The Manuscript Found in Saragossa Read Online Free PDF Page A

left me, telling me that I would soon see them again; and they advised me to fall asleep as soon as possible.
    So many strange incidents and fantastic stories and such unexpected emotions would normally perhaps have led me to reflect upon them all night, but I confess that I was most interested in the dreams I had been promised. I undressed in haste and lay down on the bed which had been prepared for me. Once there, I noted with pleasure that my bed was very wide – wide enough, indeed, to accommodate more than just dreams. But I had scarcely had time to note this before my eyelids were closed by an irresistible drowsiness and the fantasies of the night overtook my senses. I was under the magic power ofwayward fancies and my thoughts, transported on the wings of desire, carried me into the midst of African harems, where I contemplated the charms of those confined within their walls, rapturously enjoying them again and again in my imagination. I felt as though I was dreaming, but I was aware at the same time that it was not the creatures of dreams that I was embracing. I revelled in vague and wanton fancies, never leaving the company of my beautiful cousins. I fell asleep on their breasts and awoke again in their arms.
    I do not know how often I passed from one sweet illusion to the other…

The Second Day

    When at length I awoke, the sun was burning my eyelids. I could scarcely open them. I saw the sky and I saw I was in the open air. But my eyes were still heavy with sleep. I was not really asleep but neither was I properly awake. Images of torture flashed through my mind one after the other. Terror took hold of me. I rose with a start and sat up.
    How can I express in words the horror which filled me then? I was lying below the gibbet of Los Hermanos. The corpses of Zoto’s two brothers were not hanging from it but were lying on either side of me. I had apparently spent the night with them. I was lying on pieces of rope, fragments of wheels and human remains and the revolting rags which had fallen from them as they had rotted.
    I thought that I was not fully awake and prey still to unpleasant dreams. I closed my eyes and tried to remember where I had been the night before. It was then that I felt claws sink into my side and saw a vulture had perched on me and was devouring one of my bedfellows. The pain caused by its talons as they dug into me woke me up altogether. I saw my clothes to hand and hastily put them on. Once dressed, I resolved to leave the gallows enclosure but found the door nailed fast and tried in vain to break it down. I was forced to scale its gloomy walls. I reached the top and, leaning on one of the uprights of the gallows, surveyed the surrounding countryside. I easily recognized where I was. I was indeed at the entrance of the valley of Los Hermanos and not far from the banks of the Guadalquivir.
    As I watched, I caught sight of two travellers near the river, one preparing a repast, the other holding two horses by their bridles. I was so overjoyed to see my fellow man that my first impulse was to shoutat them ‘Agour! Agour!’, which in Spanish means ‘Good-day’ or ‘Greetings’. 1
    On seeing themselves greeted thus from the top of a gallows, the two travellers seemed for an instant undecided what to do. They then suddenly jumped on their horses and urged them into a full gallop, taking the road to Los Alcornoques.
    I shouted to them to stop but to no avail. The more I shouted the more they spurred their horses on. When they were lost to sight, I thought about leaving my eerie vantage point. I jumped down and in jumping down did myself a small injury.
    Limping badly, I reached the banks of the Guadalquivir and found there the meal abandoned by the two travellers. Nothing could have been more welcome to me for I felt exhausted. There was chocolate still cooking, with
esponajas
2 steeped in Alicante wine, bread and eggs. The first thing I did was to recover my