I searched the kitchens, store-rooms and cellars, which were hewn out of the solid rock. Some were connected to underground passages which appeared to lead far into the mountain. But nowhere did I come across any food.

Eventually, as the last light was fading from the sky, I went to fetch my horse, which I had tethered in the courtyard, and led it to a stable in which I had seen some hay. I myself settled down in the room in which was the only pallet bed left in the whole inn. I would very much have liked to have had a light, but the one good thing about the hunger which still tormented me was that it prevented me sleeping.

None the less, as the night grew darker, my thoughts grew also more sombre. For some of the time my mind was occupied by the disappearance of my two servants; at other moments by thoughts of how I might obtain food. I formed the opinion that robbers had jumped out from behind some bushes or had emerged from some underground hiding-place and had taken Mosquito and Lopez captive one after the other; I had only been spared, I thought, because my military uniform had suggested that I might not have been so easily overpowered. My hunger preoccupied me more than all the rest of my thoughts. I had noticed some goats on the mountainside; they must be tended by a goatherd who would no doubt have a small amount of bread to eat with his milk. I was also counting somewhat on my gun. But the one thing I was not prepared to do was to turn back and face the mockery of the innkeeper of Andújar. On the contrary, I was resolutely set on continuing my journey.

Having exhausted all my thoughts on such matters, I could not stop myself going over in my mind the well-known tale of the counterfeiters and others of the same kind which I had been told at bedtime when I was a child. I also thought about the inscription on the alms box. I did not believe that the devil had wrung the neck of the innkeeper, but I could not make any sense of his tragic end.

Hours went by in this way in deep silence, when suddenly the unexpected chiming of a bell made me start up with surprise. It tolled twelve, and as everyone knows, ghosts are only active from midnight to cock crow. I say that I started up with surprise; I had good reason to, for the bell had not tolled the other hours, and as well as that, it seemed to me that there was something lugubrious about its tolling.

A moment later the bedroom door opened and I saw a totally black figure come in; not a frightening apparition, however, but a beautiful, half-naked negress holding a torch in each hand.

She came up to me, bowed low and said in very good Spanish, ‘Señor caballero, you are invited to partake in the supper of two foreign ladies who are spending the night at this hostelry. Please be so good as to follow me.’

I followed the negress along corridor after corridor until we reached a well-lit room in the middle of which stood a table laden with oriental bowls and carafes made of rock crystal, with three places set. At the end of the room was a magnificent bed. Many negresses were there, all eager to be of service; I saw them fall back respectfully as two ladies came in, whose pink-and-white complexions formed a perfect contrast with the ebony hue of their maidservants. They were holding each other by the hand. Both were dressed in a strange manner: strange, that is, as it then seemed to me, but in fact the style of their dress is common to several towns on the Barbary coast, as I have since discovered on my travels. Their attire was as follows: it consisted of a shift and a bodice. The shift was made of linen above the waist, but of Meknes gauze below it; such a gauze as would be wholly transparent if broad silk ribbons woven into its fabric had not caused it to veil those feminine charms which are best imagined and not seen. The sleeveless bodice, richly embroidered with pearls and adorned with diamond clasps, moulded itself closely to the bosom. The gauze sleeves of the shift were lifted back and fastened in a knot behind the neck. On their bare arms the ladies wore bracelets, both at the wrist and above the elbow. Had they been she-devils, their feet would have been cloven or armed with talons; they were not at all like that, but bare, and encased in small embroidered slippers. Their legs were adorned with anklets studded with large diamonds.

The two strangers approached me with an easy and sociable air. They were perfect beauties; one was tall, slim, dazzling; the other tender and shy. The elder was statuesque; she had a fine figure, with fine features to match.