenly I was struck by the sight of natural scenery different from any I had seen up till then. A lake of dark green waters, transparent into its very depths, was surrounded by precipitous cliffs which were separated from each other by sunny beaches covered in flowering shrubs, which had been planted artistically although not in any pattern. Wherever the foot of the cliffs met the water, a path hollowed out through the rock led from one beach to the other. The waters of the lake flowed into grottoes decorated like those of Calypso. These were so many retreats where one could enjoy the coolness, and even bathe. The silence, which was total, indicated that this place was not known to men.

  ‘Here is a province of my little empire where I have spent several years of my life, perhaps the happiest ones,’ said the chief to me. ‘But the two Americans are about to come. Let us find a pleasant refuge in which to await their arrival.’

  We went into one of the prettiest grottoes, where Rebecca and her brother joined us. Soon the two old gentlemen appeared.

  ‘Is it possible,’ said one of them, ‘that after such a long period of time I have found again the man who in his childhood did me so great a service? I have often sought information about you but in vain. Satisfactory reports never reached me in America.’

  ‘Nor could they,’ said the gypsy. ‘I have undergone so many transformations and I have lived my life under so many different guises that it would have been difficult to catch up with me. But now we have found each other again at last, do me the honour of spending a few days in this retreat. Here you will enjoy a rest from the fatigues of your journey, of which you must be in need.’

  ‘But this is a magical place,’ said the marqués.

  ‘It has that reputation,’ replied the gypsy. ‘Under Arab domination it was called Afrid Hamami, or the Devil’s Bath. Now it’s called La Frita. The inhabitants of the Sierra Morena do not dare come near it, and of an evening tell each other tales about the strange happenings which occur here. I do not want to enlighten them too much, and I would ask that the greater part of your retinue should stay outside this valley in the one where I have pitched my camp.’

  ‘My old friend,’ said the marqués, ‘I ask for an exception to be made in the case of my daughter and future son-in-law.’

  The gypsy bowed low and ordered those two persons, with a small number of servants, to be fetched.

  While the gypsy showed his guests round the valley Velásquez looked all round him with surprise, picked up a stone, examined it and said, ‘This is meltable in a glass-blower’s furnace without any additive. We are in the crater of an old volcano here. The inner wall of this inverse cone provides us with a way of knowing its depth and hence of calculating the expansive force which hollowed it out. It is a subject worth considering.’

  Velásquez thought for a moment, drew out tablets from his pocket and wrote something on them. Then he said, ‘My father had a good theory about volcanoes. According to him, the expansive force which develops a core is higher than that which can be attributed either to steam or to the combustion of saltpetre and he inferred from that, that one day we will come to know about fluids whose effects will explain a great proportion of the phenomena of nature.’

  ‘So you think that this lake has been hollowed out by a volcano?’ said Rebecca.

  ‘Yes, Señora,’ replied Velásquez. ‘The nature of the stone proves it, and the shape of the lake is a strong clue, too. From the way I can see objects on the opposite bank I estimate the diameter to be about 300 fathoms, and as the average incline of the lower cone is more or less sixty-six degrees, I estimate that the core may have been at a depth of 413 fathoms, which would give a displacement of 9,734,455 cubic fathoms of matter. And as I have told you, no forces in man’s power could produce a similar effect, no matter in what quantity they were brought together.’

  Rebecca wanted to add something to this line of reasoning but at that moment the marqués came back with his own people. As this conversation would not have interested everyone to the same degree, the chief wanted to put an end to Velásquez’s geometrical proofs, so he turned to his guest and said, ‘Señor, when I knew you, you lived and breathed love and were as fair as love itself. Your union with Elvira must have been nothing other than a series of delights and pleasures. You have breathed in the perfumes of life without knowing its thorns.’

  ‘Not altogether,’ said the marqués. ‘It is true that love has perhaps taken up too much of my time but, as I have otherwise neglected none of the duties of a gentleman, I can confess to this foible without shame. And since we are in a place very well suited to romantic tales, I will, if you would like me to, tell you the story of my life.’

  The whole company greeted this proposal with acclaim, and the narrator began as follows:

  THE MARQUÉS DE TORRES ROVELLAS’S STORY

  When you joined the Theatines, we were living, as you know, quite near your aunt Dalanosa. My mother sometimes went to see young Elvira but she didn’t take me with her. Elvira had entered the convent pretending to want to become a nun and visits from a boy of my age would not have been proper. So we were prey to all of the ills of absence, which we softened by a correspondence whose Mercury my mother agreed to be, although she did this a little unwillingly, for she claimed that dispensation from Rome was not that easy to obtain and according to the usual rules we should not have written to each other until the dispensation had been granted. But in spite of these scruples she carried the letters and the replies. As for Elvira’s wealth, we were very careful not to touch it. She was destined to become a nun and as soon as that happened all her goods would revert to Rovellas’s collateral.

  Your aunt spoke to my mother about her uncle the Theatine, referring to him as a shrewd and wise man who would give her good advice about the dispensation. My mother showed deep gratitude to your aunt. She wrote to Father Sántez, who thought the affair to be so important that instead of replying, he came himself to Burgos, with an adviser to the nunciature, who bore an assumed name because of the secrecy which those involved in the negotiation wanted to maintain.

  It was decided that Elvira would spend six more months in the noviciate, and that afterwards, when her vocation had altogether disappeared, she would have the status of a highly distinguished, paying resident in the convent, with private service provided; that is, with women cloistered with her, and a house set up outside as if she lived in it. My mother would stay there with some lawyers, who would deal with the details of the guardianship. As for me, I was to leave for Rome with a tutor, and the adviser was to follow; this did not i
n fact happen, for I was thought too young to solicit a dispensation and two years went by before I left.

  And what years they were! I could see Elvira in the parlour every day and spend the rest of my time writing to her or reading novels. This reading matter greatly helped me to write my letters. Elvira read the same works and replied in the same vein. There was little of ourselves in this correspondence. Our turns of phrase were borrowed but our love was very real, or at least we had a very marked taste for each other. The insurmountable obstacle of the grille, which always came between us, excited our desire. Our blood burned with all the fire of youth and the turmoil of our senses added to that which was already ruling our heads.

  The time came when I had to leave. The moment of saying farewell was cruel. Our sorrow was neither rehearsed nor feigned and was close to frenzy. People feared for Elvira’s life. My sorrow was no less powerful but I was better able to resist it than was she. The distractions of the journey did me a great deal of good. I also owed a great deal to my mentor, who wasn’t a pedant plucked from the dust of a school but a retired officer who had even spent some time at court. He was called Don Diego Sántez and was quite closely related to the Theatine of that name. This man, who was as shrewd as he was urbane, used indirect means to bring my mind back to reality, but the habits of fiction were too deeply rooted in it.

  We arrived in Rome, and our first task was to pay our respects to Monsignor Ricardi, a very influential man, especially well looked-on by the Jesuits, who were then setting the style in Rome. He was a grave, proud person with an imposing figure, which was set off by a cross of enormous diamond which sparkled on his chest.

  Ricardi told us that he had been informed of our affair, that it required discretion and that we should not move much in polite society. ‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘you would do well to come to my house. The interest I shall be seen to have in you will prove on your part a modesty which will count in your favour. I have decided to sound out the minds of the sacred college on your behalf.’