‘Brave Alphonse,’ she said. ‘You wanted yesterday to accost the two gypsy girls but the river gate was closed. I have brought you the key. If they approach the castle today, I beg you to follow them even into their camp. I assure you that you would greatly please my brother if you gave him information about them. As for me,’ she added in a melancholy tone, ‘I must depart. My fate so ordains, my strange fate. Oh my father, why didn’t you leave me with an ordinary destiny? I could then have loved what is real and not what is in a mirror.’

‘What do you mean, in a mirror?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ replied Rebecca. ‘One day you will know. Farewell. Farewell.’

The Jewish girl left in great distress and I could not help thinking that she would find it very difficult to preserve her purity with the celestial twins whose bride she was destined to be, according to her brother.

I went out on to the terrace. The gypsies had moved even further away than the day before. I took a book from the library but hardly read at all. I felt distracted and preoccupied. At last we sat down to table. As usual, the conversation turned on spirits, spectres and vampires. Our host told us that in antiquity people had no clear notion of them and called them empusae, larvae and lamiae, but that the ancient cabbalists were at least as good as modern ones even though they were known as philosophers, a name they shared with people who knew nothing about the hermetic arts.

The hermit spoke about Simon Magus,¹ but Uzeda claimed that Apollonius of Tyana should be considered the greatest cabbalist of those times since he possessed extraordinary powers over all the spirits of the whole world of demons. On saying this, he went to fetch a copy of the 1608 edition of Philostratus printed by Morel,² and cast his eyes over the Greek text. Then, without showing the slightest difficulty in understanding it, he read aloud in Spanish the following:

Although a philosopher, the young man did not resist these blandishments issuing from such beautiful lips, and became devoted to his new mistress.

When Apollonius saw Menippus for the first time he studied him as carefully as a sculptor who had undertaken to make a bust of him. Then he said, ‘Handsome young man, you are caressing a serpent and the serpent is caressing you.’

Menippus was surprised by these words. Apollonius went on, ‘You are loved by a woman who cannot be your wife. Do you think that she loves you?’

‘Without doubt,’ said the young man. ‘She loves me very much.’

‘Will you marry her?’ asked Apollonius.

‘It would please me very much to marry a woman that I love,’ said the young man.

‘When will the wedding be?’ said Apollonius.

‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ said the young man.

Apollonius took note of the hour of the ceremony, and when the guests were assembled he went into the room and said, ‘Where is the good lady who is giving this feast?’

Menippus said, ‘She is not far away.’

And then rather shamefacedly he stood up.

Apollonius then said, ‘All this gold, all this silver, all these ornaments in the room – are they yours or the woman’s?’

Menippus said, ‘They belong to the woman. All I possess is my philosopher’s cloak.’

Then Apollonius said, ‘Have you ever seen the gardens of Tantalus, which exist and yet do not exist?’

The guests replied, ‘We have found them depicted in Homer. We have not gone down into the underworld.’

Then Apollonius said to them, ‘All that you can see here is like those gardens. It is all appearance without any reality. In order to make you realize the truth of what I am saying let me tell you that the woman is one of those empusae normally called larvae or lamiae. They are desperate not for the pleasures of love but for human flesh. The way they attract those they want to devour is by exciting their lust.’

The bogus Phoenician then said, ‘Hold your tongue.’

Next, showing signs of her annoyance, she fulminated against philosophers and called them madmen. But at Apollonius’s words the gold and silver cutlery disappeared; at the same time the cup-bearers and cooks also vanished. Then the empusa pretended to cry and begged Apollonius to torment her no longer. But he continued to press her until she finally admitted who she was and said that she had satisfied Menippus’s desires only to devour him in due course, and that she liked eating handsome young men because their blood did her a lot of good.

Uzeda was of a different opinion. He maintained that pagans had been plagued by ghosts as much as Christians, although no doubt for different reasons, and to prove it he picked up a volume of Pliny’s letters, from which he read the following:³

At that time Athenagoras the philosopher came to Athens, saw the board and asked the price of the house. The reasonableness of the asking price aroused his suspicions. He made inquiries and was told the story, but far from making him withdraw, it encouraged him to complete the purchase without delay. He moved into the house, and that evening he ordered his bed to be laid out in the front room, called for writing-tables and a light and told his servants to retire to the back of the house. Fearing that his all-too-active imagination might succumb to baseless fear and produce idle phantoms, he concentrated his mind, his eyes and his hands on his writing.

During the first part of the night silence reigned in the house as everywhere else. But a little later he heard the clanking of iron on iron and the rattling of chains. He did not raise his eyes. He did not put down his pen. But he steeled himself and tried as it were to blot out all noise.

But the noise grew louder and seemed to be coming first from the door of his room, then from inside the room itself. He looked up and saw the spectre just as it had been described. The spectre was standing and beckoning to him. Athenagoras gestured to him to wait a little and went on writing as though nothing untoward had happened. The spectre then started to rattle his chains again in the very ears of the philosopher.

Athenagoras turned round and saw the spectre beckoning again. He got up, took the light and followed the phantom, who walked ahead with a slow tread as though weighed down by the chains. When he reached the courtyard of the house he suddenly disappeared, leaving our philosopher on his own. Athenagoras then picked some leaves and grass and put them on the spot where the spectre had left him, so that he would find it again. The next day he went to the magistrates and asked them to have the spot excavated. This was done. Fleshless bones bound up in chains were found. Time and the dampness of the earth had caused the flesh to rot away, leaving only bones in the fetters. The remains were collected together and the town assumed the responsibility of burying them. And ever since the corpse was paid its last respects it no longer disturbed the peace of the house.

Realizing what the cabbalist was getting at, I left the table with a haste which was somewhat discourteous and went out on to the terrace. I had been there for less than half an hour when I saw my two gypsy girls, who appeared to be coming towards the castle and from that distance looked just like Emina and Zubeida. I immediately decided to use my key. I went into my bedroom, fetched my sword and cloak and then hurried down to the river gate but, having opened it, the hardest part was yet to come, for I had still to cross the river. To do so, I had to edge along the retaining wall of the terrace, holding on to the iron rings which had been placed there for that purpose. I eventually reached the bed of stones and by leaping from one to the next I reached the other bank and came face to face with the gypsy girls. They were not my cousins. They did not have their refinement although they were not as common and vulgar as the women of their race usually are. It almost seemed as if they were only playing at being gypsies. They wanted first to tell my fortune. One opened out my hand and the other pretended to see my future in it, saying:

‘Ah, Señor, que veja en vuestra bast? Dirvanos kamela ma por quien? Por demonios!’

As you may well imagine, I would never have guessed that ‘dirvanos kamela’ meant ‘much love’ in the gypsy tongue. But they took the trouble to explain it to me and then they each took one of my arms and led me to their camp, where they introduced me to a healthy-looking and still robust old man who they said was their father.

The old man said in a mischievous way, ‘Do you know, Señor caballero, that you are in the midst of a band of which some ill is spoken in these parts? Are you not a little afraid of us?’

At the word ‘afraid’ my hand went to the hilt of my sword, but the old gypsy held out his hand in a friendly manner and said, ‘I am sorry, Señor caballero, I did not mean to offend you. Indeed such a thought was so far from my mind that I am inviting you to spend a few days in our company. If a journey in these mountains is something which may interest you, we can promise to show you their most beautiful and their most awesome valleys, the most agreeable parts and, hard by them, what are called their picturesque horrors. And if you enjoy hunting, you will have plenty of free time to satisfy your taste for it.’

I accepted this offer all the more eagerly because I was beginning to be bored by the cabbalist’s lectures and the isolation of his castle.

Then the old gypsy led me to his tent and said, ‘Señor caballero, this tent will be your quarters for as long as you choose to spend time with us. And I’ll have a small open tent erected right next to it for me to sleep in so that I can better see to your security.’

I replied to the old man that as I had the honour of being a captain in the Walloon Guards I was bound to rely for my protection on my sword alone.

This reply made him laugh and he said, ‘Señor caballero, the muskets of the bandits in these parts could kill a captain in the Walloon Guards as easily as anyone else. Once they have been told about you, you will even be able to leave our band and go off on your own, but until then it would be imprudent to try.’

The old man was quite right and I felt somewhat ashamed at my bravado.

We spent the evening wandering around the camp and talking to the young gypsy girls, who seemed to me to be the most wanton and also the happiest women in the world. Then supper was served. The table was laid in the shade of a carob tree near the chief’s tent. We stretched out on deerskins and the food was served on a buffalo hide, which had been treated to resemble Morocco leather, and which took the place of a table-cloth. The food was good, especially the game. The chief’s daughters poured out the wine, but I preferred to drink water from a spring which flowed from the rock a few paces away. The chief kept the conversation going pleasantly. He seemed to know all about my adventures and predicted that I would have more.

At last it was time to go to bed. One was made up for me in the chief’s tent and a guard was posted at the door. But towards the middle of the night I was awoken with a start. Then I sensed that my blanket was being lifted from both sides at the same time, and I felt two bodies pressing against mine. ‘Merciful God,’ I said to myself. ‘Will I have to wake up again between two hanged men?’

But this idea soon left my head. I supposed that what was happening was an aspect of gypsy hospitality and that it would be hardly right for a soldier of my age not to go along with it. Later I fell asleep in the firm conviction that my companions were not two hanged men.